July 2009

Magento Search Results

Magento Search Results

Submitted by shane on Thu, 2009-07-02 02:00

Search seems so simple on the surface, but inside it's a very complex thing (just ask Microsoft why they still haven't beaten Google at this game). Magento offeres some search options for products, but it's search is not 'awesome', but just OK.

Here are some options I've found that return a small set of products that are most accurate.

System > Config > Catalog > Catalog Search
1. Search Type = Combine (Like and Fulltext)
- This will catch plurals pretty good as well as slight spelling variants

2. Disable quicksearch for 'Descriptions'

Removing Encryption from SSL Key

Removing Encryption from SSL Key

Submitted by shane on Sat, 2009-07-18 17:43
While having an encrypted key is a good thing for an SSL web server, it just doens't work out so well. When your web server restarts, it hangs during startup asking for a passphrase for all the SSL certs. To remove the requirement to enter a password you can follow these steps. First backup you key 
# cp www.domain.key www.domain.key.encrypted
Then create a plain text version 
# openssl rsa -in www.domain.key -out www.domain.key.plain
Then replace your current key with the new plain text one 
# cp www.domain.key.plaintext www.domain.key
Now restart your web server and you shouldn't be prompted for a passphrase.

VERY IMPORTANT!!!!!

You were about to walk away were'nt you?! Well make sure that your www.domain.key and www.domain.key.plain files are are owned by root and are read/write only by root chmod 600 www.domain.key

Installing Zend Server on Centos to run Magento

Installing Zend Server on Centos to run Magento

Submitted by shane on Tue, 2009-07-21 17:09

Installed Zend Server CE on one of my servers today.

Installing Zend Server CE via yum on Centos

To install via YUM, you can add the Zend repo as /etc/yum.repos.d/zend.repo

  [Zend]
  name=Zend CE $releasever - $basearch - Released Updates
  baseurl=http://repos.zend.com/rpm/ce/$basearch/
  enabled=1
  gpgcheck=0
  [Zendce-noarch]
  name=Zend CE - noarch
  baseurl=http://repos.zend.com/rpm/ce/noarch
  enabled=1
  gpgcheck=0

Then run yum install zend-ce

Offsite Snapshot Backups using rsync

Offsite Snapshot Backups using rsync

Submitted by shane on Wed, 2009-07-22 14:52

Creating simple backup snapshots using rsync and mv

Summary

Create the illusion of mutliple backed up copies, but in reality only the changes are different thereby saving space on the HDD. Create a cron job to run the following script once a day. The script will keep 4 days of backups, edit the numbers to your liking. Utilizing some built in rsync features it will only store 1 copy of the file on disk unless it has changed.