Software Development
All articles categorised as Software Development.
Solid Tools for Developers gets a refresh
Sunday, 12th January, 2020
It’s been over a year since the last update to Solid Tools for Developers – my suite of online tools for developers, system admins and network managers.
Yesterday I published my latest release to soliddevtools.com which gives the suite a fresh makeover and a few improvements to the tools.
DevOps , Software Development Read more
Announcing the launch of Blue Twilight Cloud
Sunday, 1st September, 2019
It’s 3 years to the day since I made the first commit to what would become Blue Twilight – my open-source PHP photo gallery.
Today I’m delighted to announce the availability of Blue Twilight Cloud.
Blue Twilight , Software Development Read more
Developers – score yourself a .dev domain today
Sunday, 24th February, 2019
Google is the registry behind the new .dev TLD – the ultimate vanity domain for developers.
The .dev extension has historically been used by developers fudging their host files to create realistic-looking development environments. Now, .dev is open in Early Access Preview to allow the world to register their .dev domains.
DevOps , Software Development Read more
Deploying PHP applications with RunCloud on UpCloud
Sunday, 27th January, 2019
My first post of 2019 is a tutorial that’s all about the cloud.
I’m going to show you how to deploy a PHP application with a MySQL database on a cloud server from UpCloud. I’ll be using the brilliant RunCloud control panel to deploy my PHP photo gallery – Blue Twilight – to an UpCloud server.
My friends over at UpCloud have provided an awesome promo-code for free credit to try out their service. Details at the end of the article.
DevOps , Software Development Read more
Variable declaration can be inlined – C#
Thursday, 25th October, 2018
It’s almost two years since I published the post on the Visual Studio IDE information message: “delegate invocation can be simplified.”
While reviewing some error messages in a new MVC project, I recently learnt something equally as simple and eye-opening.
Software Development Read more
Encrypt your database with MariaDB encryption at rest
Sunday, 1st July, 2018
The new EU data protection legislation, GDPR, mandates that every reasonable effort and technology is used to protect personal data. It even goes as far as specifying encryption. The open-source database MariaDB (a drop-in, compatible replacement for MySQL) has supported “encryption at rest” since version 10.1. Use MariaDB encryption to satisify the GDPR recommendation of using encryption to protect your personal data.
Let’s have a look at what it can do and how you can set it up. You won’t have to make a single change to your website or application!
DevOps , Software Development Read more
Install a LAMP stack (Apache, MariaDB, PHP) on Ubuntu Server
Wednesday, 11th April, 2018
Ubuntu Server is a Linux distribution that is ideally suited to server workloads. For example: hosting websites and web applications.
In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to install a LAMP stack – that’s Apache, MariaDB (in place of MySQL) and PHP – on Ubuntu Server using the latest available releases, and how to keep it up-to-date.
DevOps , Software Development Read more
Redirect all visitors to a primary domain in Apache
Sunday, 1st April, 2018
There are several scenarios in which you may want to redirect all your website visitors to a single, primary domain in Apache:
- Redirect the www and non-www (root domain) hostnames of your domain to avoid duplicate content and improve SEO
- Redirect an old domain to a new domain, maintaining links and search engine reputation
- Redirect secondary domains (e.g. “spelling mistake” domains, or alternative-spelling domains) to your primary domain
I have recently implemented the following on my own website, and I would like to share this Apache trick.
DevOps , Software Development Read more
Why I prefer self-hosted Git repositories to Github, Bitbucket, etc.
Saturday, 10th February, 2018
It’s the year 2018 and it’s impossible for a software developer to have not heard about (or used) Github, or a variant like Bitbucket. Even self-hosted Git evangelist GitLab is a popular choice.
At the start of February 2018, I provisioned a new Cloud VPS to run my website and other apps. I also chose to migrate all my private Git repositories to it and cancelled my paid Github subscription.
This article explores the reasons why I went self-hosted.
DevOps , Software Development Read more
The Great Big Cloud Hosting Speed Test 2017
Sunday, 21st January, 2018
2017 was an exciting year for the bigger players in the cloud hosting arena.
With all these improvements in cloud hosting, I thought it would be interesting to focus on a key metric of hosting providers that many overlook: network speed.
Most modern cloud hosting providers give your dedicated server or VPS a 100Mbps or 1Gbps network connection. But how close can you actually get to that speed?