From 2008-2010 I hosted my own Ubuntu server that handled all of my web hosting needs, as well as well as taking care of  MySQL, CoucheDB, Subversion, and a few other needs. This server was where I hosted all of my personal projects, the main, Casa Nova Designs site and this blog. As time went on there were several issues that lead me to want to move my server to the cloud.

Bandwidth

My server was hosted on a business class cable connection, and it was difficult to justify purchasing a better connection given the amount of traffic that I was generating. I did want a better connection so my access times would be faster, and Amazon definitely had that capability.

Scalability

Amazon allows you to scale up the resources you are using without physically purchasing machines,  they charge by the hour for usage so you only pay for what you use, if you get a spike in usage in the morning and usage tapers off you can easily scale back what you’re using without wasting resources.

Freedom to experiment

Because you can launch virtual machine instances easily and also kill them easily you can easily fire up an instance to take a new operating system, server, program etc for a spin, when you’re done you can kill it, and only pay a small amount for the learning experience. Traditionally this would require much more overhead or it would require you to run a virtual machine on a local machine that may or may not have the necessary resources to do a proper real world test.

Moving From our LAMP server to EC2

First things first

In order to use Amazon Web Services you’ll need an Amazon account. You can create one at aws.amazon.com after you’ve created an account you’re ready to begin.

Launching an Instance

Amazon Web Services servers are instances, instances are virtual machines that are hardware independent.

Selecting an Image

AMI selection screen

Instances are instantiated with images (AMIs), images are snapshots of virtual machines that come preconfigured to perform a specific task. Amazon has thousands of images to choose from, and once you’re up and running you can save your running instances as images, this is handy for numerous reasons, you can use them to save templates for new instances (generic web servers, db servers etc) or to back up a running instances at a specific state. Ubuntu maintains images of their latest version as well as their long term service releases, so it’s easy to get an Ubuntu machine up and running. You can find a list of the latest Ubuntu images at http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/ and Ubuntu’s documentation for getting ubuntu up and running at http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud/public/deploy .

Setting Instance Details

Setting instance details

At this point you can select what kind of resources you want your instance to have access to. Obviously the larger the instance you run the more expensive it will be per hour. Amazon has a large number of instance types available for selection, everything from very small machines for low traffic usage to GPGPU clusters and HPC clusters. You can read more about the instance types that are available at http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#instance. On the next screen you will be asked to name the instance, you can also store other tag information here for your use.

Creating a Key Pair

Creating a key pair

At this point you will be asked to select or create a key pair. Amazon uses key pairs to authenticate ssh logins and for other api requests. You will need to create a key pair if you want to be able to access an instance.

Configuring a security group

Amazon allows for the creation of security groups, which are basically firewall templates, using this facility is how you set which ports will be accessible to the outside world. I haven’t ever needed to stray from the default security group but your mileage may vary.

Ready Set Go

After you’ve completed all of the configuration you’re ready to launch your instance. This may take a few minutes depending upon the size of the image you’re launching (I assume that because Amazon may have to move image information over the network that that is why this process takes so long sometimes).

Connecting and Setting up LAMP

Set IP and DNS

Initially Amazon allows you to access your machine via a global domain name that they provide, but they do not give it its own IP. I planed on running this particular instance as a web server so I went ahead and took care of that first. First go to the configuration page for elastic IPs, the link is titled “Elastic IPs”, create an elastic and associate it with the AMI you just created. Set your DNS servers appropriately to point to this IP.

SSH in

Amazon requires you to use shared keys to connect to their servers, remember that key you downloaded earlier? Now’s the time to use it.

ssh -i casanova-key username@example.com

Once you’ve connected to this machine, you can install the LAMP stack run

sudo tasksel --section server

Now select the packages that you’d like to install (LAMP server obviously) and hit ok.  You now have a LAMP server installed!

Future Articles

Getting a LAMP server up and running is only the first step, there are various tools to manage your Amazon AMI instances, and the scaling of your webservers and MySQL servers. I have had some experience with this in the past few weeks as this blog has begun to develop a larger following. I plan to write up more about this issue in the future.

Regards,

Adam

I’ve been using both OS X and Ubuntu for about a year now. I started using Ubuntu almost 5 years ago as my primary operating system. I didn’t think that I’d ever need to change to anything else, until the University of Tennessee and the NSF were kind enough to buy me a Mac Book Pro. As someone who always considered himself a Linux user I was surprised at how much I loved my OS X machine, in fact, I found that I loved the Emacs style keybindings that it had to offer. In OS X you can type Ctrl+A to go to the beginning of a line, Ctrl+E to go to the end of a line and Ctrl+K to kill a line. I use Emacs everyday and having these key bindings in other applications just feels right to me.

