Linux @ Silicon Dales

Why Is My Website Slow?

This is a question we are asked by people on a regular basis: “Why is my website slow?” The answer provided here, since 2012, is generally speaking in a WordPress context – because we are WP specialists – but a lot of the rules will apply to really any website, particularly one which runs on …

Minimum Requirements for WooCommerce

Below are the minimum requirements for WooCommerce and (by extension) WordPress. Some are taken from WooCommerce, some from WordPress, and also, some, we are adding as recommendations. It should be apparent, below, which is which! Before getting started, if you’re here to assess a WooCommerce host, then you may be interested to check out our …

How to Safely Update Linux in AWS EC2 Micro Instance – Using Yum

Often, when logging into via SSH to an Amazon EC2 instance, you are told that there are several updates (usually including security updates) waiting to be updated on your system. The panel on Amazon Linux even goes so far as to explain how one might go about updating to this version. HOWEVER, as this may …

How to Setup FTP (FTPS (not SFTP)) on an AWS EC2 Instance

Below are the commands required to setup FTP (well, FTPS in fact, and specifically not SFTP, which you can most easily use by adding your security certificate to your FTP program and accessing over SSH) on your AWS EC2 cloud instance. I’m assuming you use the AWS flavour of Linux. If you do not use …

How to wget files from Google Drive

A long time ago, I had occassion to WGET files from WeTransfer to a server after being sent a large file from a client, and being located somewhere with poor broadband. This happens to us less regularly now, but sometimes you maybe will find yourself in a situation where you want to get a file …

How to: Zip contents of a directory, excluding certain sub-directory

Have you ever wanted to zip an entire directory, but exclude the contents of one or two (or more!) sub-directories, using PuTTy (or another terminal) over SSH. I know I have – this is a great way to backup a website, or make a copy of a website, and exclude big folders you don’t need, …

How to find Apache version via Command Line

A long time ago, we published an item which showed how to discover your Apache version on a Plesk installation. Sometimes, people land in there looking to find their Apache version when they don’t have Plesk.

How to: Find out Apache version from Command Line (SSH)

Have you logged into your server or VPS via command line (SSH – this is really the best and only way to do this now – Telnet is not going to encrypt your communications… this is bad!) and are now wondering how to quickly discover what version of Apache you are running? Find your Apache …

Apache HTTPD: Address already in use: make_sock: could not bind to address

This is a post for those sysadmins out there who run into problems running servers with a LAMP setup. This issue will crop up occasionally in AWS Linux, on EC2 instances, but its a common error on Linux systems running apache as a web server. Occasionally, for some reason or another – usually because you …

Allow HTTPS on Amazon EC2

If you have recently setup an Amazon EC2 instance and would like to configure access to Port 443 (HTTPS:// traffic) on your new instance, there are a few things you should do. First Step – Allow Port 443 in your Security Group Firstly, you need to tell your EC2 instance that it is allowed to …