Emmense Technologies, LLC - WordPress Consulting

Facebook HipHop and WordPress

Aaron Brazell — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:38:24 +0000

By now, the news has hit the street about Facebook’s new PHP pseudo-compiler technology that is looking set to change the PHP world once again. It is called HipHop for PHP.

Here at Emmense, we build on PHP and more specifically, we build on WordPress. The PHP community as a whole continues to innovate the language and Facebook has been a longstanding member of that community. WordPress stands on the shoulders who have gone before, and there are certainly instances of large-scale installs of WordPress that could stand to use some acceration.

It is our intention, here at Emmense, to support the Facebook HipHop methodology where appropriate. We will be exploring the use and implementation of this technology in the days and weeks to come and will be working to build solutions that leverage it in the WordPress world for our clients. Where possible, our work will be conributed back to the WordPress core where appropriate.

While we expect that many more service providers will likely leverage this technology, we want to continue to lead in the WordPress community in an ever-open exchange of ideas between the PHP and WordPress communities.

SSHKey Management Made Easy

Aaron Brazell — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:02:41 +0000

I’ve been working with Linux for years now, and one of the main things you learn early on is that it’s better to use an SSHKey than it is to use a password. It gets confusing to some people (including myself), sometimes, where things are supposed to go to make it simple to do password-less entry into a server.

I started using this script in 2007 and have kept it around and use it regularly (whenever I need to log on to other servers other than my own). It was originally somewhere on the internet, and I’ve taken it and modified it further.

Make sure this script is executable. It won’t work on Windows since Microsoft still hasn’t introduced native SSH. But it will work on Mac OS X or Linux variants.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22

#!/bin/sh

KEY="$HOME/.ssh/id_dsa.pub"

if [ ! -f ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub ];then
echo "private key not found at $KEY"
echo "* please create it with "ssh-keygen -t dsa" *"
echo "* to login to the remote host without a password, don't give the key you create with ssh-keygen a password! *"
exit
fi

if [ -z $1 ];then
echo "Please specify user@host.tld as the first switch to this script"
exit
fi

echo "Putting your key on $1... "

KEYCODE=`cat $KEY`
ssh -q $1 "mkdir ~/.ssh 2>/dev/null; chmod 700 ~/.ssh; echo "$KEYCODE" >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys; chmod 644 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"

echo "done!"

It is invoked simply by typing:

1	ncc-1701$ ./do_sshkeys.sh sshuser@sshhost.tld

Clearly, substitute sshuser with your username and sshhost.tld with your IP address or servername. (Also, ncc-1701$ is my command prompt – don’t type that) You’ll have to enter the password the first time, then the script will take your DSA public key and place it in the appropriate place on the remote server. Logout and try logging in normally and, if all goes well, you’ll login without having to enter your password.

WordPress Preset Options Plugin

Aaron Brazell — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:29:17 +0000

Late yesterday evening, my friend @immunity pointed me to Dan Gilmore’s post about hacking the database for WordPress MU to manually set options across a variety of blogs. @immunity figured there must be a better way and, indeed, there is.

In fact, I had written some code while at b5media which just did this. Because I am a persistent packrat, I still had that plugin and got the permission from b5media to release the very simple plugin publicly.

This plugin is perfect for WordPress MU administrators who want to exercise some control, whether for QA or otherwise, over the WordPress blogs on the system. Drop this plugin into the mu-plugins folder and it will be universally applied.

Couple things to think about… as for now, with this cleaned up but made-for-b5media plugin, there is no admin interface. You do have to edit the file manually to preset the options you want and you might have to comb your database options table to find the names of certain options, etc. This is not a braindead stupid plugin, but for those who are savvy enough to be administrators, it shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out via the example usage in the plugin.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Preset Options
Plugin URI: #
Description: A plugin created when I was working for b5media and released, with permission, under GPLv2. The plugin provides two functions that will set any blog option as defined and unchangeable. Perfect for WPMU.
Author: Aaron Brazell
Version: 1.0
Author URI: http://technosailor.com
*/

/*
Example Usage:

Turn off Smilies across the board:
po_hardcode_option('use_smilies', '0');

Remove the lifestream plugin from the list of active plugins.
po_hardcore_option_serialized('active_plugins', array('lifestream/lifestream.php'), false, true );
*/

/**
* Function takes two arguments and is meant for setting a setting for a single string/boolean option. It is not meant for serialized data.
**/
function po_hardcode_option($name, $value) {
add_filter('pre_option_' . $name, create_function('$a', 'return "' . addslashes($value) . '";'));
}

/**
* Function takes two required arguments, the name of an option and an array of key/value array data. Two optional arguments are boolean
*/
function po_hardcode_option_serialized( $setting, $options = array(), $removekey = false, $removevalue = false )
{
if( !empty($options) )
{
if( $exist_options = get_option($setting) )
{
foreach( $options as $k => $v )
{
if( $removevalue )
{
$key = array_search( $v, $exist_options );
if( $key != null )
unset( $exist_options[$key] );
}
else if( array_key_exists( $k, $exist_options) && !is_int( $k ) )
{
if( $removekey )
unset( $exist_options[$k] );
else
$exist_options[$k] = $v;
}
}
add_filter('pre_option_' . $setting, change_option_array( $setting, $exist_options ) );
}
}
}

function change_option_array($setting, $array)
{
update_option($setting, $array);
}
?>

Download the plugin here.

So Dan, you would have just added the following line to the bottom of the plugin and would have been set.

1	po_hardcode_option('comment_registration', true);

WordPress Safeguard (OFFER)

Aaron Brazell — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:10:43 +0000

WordPress is such a wonderful platform that offers so many things. As a long time contributor to the community and working with a wide array of clients from enterprise software companies like DataDirect Technologies to individual brands like KevinMD and Thomas Hawk, it’s clear that, the demand for WordPress and WordPress-related services continues to go up.

I am preparing to launch an initiative that will give the WordPress blogger the peace of mind they need to sleep at night. Nevermind worrying about upgrading, fixing hacked files or making tweaks to your theme. Instead, for a monthly rate, you can know that you can have Emmense Technologies handle this business for you.

While I am not prepared to release all the details of the WordPress Safeguard program yet, I will say that the service will include (at no additional cost), upgrades to your WordPress platform as well as monitoring of core files to ensure that nothing goes wrong.

If you’re interested in knowing more about this offer, email me at aaron+wpsg@technosailor.com. In the meantime, stay tuned here for more announcements of the program.