Linux Server Tutorials

As a webmaster chances are you will wind up managing a Linux box or two in your time – and when you do you’ll be happy you learned these tricks. [divider3 text=”The Bash Shell”] How To Copy, Move, and Delete Files on Linux Servers A straightforward tutorial that should get you through most of the […]

PHP/MySQL File Upload – Error Checking

A while back I had written a PHP/MySQL tutorial discussing how to upload an image to your server, and store the information about that uploaded image into your MySQL database. That tutorial covered really only the basics, and I knew that eventually someone would post a comment asking about some more advanced features – such as […]

What is On-Page SEO?

Most first time webmasters launch their website and immediately start worrying about generating backlinks and increasing their ranking in search engines, however many miss the first and most important step – On-Page SEO. On-Page SEO defines how search engines will view and list your website. This starts from your core meta and open graph tags, […]

Need a Job? Open Source Coding with Google Summer of Code

Google Summer of Code is a global program that offers post-secondary student developers ages 18 and older stipends to write code for various open source software projects. Over the past eight years more than 6,000 students have “graduated” from Google’s Summer of Code program, working with almost 400 different open source projects. Students who are accepted […]

Prevent Hacking Attempts; Keep Your Scripts Up To Date

A client of mine recently contacted me, and frantically proceeded to explain to me how his hosting company contacted him stating their server had been hacked through an out-dated WordPress install they had kept on it. To make matters worse, the host did not have a recent file backup available – great. I was in […]

Basic PHP Template System

PHP has many different template solutions, and the beauty of them all is how simple it makes maintaining and changing your website. Back in the day when everything was handled with static HTML files – if you needed to add a new link to your main menu – you found yourself editing dozens if not […]

The PHP Ternary Operator

PHP has plenty of different operators, the majority of them being either unary or binary operators. A unary operator, such as !, performs its operations on just one single value. A binary operator, such as =, is used to perform an operation on two operads. So following the naming logic you’ve probably already figured out […]

HTACCESS Tutorials

Welcome to the .htaccess tutorials section of the Rapid Purple blog. The following tutorials are aimed to give you an introduction to creating and working with an .htaccess file; along with a few useful tips and tricks every webmaster should be familiar with. Creating An .HTACCESS File First things first. Before you can start using […]

Denying Site Access

Denying and allowing access to your website can be accomplished very easily with .htaccess. In order to block an IP address you would use the following command within your .htaccess file: deny from 000.000.000.000 Replace 000.000.000.000 with the IP address you wish to block. If you only specify one or two groups of the numbers you […]

Escaping Characters and Variable Expansion

Escaping characters is basic, but essential to an error-free PHP script. Consider the following sentence for example: Mike’s uncle said, “Isn’t that cool?” Now if we attempt to use PHP to echo this sentence to the browser, those quotes and apostrophes will cause some problems. The quotes and apostrophes inside the string are confused for […]

Server Security: Processes and How to Terminate Them

Since Linux is a multi-tasking system, in which many different programs or program threads may be running simultaneously, Linux keeps track of all individual tasks and processes – much like the Task Manager within Windows. Although these processes are usually well-behaved and well-managed by Linux itself – it’s always helpful to be able to know […]

Trojan Port List

Following the recent breach of the popular hosting company, ServerPro, the internet is back to buzzing about trojans and server ports, which it should be. It never should have stopped in the first place. With that in mind – comes this list – listing the majority of the more popular known trojans, and the ports […]

The BASH Shell: Pipelines

Pipelines are a great way to string together a series of commands. This means that the output from the first command in the pipeline is used as the input for the second command in the pipeline. The output from the second command in the pipeline is used as the input to the third command in […]