Servers

Postfix Send Only SMPT Mail for Drupal 8 on Ubuntu 16.04, Nginx

If you have recently installed a fresh Drupal 8 site on Ubuntu 16.04 with Nginx running on it and you are getting Unable to send e-mail. Contact the site administrator if the problem persists notice after submitting contact form, you are missing an important element for your site to functions properly. You could be missing important information about available updates, as Drupal uses cron to sends notification e-mails once updates are available. The following written applies not only...

How To Install GlobalSight Translation Management System on Linode VPS (Ubuntu 14.04)

There are plenty of translation management systems available on the market, some are better, some have features that other's don't have. And some are paid while some are Open Source (free) In today's servers article series I will share my configuration I used to install Open Source GlobalSight translation management system on Linode VPS running Ubuntu 14.04 It took me about 8 hours to get it finally runing, but using following tutorial you should be able to manage it under 2 hours (...

OwnCloud - Increase Max File Upload Size

It has been more than 2 years, since I installed (set and forgot) OwnCloud for internal file sharing.  For the past two years OwnCloud have worked like a charm (and still does). Just today I faced a problem - I tried to upload file larger than 513 MB (default max file for OwnCloud), but struck because of exceeding max file upload size. I really needed to deliver this file across few continents as quick as possible. Well I could probably use direct file upload on bare ftp, but this is...

How To Password Protect Your site with Nginx on Ubuntu 14.04

I was working on a new customers website, and I was looking for ways to showcase current development stage to the client, meanwhile hiding contents from others. Sounds familiar? In this server series guide I will provide info how to set up basic HTTP authentication with Nginx on Ubuntu 14.04. Most details for this article are taken from Digital Ocean's guide: How To Set Up Basic HTTP Authentication With Nginx on Ubuntu 14.04 with few minor adjustments. As I'm serving more than just...

How to Upgrade from Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04 LTS

In this article I will provide simple instructions on how to upgrade Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04.  In fact I didn't wanted to push for a server upgrade for a while, but decided to do it now, and not to wait when things will break completely. In fact I was working on a Drupal 8 site development and wanted to have it on more recent version of server, and so I opted to upgrade whole server. Following tutorial is inspired from How to Upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Backups I highly suggest you...

How To Enable PHP Curl Ngnix (Good for Social share counters)

Today I was eager to install and enable really cool Drupal module for my blog - Social Share Counter, this module looked simple - all I had to do, just download, enable and a little bit tweak around. From module creator (s) This module gives the share counts for only Facebook,Twitter and more which has some excellent features in more elegant manner. If you have a website, then you definitely need this module. Unfortunately, after I successfully installed and enabled this module I noticed...

How to Upgrade PHP 5.3 to 5.5.9 on Ubuntu 12.04 to Support Drupal 8

That day finally have come and I've officially started a new project on my first Drupal 8 website. While my first attempts were about two years ago, but due to the lack of time and will to explore new things and configure new servers I proceeded just tonight (after a conversation with a long time customer we agreed to make a re-branded website and I was allowed to "experiment" with a Drupal 8 site) I took me some time to get it running as I wasn't prepared for the Drupal 8...

Linode Doubles RAM Resources both for existing and new customers

There is a reason sometimes to follow up official blogs/ social media for services you are using. I had missed an important update from Linode for about a month - Linode had doubled RAM for everyone. First it was announced and implemented already by June 16, 2016 to celebrate Linode's 13th Birthday. I have been a loyal customer for Linode services for about 5 years, and during this time - Linode have made many pleasant free upgrades. I started with a $40 sever plan, and if I'm not wrong...

LEMP Server Ubuntu 12.04 for serving Drupal on Nginx

In this tutorial you will learn how to setup a LEMP stack on Ubuntu 12.04 for serving a Drupal site (s). Update: I originally started this post to document my setup for actually configuring Nginx server on Ubuntu for Drupal site at the start of 2015. Many things have changed ,ever since, thus most of the written bellow will work. LEMP is a variation of the ubiquitous LAMP stack used for developing and deploying web applications. Traditionally, LAMP consists of Linux, Apache, MySQL,...

How to Renew Let's Encrypt SSL Certificate

Free SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt certify are issued for a short 3 month term. I first enabled secure HTTPS pages around at start of 2016, and now it's time to renew SSL.  The following tutorial is written for Nginx, but should work for Apache as well (with minor modifications) Stop Nginx​ sudo service nginx stop To trigger the renewal process for all installed domains, run this command: sudo /opt/letsencrypt/letsencrypt-auto renew Start Nginx ​ sudo service nginx start Now...

13 Dirt Cheap Web Hosting Under $5/mo

In this article I decided to list cheapest web hosting companies available in hosting market, offering services under five bucks a month. It's a dirt cheap money, for an option to serve your website online. Thus I'm not a fan of shared hosting (and exactly shared hosting fells under dirt cheap), instead I prefer VPS (this blog is served with Linode VPS), if I would need to choose a cheap hosting for a new website or blog I would most probably look only on two companies from listed bellow -...

Let's Encrypt to fix HTTPS Certificate incompatibility with Windows XP and Google Chrome

It was about a month ago - when I successfully installed secure https pages for my blog, I opted for using free certificate provided by Let's Encrypt certificate authority. I first heard Let's Encrypt certificate authority from KeyCDN. It was super easy and fast to create SSL certificates for my Linode powered Nginx box. Unfortunately - just a few days later I noticed a deadly screen - Your connection is not private Your connection is not private Google Chrome screen I was using Windows XP...