An Easy Fix

I posted a question about how to solve this problem on Reddit and received a quick response.

Changing Ubuntu Keybindings

Install gconf-editor

In a terminal run:

sudo apt-get -y install gconf-editor && gconf-editor

When the configuration editor opens go to desktop > gnome > interface > gtk_key_theme and change this value to “Emacs”

Once you close the editor you’re done setting changing the key bindings for Ubuntu!

But what about Firefox?

If you use keyboard shortcuts religiously like I do, you’ll quickly notice that Ctrl+K doesn’t work in Firefox any more and you have to grab your mouse to do a Google search (gasp!). This is an easy fix too. In the location bar in Firefox navigate to about:config and change the ui.key.accel value to 224 to use the meta key (Command key on a Mac keyboard like I’m using) , 18 to use the alt key, or 17 to use the ctrl key. More information about customizing firefox can be found at http://www.mozilla.org/unix/customizing.html.

Wasn’t that easy?

Thanks to this simple change my Ubuntu machine is much more usable and intuitive. Do you have more Ubuntu keyboard shortcut tips? Please share them in the comments.

Thanks,

Adam

The problem with this view is that while information is valuable, the public has become less discerning about where they receive their information. The blogosphere as it is to tritely called, has in many ways eliminated the need for the 4th estate. CNN’s iReport is a feeble attempt to tap into the power of nearly a billion camera phones pointed at the world that we each see every day. What they fail to realize is that by elevating this form of communication they make themselves less and less relavent. Why should we pay to view content produced by a news organization often of questionable journalistic integrity, which is many cases is of similar quality with that produced by amateurs? Why should I pay my cable bill and tune in to watch Bill O’ Reily shout at his guests when I can read the latest comments on reddit? Consumers will not pay for content produced by major media outlets again unless the quality drastically increases, or the effecitiveness of DRM drastically improves.

So I pose the question to you all what do you do to verify the integrity of news you read? Do you trust CNN more than Reddit and whatbdo you think news should look like in this new decade?

Regards,

Adam

There are two primary development workflows web developers use. One option is to install all necessary servers, libraries, databases etc on their working machine, do their editing their and then push the changes (hopefully through some sort of code revision system, but often through ftp) to the production server.

Pros

• Ability to work without network connection

Cons

• You must install entire server environment on your personal machine, this may be a bad thing for a laptop with limited resources
• You have to keep your working machine’s environment up to date with the versions the server is using
• You usually won’t want to keep a test dataset in a database on your working machine so you’ll need to make a remote connection to your db server ANYWAY eliminated the ability to work without a network connection
• To show clients the current version you have to push changes to a server.

Remote Workflow

Some developers choose to set up a development server (which can either be a separate machine or simple a separate subdomain on the production server). Their code lives there, when they make changes on their working copy there (again, hopefully using some sort of code revision system like subversion or git). This model allows you to run code in an environment more similar to what it will actually be run on in production. It also allows you to allow collaborators, backers or clients to view the current working copy of the code. You obviously don’t want to be working on the code for a production site (you aren’t that good, you will break things, and for a site with any reasonable amount of users this is unacceptable), but this model works well for working on development code.

Editing code that lives on a remote server. The simplest solution for editing code on a remote server is to ssh in the machine and use a command line editor such as vi, emacs or nano to edit the code. This is somewhat distasteful to some developers especially those who are used to GUI text editors. SSHFS allows a developer to mount a directory on a remote machine as a directory on their local machine in a way that is transparent to the operating system. This is an ideal solution because it allows you to edit code with the tools you’re used to using. We plan on making a blog post about how sshfs and autofs make web development easier, but until then check out google for info about them.

Pros

• Code is run on an environment more like what it will be in production
• Database connections are easier
• It is easy to show clients the code you’re currently working on
• It is often times easier to push changes to the production version of the site

Cons

• Network connection is required to do work
• Requires setup to edit code on your local machine while it is on the remote machine
  • This problem is relatively easily solved, we’ll discuss this issue in a later post

Conclusion

Here at Casa Nova Designs we have found the remote workflow meets our needs and allows for more rapid development. This article is the first in a series about what our development environment is like, and how we’ve solved common web design head aches to streamline our workflow. In the next article we’ll show you how to use sshfs and autofs to mount remote file systems.

