Got Wills

Sphere piqued my interest two days ago, when I saw that someone had been referred to my blog from there. I immediately recognized the site… I had seen it on TechCrunch and GigaOm. When I had seen it on those sites, I thought it was just another social bookmarking or “Digg” like site. I soon found out it was a great tool for helping navigate the blogosphere.

Naturally, I went to get the code to put on my site, finding only a link to contact Sphere for more information. Sphere looked cool enough to forgo my usual distaste for a ‘contact me’ where a download link should be. I filled the requested information and hit send. Within a few minutes I had received an automatic response… great, I’m at the back of a long line. I archived the email and went about my business. Checking my email, I found, quite unexpectedly, that Tony Conrad, founder and CEO of Sphere had sent an email asking me to download and implement the new plugin for WordPress. About 5 minutes after reading the email… Sphere was running on my blog. I still had to make a small tweak to disable Snap Preview Anywhere, by adding a class, “snap_nopreview” to the link in the plugin file. So, now after each of my posts you will see a ‘Sphere it’ link. If you would like more about some topic I have written about, just click Sphere it, and you’ll be presented with a list of related blog posts. Now, if I could just get some comments… Oh well.

I just noticed the release of “Ella,” the new version of WordPress yesterday. Usually I don’t upgrade my site stuff the first week of a release, and sometimes I never upgrade it, it’s just too much of a hassle in most cases. However, after looking at the list of new features included in WordPress 2.1, I knew I had to have it.

• Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again.
• Our new tabbed editor allows you to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post.
• The lossless XML import and export makes it easy for you to move your content between WordPress blogs.
• Our completely redone visual editor also now includes spell checking.
• New search engine privacy option allows you take you to indicate your blog shouldn’t ping or be indexed by search engines like Google.
• You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.
• Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions. Domas Mituzas from MySQL went over all our queries with a fine-toothed comb.
• Links in your blogroll now support sub-categories and you can add categories on the fly.
• Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project.
• More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, and more all faster. My favorite is the comments page, which new lets you approve or unapprove things instantly.

Wow, I don’t know if this was available on WordPress 2.0 or not, but I was just able to drag the “Custom Fields” box out of my way, which is great, because it didn’t move enough when I tried to expand the “Trackbacks” box (probably an IE7 bug). Anyway, my favorite feature has to be the Autosave followed closely by the tabbed entry interface, making it easier to see the code view of your post.

This is really getting annoying. The computer was still on when I woke up, there are no traces in the Windows system log or the Virtual Server log. Hmm, I wonder if the beta service pack will help. I don’t want to try it except as a last result, as my experience with service packs has usually been if it was broken when the service pack was applied, the service pack usually just complicates things.

Oh well, I guess I’ll just limp along until I have an evening to apply the service pack. Maybe I’ll be able to find me a separate server, sometime.

No worries, it’s back up now. Weird, though. I don’t remember shutting down the computer last night, yet it was off when I got out of the shower. After reviewing the event log after work, I found that it was shutdown gracefully around the time I went to bed.

That’s not the weirdest part, not by far. After getting the computer back up, I was looking through the feeds I subscribe to on NetVibes and saw that my blog wasn’t sending a feed. After trying (unsuccessfully) to ping the virtual server, I go to the trusty start menu and find my Virtual Server Administration links. However, when I open it, “Page not found.” Hmm, IIS isn’t running, after a quick stop at the services console, the WWW Publishing service is running and I’m able to access the Virtual Server console, at which point I’m greeted with a nasty error message… the virtual server service wasn’t running either, that’s odd. Once again I punch the ever faithful “services.msc” in the run dialog and start the Virtual Server service. Only it doesn’t start. Well, well, well, file not found. “Huh? What file?” After a little investigation, I found that the file that is the service isn’t where it should be. “Where is it?” you say… Only my master file table knows.

Naturally, I did what anybody would do in my situation, I reinstalled Virtual Server (I guess not anybody, but I like to think I’m normal sometimes). Anyway, the service was able to start afterwards, but the virtual machine wouldn’t turn on… something about a bad login. Hmm, that’s an odd error for something like this. After beating around the proverbial bush some I figured I’d remove the server and add it again. The processor monitor started moving… it was beautiful.

Naturally, I start a continuous ping to the server so that I will know when the network is available on it, only it never becomes available. Alright, can nothing work today? Well, it turns out Suse saw the network adapter that Virtual Server setup as a whole new adapter. I guess, even though it was the same Mac, Linux knew that something had changed, oh well. A little configuration in Yast and it was responding to my continuous ping. Wondrously, my blog was still returning a page not found, DOH! Back in Yast, I look through the runlevel services and find that lsws is disabled (LiteSpeed Web Server, duh). I start it (and check MySQL, of course). Voila! It’s alive!

The weirdest part… you thought that was it? No, not quite. Actually, I find it freakishly weird that when I found out my Web site was down all night, I got this sick feeling in my stomach. When I had trouble getting back up, I think I actually started to panic. Whew. Good thing I was able to contain my emotions well enough to think this problem through. You would have missed out on this and many more posts only available on Got Wills. Heh, probably not. I would probably just put it back on my Windows PC, you know, the physical (as opposed to virtual) one. I do still feel a strange longing for the 1 or 2 hits that I may have gotten over what I like to call “The Night the Server Went Down in Holbrook.”

Well, I got it all working, well mostly. The blog is now hosted on my virtual Suse 10.2 server. The only issue that I’m still having is getting the colors of my header correct, it doesn’t seem to take any adjustments I make. I probably just need ImageMajik or something like it. I’ll check it when I get a few minutes.

