RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^subdirectory/(.*)$ /$1 [R=301,NC,L]

This means that all files like www.yoursite.com/subdirectory/yourfile.htm would now be redirected to their equivalent location on root like www.yoursite.com/yourfile.htm .

Just a quick note to help someone who was struggling with that issue. Hope that helps.

What is it that I’m looking for in an FTP client and why is it so hard to find? The features I need are :

• SFTP connections. (Webdav all the better)
• Multi-segment downloads/uploads to make large files transfer as fast as possible.
• Transfer auto-resume - If the connection breaks, the software shuts down, the transfer queue is automatically resumed upon a restart.
• Direct server to server transfers (FXP) – since I run a few servers on multiple locations, this makes it a breeze.
• File edit online – automatically download the file, open in an editor, and resume once file changes are saved. I do a lot of changes to files, and this feature is a must.
• File/directory comparisons – what’s missing? what’s changed? where?
• Free.

So what’s wrong with the alternatives? FileZilla doesn’t maintain the queue and resume upon client/connection restart as well as breaking some of the files, CuteFTP doesn’t have multi-segment download (not to mention it’s not free), and WinSCP is very slow at batch and large files, doesn’t maintain directory location and has a lousy bookmark feature. And these limitations are just a few examples.

Try it out, let me know what you think. If you something that’s better, I’m interested.

Took me a while to figure out why websites were breaking in some pages, till I was finally able to figure out that Internet Explorer has a bug where it can handle only pages with under 30 CSS files. Anything above that and the page would go dead.

Don’t believe me? check Microsoft’s “All style tags after the first 30 style tags on an HTML page are not applied in Internet Explorer”

All style tags after the first 30 style tags on an HTML page are not applied. Occasionally, you may also receive the following error message:

The page you are looking for might have been moved or had its name changed.

If you use a network monitor tool to capture network traffic, you may notice that a TCP reset occurs when Internet Explorer is receiving the page. Internet Explorer then generates another POST request if the original request was a POST request. Or, Internet Explorer may send a GET request instead.

You’d think that Microsoft would fix such a bug, but looking at the Internet Explorer versions that are affected, the list starts back at version 4.0 and goes up all the way to the most recent version as of today – Internet Explorer 8. Brilliant.

If you’re developing Drupal based websites, 30 CSS files are nothing, especially with the more advanced themes and modules. It’s enough that you include the theme, views and panels to easily top this limit.

But, there are a few things that might help.

For one, the IE Unlimited CSS module saved me with the Drupal 6 installations.

In some cases, though not all, the built-in Drupal CSS aggregation/optimization may help (if it’s aggregated already, that is).

How to enable Drupal CSS file aggregation

1. Log in as your Drupal site’s administrator.
2. Go to the Administer » Site configuration » Performance page.
3. Check the Enabled checkbox for Optimize CSS .
4. Click the Save configuration button.

Another option, if you’re not in Drupal is using a CSS optimizer solution. Here’s from Nadeau Software’s list, and although they claim it won’t speed up by much, it might save you from IE.

CSS optimizers

Hand-editing CSS to make it more optimal is tedious. Instead, use a CSS optimizer application. Here's a few of the many available:

• Blumentals Software's CSS Toolbox (freeware)
• CSS Drive's CSS Compressor (freeware)
• Michael Bianco's CSS Optimizer (freeware)
• Robson's CSS Compressor (freeware)
• Lottery Post's CSS Compressor (freeware)
• CSS Tidy (freeware)
  • CleanCSS (freeware)
  • Code Beautifier (freeware)
  • CSS Formatter and Optimiser (freeware)
  • CSS Code Formatter and Optimizer (freeware)
  • ... and many more based upon CSS Tidy

It never ceases to amaze me how a serious company as big as Microsoft, with all the resources available to it, keeps getting the whole browser thing wrong. What’s even more remarkable, is that there are those among us who still use that thing.

To tackle that, I would suggest setting Yahoo’s crawl rate to something very slow and blocking CUIL and Baidu altogether (unless you have a Chinese site).

To set a lower crawl rate for Yahoo’s slurp crawler and block their useless adcrawler, add this to your ROBOTS.TXT file :

User-agent: Slurp
    Crawl-delay: 300 

User-agent: Yahoo!-AdCrawler
    Disallow: / 

Please note that this sets the crawl rate to one page every 300 seconds. That’s very very slow and will impact how your new pages appear on Yahoo. But, since Yahoo doesn’t bring in that much traffic, I’d say that does matter. Still, if you’re concerned about it, set it to something lower, perhaps between 20-50

To block CUIL altogether add this :

User-agent: twiceler
    Disallow: /

Baidu ignores robots.txt and so you have the following options (source):

Block the Baidu IP range (list)

if you have mod_write on your apache enabled, add this to your .HTACCESS :

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^baiduspider [NC] RewriteRule .* - [F]

or this to you httpd.conf

SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "^Baidu" bad_bot
    <Directory /> 

Order Allow,Deny 

Allow from all 

Deny from env=bad_bot 

</Directory>

Hope that helps, let me know if you ran into this problem and if you have any others way you tackle that.

