On moving a directory-based Wordpress installation to a subdomain
When I originally cobbled this blog together the URL I decided upon was http://www.lylo.co.uk/blog which seemed like a good (easy) idea at the time, but I recently decided that what I wanted the URL to be was http://blog.lylo.co.uk because, quite frankly, subdomains are cool.
Recently I moved web hosts from AISO to Slicehost, mainly to give myself hours and weeks of pain by building my own virtual Linux server, but also to host and manage client sites myself. I built Apache from source and Slicehost provide full DNS control so I can now create as many subdomains as I want and not pay a penny. If any web host out there is charging you, say, £5 a month per additional subdomain then you should really think about moving. I come cheap and highly recommended :-)
Adding the blog subdomain was as easy as adding a VirtualHost declaration in my Apache config:
<virtualhost>
ServerAdmin admin@lylo.co.uk
DocumentRoot "/the/path/to/htdocs/blog"
ServerName blog.lylo.co.uk
ErrorLog "/the/path/to/logs/error_log"
CustomLog "/the/path/to/logs/access_log" common
</virtualhost>
My existing Wordpress installation lived in the htdocs/blog directory, so once the new subdomain was active, requests to it automatically displayed the blog. However, none of the links in the blog were using the subdomain because Wordpress was still configured to work with the old http://www.lylo.co.uk/blog URL. I changed this to http://blog.lylo.co.uk in the Wordpress Options page and, magically, all the links appeared using the new subdomain URL.
If only they worked.
The problem was that the .htaccess file in the htdocs/blog directory was configured for the old /blog set up:
<ifmodule>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]
</ifmodule>
Since the blog directory wasn’t publically visible, I removed it from the config:
<ifmodule>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</ifmodule>
Which made all my blog permalinks work through the new subdomain. Huzzah!
Except that now all the old links which my thousands upon thousands of avid readers (Andy) have carefully bookmarked and refer to almost daily, all seamlessly failed at once. The best way to deal with this situation is a permanent 301 redirect from the old URL to the new. This way I don’t hamper Lylo’s top-notch Google ranking for searches such as “lylo” and, er, “lylo uk”. Putting a 301 redirect in my htdocs/blog directory would work perfectly if the location I was redirecting to wasn’t the same folder (and thus causing a recursive redirect which Apache really doesn’t like), so I moved the Wordpress installation to a new directory:
[htdocs]$ cp -R blog wordpress
I then changed the Apache VirtualHost setting to point to the new directory before I removed everything from the old blog directory. Finally, to redirect all the old /blog requests, I added the 301 redirect by creating an .htaccess file in htdocs/blog containing the following statements:
RewriteEngine ON
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://blog.lylo.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]
And, as Tony Blair once said, that is that. The end.
Posted by Olly on June 28, 2007 at 12:12 pm in apache, wordpress
Comments (1)
| Permalink
The world’s greatest web browser
It doesn’t exist. There are some hotshot contenders to the browser crown for sure, but not one of them has nailed it.
The big news yesterday was Apple announcing a beta of Safari 3 for both Mac and Windows. It even made page 2 of Metro which is a little bit weird.
Safari has long been the browser of choice for Mac Daddy’s everywhere and now it fancies it’s chances against the behemoth, the king of the hill, the undisputed champion of the world and the object of hate for any self-respecting web developer — Internet Explorer. Safari, you’re going to take a beating.
Microsoft’s ability to completely ignore the voice of the people combined with Firefox’s top-notch rendering ability, security (apart from the master password thing), wealth of extensions and the power of nerd, has led Firefox, over the past four years, to gradually nibble away at Internet Explorer’s user base to gain a respectable market share of 15%. Safari sits just below 5% while poor old Opera is struggling to make 1%[1]. I’m not sure where Navigator 9 fits in.
So how is Safari going to take that market share? What’s it offering over Internet Explorer or Firefox? It’s faster, apparently, not that 95% of it’s potential users would ever notice. The majority of PCs out there are so crammed full with AOL limited trials, Anti-Virus, Anti-Spam, Anti-Spyware, Google Desktop, Adobe Speed Launch, and all that other guff which gets pre-installed by manufacturers desperately trying to squeeze that little bit more profit out of each sale, that Mr. G. Higgins of Chesterfield has to endure 30 seconds of disk swapping before Windows will even let him double-click on the Safari icon, if he can find it on his desktop that is, which is chock-full of downloaded .EXEs, hilarious email attachments and misplaced documents.
And exhale.
What I’m trying to say is that Safari isn’t really offering anything else over Internet Explorer for PC users, except giving that tiny percentage who have a functional Dell but really like the look of that shiny Apple and might even consider buying one if they didn’t cost three times as much as a PC, a bit of Mac Love. It’s too little, too late.
Firefox really should have nailed it by now. It towers above the competition, the extensions are superb, even my online bank strongly recommends it, but
it
can be
really
s l o w.
And it doesn’t look like a Mac app on the Mac, which isn’t that important to me, but probably is to the majority of Mac users. And it doesn’t use the Keychain (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106400 - 5 ½ years old!). And it isn’t written by Apple.
Still, I keep using Firefox even though I don’t really want to, so when Camino 1.5 was announced this week I got a little too overexcited before being quickly disappointed. Camino is fast, it looks like a Mac app (it is a Mac app), it uses the Keychain, it imports my Safari or Firefox bookmarks and even duplicates Firefox’s bookmark keywords which is such a nice touch (are you listening Apple?), but despite having ‘Mozilla Power’ it doesn’t have Firefox extension support (and never will) which means I can’t use Firebug, del.icio.us, Google Notebook, Tails and all the other add-on goodness which I can with Firefox. Game over.
So you see, the perfect browser really doesn’t exist. It almost does, and every feature you could possibly want exists in one of the leading contenders, but not one of them has managed to combine them into the one true browser. The crown is there for the taking.
Posted by Olly on June 12, 2007 at 9:35 am in apple, browsers, news, safari3
Comments (1)
| Permalink
Introducing FreeAgent Central
£2444. That’s the current total Lylo has paid to accountants in our first two years of business. For this bargain price we’ve had three tax returns and eight VAT returns filled in for us, whilst we’ve been saddled with meticulously maintaining a gargantuan spreadsheet of categorised expenses and bank transactions. Not exactly great value for money… unless you’re our accountant.
So, to simplify managing a small business (and to make doing so cheaper), I hooked up with Ed, Roan and Dennis to produce FreeAgent Central, an online service targeting UK-based freelancers, consultants and contractors, and this week we’re proudly announcing the launch of the public beta version.
In a nutshell, FreeAgent offers client management, invoicing, time tracking, expenses, payroll and tax calculation for sole traders and limited companies, securely, from your favourite web browser.
There are lots of other great features, with dozens more in the pipeline, so check out the product tour for a more in-depth look. If it floats your boat, sign up for a free beta tester account and prepare to say goodbye to spreadsheet hell!
Posted by Olly on June 5, 2007 at 7:07 pm in freeagent, freeagentcentral, news
Comments Off
| Permalink
