Sangat Pedas

Using FFProbe In PHP To Get Video File Info [Script]

September 1, 2013 by Remco | 0 comments

ffprobe-file-info-phpIn case you haven’t figure it out yet, my next project is a video thingy. Not sure if it will become a business but I like to extend my knowledge and development skills so I’m just building it without worrying too much about making money with this.

Anyway, in my previous post I shared how to install FFMpeg on a (shared web) server because core of any video platform is encoding so you can deliver (fast) to every platform and device. In the meanwhile I already played around with encoding and will write a post on that later.

But if you start encoding the different video files you need to be able to deliver on all platforms, devices and adapting to all bandwidths, you need to know your starting point. No use for instance in generating a mp4 file with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels if the size of the original file is just 640 x 360 pixels. The same applies to the audio stream of the file, no use saving your target file with a higher bit rate for audio than the original file as it will just eat bandwidth without any upside.

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Installing FFMPEG On A Web Server

August 31, 2013 by Remco | 0 comments

FFmpeg-2-0-1-Officially-ReleasedTime for another short, sweet and time saving geek post, this time on how to install FFMPEG on a web server. Now, there’s many scripts out there like the one below but most are outdated and not working anymore. Basically all I did was step-by-step debugging an existing script and changing it until it produced the desired result. In case the script below to install FFMPEG doesn’t work anymore, just check if any versions changed, if the code moved to github and change the script accordingly or just drop a comment.

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Cracker Versus Sangatpedas

August 15, 2013 by Remco | 0 comments

hacker-crackerYesterday I wrote a post on how to simply avoid WordPress “password reset hacks“, because that’s exactly what happened to this blog yesterday and already some more times before. I actually thought and hoped that would be the end of the hacking attempts but I couldn’t be more wrong.

When due to a severe jetlag I came out of bed around 3:30 AM this morning I noticed an email from my hosting provider that the website was deactivated due to a DDOS attack. Like WTF?? You just won’t give up, do you? I mean even if he would have succeeded and defaced the site then probably 150 visitors would actually notice it. And to be honest, I wouldn’t  care less. For me this is not a business but just a blog where I write when I feel like it.

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Quick Solution For WordPress Password Reset Hacks

August 15, 2013 by Remco | 0 comments

wordpress_hackNo idea why anyone would be even remotely interested in hacking this blog but it happened. Quite a lot too. Every time I see a “password reset” mail I knew it happened again. Quite annoying, considering I like to present myself as a dev ninja. Kinda embarrassing.

I thought I solved it but after working till 5 AM last night I woke up this morning and witnessed another hack as it happened.

The cause was pretty much known. One of the 24(!) active plugins on this site has an SQL injection vulnerability. Ah what? Well, basically the writer of the plugin is a moron or deliberately making his plugin vulnerable to attacks. With this vulnerability it’s quite easy to change the password of the admin user and take over full control of the WordPress blog. If you want to know the details check out the super clear tutorial explanation on Flippercode.

Nice, so now I should actually check all the files of code of 24 plugins to find the vulnerability? That would probably take days and quite frankly this blog is not worth that. So I looked for a more simple solution and quickly found it. Just leave the SQL vulnerability for what it is, that is, unless you store credit card info in your WP database.

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WordPress Image (JPG) Compression & Quality

December 4, 2012 by Remco | 0 comments

One of the things I regularly do is see where I can make my sites smaller with less requests and lower file sizes. One of the things I’ve noticed on my WordPress sites and those of others is that images are stored in an extreme high quality and thus with very little compression resulting in larger image file sizes and longer loading times.

The reason for this is that WordPress basically by default uses an image quality of 90 (out of 100) when creating it’s different files sizes ie thumbnails. This even when your original has a quality of let’s say 40. This results in images of the same quality as the original but stored as if the quality is 90 instead of 40. For me a quality of 40 is the best balance between file size and quality, especially because I’m operating in a country where connection speeds are on average still low.

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Implementing Solr4 in WordPress - No Plugin

December 2, 2012 by Remco | 1 Comment

I’m currently working on a WordPress based travel site….

 

I left some space here where the experts can chuckle, LOL, ROFL and whatever else they think is appropriate. To those cynics I say good luck with you’re home made platform. WordPress is so much more than a blog platform, it’s the perfect framework for almost every project. It’s known for it’s near perfect and solid database design, it’s equipped with a great admin interface, offers great caching plugins and many more. I at first thought I had to migrate to another platform but along the way I found out that at least for me the possibilities are unlimited. And scalability? Well, read this post and make up your mind again. Continue Reading →

5 Less Obvious Must Have WordPress Plugins (2012)

June 5, 2012 by Remco | 0 comments

So, everyone by now knows the major must-have plugins for WordPress like W3 Total Cache and YARPP, but there are some less spectacular simple plugins out there that are a must for your blog. So here’s one for the sake of SEO and reputation of this blog, a semi-intelligent post about the not so obvious but still must have WordPress plugins. Most of them are just as simple as useful and don’t strain the performance of your blog.

All plugins are running on this WordPress MU site version 3.2.2 and are doing what they promise but obviously no guarantees from this side, try at your own risk.
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Boost WordPress Blog Performance: Minify & CDN with W3TC

September 1, 2011 by Remco | 5 Comments

There must be a thousand posts out there about “boosting” the speed of your WordPress blog but it seems not much of them can show the before and after, the actual effect.Also most posts are pretty general on using the W3TC (W3 Total Cache) plugin but forget about the details and difficulties when configuring the W3TC plugin.

So for this post it’s mandatory that you use WordPress and you have installed the W3 Total Cache plugin, you can find the plugin here. Also you will need Firefox with the Firebug, for one to easy analyze which javascript and css files are loaded and secondly it’s one of the tools to test your site speed. Yep peepz, time for a true geek post!

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Free Memory Eating WordPress Backup To Dropbox Plugin [UPDATED]

May 8, 2011 by Remco | 7 Comments

The new “WordPress Backup To Dropbox” plugin is exactly what I needed. I tend to do a lot of customizing in templates, plugins and even the core which tend to go lost when execute an upgrade without thinking. The new plugin makes it possible to completely automatic backup your WordPress blog to you Dropbox, giving blog owners an ease of mind. Great idea, pretty good execution at first sight, however, within 5 minutes after starting the first backup I received a message from my webhost.

Shortly after this message I received the same message again with the changed status “process killed” even though the whole backup was successful.

My guess as a (intermediate) techie guy is that the zipping process was guilty and probably the fact that I hit the “backup now” button twice because I saw nothing happen after the first time.

One thing that I found in the settings of this plugin is that it has two settings that are contradicting. In the “Day And Time” field you have to select on which day you want the backup to be executed, making it a once in a week backup while this makes the setting “Frequency” completely useless. Anyway, please drop your experience with this plugin in the comments, thanks!

UPDATE: After the latest plugin update the backup executed nicely without any complaints from my webhost, it might be because they’re just nice guys but for sure the memory issues have become smaller.

UPDATE: The good news was temporary but the latest update to version 0.8 does the job without zipping your blog before backing it up. This does solve memory issues but the option to have an archive of the last 6 weeks for instance has gone due to that change. All new updates and issues can be followed on the wordpress forum.