Firstly, this could indicate that there is something wrong, like a problematic module or plugin that - due to a bug - is consuming too many resources and is over burdening the server. But, it might also be that everything is okay and that for the perfectly reasonable functionality you're running with your CMS you just need a bit more memory to run the PHP commands.

The PHPINFO command could help you figure out what specs you're currently configured for and adjust that upwards. You can create a PHP file with the following command and run it from your browser :

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

How to tweak that memory_limit settings? a few ways to do that.

PHP.INI

If you have access to your PHP.INI file, you can add the following command (choose something like 16M, 32M and 64M, depending on your needs):

memory_limit = 32M

If you're on shared hosting, some providers allow a localized PHP.INI tweak by adding a PHP.INI file to the directory you're executing the PHP files from (if you're on root, then it's the public_html folder).

.HTACCESS

Another ways is by defining the variable through the .HTACCESS file. Open it with your FTP client in the CMS top directory and insert the following at the top :

<FilesMatch "\.(php|html?)$">

php_value memory_limit 32M

</FilesMatch>

Settings PHP file

If you want, you could also add the PHP directive in the CMS settings file, by adding the following to the relevant file (WordPress - WP-CONFIG.PHP, Drupal - SETTINGS.PHP under the relevant sites folder) :

ini_set('memory_limit', '32M');

Hope that helps somewhat. If you know of any other way or have something to correct/add, let me know.

Following a query from a colleague, a few quick tips on troubleshooting and optimizing a slow overloaded VPS/DS hosting a Drupal site based on some of my experiences.

Apache

Note - I run my VPSs-DSs with Hostforweb and VPS.NET (aff). Both should be able to do most of the following server tweaks for you as part of your managed server services.

Install PHP accelerators

Upgrade your Apache server to the latest version.

Install FW & anti spam-bot Apache modules (ModSecurity and the likes).

VPS-DS

Still paying the same money for the same old machine for over a year or two? Why should you keep paying the same price for the same old machine when you can be running on a much better one? Bargain with your hosting service to move your account to one of their newer faster VPSs. That could make a world of difference.

Drupal

See what's loading up your Drupal site using the DEVEL module.

If you mostly have anonymous users, consider using file-caching with Boost.

Sometimes caching increases speed, but sometime it unnecessarily loads the machine. Modules/features like block-cache should be used with care. Play around with both caching turned off and on to see which one works best for your site.

WordPress

Disable all plugins and re-add them one by one to see load impact.

Install WP Super Cache.

Hope that helps somewhat. If you have any other quick tips, I'm interested.

Till about a month ago, there was one RSS feeds manager I knew and used that wasn't Google Feedburner but was because of a political problem. China, with their Great Firewall, loves to play around with the Chinese netizens by blocking certain sites when those misbehave by posting sensitive information. Naturally, Feedburner as an RSS service carries all sorts of such information and so Feedburner occasionally got blocked. The solution? Feedsky, the Chinese government approved alternative. If you have Chinese audiences, as some of my own sites and some of my clients' sites are, then this is a good alternative. But naturally, offering those not fluent in Chinese to burn feeds with Feedsky is taking it too far.

One of my online colleagues recently mentioned a few other English based alternatives he's been experimenting with for some of his clients who've had enough of Feedburner. I have no personal experience with those, but I was assured that they work as well and offer many of the features people have come to love in Feedburner with out some of the stat frustrations. So, give these a try :

• Feedcat.NET
• Rapidfeeds
• Feedblitz - which I use for newsletters, recently launched their own service (announcement).
• Feedity
• Feedsky (in Chinese)

Some of the endless readings on the issue :

• Why Do We Use FeedBurner and What Alternatives Are Available for Feed Management?
• Alternatives to FeedBurner - The RSS publishing dilemma
• 4 Must See Feedburner Alternatives for Your Blog
• Free Feedburner Alternative: Feedcat
• Is there an alternative to Feedburner?
• We Need Feedburner Alternatives
• Feedburner Breaking? Any Alternatives Out There?
• מה יהיה עם פידברנר?
• Google: Why I am switching from FeedBurner to FeedBlitz
• Feedup with Feedburner

Let me know how that worked out for you.

ColorZilla web developer addon

It assists web developers and graphic designers with color related tasks.

With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes. DOM spying features allow getting various information about DOM elements quickly and easily.

