I use vagrant to run multiple docker based environments to reproduce client environments. PHPSTorm has a built in terminal, which you can right click and start a termical session in the folder of the file. The problem I have is that the terminal session is outside vagrant.

The built in vagrant tools don;t work here as I am in  a project folder that exists inside the vagrant file path, so vagrant is OUTSIDE the project

This is just an example of how to pull in buddy IP's, and then assign them to an aws_security_group using terraform.

The procedure is not specific to aws_security_group, and can be used for anything that needs CIDR blocks or multiple IPs

This week I wanted to add PHPCS Code Sniff to the Buddy.Works deploy Pipeline. I did not want the deploy to fail if any sniffs were found, I simply wanted to have the team emailed with any found sniffs. (for now)

Unfortunately the built in buddy.deploy PHPCS action does not have the ability to email out, and the Email Action cannot attach files. (Buddy support told me they have this feature in their backlog)

I had to come up with my own solution, so here it is....

I turned our dumb, 15 year old, split cycle Air-Conditioning unit into a SMART Unit by adding some home Automation via Sensibo

Sensibo was super easy to install, and within no time at all, I had full control over our Air-Conditioning requirements. Sensibo was SMART, and even integrated with IFTTT (IF This Then That) which opend a whole world of automation possibilities.

Life felt great. Life felt smart. I felt smart, until.......

Google Tag Manager allows you to easily send all products to an external resource, by using the dataLayer, and a specific tag.

But what if you want to fire a tag only when a specific product, or set of products, have been purchased?

I worked out an easy way to get it done, using macro's and dataLayer.

Recently I started using Vagrant as part of my development environment. Could not be happier, however, one small issue has become very very irretatating.

Letency!

That initial 'hang' is slowing me down

Recently I became aware that my Dynamic Catgeory Products module is being pirated by a company called CMSmart.net. They seem to be based in VietNam, but their site was hosted in the USA.

So you have an awesome, popular website,  be it e-commerce based, or just information based. No matter how awesome your site, one of the leading factors to break the awesomeness is site speed. Plainly put, if customers find the site loading time frustrating, they will move on to another site. 

So, how to improve your site performance?

One of the best ways will be to hook up with New Relic

A recent botnet attack on a site I manage createded a massive amount of emails in the mail queue.

A site I am managing recently came nder a massive DDOS attack from around the globe.

To limit the attack, I used fail2ban to setup a ban system to help mitigate the issue.