If you use Tarball or Gzip file archives for storing your data, occasionally you may need to extract only a few select files or directories, rather than the entire archive file’s contents. Many people waste time, CPU, and drive space extracting the entire archive only to get access to a few of the contents, then to discard the rest of the data.

Why should one wait on files to extract that will just be deleted immediately after, without being used? Thanks to the great minds behind the tar application for Unix and Linux; we have been privileged with a solution. A little-known time saving tip is that extracting only specified directories or files from a tar gzip file is possible. Continue Reading

Changes to Apache web server’s configuration typically warrant a necessary immediate restart of the Apache. This is necessary in order for the new configuration changes to take effect due to the way Apace loads configuration settings at start-up.

Examples of changes which would warrant a restart in order to take immediate effect would be changing (adding or removing) an IP address, modifying the maximum connections limit, installing or uninstalling module files, changing virtual host configurations, and the list goes on, etc.

What is a Graceful Restart, and Why Bother Restarting Apache Gracefully?

Chances are you are already aware that the above situations would require a restart of Apache. The question that needs to be answered is “Why restart with the graceful command rather than the standard restart command. Continue Reading

Are you irritated by those forced advertisements placed through IFRAMEs on your free web space from your host? In this guide, I will show you how to escape the IFRAMEs used when masking / redirecting to your destination address.

These ads are displayed at the top of a forced IFRAME , with the main content being forwarded to the clients destination, all while remaining nested inside the parent frame so as to keep the main ad in the main frame on display through out the user’s entire browsing session.

Using the following JavaScript will help you get your content forwarded first, and then exit the forced ad’s by reloading itself without the IFRAME, thus no more IFRAME advertisements. Continue Reading

Redirecting non-www to www for ALL of your domains.

This guide will quickly go over why you should not use both www and non www versions of your domain, but choose only one, and how this affects your search engine rankings for Google.

Why you should only have www or non www, but not both for your website and it’s search engine optimization.

Many people have made their website accessible both through http://www.domain.com as well as just http://domain.com. This is not generally a good idea for your SEO (search engine optimization). You’re asking “Why?”, and I will explain. Google “king of search engines” and the only search engine that really should be important to you, treats subdomains as separate domains than the main domain.

In Google’s eyes; www.domain.com, domain.com are separate websites. If you are thinking “Great! My website is then going to be listed twice at Google!”, you will now need to reconsider, Continue Reading

SSL Certificates are considered a necessity with any website which stores or transfers any personal information. Users visiting your website are looking for and expecting to see evidence that their data will be securely transmitted, and it is a webmaster’s responsibility to provide such protection to their users.

SSL Certificates are an excellent tool to maintain the trust of your new and current user base. Without such a prominent and industry standard security measure in place, many users will simply “bounce” off of your website, as for a majority of the users of the internet, it is not worth the unknown risk to them to transmit their personal information to a destination which has not invested in such security measures.

Now that you have gotten your SSL Certificate installed, your site is ready to be viewed via https:// . However, for users typing in your web address in a search engine or their address bar, https:// is not the standard URL prefix which will be applied when connecting to your website. By default, all web browsers automatically make an http:// connection, which is not encrypted. With that, your current dilemma is how to you force your web site users to automatically connect with the secure https:// protocol, rather than the default http:// .

This brief guide will help you easily enforce the usage of your SSL Certificate and help you maintain the trust and confidence of your userbase with your SSL encrypted connection. Continue Reading