Category: DevOps

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.

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.

I have held a paid-for Github account for a few years now. Github hosts my open-source PHP photo gallery, Blue Twilight.

​​​​2017 was an exciting year for the bigger players in the cloud hosting arena.

Content Delivery Networks were created for one reason: to speed up your websites and web applications. In this article, I explore how you can take advantage of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to improve your website performance for a small cost.

The Problem

Modern websites and web-based applications have a number of digital assets. These are the stylesheets, scripts and images that make up the websites you use. My website is no exception – it has 15 such assets.

... after some people upload too much.

“Today, storage limits just became a thing of the past with Office 365.”
Julia White, general manager of Office 365 Technical Product Management. 27th October, 2014

The open-source database fork of MySQL, started by MySQL’s original developer – MariaDB – have certified their latest release of the 10.1 series (10.1.8) as Generally Available – i.e. suitable for production use.

MariaDB 10.1 is a drop-in, binary replacement for MySQL for those that want a quicker development cycle and don’t want to have their hands tied by Oracle, who know own the MySQL project.

I’ve already upgraded my server to this release, and if any of the below sound good to you – so should you.

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server (TFS.) It is a complete tool for managing an application throughout its lifecycle. However I was bought up (and learnt most of my programming skills) on open-source software. It’s important to me that I don’t forget my roots!

Software developers sometimes have to get involved in choosing an infrastructure partner or web hosting provider, especially if that developer runs their own application or websites, or they work in a small company that can’t afford (or don’t want) to employ separate infrastructure engineers.

In my current role as a technical consultant, I can be called upon by a client to recommend a hosting environment, so it’s important I know what’s available on the market, and who to trust.

This is all very daunting, particularly if you’ve never had to experience it before.