Web Development – Frankie Inguanez

Category: Web Development

Project MATFAR.CO.UK launched

Posted on 2012-04-26 by Frankie

Just launched one of my latest projects: matfar.co.uk This is a portfolio site for Matthew Farrugia a senior creative and a great friend of mine. The site is based on WordPress and the Photorific premium theme. Following is the flier:

N.B. All graphic and photographic material is the work of Matthew Farrugia.

Virtual Hosts on Apache

Posted on 2012-02-10 by Frankie

Working on multiple Web Projects on the same system might become a headache to manage. You must use Virtual Hosts if you are using Apache as pointed out by David Kiss. Following are the steps required to create a Virtual Host called magento in your system such that when you type http://magento the site is displayed, as per Mac OS X Lion using MAMP:

Backup your files.
1. Open a terminal window.
2. Backup your hosts file:
  sudo cp /private/etc/hosts /private/etc/hosts.bak
3. Backup your Apache configuration file:
  cp /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf.bak
4. Backup your Virtual Hosts configuration file:
  cp /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf.bak
Update the hosts file.
1. Edit the hosts file:
  sudo nano /private/etc/hosts
2. Add the name of the Virtual Host you want on your system:
  127.0.0.1 magento
3. Save and exit:
  Press Ctrl+X then Y.
Update the Apache configuration file.
1. Edit the Apache configuration file:
  nano /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf
2. Un-comment the line where httpd-vhosts.conf is found such that it looks like this:
  Include /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
3. Save and exit:
  Press Ctrl-W then Y
Update the Virtual Hosts configuration file.
1. Edit the configuration file:
  nano /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
2. At the end add the following:
  <VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName magento
  DocumentRoot /Users/fraki/Sites/magento
  </VirtualHost>
3. Save and exit:
  Press Ctrl-X then Y
Place the site contents in the folder specified.
Navigate to the virtual host.

Virtual Hosts Navigation — Using Virtual hosts

You might want to check the official documentation of Apache about Virtual Hosts, in this post I am using name-based virtual hosts.

Configuring SSL for Apache on OS X Lion using MAMP

Posted on 2012-02-10 by Frankie

After self-signing an SSL certificate for development purposes the Web server needs to be configured appropriately. I found the posting by Dave Kiss to be the best one. Following are the required steps if you used the default MAMP settings:

Backup your configuration files:
1. Open a terminal window.
2. Go to the Apache configuration folder:
  cd /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache
3. Backup the Apache configuration file:
  cp httpd.conf httpd.conf.bak
4. Backup the SSL configuration file:
  cp extra/httpd-ssl.conf extra/httpd-ssl.conf.bak
Update the Apache configuration file:
1. Open the configuration file using an editor of your choice:
  nano httpd.conf
2. Search for the line containing httpd-ssl.conf:
  Press Ctrl-W then type httpd-ssl.conf
3. Uncomment the line by removing the # from the beginning such that it reads:
  Include /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/extra/httpd-ssl.conf
4. Save and exit:
  Press Ctrl-X the Y
Copy the server.key and server.crt file to your Apache configuration folder.
Start the servers through the MAMP interface.
Navigate to your site through a browser using https:
https://localhost

Accept Certificate — Accept self-signed certificate

N.B. If the apache server fails to start then you have an error in your configuration, make sure you replace the DocumentRoot in your SSL configuration file to match your actual root folder.

N.B. Dave’s post also contains steps to configure Virtual Hosts which I left out for a different posting to be less confusing.

N.B. Dave’s post using git to backup the files, in this post I simply make a copy of the configuration file, if you want to restore the backup simply type: cp httpd.conf.bak httpd.conf or any other file you want to restore.

Configuring MySQL Workbench with MAMP on Mac OS X Lion

Posted on 2012-02-10 by Frankie

Installing MAMP on Mac OS X Lion is surely an easy way of getting Apache, PHP and MySQL working on your system. If you plan on using MySQL Workbench you will need to do some additional steps.

