Tinkering with Python xmlrpclib, in this case for updating a WordPress blog from the command line. Using Python 2.7.6 here. xmlrpclib is included with Python 2.7, but if you need it, install with Pip.
Category: Web Development
WordPress Plugin Development Tutorial
This article is intended to serve as a simple WordPress plugin development tutorial. For the purpose of demonstration we’ll create a plugin that removes comment spam. For this to work, you have to be running some sort of anti-spam system like Akismet that marks spam comments as such when they’re submitted. Comments are written into […]
PHP Zend OPcache Installation
The Zend OPcache is a caching system that seeks to improve PHP performance by keeping precompiled PHP code in the shared memory of your web server. Since PHP is an interpreted language that has to be compiled into a set of intermediate instructions (“opcodes”) when someone accesses your PHP page or site, not having to […]
WordPress: Installation and Performance
This article describes some of the basics on installing and running WordPress to maximize its performance. The following scripts and text generally assume Debian/Ubuntu, so substitute Red Hat, Arch, etc. as needed. Installation If you’re less lazy than I am, you could combine the whole install routine into a single Bash script, and make it […]
Drupal: Programmatically Create a Block
So you want to add a block to your module in Drupal 7. First, define its internal name and human-readable title (for the Blocks UI) with hook_block_info(): Then, give it the permissions needed to view it, a title (to appear for your site visitors), and some content with hook_block_view(): If you want to give the […]
Customize the Drupal Search Form
Here’s an easy one: you want to customize the Drupal search form provided by the Search module in your Drupal 7 site. Fortunately, Drupal provides an easy way to do this, via hook_form_alter(). Put something like this in your theme’s template.php: This defines the appearance of the search block form, which you can then place […]
Drupal Module Development Tutorial
On my Drupal 7 site here, I wanted to create a method of automatically injecting my Google Ad banners on all content pages before the Disqus comments thread. You could do this manually, say by adding a text field to your basic page content_type with a default value of all the Google Ads JavaScript, but […]
The Drupal Database: Querying From the PHP filter
If you have a multi-site Drupal 7 install, or simply another database living alongside your Drupal database, sometimes you may want to pull a few records from the other database for display on your Drupal site. Displaying data from the Drupal database is pretty easy since you can just use Drupal’s built-in db_query function: (If […]
Varnish and Pound with Apache
Using Varnish and Pound together is a relatively easy way to ensure the Varnish cache works for both SSL and non-SSL web sites. Varnish is a general-purpose web cache that can make your web sites and applications run substantially faster for your visitors while reducing the overall load on your web server. It works by […]
Swap Apache Prefork for Worker
By default most Apache web servers — at least prior to Apache 2.4 — run Apache’s Prefork MPM (multi-processing module). Prefork works OK and offers the greatest compatibility with existing Apache modules, but it consumes a relatively large amount of memory because it spawns many processes that each handle one connection at a time. Prefork […]