A couple days ago, when I finally got around to installing Linux and configuring my old PC as a 24x7 server, I had the notion that I'd like to make daily (or at least weekly) backups of the databases behind my websites (my forum and my blog primarily). The MySQL databases are provided by my hosting company (GoDaddy.com). However, when I sent an email to them asking why I couldn't seem to connect a local mysqldump to the database servers they responded stating it was not allowed since it was a security risk and put unknown load upon their servers. Being the type of guy I am, I decided to do something about that. Read the rest of this entry ...

Every guy with a webpage eventually gets really curious about who is reading his website and whether he's doing anything worthwhile or if he's just entertaining himself. Serious webmasters will ensure they get server logs so they can analyze their traffic thoroughly. The web package that I purchased through my host gives me some standard web site statistics (produced by Report Magic) and these reports are great as summary information. But if I want to look at my actual server logs I'm out of luck unless I want to pay an extra couple bucks a month for them.

Ok, so I'm cheap. Instead of doing that, I thought I'd brush off my PHP manual and figure out how to do it myself. It wasn't that hard to do. Consider that it only took a couple hours time, I wasn't testing it locally (had to FTP every time), and my PHP knowledge is maybe just a notch above novice (though my familiarity with C/C++ certainly helps). Read the rest of this entry ...