HTTPS All the Things!!

rob — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 00:10:16 +0000

Google recently announced that they would be using HTTPS as part of it’s search ranking algorithms. This is great for the web. The more secure every site is, the better off we are as a community. Recently, my friend Mike Yockey told me about letsencrypt.org. Let’s Encrypt is a free, open authority for SSL certificates that just launched it’s private beta.

So, I signed up a few days ago got my authorization today. The email had a few quick, simple instructions to run the command line tool to generate the certificates, and about 5 minutes later:

I would encourage everyone to look into this for sites they manage but have been prohibited (cost?) from securing with SSL. One thing to note, is that you’ll want to include all of your subdomains when you register, as currently in the beta, they need to be manually added to the whitelist – this is why this blog is not yet HTTPS.

Simplify Your Atom Config

rob — Sat, 24 Oct 2015 03:53:12 +0000

If you love setting up your editor to get it just right every time you set up a new computer, or really enjoy keeping plugins and setting in sync across multiple computers you should probably stop reading right now.

OK, good, you stayed here – because you want to make this process simple and repeatable. Let’s do it.

Step 1

The first step is to setup a dotfiles repo. If you haven’t done this already, check this out this example on GitHub.com.

Step 2

Move ~/.atom into your dotfiles repo. Mine is located at ~/my-projects/dotfiles/atom.

Step 3

From the folder containing the original .atom folder, create a symlink to your new Atom config.

Mac OS X/Linux:

cd ~
ln -s ~/my-projects/dotfiles/atom .atom

Windows:

cd C:\Users\\.atom
mklink /D my-projects\dotfiles\atom .atom

Step 4

Inside your new atom folder, you will probably want to add a .gitignore file. This will keep your repo from getting bloated. Here’s what mine looks like:

.apm
.node-gyp
compile-cache
packages
storage

Step 5

I’m using Parcel to keep track of my plugins. Running Parcel: sync will generate a package.cson file in your .atom folder, and install any missing plugins.

Step 6

Commit the changes to your dotfiles repo and push them to GitHub (or wherever your repo is).

That’s it.

Next time you need to set up Atom on another computer, clone your dotfiles, recreate the symlink, and you’re good to go.

Words by Rob