Author Archives: Ammon

The better way to install LAMP on Ubuntu Karmic 9.10

By Ammon | March 29 2010

All this comes from here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ApacheMySQLPHP In the teminal: $ sudo tasksel install lamp-server $ sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin $ sudo gedit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf Add the following to the end of this file:  “Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf” Edit the /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini file and increase the memory_limit value. I used 64M, but that may be overkill.

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Bash aliases: create your own bash shortcuts!

By Ammon | February 25 2010

When I’m building websites especially, I have to work with a lot of deeply nested files. But typing cd ~/public_html/websitename/wp-content/themes/themename/ in the terminal every time is giving me carpal tunnel, so I found a better way: First open ~/.barshrc in a text editor and uncomment lines 73 through 75 so they look like this: if [...]

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How to configure Apache virtual hosting in Ubuntu Karmic 9.10

By Ammon | February 17 2010

Edited 3/8/11 Before you do anything, back up your original config files. I used to just create a copy of the files with the suffix “.bak” (sudo cp example.conf example.conf.bak), which works, but creates a lot of clutter. Now I use a great little utility called etckeeper which automatically places all files in /etc under [...]

Posted in Apache, Solutions, Ubuntu, Virtual Hosts | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Add Mootools to a WordPress child theme

By Ammon | February 11 2010

The following code, when included in the functions.php file in your WordPress child theme, will correctly load Mootools and a custom script. This is the only way I am able make custom scripts work, but you hear a lot of stuff out there on the interweb… <?php function add_js() { $stylesheet_dir = get_bloginfo(‘stylesheet_directory’); $myscript = [...]

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I’m switching to Chrome (on a trail basis)

By Ammon | February 1 2010

I thought I would be a Firefox user till I died, but holy crap Chrome is fast! I can launch Firefox, go make a sandwich, launch Chrome and be browsing before Firefox loads. This is particularly nice on our crappy Windows machines at work. JavaScript is noticeably faster. Chrome seems more stable and doesn’t do [...]

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WordPress Error: Unable to create directory / Is its parent directory writable by the server?

By Ammon | January 28 2010

If you get this error when you try to upload an image to your WordPress blog, there are two things you can do: Go to Settings > Miscellaneous in your WordPress admin area and make sure that ‘Store uploads in this folder’ is set to the default: wp-content/uploads (notice there is no ‘/’ before wp-content/uploads).  [...]

Posted in Musings | Tagged | 2 Comments

Use your user’s public_html directory to serve webpages

By Ammon | January 20 2010

Using a public_html file in your home directory is much more convenient than /var/www for a local website development environment. The following commands create a file called public_html in your home directory and enable the UserDir module in Apache. From the command line, enter: $ mkdir ~/public_html $ cd /etc/apache2/mods-enabled $ sudo ln -s ../mods-available/userdir.conf [...]

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Ubuntu Karmic LAMP stack installation

By Ammon | January 19 2010

In the terminal, type: $ sudo apt-get install apache2 $ sudo apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5 php5-mysql $ sudo apt-get install mysql-server $ sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin Just agree when it asks you stuff.

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Use ‘service’ to start, stop and restart Apache in Ubuntu Karmic

By Ammon | January 19 2010

The service service_name command command can be used to start, stop, or restart anything in your /etc/init.d directory. From the command line, use it like this: $ sudo service apache2 start $ sudo service apache2 stop $ sudo service apache2 restart

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The difference between a working tree, repository, branch, and checkout in the Bazaar version control system

By Ammon | October 20 2009

I love using Bazaar for version control! It allows me to work on the same files as my buddies without accidentally overwriting their work. I’m also free to experiment and refactor without fear, because I can just revert my files to previous (working) version if I screw everything up. The key to understanding version control [...]

Posted in Musings | Tagged | 4 Comments