site

I don’t suppose there’s any way to prevent macOS updates stomping on my local website every time? After doing an OS update, I have to do some magical incantations in Terminal to get my localhost (dejal.local) site working again. I use this for local testing of website changes before pushing to my production server.

If interested, here is my spellbook to re-enable the local website and PHP, based on instructions I found on the web; presumably I could script this in some way, but I’m not confident enough with scripting or messing with these files to try that:

% sudo nano /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

Uncomment these:

LoadModule authz_host_module libexec/apache2/mod_authz_host.so
LoadModule authz_core_module libexec/apache2/mod_authz_core.so
LoadModule userdir_module libexec/apache2/mod_userdir.so
LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache2/mod_rewrite.so
LoadModule php7_module libexec/apache2/libphp7.so
LoadModule vhost_alias_module libexec/apache2/mod_vhost_alias.so
Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf
Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

% sudo nano /etc/hosts

Make sure this is still there (typically fine after an OS update):

#Local sites
127.0.0.1 dejal.local

% sudo nano /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf

Uncomment to be like this:

Include /private/etc/apache2/users/*.conf
<IfModule bonjour_module>
  RegisterUserSite customized-users
</IfModule>

% sudo nano /etc/apache2/users/dejal.conf

Should be like this (typically fine after an OS update):

<Directory "/Users/dejal/Sites/">
  AllowOverride All
  Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
  Require all granted
</Directory>

% sudo nano /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Change to this:

#Virtual Host Entry for dejal.local
<VirtualHost *:80>
  DocumentRoot "/Users/dejal/Sites/dejal"
  ServerName dejal.local
  ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dejal-error_log"
  CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dejal-access_log" common
</VirtualHost>

% sudo apachectl restart

As for the @dejal header, in addition to being green now, it is simplified to just three items, and the Apps item now shows a menu of my apps (or click the Apps link to go to the Apps page). That lets me remove the apps from the sidebars, and later the sidebars themselves.

Dejal apps menu

Speaking of @dejal, I’ve continued to tweak its website, very slowly modernizing it. Yesterday I pushed out a new green Dejal header and a shrinking and sticky app header. Here’s a GIF demo. I’m not a web developer, so I’m kinda proud that I could get this working fairly well.

Dejal website scrolling

People self-hosting WordPress sites and cross-posting to Micro.blog and/or Twitter: by default WordPress converts emojis to images, which breaks emoji-based tagging, among other issues. I just installed a plugin to disable that. 🔌🎉

I’ve decided to stop using the #dejus365 hashtag on my daily photo posts, since hashtags are a bit out-of-place on my favorite social platform, Micro.blog, and I don’t see sufficient benefit in using it. I still plan to post at least one photo every day.