Having an SSL certificate in your WordPress is the de-facto standard nowadays, did you know that? Google ranks sites having HTTPS higher in their SERP. But in WordPress, how do you configure an SSL certificate and HTTPS URL? You’ll learn the important steps to move WordPress from http to https in this post.
…SSL in WordPress: how to move WordPress to HTTPS? The definitive guideRead More »
When you use iisnode to host the Node.js blogging software Ghost on your IIS web server, and you set up an SSL certificate for your Ghost website, you may run into too many redirect issues when changing Ghost’s config.js file. This happend to me yesterday, and here is the solution.
Ghost on IIS with HTTPS, how to resolve a “Too many redirects” errorRead More »
In this post I provide you various HTTP to HTTPS redirection methods, for Windows Server IIS and Linux Apache. Use these examples to your advantage to secure the traffic between your visitors and your website.
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Ok, this one is huge: Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2 now has native support for IPv6! Almost exactly a year ago I asked about when we’d get IPv6 support in WSL2 on Twitter X, and now we have it.
Sometimes you need to convert a Windows SID (security identifier) to an username, or vice versa (username to SID). In this post I show you a couple of methods to translate the one into the other using VBScript and PowerShell.
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Learn how to query the .bak file for header information. Whenever I need to restore an SQL Server .bak backup file, I want to know some properties of the backup file to make sure I’m working with the correct file(s). Luckily, the .bak file and PowerShell provide all the information I need, so I don’t have to start a Restore procedure in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) just to view the header information. As you know, SSMS is slow…
…Do you want to know how to get the current number of connections to IIS hosted websites? The information is stored in Windows Server Performance Counters, and you can get it using Get-Counter cmdlet in PowerShell of course. But in post I’ll show you a different -and perhaps even faster- method using WMI/CIM and Win32_PerfRawData_W3SVC_WebService. Read on…
The following PowerShell snippet can be used to quickly install an SSL (or TLS) certificate in Windows Server. It assumes you have a PFX file and its password. The default location is Cert:\LocalMachine\My, to use for IIS websites.
Install SSL/TLS certificates in Windows Server using PowerShellRead More »
When you have set up your ASP.NET / .NET or PHP configuration for high performing websites in Windows Server, it sometimes becomes important to reconfigure Windows Server’s TCP/IP stack and IIS too. You may have to increase network throughput and performance, or you just might run out of available ports / sockets (aka port exhaustion). And, as you know, fast page loads are more and more important nowadays for seach engine optimization (SEO) and user experience. Therefore we’ll dive into tuning IIS and TCP/IP stack for high performance websites and high volume of web requests a bit.
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You can use PowerShell to install Windows Updates automatically, unattended and simple. Neat, right? For this, you don’t have to have an enterprise environment with WSUS, or Windows Server, but since this is Sysadmins of the North, I assume you do. In this post I’m going to show you how to install Windows Updates with PowerShell and the PSWindowsUpdate module.
…Easily send your DevOps reporting by email with this PowerShell function, because the Send-MailMessage cmdlet is obsolete. Of course you’ll be using StartTLS and authenticated SMTP as additional security.
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Recently, Jeff Starr wrote about blocking IP addresses posting random string comment spam. That post reminded me about my own older post about blocking WordPress comment spammers manually. With just a few manual steps, you create your own little blocklist for WordPress in either a .htaccess or web.config file. Here are the IP addresses I’m currently blocking. Note, this list can get long (loooonnggg).
Sometimes you need to create an additional SQL Server Login (user) for your database (databases). Here is a small T-SQL snippet that creates such a login for contained databases in SQL Server and adds memberships.
…SQL Server performance monitoring in Zabbix: Keeping your SQL Server and databases in top shape is key for a good performing SQL Server database server and its databases. A good performing server makes happy customers, and that’s what puts bread on the plank, right? In this post I’ll show you how you can use Windows Performance counters, PowerShell and Zabbix for in depth monitoring of your SQL Server server and SQL databases.
…Monitor SQL Server and databases in depth using ZabbixRead More »
Sysadmins of the North is just a technical blog, like so many others out there. Here I write about IT stuff that I find interesting, problems I encountered and solved. Topics include computers, servers, web, sysadmin, database, virtualization, optimization and security.
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Currently I work as an application manager / administrator at Embrace – The Human Cloud in Groningen (the Netherlands). At Embrace we develop and manage software to automate processes and unlock knowledge, social intranets, and so forth. Smart technology helps your organization move forward.
The human cloud connects automated services with human knowledge exchange. With our solutions for self-service portals, customer tracking systems and digital workplaces, we are creating space for human work.
Before Embrace, I was over 20 years at Vevida.com as a systems- and applications manager/administrator.
My experience and specialties include Windows Server, IIS, WSL & Linux (CentOS, Debian), PHP, WordPress, websites, MySQL, optimization and security. Vevida is now part of TWS, Total Webhosting Solutions, and incorporated into Yourhosting.nl. My SysOps department went to the company cldin.eu, Cldin.eu’s mission is to build the best-in-class digital infrastructures that scale.