1. 2013

    Securing Nginx with HTTPS

    ![SSL](https://www.bjornjohansen.com/content/uploads/2013/08/origin_4146023669-150x150.jpg)Adding a certificate and using the HTTPS protocol is a good improvement to the security in the communication between the browser and the server, and should be in place on all sites that have a user login. Contrary to what many (older) guides say, it doesn't add much load on your server and is fairy easy and cheap to set up right.

  2. 2013

    Install latest version of Nginx on Ubuntu

    ![Nginx](https://www.bjornjohansen.com/content/uploads/2013/08/nginx-300x64.png)I always run the latest LTS version of Ubuntu on all my servers. Unfortunately, the Nginx versions tend to be quite the bit behind the current release. So how do you get an updated, current version of without resorting to having to maintain the packages yourself? Luckily, the Nginx team have their own Ubuntu apt repository so it’s easy to keep current with the latest version of Nginx.

  3. 2013

    Install latest version of PHP on Ubuntu

    ![PHP](https://www.bjornjohansen.com/content/uploads/2013/08/php-logo-300x157.png)I always run the latest LTS version of Ubuntu on all my servers. Currently the latest LTS is 14.04 which comes with PHP version 5.5, but as of November 2014, the latest stable version is 5.6. So how do you get an updated, current version of PHP without resorting to having to maintain the packages yourself? The answer is in PPA.

  4. 2013

    Publishing WordPress site from development to production server – or moving your WordPress installation from one host to another

    ![WordPress](https://www.bjornjohansen.com/content/uploads/2013/08/wordpress-300x186.png)You have finished that WordPress site, and want to deploy it – move it from your test server to the production server where it goes live. But how? WordPress have a famous 5-minute-install, but there is no 5-minute-go-live-script\*. I'll show you how in these 5 easy-to-follow steps.

  5. 2013

    Restricting access to WordPress login by IP address

    If you have a static IP address, like from [your own VPN](https://www.bjornjohansen.com/setting-up-your-own-pptp-vpn), it is very easy to increase your security tremendously. Simply restrict all logins to that IP address.

  6. 2013

    Setting up your own PPTP VPN

    When it comes to VPNs, there is the choice between PPTP and OpenVPN. PPTP is pretty quick to setup and works out of the box with most (all?) OSes and devices.

  7. 2013

    Get your Ubuntu VPS up and running

    ![Ubuntu](https://www.bjornjohansen.com/content/uploads/2013/04/ubuntu-300x148.png)These are the first steps you should perform on your shiny, brand new VPS to set out on a safe journey on the internets. You don't actually have to understand each of the steps here, but this post is intented for people who have some clue of what they're doing. If there is such a thing as a «VPSes for dummies», it should not be read. VPSes are not intended for dummies.

  8. 2013

    Caching: Varnish or Nginx?

    TL;DR: Varnish lacks support for SSL and SPDY. Nginx handles it just fine, and has very fast cache with either memcache or disk storage (ramdisk). Both can serve stale cache if your backend is down. But Nginx can not write to the memcache storage directly, it has to be done by the application. Also, Nginx can not purge the cache itself, without you compiling your own package.

  9. 2013

    Using Jekyll without YAML front matter

    OK, so I was ready to give Jekyll another shot today. But one thing I’m not that happy with is the need for specifying the YAML front matter on every post. At this point, I’m not really using it for any practical matter.