Linode: How To Secure Nginx with Let's Encrypt on Ubuntu 12.04

Encrypted HTTPS websites are pretty much a hot topic nowadays. I have seen a lot noncommercial websites and blogs using HTTPS protocol lately.  I believe cheap prices for certificates and possible SEO boost from Google are pushing more and more to add HTTPS. Including me! In fact this article is first since my blog is HTTPS, to celebrate that I decided to write shot tutorial how you too can enable HTTPS on Ubuntu 12.04 running Nginx and optionally running a Drupal...

Third Traffic Spike: More than 7,500 Daily Users

A huge traffic surge to this website was experienced on November 15 when total unique user count reached 7,732. The vast majority of them were coming from Turkey.  Update: Learn how I got 10,000 Page views in a day This was already third traffic spike to my blog, previous record was set back in January (2015) with 3,584 users. While the first serious traffic spike my blog experienced almost two years ago, when total daily traffic surged just above 1,000 daily users. For the couple of...

How To Recover Lost Password on Linode Server (SSH, Putty)

Bad things happens time after time, and so did happened to me recently - after a longer pause I resumed work on a customers project, and I faced a problem - I had lost my password for accessing my Linode VPS. I must admit that I panicked a lot. Since this happened second time in a 3 years, I decided to wrap up a simple article to help me and others to quickly get connected back to our servers. Interested in Linode VPS? You can actually have a Linode VPS starting as low as $10.00/mo...

How To Fix "Server has a weak ephemeral Dillie-Heffman public key" For Jboss Server

A few days ago a customer of mine experienced an error by not being able to access his management system on intranet I built a few years ago. The error we got was following: "Server has a weak ephemeral Dillie-Heffman public key" or ERR_SSL_WEAK_EPHEMERAL_DH_KEY What basically means: If you see this error, it means that a secure connection can't be established because of outdated security code on the website. Chrome protects your privacy by preventing you from connecting to these...

Best WordPress Hosting From Bluehost - Starting Just $3.95/mo

If you are looking for a reliable, fast and cheap hosting for your self-hosted WordPress blog or website - I can recommend you to try Bluehost. The Best Web Hosting Bluehost While I must be completely honest with you - I'm not a fan of WordPress, I prefer Drupal over WordPress (Read: Cheap Drupal Hosting from Bluehost) but if I were up to for a WordPress site and was looking for my options of hosting it - I would probably stick with a Bluehost. In case you are looking for more...

How to Specify a Vary: Accept-Encoding header Nginx

The other day I visited tools.pingdom.com to test performance for my blog (the one you are currently reading) and I did fine I have a two bottlenecks: Remove query strings from static resources Specify a Vary: Accept-Encoding header I managed to handle query string issue for static resources and then I headed to find a solution for the Specify a Vary thing. Since it's not a Drupal related issue I did some search regarding Nginx and I soon found excellent solution on stackoverflow.com...

Cheap Drupal Hosting - Starting $3.95/mo - Bluehost

I believe there are many articles out there about best/cheap/fast... you name it - Drupal hosting. In this article I will provide a simple review of a very known hosting company - Bluehost - 100% compatible with Drupal.  I have been working core with Drupal since 2009, prior to that I developed websites on WordPress. Then I made a major switch, because of WordPress couldn't handle what I was looking to build (Geospatial web, multiple content types, e.t.c). I was super excited (and still...

Bluehost VS Linode - Which VPS Hosting To Choose

For a prelude, I have been a core Linode VPS user for the past last 3 years. Currently I'm running 4 separate Linode VPS (on one of them this blog is running). I'm paying pretty solid amount of money to Linode each month. And of course I'm a proud Linode affiliate. That's actually a reason why I decided to wrap up a blog post comparing Linode to other VPS provider, and this time I have chosen Bluehost VPS. The other day reading some other blogger's income reports I found that Bluehost's...

Nginx redirect domain name to another domain

Some time ago I explained how one (perhaps you) can do a non www redirect to www redirect (or vice verse) using NGINX. Today I will show how one (again perhaps you) can redirect domainname to any other domain name using Nginx server { server_name .domain.com; return 302 $scheme://forwarded-domain.com; } Found here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6045020/how-to-redirect-to-a-different-domain-using-nginx

How to solve Nginx: 413 Request Entity Too Large error

I'm running a Nginx powered server I have configured a while ago. One problem I have on my Drupal sites hosted on that environment is that I couldn't upload a files larger than 1MB using Drupal fields. I got Nginx: 413 Request Entity Too Large error. And it pissed me of - because of - in my php.ini file I had already set a maximum upload file size to some 192MB. When I faced a situation, when I had to upload files larger than 1MB, I went on my searches, what's wrong with my server, after...

Installing ownCloud on Linode - Ubuntu 14.04

Some time ago I get an opportunity to familiarize with ownCloud, you can find out more about my first impressions with ownCloud server here.  Today I decided to create a simple tutorial were I have noted have one (perhaps you) can install his/her own file sharing server - ownCloud. I'm going to use Linode VPS, Ubuntu 14.04 and Apache Actually, I tried to set ownCloud on Ngnix, but there was some problems with it, so i sticked with Apache At first I bought a new VPS from Linode....

OwnCloud - Answer to my Needs

A while ago (actually a very long time ago) I faced a need to develop a file storage server for some of my customer. This is what I wrote 6 months ago: My first idea is to buy cheap VPS from Digital Ocean, set up vsftpd, and add some web interface for user management. For $5 I can get 20GB disk space, so I will try soon to realise this idea, and see how it's gona work. Unfortunately I didn't finished my idea using cheap VPS for more than 6 months. Today, speaking with another...