Tag: PHP

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Blogging Geeky/Programming

Switching Hosting – Moving to Media Temple (MT)

A few months ago I decided to consolidate my hosting and sites to one server, and I went to Server Beach, and got my own Windows 2003 server. I needed ASP.net and PHP for some things I had so it was kind of a unique situation.

Server Beach is awesome, and if I needed more control I would definitely go back, but I decided it was too money for what I was doing, so I found Media Temple (MT). They have one click WordPress install which was nice, and you can host like up to 100 sites on one account on their “grid” service, for like 20 dollars a month.

What this did leave me with though, was I needed to convert the services I had in ASP.NET to PHP, so a week or so ago I decided to make the switch and converted those services over. PHP just reminds me too much of ASP Classic, very hacky and you have the ability to just put anything anywhere. Oh well, it works now and all my sites are over there for now (except a couple that I will move when their hosting expires). I am liking MT so far and hopefully it goes well, its cheap enough and allows me to do what I need.

I do like that they have the MySQL admin available so you can manage the DB’s directly. In one of my sites, I had to update all the posts at once, and I just wrote a query to do it, saved a ton of time.

Now if I can just get all my DNS and domain registrations in one place, I will be set 🙂

Categories
Geeky/Programming

Server Move: Hosting My Own Site(s)

Well, I have been on HostMySite for a few years now, and I just wasn’t liking it. I didn’t have control, and couldn’t do everything I wanted to. Last week I signed up with ServerBeach and I have my own dedicated server. I am running Windows 2003, IIS, SQL, MySQL, PHP, etc.

I changed for now my DNS to GoDaddy from Active-Domain, since GoDaddy has SPF records (for Google talk federation, etc). I might change that up here in the future as well.

Transferring a domain takes way to long! Took like 4 days overall. Also, I first went with EasyCGI , a VPS solution, but the box couldn’t get to the Internet! I put in tickets, etc, they just wouldn’t fix it, so I canceled and went to ServerBeach. I am liking them so far, they had the server provisioned in about 4 hours.

One thing I can do now as well, is write a site for myself and import all the log files (Firewall, SMTP, All the Sites, FTP, etc) and have a nice little reporting solution.

ServerBeach is good, very professional. If you want to sign up, use referrer code BW27Q37B6D  (http://www.serverbeach.com/)

To get PHP/MySQL/WordPress, I loosely followed these three tutorials

How to Install PHP on IIS 6.0
How to Install MySQL On IIS 6.0
How to Install WordPress on IIS 6.0

For my ASP.NET Site, it was just copying over files and configuring IIS a little. For my blog, I used this dbbackup plugin (http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup/) and then once I had my WordPress files over, and MySQL/PHP running, I connected to the instance of a DB I created and ran the SQL backup script, which created everything the way I needed it for WordPress.

For Mail, I use the built in SMTP in Windows 2003. I just had to turn on relaying, but yeah, spammers, so I just allowed the local server to send mail, and it works. Tested it using this (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323350) and it worked.

Other than that, its pretty much basic server admin stuff. Firewall, FTP, etc. Everything is running smooth… for now 🙂

I will just have to make sure I have backups!

 

Categories
Blogging

WordPress 2.3.3, PHP, Windows Live Writer, Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted

After I updated to WordPress 2.3.3, I was seeing some pages in my admin screens getting errors like this:

Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted

WTF? So, pages still worked though. I cleaned out everything I wasn’t using (themes, plugins, etc) in my WordPress directories, still getting it.

So researched a little, had to edit my php.ini in the etc directory of my webhost. I changed memory_limit from 8M to 16M. Pages started working again. cool!

Anyways, Windows Live Writer was getting an error on posting after I upgraded "Invalid response document returned from XmlRpc server" and the post would save as a draft in WLW (but still post to my blog)  After posting to the WLW groups on MSN, Joe Cheng at Microsoft wrote me to send me the WLW log file. (Help->About->Show Log File). After looking at the log file myself I noticed the same "Allow memory size…" errors and realized that the php.ini fix probably fixed the posting problem.

After I fixed the php.ini, my posts now go through with no issue.

I know some people have just updated the xml-rpc.php and they are having issues. I recommend just updating your whole WordPress installation. If you are using a custom theme you are ok. Just disable your plugins and re-enable after updating the files. the wp-config.php doesn’t get overwritten, so you are ok.

Categories
Geeky/Programming

PHP, IIS7, Vista, VS2005

Tonight, just for the heck of it, I decided to get PHP running on my machine. I am running Vista (not SP1 beta). I already have IIS installed, so that pre-req was taken care of.

First thing, I made sure I had everything turned on..

Start->Run->Programs and Features->Turn Windows Features on or off…

image

I made sure CGI and ISAPI was checked. I then downloaded and installed PHP (http://www.php.net/get/php-5.2.5-win32-installer.msi/from/a/mirror)

When I went through the install, I changed the path from Program Files to Windows (read online that it would be better – rights – if in Program Files it doesn’t have the same rights as in Windows)

Then, I opened IIS7, and  went to “Handler Mappings” and clicked “Add Script Map”

image

It will prompt you when you hit ok to add to CGI stuff, hit Yes.

Then you can make a test PHP page in your wwwroot, put <?php  phpInfo();  ?> in there and it should work!

Now, as an added bonus, I wanted to use VS2005 IDE to develop PHP scripts, and found VS.PHP (http://www.jcxsoftware.com/vs.php) which lets you make PHP projects in VS2005. There is a 30 day trial, but then it is 99 dollars. I installed it and tried it , pretty awesome.

I don’t know how much PHP programming I will do, but every now and then it is nice to dabble into other technologies and code up something, or just keep up on the latest trends.

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