Tag Archives: Apache

configure apache

Apache Active Directory Authentication

Overview

This tutorial provides an example of Apache Active Directory Authentication using the Authz LDAP module.
Apache and SSL settings are not in the scope of this tutorial.
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how to speed website

How to speed up website load time

How to speed up website load time

How to speed up website load time is important question for those that performance matters to them.

Nobody Likes a Slow Website!

 

Overview

How to speed up website?

Website optimization is a required step for production, and when is automated when possible correctly it can help you deliver your website as fastest as possible without compromising on development comfortability and code readability.

 

Test your website load time speed

How to speed up website question could be answered for your case better if you’ll use a website speed test tools. There several good websites load time speed tests available online for free. check out pingdom website speed test, Google PageSpeed tools. this are very good tools which also gives you important and valuable information and tips to speed up your website.

 

pingdom

You can also check: WebPagetest, GTmetrix or PageScoring Website Speed Test.

Some of them rates your website and/or explain what could be done to make your site faster. you can learn also a lot from loading time graphs.collect information from all the above to optimize your website to maximum.

  • If it takes more then 10 seconds for your website to load. you are doing a very bad job optimizing your website (if at all).
  • If your page load time takes several seconds then you’re ok (but you can do better then that!).
  • if your page load time takes up to two seconds then your site is in very good shape!
  • if your page load time takes less then a second then your site is sooooo fast!! and you are doing a excellent job!

if your score is bad.. continue reading How to speed up website

 

How to speed up website load time

So, how to speed up your website load time?

You can do that using several tweaks.. one at a time…

 

1. learn the waterfall. where are your bottom neck ?

Use the mentioned websites speed test graphs to learn what are the slowest parts of your website and start with them. does the problem is with your webserver or maybe the infrastructure?

How to speed up website ? Does your static files load time is the problem?

And maybe it is the dns? processing request? loading the images? loading the scripts? maybe you have bad requests?

This extreme powerfull tool will help you learn your weaks and strongs.

how to speed website

how to speed website

2. Minimize redirects

If your website on load check if it’s mobile or not, then it redirect to another page when checks the language and then redirects to another page who check the cookies and then redirect… well you’ve got the idea. Bad design pattern!

Minimize redirects!

 

3. Browser caching

Set up your server to return Expire and Cache-Control headers with static files. Setup you expire date to be within week or more is a very good timeframe (depend on how frequently you update your website static files you can setup the expire date as required).

 

4. use CDN (if possible)

Content Delivery Network (CDN) can be an important tool in achieving decent page load and web application speeds. Providers such as AkamaiEdgeCast, Amazon (CloudFront), Rackspace (CloudFiles), Google (PageSpeed) and Microsoft (Azure CDN) are providing the means to distribute your content to locations geographically closer to your customers/users, which improves the responsiveness of the application or website.

 

5. put cache server between your server and your client when possible

Although using a CDN can help with page load speeds, a CDN is not always the best solution in terms of Cost–benefit.

when configuring a cache server before your website server, and no matter if it’s apache, tomcat, gunicorn or any other html generator you can boost up clients page load dramatically.

 

caching the compiled html pages is very important speed tweak. if you have any static and/or low-rate updated pages with no problem if some users will not see the lastest updates of the html when it changes (until cache reloads).. check varnish-cache or squid-cache or nginx (with HttpProxy module) or Apache with mod_proxy.

You should think of your webapp as in several seperate layers. where one layer could answering html requests and other serving your static files. always try to find the suitable tool for this mission in terms of speed (and taste). consider serving your static files (those not on CDN) using the fastest web server for static files you can find.

 

6. Minify

A very important stage is to minify data.

  • Minify CSS files for production! there are many simple gui or command tools to do that..
    if you are using LESS, SASS or other, Never compile on client side! compiler only on server side and setup your compiler to minify results.
  • Minify your JS files. if possible, insert them as scripts into the html, or better, minify and join them inside when processing the html (But don’t forget to use Cache server!).
    If you’re using Coffee-script and template engine it should be easier as you can compile the ,coffee file to minified version and include it within your template.
  • Minify HTML. if you have static html files use command or gui tool. if you have more advanced server like python or ruby – minify them before sumbit.
  • If your template engine support preprocessors. use them to minify HTML (and everything other you can). if not – use a library (if possible).

