A cartoon created by artist Brad Fitzpatrick.

 

If you have an idea for a future comic or would like to submit your own BlueFur cartoon let us know in a comment.

By default, whenever somebody requests something from your server, Apache makes note of it in a special log file. This is called an access log and records every request (that goes through Apache) that touches your server. This log can be useful for identifying hard-hitting IP addresses or for statistics using software to process the access log (we’ll cover some of this software in a future article).

However, the default access log only contains the basic HTTP request and originating IP address. It also logs across all domains, making it difficult to narrow down on just one site. To make access logs more useful to us, we’re going to change the format of the access logs, and also make them on a per-domain basis.

We’ll start off by disabling the all-inclusive access logging. Open /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf and find this line and comment it out (add a # in front of it):

CustomLog "logs/access_log" common

Save and close that file and open /usr/local/apache2/conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf. We’ll be implementing access logging on a per-virtual-host basis, so you can choose which domains you want to have an access log for. For each virtual host you want to have an access log for, add the following lines within the appropriate blocks.

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined
CustomLog "/home/domain_root/logs/access_log" combined

Replace domain_root with the directory where you hold all the files for that particular domain. Save and close that file. Then, create the access log files, for each virtual host you’re logging:

touch /home/domain_root/logs/access_log

Restart Apache to load the modified configuration files:

apachectl -k restart

Once you have made these changes, and restarted Apache, you will have per-domain access logging with more information about the request.

We are currently testing a new service where you can purchase a domain, dial a local number and then domain cost will be charged to your phone bill. This means you would not require to have a credit card, use PayPal or send cheques through the mail to pay.

The service we are using is through Daopay who allows phone payments around the world. The setup was easy and takes minutes to add to our site.

The option has already been added to the bluefurdomain.com site and you can buy domains today with just your phone.

Does this seem like a convenient way to buy hosting and domains?

Advertising can take on many different forms. For some industries, it makes the most sense to focus on web advertising. For other niches, it may be better to invest in print media and radio spots. And then there are the more creative ways to gain some brand presence and guide potential customers in your area. Over on Twitter, I was recently followed by an interesting account. Ice Cream Truck Ads, as its name clearly indicates, sells advertising on ice cream trucks.

Summer is just around the corner and these trucks will soon be making their rounds near playgrounds, beaches, and other popular family hotspots. Maybe in your area, these trucks are already going around selling popsicles and frosted malts. By placing an ad for your business on the sides of these trucks, you effectively gain access to a mobile roaming billboard. With stationary billboards, only people who pass through that area will see it. With the ice cream truck, you get exposed to an entire neighborhood and, oftentimes, several neighborhoods.

According to a recent blog post, advertising starts at $249 per month, possibly making this marketing option even cheaper than advertising in the local newspaper or magazine. Depending on your budget, this could also be less expensive than a similar web campaign. The question, however, is whether people will even notice your ad when they are far too interested in getting an ice cold treat. I’d imagine that the $249/month ad would be quite small. They have options to plaster the entire side of the truck, but I’m guessing that costs more than $249 a month.

Naturally, the companies that will be able to extract the most value from advertising on the side of an ice cream truck would have to come from a related industry. The local water park, for example, may be of interest to children who are buying ice cream. The office supply store, on the other hand, is unlikely to gain any new customers through this effort.

What do you think? Would you advertise on the side of a truck?

Sometimes when developing a WordPress plugin, you’ll want to modify something that has no actions or filters associated with it. However, all is not lost. Chances are that WordPress has some other way to modify it. You’ll just have to dig into the code and follow the trail to whatever it is you want to modify.

I needed to do just that to create the plugin we’re going to be talking about today. What the plugin does is change the order of the posts in tag listings from descending (by date) to ascending (by date). While this seems like a simple plugin (which it is, it’s only a couple of lines), I did have to do some digging to find out how to change this. Here’s what this plugin looks like:

[code='php']/*
Plugin Name: Ascending Order Tag Pages
Description: Changes the tag page listings to display in ascending order.
Version: 1.0
Author: Matt Freedman
Author URI: http://mattfreedman.ca/
*/

function tag_asc() {
if (is_tag())
set_query_var('order', 'ASC');
}

add_action('pre_get_posts', 'tag_asc');[/code]

To figure out how to modify the order of the tag pages, I followed the trail of how the tag pages are displayed. I know they’re displayed by the archive.php file in my theme, and I know the “the loop” is where these posts get retrieved from the database and displayed.

So, I started following the trail, and ended up in wp-includes/query.php looking at the get_posts() functions. Reading through that function, I found an if that checks if order is set in the query vars. So, I looked through that file for functions related to query vars. I ended up finding the function set_query_var(), which allows me to set the order query var to a custom value.

Now that I knew how to change the order, I just needed to write the plugin. I started with my plugin headers, the created a function to contain my set_query_var(). Since I only want to change this on tag listing pages, I wrapped that in an if statement using is_tag(). After that, I needed to hook the function into WordPress somehow. While look at the get_posts() function, I came across the pre_get_posts action, which is the perfect fit for this situation. There I had it, a plugin that change the display order of the posts on tag listing pages to ascending.

As you can see, with some digging, you can change practically anything in WordPress, it just takes some time and patience.

Last week we asked do you follow celebrities on twitter and 36% said no. With 21% still unsure of what twitter is. This weeks question is…