Totally Unrelated Post
Well, first I want to let you know that I finally upgraded my weblog to LifeType's latest release (1.1.1, that is). Then there was the Firefox 2 release earlier today (check out the "agenda of the last steps"), and I found that ridiculous mister I sell everything Steve Balmer Video prising Windows 1.0:
BTW: It's dead simple to include YouTube and Google Videos with the new LifeType Editor :)
PHPSecInfo
The PHP Security Consortium has release v0.1.1 of their PHPSecInfo tool. From their website: The idea behind PHPSecInfo is to provide an equivalent to the phpinfo() function that reports security information about the PHP environment, and offers suggestions for improvement. It is not a replacement for secure development techniques, and does not do any kind of code or app auditing, but can be a useful tool in a multilayered security approach.As PHPSecInfo doesn't provide any new information, at least with this release, I see it as a useful tool for the one's that are not very familiar with php and only want to set up some downloaded scripts on their own web server. What I'd like to see in upcoming versions is a LOT more verbosity. Explaining the settings in depth and giving advices on secure programming linked to some of the settings they test (like input validation without
magic_quotes_gpc, handling globals with globals off etc.)
Poor Man's Website Monitor
You can set up monitoring for your website in five minutes.
- create a text file "uptime.txt"
- add the word "success" on the first line
- upload it to your webserver (usually the root of your website)
- add your url and complete the form with your e-mail, name and a password
- done
The uptime.txt will be requested about every 15 minutes, if the file is not reachable you will get an e-mail warning. Uptime will still try to reach your site every 15 minutes and e-mail you again, as soon as the file is reachable again.
Although there may be tons of reasons why Uptime can't reach your website other than your website actually being down, it's still a handy service to get an idea of the service availablity, especially on (shared) hosting.
