The VP Geek Speaks

Run Multiple Python mod_wsgi Websites With Apache On Windows

Yes, this sounds completely crazy, but there is a semi-valid need to do this, unfortunately. However, when you need to run multiple Python websites on Apache on Windows via mod_wsgi, it quickly becomes apparent that using the typical <VirtualHost> configuration options do not work as expected.

When you try to do it with a <VirtualHost> configuration, you will be unable to setup a separate WSGIPythonPath configuration setting per virtual host, as that configuration directive is not allowed within a <VirtualHost> node. Instead, you have a single WSGIPythonPath for your entire Apache instance.

Top 5 Reasons To Test Your Website Across Browsers

I would hope that those of you taking the time to read this posting would have some idea of why you should perform some level of testing of the software and websites you create. However, I am keenly aware that some management types don’t always understand the importance of testing until an untested “feature” appears in the wild, frustrating all that run across it.

1. Ensure Cross Browser Compatibility- Unless you develop a website for internal usage only, where you are able to successfully restrict users to a specific version of a specific browser, Cross Browser Compatibility ensures your site functions well for the greatest number of users.
2. Detect Shallow Errors - Simply loading a website for a quick look in all the major browsers allows you to find 95% of all the browser compatibility errors for your site.
3. Discover Performance Issues - Typically, older and less-advanced browsers, such as Internet Exporer, and the older versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari are unable to process the CSS, JavaScript, and HTML that the most recent and more-advanced versions of these browsers handle with ease.
4. Prioritize Backwards Compatibility - I have heard countless times that we need to make sure this website supports browser versions that were released more than a decade ago. Instead of just making excuses for why you can’t support them, testing your site in the older browsers first allows you to put a more accurate time estimate that supporting these browsers will require. Its amazing to see how the requirements for supporting old and outdated browsers evaporate as the time and cost estimates begin to add up.
5. CYA - Whether it is your internal customer that is requesting the new website or you are an agency working with another individual or business for a new website, the last thing you want to have happen is that the customer open the site when it goes live in a browser you have not tested yet and has major issues. Establish ahead of time what the list of supported browsers will be and make sure to test all of them. If you have time, test the next most popular browsers or versions of popular browsers.

While testing your website may not be the most exciting part of web development, it definitely will save you time and money in the long run.

When Is Enough CSS Enough?

One of the major pushes in web development today is to try to do as much of the styling of a website as is possible from within the CSS of the site. The idea behind this is that when you do so, you remove styling responsibilities from your JavaScript and HTML content, resulting in a much better separation of concerns. The other aspect of this is that CSS styling is typically handled in a more native fashion in the browser as compared to what you can accomplish via Javascript.

Google Code Shutting Down

Google just recently announced that they are going to begin the process of shutting down their Google Code project hosting service. In the blog post announcing that they were shuttering the service, they let it slip that even Google had quit using Google Code for their project hosting, instead transitioning thousands of their projects to GitHub. Google seemingly blames the fact that GitHub and BitBucket handle project hosting better than Google does as the main reason that they are discontinuing the service.

Never Explicitly Trust Software Because It Is Open-Source

One of the major ideas behind open source projects is that allowing anyone that wants to view the source code of a project to be able to do so should make bugs and security weaknesses easy to find. While this did not work so well with OpenSSL and its various bugs that have been exposed recently, I do have an example where it worked extremely well.

Magento is an eCommerce platform that has two separate editions. One is a completely open-source and free as in beer Community edition. The other is a somewhat expensive Enterprise Edition. There is a large community of Magento developers that create extentions, or addons, for these two editions of Magento.

The Number 1 Cause of the Not Invented Here Syndrome

One of the quickest ways to get a new internal tool bootstrapped is to utilize an existing design, making slight adjustments to ensure the design matches the requirements of the current project. Instead of using another internal tool as the basis for the new design, I used a design that was purchased specifically for this project.

This particular design was unique in that there were multiple working examples using AJAX, pure HTML, and AngularJS. While it was nice having supposed working examples, when you start to look at the readme file for how to get this functionality working on your own hosting setup, thats when the niceties disappear. Specifically when lookng at the readme file for AngularJS, it effectively says: “Because this is a well-known JavaScript framework, we are not including any documentation for how it works or how to get started with our design”. Granted, the inner workings of AngularJS need not be covered in the readme, but a simple walkthrough of what to expect this design to do would make things much more user/developer friendly.

Firefox 36 Has A Massive Memory Leak

While looking through our TrackJS logs the other day, I ran across a peculiar error message coming from Firefox 36 on Windows 7. The error message was simply out of memory. It seemed that the pesky local storage issue had reappeared mysteriously. However, with a quick check of the codebase, I verified that no one had accidentally reverted those fixes.

With that possible cause ruled out, I turned to a developer’s best friend, Google, for solutions. Well, it appears that Firefox 36.0.0 has quite the memory leak issue. When looking into the detail of the issue, it became highly probably that this issue was the cause of the errors in our monitoring tools. Apparently, this bug rears its ugly head when you are doing 2D rendering on your page, and the site uses a 2D charting library to present information.

Authenticate Magento Admin Users

Magento’s admin interface allows you to do the vast majority of everything that you would ever want to do to manage your eCommerce website. However, there are times when the rigidity of the framework makes it difficult for developers to appropriately customize a layout.

One of the things that we have done to combat these limitations is to create a new administration section of the website specifically for the use of developers and other advanced administrators of the site. In order to do this as seamlessly as possible, one of the requirements was to enable current admin users to use the same authenticated session across the standard Magento admin and our new custom admin systems.

The Top Sign You Hired The Wrong Developer

I have been a part of the interview process at a few different companies now, and there is one thing that I have seen correlate completely with how useless a developer hire is. If the hiring manager ever brings me a resume that mentions how many conferences a candidate attends or gives talks at, I will immediately rule that candidate out for the purposes of the development position I am interviewing for.

The Amazing Magento Configuration

At the heart of every piece of PHP in Magento is the XML configuration files that tell core Magento code where to find functions and what to do with them. It seems to be the biggest hurdle that most developers face when they begin developing with Magento.

When going through a bit of code recently, I discovered something in the configuration that looks like it should have never worked, but amazingly enough, has worked without issue the entire time it has been in place. Let’s see if you spot the bit of strangeness.