Regards,

Adam

As a small business owner or manager living in the digital age it is important to understand how customers see and access your business on the web. This is important not just for your website and blog (you do have a blog right?) but it is also important that you keep up to date on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter so that your business can achieve the maximum benefit (and the maximum number of sales or service conversions) that these sites have to offer.

First things first

Start Blogging this year

If your company or organization isn’t blogging on at least a monthly basis you are missing out on opportunities to keep your customers updated on what you’re doing, and how your services can benefit them. Blogs can be set up relatively easily and cheaply (we are able to set up WordPress blogs for your pre-existing website,  for as little as $150).  Blogs don’t necessarily just have to be about your business practices, customers want to see that your company’s brand fits them and their lifestyle, Good Work Life Coaching, one of our clients has done an excellent job explaining what their business does and offering helpful advice that shows customers that they are knowledgeable without requiring a customer to pay up front (something that they are often times unwilling to do). Blogging gets your foot in the door, it lets customers read about who you are what you do and how you can help them in a much more accessible way.

Tap In To Social Media

Facebook

So your company has been blogging since last year, you’re done right? Well, blogging is a great start but if your company doesn’t have a Facebook page and a twitter account then you are missing out on a lot of potential customers.  It is very simple to set up a page on Facebook that describes what your company does, where you are located and what your hours are. It’s also important that this page links to your home page and your company’s blog. It is helpful if your page has some content that is updated such as photos of your company’s new products, or notes about new services that your company is offering. It is important to not abandon this new page once you’ve created it, you need to update it regularly. Some of our customers have found this process of maintaining multiple pages with company information tedious, because of this we offer services that tie your blog to your Facebook page so that all you have to do is update your blog.

Twitter

Twitter allows your company to release short explanations of what you’re up to. They bill themselves as a “micro blogging” service, so if you’re already blogging creating content for twitter shouldn’t be too difficult. We recommend that you update Twitter more frequently than most people update their blogs, but we do offer a service that automatically pulls content from your blog into twitter so that, again, blogging is the only content creation you have to concern yourself with.

It’s a New Year tap into new opportunities

Many small business owners don’t blog or utilize social media either because they don’t understand the importance of it, or because they don’t understand where to begin. Social media and Blogging are some of the most powerful tools for your business, and have the potential to generate serious amounts of capital for your business. We hope that this post has convinced you how important these tools are for the modern business, and if you’re confused please contact us (adam@casanovawebdesign.com or 865.236.1605) we offer services that can either help you in your social media journey or in some cases we can manage it all for you.

Happy 2011!

Adam

I’ll assume that if you’re reading this article that you’ve written PHP code before, and that you’re fairly familiar with the constructs of the language. But, for the sake of being thorough, I’m going to mention a few things.

1. Comment!

Make sure you’re commenting. I recommend a header comment to describe the file: The Author’s name, a description of the script, and a listing of your founding assumptions are all good things to include in the file description. Also if you write some code that is particularly complex or important I recommend commenting it aswell. Some sticklers will even recommend commenting every function (including function parameter descriptions). I don’t feel that this is necessary but if you’re writing a massive application or an application created by multiple developers than this will be very helpful.

2. Use Functional Programming

I can’t believe I have to say this, but, use functions. If you write a string of code more than once it should be turned into a function. But, be careful to avoid writing several functions that do similar things, if two functions could be consolidated into one in an elegant way I would recommend that. remember the less code you have to look at in the future the easier it will be to understand what the application is doing.

3. Split up your files.

If you find that your script is very long try splitting it into multiple parts. Also, if you have certain portions of your code that are used on multiple pages make sure that this part is included in an external file for easy maintenance. If one page has several modular parts make sure that they are all contained in external files.

4. Make sure you’re using directories.

If you’re working on a large project, it’s very important that you organize your files into logical directories. There’s nothing worse than a completely flat file system. I’ve seen projects where there were hundreds of scripts (with nondescript names) in the same directory. Do yourself a favor and organize these files. It’ll make finding things later much easier. I usually find that it’s best to organize my files into Models, Views, and Controllers. Model are scripts that describe data objects (classes). Controllers manage interactions between user actions and models and views give information to the user (pages, ajax responses, RSS feeds, RESTful API responses, SOAP pages etc.).

5.Don’t create variables where you don’t have to.

If a function returns an iterable object and all you need to do is perform an action on that object using a loop, don’t create a dedicated variable for it. For example say that I want to iterate over an array that is returned by a function. Instead of:

$arr = functionReturningArray();

for($arr as $element)

do some action($element);

try:

for(functionReturningArray() as $element)

do some action($element)

this is a much more concise way of performing an action.

