Connecting to a PPTP VPN from an OpenVZ CentOS VPS

When setting up the PPTP and PPP packages on an OpenVZ VPS in order to connect to a VPN, there are a few extra steps you need to take that you don’t have to do with a non-virtualized box. First, you have to load the following kernel modules on the hardware node and/or set them […]

Discouraging Trolls

Jeff Atwood wrote a fascinating article on different methods to use to discourage trolling on social websites, including some discussion of their ethical merits. I wasn’t aware of slowbanning and hellbanning before, but I think they’re very clever ideas.

Principles to Apply When Preventing Brute Force Attacks

I just read a good article by Bryan Rite about the security principles involved in preventing dictionary attacks. He makes a good point about offloading the work to a service like OpenID if possible, and has some other tips to use if you have to implement it yourself. Some of it challenges the conventional wisdom, but I think […]

$( this ).attr( … ) Is Often Unnecessary

It’s often much more efficient to access DOM properties directly, rather than using jQuery. The downside to that approach is that there are differences between the various browsers, so in some cases it introduces bigger problems than the extra performance overhead.

Registering jQuery Event Handlers Before the Elements Exist

Update: I removed the link to the article because the site now contains malware. Dave Ward wrote an article Don’t let jQuery’s $(document).ready() slow you down that shows a few situations where execute the contents of a JavaScript file immediately, rather than wrapping it all inside jQuery( document ).ready(). The .live() method has been deprecated since he wrote the […]

New WordPress Security Plugin

In the past I’ve used Login Lockdown and Login Lock to block brute force attempts against WordPress installations, but Login Lockdown isn’t actively maintained and Login Lock has some serious bugs/security vulnerabilities. Recently Daniel Convissor released a new plugin called Login Security Solution that has the same basic features of Login Lockdown and Login Lock, […]

Cronie Depends on Sendmail in CentOS 6

I ran into a problem the other day when building a new CentOS 6 VPS template. After doing some of the initial work I ran yum update, and it worked fine. Later on, after installing the AtomiCorp repo, I tried to run it again and it failed with errors about Qmail obsoleting Sendmail, not being […]

Ian Dunn

WordPress Developer

Connecting to a PPTP VPN from an OpenVZ CentOS VPS

Discouraging Trolls

Principles to Apply When Preventing Brute Force Attacks

$( this ).attr( … ) Is Often Unnecessary

Registering jQuery Event Handlers Before the Elements Exist

Cronie Depends on Sendmail in CentOS 6