1. First thing you’ll want to do is create a private key and public certificate signing request (CSR) for the domain, using the following command (replace www_yourdomain_com with www_example_com or example_com or secure_example_com… see above) :

   openssl req -nodes -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout www_yourdomain_com.key -out www_yourdomain_com.csr
   

2. You’ll be prompted to fill out org info.  Please do so, but (if you’re using the cheap Comodo’s PositiveSSL from NameCheap) you’ll need to set COMMON NAME parameter to the domain (i.e.  www.yourdomain.com).  Skip the challenge password and optional company name.
3. Open your newly created www_yourdomain_com.csr and copy & paste the entire certificate signing request into your registration of a new SSL cert (from PositiveSSL, for instance).
4. Follow the SSL company’s instructions.
5. You should receive from them something like the following:
   1. www_yourdomain_com.crt
   2. www_yourdomain_com.ca-bundle
6. If you didn’t receive a bundle, you’ll need to create your own bundle from the files they do send over.
7. You might have “ssl.key” and “ssl.crt” sub-directories located at /etc/ssl.  If you do not, I recommend creating them (N.B. /etc/ssl/ssl.key and its contents should be set to visible only by Apache!).
8. Move the www_yourdomain_com.key file to /etc/ssl/ssl.key
9. Move the CRT (www_yourdomain_com.crt) and the bundle (www_yourdomain_com.ca-bundle) to /etc/ssl/ssl.crt
   
10. Now go wild in the /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ directory by finding the domain for which you want to enable SSL and open them for editing.
11. Copy the entire <VirtualHost XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:PORT>blah blah blah </VirtualHost> and paste it into the same file, just immediately below its existing location.   Change the port number from :80 to :443 (SSL default).
12. Add the following entries inside of your new <VirtualHost> configuration:
    • SSLEngine on
    • SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/ssl.key/www_yourdomain_com.key
    • SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/ssl.crt/www_yourdomain_com.crt
    • SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/ssl/ssl.crt/www_yourdomain_com.ca-bundle
13. Save the file and give Apache the old restart:  /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
14. Go to bed.

PHP Warning:  PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/lib/php5/20090626/mhash.so' - /usr/lib/php5/20090626/mhash.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory in Unknown on line 0

This is the result of the latest version of PHP already having mhash included in the php5-common package.   Even though php5-mhash got removed in the upgrade, the mhash.ini file still references it (and the warning gets thrown).

To fix this, you’ll need to comment out the following line in /etc/php5/cli/conf.d/mhash.ini :

extension=mhash.so

This is a hack, but it removes the tiresome warning.

Fortunately, changing WebCit’s port is as easy as editing the config file likely found at /etc/default/webcit.  Just change the port number on the following line:

export WEBCIT_CITADEL_PORT='443'

Just make it something like 2000, which I believe should be its default port anyway.

After making the change, don’t forget to restart the service:

/etc/init.d/webcit restart

To automate daily bug and security updates to your Linux system, first install cron-apt with the following command:

apt-get install cron-apt

Then configure it to email you the results each time it runs, edit /etc/cron-apt/config to include the following lines:

MAILTO="you@emailaddress.com"
MAILON="always"

Lastly, link it to cron.daily by running the following command:

sudo ln -s /usr/sbin/cron-apt /etc/cron.daily/

This should keep your system nicely up-to-date.  If you’re feeling a little wild (and you’ve backed up everything), you might also want to upgrade to the latest version of Ubuntu every once in a while (but this should never be automated).

To fix this, open up the JavaScript file /js/varien/product.js and change line 356 from var index=1; to  var index=0;

This will force Magento to pay notice to your preferred default in the pull-down rather than displaying “Choose option…” and forcing the user to select something.

Caveat: If you are using more than one custom pull-down/drop-down attribute, you’ll probably screw some stuff up.

I don’t have time for a long post, but if you’re doing any development work that needs HTTP header data, this tool is indispensable.

Please feel free to cry in the comments below about this not being a secure solution, but it works.  In any case, if you’re using Ubuntu, you’ll need to make sure your permissions are right.  Once you’ve done this, change the owner of your public_html directory (and its children) by going to its parent directory and running the following command:

 chown -R www-data: public_html/

This should do it.  If you’re not using Ubuntu you might not have ‘www-data’ .. it might be something like ‘httpd’ instead.  Additionally, if your WordPress installation isn’t in the public_html directory, you’ll need to change the command accordingly.

Basically, you have an array of arrays (multidimensional) and you want to sort the first array by the values in the secondary arrays.  In my case, I had an array of 3 value associative arrays (title, link, date).  I wanted to sort the primary array by the datetimes found in the 2nd array.  Turns out, this is incredibly easy using usort.

Just create a comparative function that will take two children arrays and compare two elements.  In my case, comparing articles (or more specifically, the dates):

function compare_times($article_one, $article_two) {
 if ( $article_one['Date'] == $article_two['Date'] )
 return 0;
 else if ( $article_one['Date'] < $article_two['Date'] )
 return 1;
 else
 return -1;
 }

Then… just call that by giving usort two parameters: the master array and the compare function name as a string:

usort($todays_stories[$section], 'compare_times');

(N.B. In my case above, I was using a three dimensional array, but only sorting the 2nd dimension ($section) by the times (more specifically the ‘Date’ key) in the third dimension.  The first dimension went unsorted/untouched.  This was inside of a foreach loop, so each $section was sorted independently from most recent article to oldest article).

Hope this helps — comment below if you have questions.

 uname -r

And Happy Friday.