 

7. GZip

Configure you webserver (nginx, apache,etc)  to GZip response.

Set the Vary header (Vary: Accept-Encoding header) correctly for Internet Explorer.

 

8. Caching data

If you have data you can cache in memory for your application server – DO IT.

Use Redis, memcached or any other tool you find is suitable.

It can be small data (like the number of your followers you’ve just counted from facebook, twitter and youtube JSON calls) or the Entire processed HTML.

Put expire time for each resource on your store as needed.

 

 

How to speed up website

‘ How to speed up website ‘ tutorial ends here.

hope you’ll have fun optimizing your website and now you now few important tips on How to speed up website

Using those steps I’ve managed to reduced my website load time from several seconds to only 1-2 seconds (and sometimes less then second). It’s was worth the effort!!

 

Good day (or night),

WordPress SSL Encryption using Apache and mod_ssl

Overview

WordPress SSL Encryption has several options so you can encrypt just the Log-in page, the entire Admin area or the entire WordPress instance.
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configure apache

Apache Variables using system variables or mod_macro

Apache Variables

Apache Variables are not supported by defaultby apache but you can do two things to achieve this functionality::

  • Option 1 – Use system variables
  • Option 2 – Use mod_macro

Applicable to

  • Centos 6.x

This article was written with instructions for Centos 6.x, but the concept applies any distibution.

 

Option 1 – System Variables

Add variables in init script

To set environment variables in your Apache init script (/etc/init.d/httpd) before the line that calls httpd. For example, add:

MYVAR=value

Better would be to store all the variables in an external file, for example you can call it: /etc/httpd/conf/vars.txt and add to it all your variables:

MYAPP=/path/to/dir
BAR=/path/to/dir

and then include these into your Apache init.d script with:

. /etc/httpd/conf/vars.txt

you can also reload the file into memory by using the last command on shell.

to check that the variables added to your system variables use the set command:

set

Using inside configuration

Variables can be used in the configuration like so:

${MYVAR}

The variables can be used anywhere.

You can pass the variable into your CGI scripts and SSI pages using mod_env by adding to your confs:

PassEnv LD_LIBRARY_PATH

 

Option 2 – mod_macro

You can use apache Variables as functions using mod_macro extension,

mod_macro enables you to create macro functions with variables like:

<Macro VHost $host $port $dir>
  Listen $port
  <VirtualHost *:$port>

    ServerName $host
    DocumentRoot $dir

    <Directory $dir>
      # do something here...
    </Directory>

    # limit access to intranet subdir.
    <Directory $dir/intranet>
      order deny,allow
      deny from all
      allow from 10.0.0.0/8
    </Directory>
  </VirtualHost>
</Macro>

## Use of VHost with different arguments.

Use VHost www.apache.org 80 /projects/apache/web
Use VHost www.perl.com 8080 /projects/perl/web
Use VHost www.ensmp.fr 1234 /projects/mines/web

* example taken from here.

Prerequisites for mod_macro

  • The scripts in the article uses wget: yum install wget
  • apxs: yum install httpd-devel.i386
  • apache version 2.3

check your apache version using:
httpd -v

centos repository have apache 2.2.15, so you’ll need to compile newer version from source which is out of the bounds of this article. if you have later version of apache you can still use mod_macro which is better solution (for me) over system variables

 

mod_macro

to download and install mod_macro type:

cd /tmp
wget http://people.apache.org/~fabien/mod_macro/mod_macro-latest.tar.gz
tar xzvf mod_macro-1.2.1.tar.gz
apxs -cia mod_macro-1.2.1/mod_macro.c

Update 1.2.1 if wget returns newer version.

read more information and view demonstration code of how to use this extension check: http://www.cri.ensmp.fr/~coelho/mod_macro/

 

That’s it! select the way appropriate for your apache variables…

configure apache

Apache VPS Optimization

Apache VPS Optimization – Memory Usage Tuning

I’ve recently had the need to optimize my VPS plan so it won’t consume that much memory.
The main culprit was Apache with more then a few processes using over 50MB.

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Installing Python / Django on Centos 6.3 is Easy!

 

 

Django

NOTE: This article was rewritten (for CentOS 6.4). please read the updated post.

What is Python?

Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Its syntax is said to be clear and expressive.” from Wikipedia.

Visit http://www.python.org/

 

What is Django?

“Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.” from https://www.djangoproject.com/

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