6. Object Oriented Programming

If you’re not familiar with it already read up on Object Oriented Programming. OOP allows you to create objects that contain all the data and functions to represent a physical object or idea. This is very helpful for large project where you want to compartmentalized your code into distinct pieces (easier for debugging easier for understanding). This approach almost always yields less code, and if done correctly can yield reusable code for other projects.

7. (Bonus) Don’t Be Lazy

One of the main sources of sloppy code is laziness, remember that just because you know what you’re trying to accomplish with your code doesn’t mean that others will. Take the time to do it right, because sooner or later almost all code needs to be revised, write it correctly the first time and you’ll thank yourself later.

Regards,

Adam Haney

For those of you who don’t know. I’m a Computer Science student at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. I got into web design before I was in college and I’ve found throughout my academic journey that being a good C/C+/Python programmer has led me to be a good PHP/javascript programmer. I love web design because it’ s not entirely scientific, it’s much more people based, but often times when we as web design professionals must design highly scalable websites, or websites that need to be easily maintained it is neccassary that we be familiar with Computer Science principles and be accustomed to the general thought process of a Computer Scientist. I whole heartedly believe that as you grow to be a better academic programmer you will grow to be a better web professional. For those of you who have already left your college days behind you I’ve compiled a few wonderful resources for begining your journey into the realm of academic computing.

Located at: http://code.google.com/edu

Google code is a wonderful resource for web designers because Google’s business is web, but it’s methodology is very academic. Google’s code university is a great way to keep up to date with the new and innovative things happening at google.

Located at: http://ocw.mit.edu

MIT, one of the world’s premere universities for Computer Science has graciously opened up their lecture halls to the masses. They’ve included everything from introduction to computer science to some of their much more advanced courses.

http://academicearth.com

Academic Earth is a wonderful resource for all subjects. It’s computer science courses include lectures from top schools such as Berkley, Stanford, and MIT.

What to Take Away

Some of the lectures included material that is at a graduate level, unless you’re particularly interested or talented don’t expect to understand everything that’s talked about in these courses. Remember YOU aren’t being graded over this information and even if you only understand 40% of the material that’s it’s still going to help you as you approach your day to day problems and stretch your thinking into new directions. I hope you find these resources helpful, happy coding.

UPDATE:

And we’re back.

Thanks,

Adam Haney

So how did we accomplish this feat? Simple, we used an application called tweet spinner http://tweetspinner.com/70914771. With tweet spinner you can set up keyword following and user mimicking to target twitter users who would be interested in your blog or your organization. We don’t think that tweet spinner should be used as a way aid spammers, but rather as a tool to effectively tell people about what you do and how you could help them.

Now, like we said tweet spinner offers several helpful tools such as keyword following (which allows you to automatically follow users who tweet about a specific keyword) and user mimicking (which allows you to follow all the friends or followers of another twitter user). But, like we said you don’t want to spam people so what is the best way to use this tool?

1. Find twitter accounts that are already established that relate to your organization.

users we mimicked

Finding people to model yourself after should be part of your day to day life anyway. Who better to mimic than someone who is already where you want to be. We selected 4 twitter users who were in the same field that we were, who were already established, after a week almost 40% of users we followed followed us back, talk about reciprocity!

2. Keyword following

With keyword following you follow users who have tweeted about topics that relate to your organization (up to 40 at a time). As you can see some users were more interested in our blog than others, and you’ll have to play around with this. This information serves two purposes. First, and most obviously, it helps you target specific keywords, but it also tells you who your target market should be in other ventures, it helps to know what sort of people are interested in you.

Don’t Over-Do it!

Don’t go too crazy, twitter does have a follow limit of 2000 follows (unless you yourself have more than ~1800 followers in which case your follow limit is about 10% more than the number of followers you have). Also, you can’t follow more than 1000 people per day, so don’t try it. One final note, spammers are bad people don’t be one, twitter and karma will punish you.

We’re really liking twitter, especially now that we have so many people to talk to. Twitter isn’t completely about numbers, it is about the relationships that you can create with other people in your industry, but tweet spinner is an excellent tool to help you find people who are interested in the same things you are. Be kind to to twitter community and they’ll be kind to you.

Regards,

Adam Haney

Chief Developer

Casa Nova Designs

Here’s our list of (web design related) news feeds:

Did we miss anything? Do you read a blog that’s not included in this list, do you think we should start reading your blog? Leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comments.

Thanks everybody,

Adam