DustinsDesign.com

I often use the following .htaccess / mod_rewrite solution to redirect domain names based on the requested domain. The reasons for this are many. Most recent example for me is I had a single site with 5 alias domains but software licensed for only one. Even though I had the alias domains set up on the server it still did not satisfy the license. Add the line below to htaccess and now no matter which of the 5 domains are written in they are re-written to the one with the licence (need to duplicate for each domain). The license is valid since its all the same physical website and everyone is happy. Brilliant!

I am sure there is a more eloquent way of accomplishing this with mod_rewrite - but this gets the job done!

Can also be used to redirect to a landing page based on the requested domain:

Have a better solution? I’m no mod_rewrite guru so comments are always welcome!

This game is soo addicting. You have been warned - click on the following image at your own risk

For the Flash animators out there…

Originally found here by Alan Becker.

The following is a list of the directories that must be ‘writeable’ for Joomla 1.0.x to work properly. I’m including it here as a reference. In most cases individuals that install Joomla will simply chmod the permissions for these directories to 707 or 777. I have found through personal experience that this is not very secure (using 707 or 777 anywhere on your site allows a ‘hacker’ who may find a vulnerable script to upload anything they want to your server - aka ebay/paypal spoof sites, etc).

I have found a few solutions, but have not implemented any as of yet. The most promising looks like mod_suphp (aka PHPsuexec). I will post my solution to this issue once it is fully tested. In the mean time I am setting all directories to 755 and files to 644 and temporarily changing them when needed.

This post is a continuation (actually a better solution) from my previous post on Joomla Session Save Path

The solution is a slightly modified version from the original post found at rackerhacker.com

Change the umask in ‘/etc/proftpd.conf’ from ‘022′ to ‘002′.

Then, update the directory permissions by running the following at the command line:

Add the ‘apache’ user to the ‘psacln’ group by editing ‘/etc/group’.

Change

to

For my server I also had to add psaftp,psaadm:

Joomla also complains about some PHP settings, sometimes including not being able to write to ‘/var/lib/php/session’. To fix the issues, make some adjustments to the ‘/var/www/vhosts/[domain]/conf/vhost.conf’ for the domain (you may have to create this file):

If the vhost.conf is brand new, then run:

Make sure Apache runs with your new configuration:

Done! No more errors on the install screen and no more apache/ftpuser issues with uploading files.