FireBug web developer addon

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Webdeveloper web developer addon

The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools.

MeasureIt web developer addon

Draw a ruler across any webpage to check the width, height, or alignment of page elements in pixels.

ScreenGrab web developer addon

An extension for Firefox that makes it easy to save a web-page as an image. With it, you can save anything that you can see in a browser window - from a small selection, to a complete page.

Live HTTP Headers web developer addon

View HTTP headers of a page and while browsing.

ShowIP browsing addon

A Mozilla Firefox extension which shows the IP Address of the current page in the browser's status bar and allows queries to different databases about it when you right click on it. The IP is colored red for an IPv4 address and green for an IPv6 address (hence the name). Since v0.7.8 these colors can be changed in the preferences menu. With a left click one can get information about the hostname of the current page.

IETab browsing addon

Embeds Internet Explorer in a Mozilla/Firefox tab.

YSlow web developer addon

YSlow analyzes web pages and tells you why they're slow based on Yahoo's rules for high performance web sites.

SearchStatus SEO addon

A toolbar extension for Firefox and Mozilla that allows you to see how any and every website in the world is performing. Designed for the highly specialised needs of search engine marketers, this toolbar provides extensive search-related information about a site, all conveniently displayed in one discreet and compact toolbar.

SeoQuake SEO/SEM addon

A Mozilla Firefox extension aimed primarily at helping web masters who deal with search engine optimization and internet promotion of web sites. Seoquake allows to obtain and investigate many important SEO parameters of the internet project under study on the fly, save them for future work, compare them with the results, obtained for other, competitive, projects.

Google Global SEO/SEM addon

Google Global allows users to see organic and paid Google search results as they appear in different countries, cities, regions, ZIP codes and IP addresses.

Some of those are quite basic and popular, yet some I’ve rarely seen others use. If you’ve got any other web developing or SEO/SEM Firefox Addon favorites, I’m interested.

Checking website browser and platform compatibility is key, if you want your site to appeal to the target audiences using them. Since I got a few emails about the topic, both from people asking me what I use and those suggesting their services, following is a list of online and offline tools you can use to check your site

Platform screen-shots and/or ready-made virtual machines

• Net-Renderer - Internet Explorer screenshots.
• Browsrcamp – Mac screenshots. There’s also a paid virtual machines service with a Demo.
• Browsercam – All platforms virtual machines.
• CrossBrowserTesting - All platforms, virtual machines, free for 5 minute sessions. Demo.
• BrowserPool – All platforms, virtual machines, free test account.
• Browsershots – All platforms, screenshots.
• IECapture - Internet Explorer screenshots.

Software

• Just download everything and run from your local machine (example), maybe through using virtual machines (like VMWare).
• Microsoft VNCs.
• Multiple IEs – Internet Explorer installations.
• IETester - Internet Explorer installations. (through TipTrickMod)
• Sizer - Test different resolutions.

I was also made aware of a Smashing Magazine article that has some more details and tools in “Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites”. IBM also has a few more in “Cross-browser Web application testing made easy”.

What do you use?

The other week I was horrified finding out how some of my friends do their CMS testing and debugging (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, whatever) – they do it online. To their defense I would say that they backup everything and put the site in maintenance mode, but it’s a real problem that they keep experimenting with their live sites, restoring backups whenever things fail. Nowaways, installing, upgrading, testing and debugging has become so easy, especially for the non-advance user who’s using a shared/VPS hosting with a pretty simple non-customized WordPress or Drupal installation.

There is no reason what so ever to install, upgrade, test and debug things on a live server. It’s slow, it causes down time, and it can sometimes drive you insane when you’re trying to figure out what’s wrong or do minor devs and manipulations.

There are many ways to get your local Windows machine ready to install, upgrade, test and debug a CMS, and I will only point out to some of those, which is what I use with some very very easy tutorials that will guide you through it.

Keep in mind one thing - Your PHP, apache and other applications all have log files. If things don’t work, check them out. There are a few other applications you can use to see how things are working on your machine with stuff from Sysinternals like Process Monitor. So…

• Get your Wampserver.
• Watch the wonderful Lullabot tutorial on how to install it and get it ready (direct video link, direct video download link). It’s about Drupal, which Lullabot does a terrific job in promoting for the general public, but the same would naturally work for WordPress, Joomla and other common CMS.
• Configure your php.ini (please note that you have three – Apache, PHP4, PHP5). You can look at the php settings with the phpinfo() function.
• Configure your installation to send emails using fake sendmail for Windows.

Examples for using this for WordPress? Check out Webtoolscollection or WordPress@T2 for using XAMPP. Prefer this in Hebrew? Check IT-Bananas or Dakar’s.

Anything else interesting others should know about?

Good luck.