Create the missing my.cnf file.
1. Open a terminal window.
2. Create the file by typing:
  sudo touch /etc/my.cnf
3. Change the owner of the file to your username:
  sudo chown fraki /etc/my.cnf
Create a new server instance and shown in my previous post: MAMP, MySQL Workbench and WordPress setup guide
Edit the server instance settings as follows:
1. Set the MySQL Server start command to:
  /Applications/MAMP/bin/startMysql.sh
2. Set the MySQL Server stop command to:
  /Applications/MAMP/bin/startMysql.sh
3. Set the MySQL Server status command to:
  ps xa | grep “/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/[m]ysqld”

: Configuring MySQL Workbench on OS X Lion with MAMP

Keep checking through the guide for additional configuration.

SSL Certificates

Posted on 2012-02-10 by Frankie

At some point any Web Developer would need to secure part of a site and therefore require an SSL certificate. There are different options available depending on the use and here is a short post documenting the various options:

Free for Open Source Projects: Some providers are willing to offer free SSL certificates for open-source projects such as GoDaddy.com, obviously some terms and conditions apply which one must read. More details can be found here.

Free with Hosting Plan: Some Web Hosting providers would include a free SSL certificate if you buy a hosting plan. Generally the offer is for the first year with competitive renewal pricing. Just to name a few: HostColor.com, DomainAvenue.com and HostGator.com

Free SSL Community: A growing community called StartSSL are offering an entry level service for free for basic used and limited warranty which might well satisfy your needs and therefore worth a check.

Comparison Charts: If none of the above suits you then you might have to actually buy an SSL certificate, not before doing the appropriate research. WhichSSL is a dedicated site to aid in the selection of the appropriate certificate authority or SSL vendor to choose with the help of a comparison chart. More comparisons can be found in Wikipedia.org and SSLShopper.com. Your research might also payoff by finding some promotional offers and/or discounts.

Self-Signed Certificates for Development: Well if you need a certificate just for development purposes then you can sign one yourself as shown in my previous post.

Self-Signed SSL Certificate

Posted on 2012-02-10 by Frankie

If you are planning on developing or customizing some web systems such as WordPress or Magento, then at one point you will need some security. You might want to sign the SSL certificate yourself. A number of guides exists for this, for Windows Systems I found the one by Shivprasad Koirala to be very intuitive and for Unix systems the one by Heroku and Scott Baker are best. Here are the steps required:

Check that openssl is installed by running the following command in a terminal:
which openssl
If no such file is found then you need to install. Here are the possible installation methods
1. Mac OSX – Via Homebrew: homebrew install openssl
2. Windows – Download software package.
3. Linux (Debian/Ubuntu Variants) – Guide – sudo apt-get install openssl
4. Linux (RedHat Variants) – Guide – yum install openssl
Generate the keys for the Certificate Authority
openssl genrsa -des3 -out ca.key 4096
openssl req -new -x509 -days 3650 -key ca.key -out ca.crt
Generate the private key for your server
openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 4096
Create the certificate signing request to be signed (leave challenge password and organization name empty)
openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr
Sign your certificate
openssl x509 -req -days 3650 -in server.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -set_serial 01 -out server.crt
Optionally remove the password
openssl rsa -in server.key -out server.key.nopass

For some documentation about how to use openssl check the official site.

MAMP, MySQL Workbench, WordPress installation and setup guide for MAC

Posted on 2012-01-31 by Frankie

Another task that I needed to do after buying my Mac was to get my Web toolkit working. Apache, MySQL and PHP are very conveniently managed by MAMP, WordPress is as straight forward as always. MySQL Workbench required some fine tuning but managed to fix it properly.

Decided to document everything as I went along and prepared a well documented guide with some of my personal recommendations. Hope you will find it useful and as always all feedback is welcome.

MAMP, MySQL Workbench and WordPress setup guide