Working with a Windows based web server recently, I ran into a bit of a puzzle when a software package I was using required a regular PHP script to be run.  On POSIX based operating systems like Linux or BSD, this is something you could easily accomplish by running what is known as a ‘cronjob’.

As Windows has no cron daemon, I had to come up with another solution.

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This week as I was migrating my Wordpress installs to a new host, I noticed that all of my posts contained funny ‘Â’ characters where newlines should be.   Why was this happening?  How did I fix it?

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This afternoon at work I got a call from the boss letting me know that our website was down.

Down? I think one of my nagios alerts would have let me know about that!

Ok he says, not really down, it’s just not showing content.

Having a look, the template was showing up fine but the spots where articles should appear were coming up blank.

What was the problem?

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I just recently set up a new email server for the company I work with.  With this new setup I’ve tried to be a bit more security conscious, forcing clients to use SSL/TLS when sending and receiving messages.  Part of the process for this setup involved generating a self signed security certificate.

The problem?  Outlook throws a warning message every time it’s opened.

Solution?

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One of the most basic Apache administration tasks I perform is password protecting a directory or site.  In lieu of creating a complicated login/registration engine, sometimes I prefer a quick and dirty basic authentication.  This is especially true for projects only I’m meant to see.

Here’s a quick refresher on how to password protect a directory with Apache.

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