Blog.Project13.pl » web

OVH’s “main domain” concept

Ktoso — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:59:54 +0000

This will be an short explaination about how OVH treats domains/servers (virtual servers) as @pwesolek asked me on twitter to expand about this a little.

What I don’t “like” there is that an server is bound to one special domain that they call the server’s “main domain“. Fair enough, he ought to have some “main” thing right? Basically, the domain is identified 1 to 1 with the server, and this one, has some special stuff it can do. It’s like “I’ll call this server example.com” and then you work with example.com, kinda not caring wtah server it is. And that’s not harmful at all but:

The problem comes up if you host multiple domains – each of which would like to be “mainish” – be able to setup email accounts easily etc.

The part with multiple websites is simple: you set it up using what they call “multidomains” (weird name…) – it’s basically like httpd’s VirtualHost stuff. “Ok, nice.” – you think and then want to setup mail adresses for those domains you’ve hooked up to this server. Should be easy – right? You could just enter some [login]@[domain] and be done with it. But it’s not that simple since all you can do is add emails inside the servers “main domain” (if you’d try to youd get into relay domain denial stuff). You’re forced to buy some sucky (25MB POP accounts) extra “MX pack”… I’ve encountered this while using an domain not registered in OVH, so it’s possible that this is easier with domains bought “from them”, but I doubt it (nothing suggesting this in sight on their website).

To sum it up: You can only easily set up email accounts for an domain that is the servers “main domain” – it’s 2 clicks. Setting the same stuff up for an “not main domain” – will cost you a little extra.

Another weirdity is that if you want to change an servers main domain – it’ll cost you a little (not much).

That said – ovh is an reiable hosting company and does not try to “rob” the user from every penny he’s got like nazwa.pl does on their “WOWOWO FREEEE* domains” – you can guess what for the * there is… ;-) I’ve seen lot’s of hosting operators and ovh is certainly one of the best when it comes to “techy stuff”. I also often recommend (and have used) linuxpl.com it’s also very nice for virtual hosting – I’ve seen an VPS there and it was horrible – many “magical” things were happening there (it was openvz based if I recall propperly) but Virtual Hosting is top class there (svn, python, rails, ssh, synfony, all preinstalled :-))

jQuery tricks 1: automatic-wslider

Ktoso — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:19:12 +0000

This time I’ll post some actual code. A client wanted me to write an “image slider”. You’ve probably seen lot’s of them online – and a whole lot of them is in flash – why? There is no need to involve flash in such a trivial task, and jQuery is more than up to the job :-) I used jQuery with the wslide plugin, it’s simple and quite neat. But it does not slide on it’s own. But thanks to it’s simplicity I was able add the functionality I needed in just a few lines of clean code. I used the timer plugin to “click” on the slider at some interval and voila – the birth of an automatic jquery image slider. Anyways, here’s thecode:

var canDo = true;
/** plugin @author: http://www.webinventif.fr/wslide-plugin/ */
$(document).ready(function(){
$('#slidermenu, #slider, .cube').mouseover(function(){
canDo = false;
}).mouseout(function(){
canDo = true;
});
$('#slider').wslide({
width: 900,
height: 200,
pos: 1,
fade: true,
horiz: true,
autolink: 'slidermenu',
speed:300
});
$.timer(5000, function (timer) {
if(canDo){
if($('#slidermenu a:last').hasClass('wactive')){
$('#slidermenu a:first').click();
}else{
$('#slidermenu .wactive').next().click();
}
}
});
});

Beauty: Ólafur Arnalds – Ljósið

Ktoso — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:29:59 +0000

Ólafur Arnalds – Ljósið (Official Music Video) from Erased Tapes on Vimeo.

Yet another amazing freedom using initiative. Let’s quote the homepage first:

In April 2009, Iceland’s neo-classical export Ólafur Arnalds created the 7-song series ‘Found Songs’ –
recording a song a day for 7 days and instantly making each track available via Twitter. With artwork contributions
from fans via Flickr, this modern release awakens memories of a tradition that seemed lost in the digital age we live in.

The music and video are just amazing… Low-quality audio files can be downloaded on the website, for HQ you’d have to pay – fair deal i guess as the LQ is quite ok. Sadly it’s not on creative commons, but the basic idea seems to be there nevertheless.

Google Analytics GUI fix

Ktoso — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:00:13 +0000

I really like the google analytics tool, yet it doesn’t seem that all it’s styles where writen carefuly… Take a look at this:

So… Which button is the confirm one…? Yup, the colors are screwed up! I guess that’s becouse they didn’t think that someone could have a dark OS skin that would also skin the buttons dark. Ah wel… Thankfully I use Firefox 3.5 and the Stylish extension! Using this extension you can override a websites CSS styles, and that’s just what i did. The following code can be used to fix all the input button colors:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document url-prefix("https://www.google.com/analytics") { /* using url-prefix*/
input{
color: white !important;
}
select{
color: white !important;
}
}

Notice the !important at the end of the color attribute, that’s what forces this setting to be “final”. Let’s check if the changes fixed our problem…

Ahh… much better!

You Have to Burn the Rope!

Ktoso — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:17:47 +0000

Burn the Rope, damnit!!!

You Have to Burn the Rope jest małą gierką w flashu, z serii takich “z pomysłem.” Gra polega tylko i wyłącznie na przejściu korytarza, w którym mamy napisaną na ścianach instrukcję jak pokonać bossa na jego końcu, oraz potem wykonaniu tej instrukcji… Bardzo trudnej! Trzeba spalić linę nad bossem (tytuł gry wcale nie jest podpowiedzią!), aby żyrandol go zmiażdżył. Podkreślam że nieziemsko trudno jest się tam dostać! Trzeba skoczyć około 4 razy! A jak już “przejdziemy grę”, mamy ładną muzyczkę i napisy…

Ok, czym zatem się jednak ta gra tak wyróżnia? Czemu jest taka wyjątkowa? O tym w rozwinięciu tego posta…

Otóż tym że jest satyrycznym przedstawieniem dzisiejszych gier. Fantastycznym. Gry dziś są banalne, krótkie, a walki z bossami to często tylko seria quicktime eventów (takie jak w God of War: “Teraz wciśnij X, a przejdziesz grę!”). Tak to wytrawni gracze na pewno poznają bohatera, którym jest nikt inny jak Kirby a boss jest małym nawiązaniem do Shadow of the Collossus: “Grinning Collossusie”. Polecam zagrać aby zobaczyć jak bardzo dobrze You Have to Burn the Rope przedstawia dzisiejszy świat gamingu. http://www.mazapan.se/games/BurnTheRope.php W razie problemów zawsze możecie zajrzeć do INSTRUKCJI lub VIDEO-SOLUCJI. PS. Za pierwszym razem wyskoczyłem tam gdzie trzeba, nie zobaczywszy nawet jeszcze bossa… Zobaczyłem go dopiero gdy spadłem po podpaleniu liny… “To takie trudne…” xD

“Bo te gry dziś są wszystkie takie trudne…”