I only dedicated 128 MB RAM to the server and it seems to be doing fine (thank you textmode). Instead of Apache, I’m now using LiteSpeed as my Web server. It’s supposed to work a lot better with Ruby on Rails. While there were a few stumbling blocks along the way, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be and as I suspected I would, I’ve learned a lot since I started this little project two five days ago (I actually finished 3 days ago and have been trying to write this post since then).

Server Installation

I made it through the Virtual Server 2005 R2 installation without incident, and was soon able to boot to a virtual system that wanted a system boot disk. Next I downloaded the Internet installation of Suse 10.2, afterall, I was only installing textmode and didn’t think I would need the whole installation DVD for that. Later I found out that I could have downloaded CD 1 and it would have been a lot easier… furthermore, I would have completely avoided my first pitfall, no swap partition, which resulted in an impass. After googling it a few times, I decided to use Partition Magic to setup a swap partition for the installation to use. Finally, it was installed successfully, on to the software installs.

Software Installation

I found a nice tutorial on howto forge for setting up The Perfect OpenSuse 10.2. This tutorial was invaluable in getting my virtual system ready to host. I had already installed the OS so I skipped ahead to page 5. Now, this tutorial uses Apache and I wanted to use LiteSpeed for my Web server, so that’s one step I skipped. I also didn’t want ISPConfig as I’m only setting up this host for my own personal use… for now. Also, my ISP blocks traffic on port 25, and I like my Google Apps for your Domain, so I didn’t bother with setting up Postfix or POP3/Imap related material. I also skipped the BIND9 install since I don’t have a static public IP address. Besides, I’m happy with EveryDNS.net.

I used wget to download LiteSpeed and the included installer worked very well. I found later, when trying to make my blog work that the included build of PHP wouldn’t work for me. A forum post led me to a howto that detailed building and installing a custom built PHP for LiteSpeed. A couple of things to note:

Be sure to install libxml2-devel:

yast2 -i libxml2-devel

Be sure to include the mySQL client library that came with mySQL (my mySQL base install was in /var/lib/mysql):

./configure '--prefix=/php5' '--with-litespeed' '--with-config-file-path=../conf' '--with-mysql=path_to_mysql_base_install'

Transferring the Blog

I ran into yet another speed bump when trying to access my database from the Windows machine. I remembered to open the port on the firewall and could access it from the server, but I couldn’t get into it from the host system using the root login and the password I had set. After a bit of googling, I found that mySQL is setup to only allow local access to root, so I proceded to allow access from my host machine using the instructions I found on Hard Hat Hosting. It worked perfectly, I now had access to my mySQL installation and was able to use SQLyog to synchronize my database on the Windows system with the database on the Linux system. I made the name and everything else the same so that I wouldn’t have to tweak my config files.

I uploaded the blog files using sftp to a subdirectory of the LiteSpeed server install and used chmod to set them all to read/execute for everyone except me, well actually root.

Setting Up the Virtual Host

I used the nifty LiteSpeed configuration page to add a virtual host. I ended up using the PHP_SuEXEC template and instantiating the member virtual host. I was then able to setup a new listener to direct requests to the correct virtual host. I simply restarted the service by clicking the “Apply Changes” link in the top left corner and voila. My blog is up and running.

I meant to write about this yesterday, but it was insanely busy around here. Snap Preview Anywhere is a piece of Javascript that you put on your Web pages. It then adds an Ajaxy feeling preview box when you mouse over the links on the pages.

SPA is beyond simple to install, just copy a bit of custom Javascript into the <head> block on each of your pages and you’re good to go. It’s even easier to install on blogs, thanks to Ajay D’Souza’s plugin for WordPress and the widget for TypePad. There is also a quickstart for blogger.com.

I first saw Snap Preview Anywhere on TechCrunch and knew I had to have it for my blog. It is an excellent tool and I imagine it will help to keep people from clicking away from your site. As always, let me know what you think.

It turns out, I’m not feeling ambitious enough to create my own theme, at least not right now. I have found a theme that I like enough to stop my constant scouring of WordPress theme sites. Wouldn’t you know… It’s the default with a few of the options tweaked.

Well, I looked through about a hundred themes last night… As you may have noticed, I didn’t like any of them. Now I intend to create my own theme. This is, however, more complex than I thought it would be. Well, I don’t know a better way to learn than to dive in. Of course, I really should try to tackle this some time before the sand man is tugging at my eyelids. Maybe I’ll try to hit it some tomorrow.

I’ve looked through some of the instructions and one particular saying comes to mind, “Nothing worth doing is easy…” Is that a saying or did it just pop into my weary head. I guess I better go to bed before I start typing gibberish.

Well, I’ve finally started a new blog using my new and improved domain, phillipwills.com. Everybody had so much trouble with the .info, I thought I should try to find a .com that works. So, here it is. The site isn’t much, yet. It is hosted on Google, but I plan to get a computer to setup as a linux server. Then I’ll make it my Web server and host all of my stuff from my own house…

My own house, did I mention that I’m in the market for a new house, or an old one, as long as my wife likes it. We looked at a couple yesterday, but we will probably wait and look at some more houses before making a final decision. It was fun looking, though.

Another thing, I’m going to start trying to get more computers to fix as a consultant. I’d like to build some Web pages, too. It’s so annoying that you can’t find a menu online for one restaurant in Holbrook (other than the major chains, of course). I’d like to make that change, as well as make an event list and even a forum… but that’s a little farther down the road.

One more thing, and I’m done. I need a better theme for WordPress. I’m going to look around a little more tonight, but I need to go to bed soon.

Night all.