Indoctrinating the youth

I think, this morning, my son finally began to understand the awesomeness that is Open Source. He asked, as he has done a number of times before, what it would cost to set up a website, and didn't seem to believe my answer, which was, of course, $0.

So, after he wolfed down his breakfast, we sat down and installed Wordpress, got it configured shiny, and he kept asking, how much does this cost? How can it be this good if it doesn't cost anything? This looks really professional. Are you sure this is free?

I told him, as I've probably mentioned before, that the Apache Web Server runs a huge percentage of the websites he looks at, and that I had a part in creating that. And that I also had a *very* small part in creating Wordpress, too. (I believe I have two patches in there somewhere, although I don't remember what they were.)

At one point, while we were tweaking the theme, he said, in a very roundabout "I'm sure this is way too hard" kind of way, that some day, in the distant future, he'd like to have forums on the site, where people could discuss things. I installed BBPress in under a minute, and said, you mean kinda like this?

He also asked whether it was possible to have his own hostname, and so I taught him a little bit about how DNS works, and showed him how to register a name, and then how to configure DNS to point a name at an IP address.

So, about 30 minutes later, he's got his own website, where he'll be posting his youtube videos, animations, and random comments about the world. No, I don't really know what the name means, so ask him, not me.

Syndicated 2014-09-09 13:08:06 from Notes In The Margin

Apache httpd at ApacheCon Budapest

tl;dr - There will be a full day of Apache httpd content at ApacheCon Europe, in Budapest, November 17th - apacheconeu2014.sched.org/type/httpd

Links:

* ApacheCon website - http://apachecon.eu
* ApacheCon Schedule - http://apacheconeu2014.sched.org/
* Register - http://events.linuxfoundation.org//events/apachecon-europe/attend/register
* Apache httpd - http://httpd.apache.org/

I'll be giving two talks about the Apache http server at ApacheCon.eu in a little over 2 months.

On Monday morning (November 17th) I'll be speaking about Configurable Configuration in httpd. New in Apache httpd 2.4 is the ability to put conditional statements in your configuration file which are evaluated at request time rather than at server startup time. This means that you can have the configuration adapt to the specifics of the request - like, where in the world it came from, what time of day it is, what browser they're using, and so on. With the new If/ElseIf/Else syntax, you can embed this logic directly in your configuration.

2.4 also includes mod_macro, and a new expression evaluation engine, which further enhance httpd's ability to have a truly flexible configuration language.

Later in the day, I'll be speaking about mod_rewrite, the module that lets you manipulate requests using regular expressions and other logic, also at request time. Most people who have some kind of website are forced to use mod_rewrite now and then, and there's a lot of terrible advice online about ways to use it. In this session, you'll learn learn the basics of regular expression syntax, and how to correctly craft rewrite expressions.

There's other httpd content throughout the day, and the people who created this technology will be on hand to answer your questions, and teach you all of the details of using the server. We'll also have a hackathon running the entire length of the conference, where people will be working on various aspects of the server. In particular, I'll be working on the documentation. If you're interested in participating in the httpd docs, this is a great time to learn how to do that, and dive into submitting your first patch.

See you there!

Syndicated 2014-08-28 14:04:37 (Updated 2014-08-28 14:18:45) from Notes In The Margin

LinuxCon NA 2014

Last week I attended LinuxCon North America in Chicago.