I was just dumping a database using mysqldump and I noticed that tables such as cache (and its cousins cache_page, cache_menu, etc), sessions and watchdog can be pretty big and are also not often essential for backing up. I mean, when you restore your web site do you really care about restoring people's logged in sessions from when the backup took place? I can understand maybe keeping watchdog; but then again should you lose your site you would probably lose it several hours after the backup so would miss out on any relevant watchdog notices.

Anywho… I did a mysqdump for a large database for a website I maintain and the dump came out at 400Mb. I then spent a few minutes cobling together a small script which would do a mysqldump but had some pre-programmed Regular Expressions to match specific groups of tables which it would only dump the structure for (ie, no data). After running this script, the SQL dump was only 220Mb. Much better! It also runs considerable quicker too and will cause less table locking.

So - the script?

Today I needed to list all of the services which were enabled on boot-up for one of the servers I maintain. Obviously, my first port of call was to use the nifty tool ChkConfig like so…

I while ago (almost a year!) I released a module called Relevant Content to the community. This module executes a relatively lightweight SQL query which pulls up other nodes and sorts them by how many terms they have in common with the current node you're looking at. This provides a rudimentary method of suggesting other content to visitors to the page. It also provides a way of teaching search engines about other potentially relevant content.

I am currently in the process of migrating several dozen sites between two servers. I tried using scp command to copy the sites over however scp is a very slow command when transferring many small files.

I did a little research on how to use tar over an ssh connection and realised that you could specify the stdout on tar.

After recently reading about how great VIM is for the three hundredth and fifty second time (I kept count), I decided to take a look.

It really is quite cool! I've also decided to try to log any cool tips I learn about it. Here is the first which I found after running the coder module on one of my modules (Page Title 2) and it threw hundreds of errors about too many trailing spaces on empty lines.

I recently setup my PC in the living room with my TV so I could play games and watch streamed video from the net (eg, BBC's iPlayer). Unfortunately this always meant having a keyboard and mouse attached.

Then came along Synergy.

I have just finished commiting my very first theme to the drupal community! I'm not a designer by nature - I prefer to be deep in the code. Thats why I commited this theme - it contains very little design (in terms of Photoshop work). This design is, pretty much, image free! On top of that - its SEO friendly too!

I say 'Pretty much' because it is still using 3 core image files for the bullet points. But what I'm pleased about is the curved CSS-only corners with a slight gradient on them AND the fact that if you remove content from a column, the content fills out over it automatically.

I've just released Page Title 2 for Drupal 6. Page Title 2 is still marked as Alpha (as a project) however its in use on a number of my sites and appears to work.

I'd appeciate people's feedback regarding this module. Its a GREAT way to improve your websites SEO!

Following my previous post about configuring Lighttpd on this VPS Webserver to replace Apache I bring you a guide to configuring AWStats under Lighttpd. This process is differs to Apache as control of directories and aliasing is handled differently. There can also be complications if you have previously enabled the Drupal LUA Magnet script on your site for clean URL handling!

This blog is now no longer powered by Apache (the feature filled but slightly bloated beast), instead I have decided to give Lighttpd (pronounced Lighty) a whirl.

What convinced me? Ages ago I read an article by Dries Buytaert comparing webserver configurations. It was shocked to see that Lighttpd appeared to be able to serve almost twice as many pages per second as Apache. There is also the advantage that a static file will only cost you substantially less memory to serve in Lighty than it will in Apache due to Apache bundling ALL the mods into every process.

So what is Lighttpd? The inventors describe it perfectly…