Here are some missing PHP modules on my WordPress install.
apt install php-gd php-dom php-mbstring php-imagick php-zip |
Reboot Apache after the install.
systemctl restart apache2 |
PHP Modules
PHP
List Available PHP Modules
Here’s how to list the available PHP modules.
apt-cache search php- | less |
To get details about a module.
apt-cache show php-curl |
To install a module.
apt install php-curl |
Or install all modules.
apt install php* |
Restart Apache after each install.
systemctl restart apache2 |
Phpinfo Blank Page
Here’s how to fix when phpinfo is displaying a blank page. The install is missing this php module.
apt install php libapache2-mod-php |
Restart after install.
service apache2 restart |
HTTPS in CodeIgniter
If you switched to HTTPS in Apache, make sure to update CodeIgniter’s config file.
vim /var/www/applications/config/config.php |
Change the base URL to https.
$config['base_url'] = 'https://yourdomain.com/ci/'; |
CodeIgniter 2.1.3 on PHP7
If you’re still running older versions of CodeIgniter, here are a couple of tips to make it work with PHP7.
- Make sure to install all PHP tools and libraries that comes with PHP7. I was missing curl.
- Change your database driver from mysql to mysqli (application/config/config.php).
- Fix the /system/core/Common.php error or as some prefer, upgrade to a newer version.
Considering v2.1.3 is very old (currently 3.1.10) , I’m surprised it works with PHP7 with just a few modifications.
Comparing Time
Here’s a neat little PHP script that compares a set date/time to the current time. The time() function sets the $now variable to the current Unix timestamp. The strtotime() function converts a date string to a Unix timestamp. The result is assigned to the $setdate variable. The two variables containing Unix timestamps are then compared. A simple if-then statement determines if the date is in the past or future.
date_default_timezone_set('America/Los_Angeles'); $setdate = strtotime("May 9, 2017 12:27PM"); $now = time(); if ( $setdate > $now ) : echo 'Future date'; else : echo 'Past date'; endif; |
You may have to change the default timezone if your server is in a different timezone.
Quick Database Check
Here’s a quick PHP script to check if your web server can connect to your MySQL database. It’s a neat little script if you don’t have any application installed yet, and you just want to see if your web server setup can quickly connect to the database. All you have to do is create a new file called connect.php, and place the following code inside. Just change the username, password and database. Most likely the hostname will be localhost.
$ sudo nano /var/www/html/connect.php $username = "user"; $password = "password"; $hostname = "hostname"; $database = "database"; $dbhandle = mysql_connect($hostname, $username, $password) or die("Unable to connect to MySQL"); echo "Successfully Connected to the MySQL Database.<br/>"; $selected = mysql_select_db("$dbname", $dbhandle) or die("Could not select database"); echo "Successfully Connected to Database called: $database"; |
It’s also available on my Github gist.
Laravel 5.4 Install
This is the installation of Laravel 5.4 on an Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS. Laravel requires that you run Apache, MySQL and PHP. In this installation, I’m using the following versions: Apache 2.4.18, MySQL 5.7.17 and PHP 7.0.15. The installation of Laravel has changed over the years. I wished the installation was simpler. You can try Forge, but it’s not free. It also requires that you have an account at Linode, Digital Ocean or AWS. Forge costs $15 per month and Forge Plus is $30 per month. If you don’t want to pay, I’m afraid you are going to have to install Laravel yourself. Laravel installation may vary based on the distro you’re using. These instructions are for the Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS.
Run Update
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade |
Install Apache
sudo apt-get install apache2 sudo a2enmod rewrite sudo service apache2 restart |
Install MySQL
sudo apt-get install mysql-server sudo mysql_secure_installation |
Install PHP
sudo apt-get install php libapache2-mod-php php-mbstring php-zip php-xml php-mysql |
Install Composer
sudo curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | sudo php — —install-dir=/usr/local/bin —filename=composer # you may have to move composer manually if it doesn't work sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer # check if composer is accessible globally composer -V |
Install Laravel Installer
composer global require "laravel/installer" # Using alias instead of $PATH echo 'alias laravel="~/.composer/vendor/bin/laravel"' >> ~/.bashrc source ~/.bashrc # add source ~/.bashrc to .profile to load automatically echo 'source ~/.bashrc' >> ~/.profile # restart apache sudo service apache2 restart # check if laravel is accessible globally laravel |
Install New Laravel Project
# set permissions cd /var/www/ sudo chown -R ubuntu:ubuntu /var/www/html sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html # install new project cd /var/www/html laravel new project # give apache permissions sudo chgrp -R www-data /var/www/html/project/storage sudo chgrp -R www-data /var/www/html/project/bootstrap/cache |
Configure Apache
cd /etc/apache2/sites-available sudo cp 000-default.conf project.conf sudo nano project.conf # <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName local.project.com ServerAdmin admin@project.com DocumentRoot /var/www/html/project/public <Directory "/var/www/html/project"> AllowOverride All </Directory> ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined </VirtualHost> # sudo a2ensite project.conf sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf sudo service apache2 restart |
Finally, you can now access Laravel from the browser from the server IP address or domain.
Mass Find and Replace
There are situations when you have to do a mass find and replace on your database. Let’s say you’re really, really bad speller. You just recently found out that you’ve been spelling a word for wrongly for years. To avoid embarrassment, you decide to do a search and replace. Unfortunately, you found out that there are hundreds of posts that contains that misspelled word. Instead of editing each post which is time consuming, you decide to run a mass find and replace against the database. In this example, we will replace the word ‘dawg’ with ‘dog.’
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE ( post_content, 'dawg', 'dog'); |
I highly recommend that you back up your database first. I also recommend that you run it on a test database first before running it on a production environment, because a mass update is quite dangerous if you’re not sure what you are doing. If you’re a WordPress user, there’s a plugin called Search and Replace that will do the same thing. That might be easier for most people who don’t have access to MySQL command line or PHPMyAdmin.
WordPress Mobile Detect
I found this little nugget in the WordPress Codex called wp_is_mobile(). It will detect the user browser’s agent and will return a true or a false if it’s a mobile device. This is helpful if you would like to customized code specifically for a mobile device. Let’s say you have a media player and you want it to have a specific width for desktops and another width for mobile devices. So, here’s the code to detect if it’s a mobile device.
if ( wp_is_mobile() ) : $player_width = '270'; else : $player_width = '400'; endif; |
You can then use the variable $player_width in your media player configuration to set the width of the player. However, if you read the Codex, it says that tablets are considered as mobile devices, which is perfectly fine for my purposes here. It’s ok to use this tiny little function in your WordPress templates, but it’s not recommended for media queries.