All you need to do is alter your web.config…

<configuration>
  <system.net>
    <defaultProxy>
      <proxy usesystemdefault="False"
        bypassonlocal="True" 
        proxyaddress="http://127.0.0.1:8888" />
    </defaultProxy>
  </system.net>
</configuration>

…and now you will see everything pass through Fiddler. Click on the specific call and start your investigations.

iftop

yum install iftop

As the name might suggest to you ‘top’ but for interfaces (network interfaces). The simplest layout of them all – a monochrome readout telling you all of the hosts connected to the current interface (or another interface, use the -i option on the command line), how fast they are pulling information from the machine and the overall transmit and receive. Use this one if you have a site with some traffic and you want to see who are the biggest bandwidth hogs connected. This can be a useful one for debugging a site if it gets slow periodically (can be cron / load based or it can also be bot / hits based).

http://www.ex-parrot.com/pdw/iftop/

iptraf

yum install iptraf

This one is a little more involved than iptop. A full blown network statistics utility. If you have been using tcpdump in the past then you might want to give this one a shot also. You can monitor (in glorious console colour) traffic to the machine, interface statistics, statistical breakdowns and more. Add to this a really nice filter (with IP as one of the options) and you are onto a winner. Use this one if you want to get some more detail or check out traffic from a specific IP.

http://iptraf.seul.org/

apachetop

yum install apachetop

Whilst Google Analytics and other packages have made collecting information about your sites visitors super simple it is nice sometime to check out the hits as you are getting them. This is particularly interesting and useful in the optimisation process for any site. You can see what’s being called and in near realtime since apachetop keeps a track of all your logfiles. Click on the ‘h’ key whilst in there and you will get to see some interesting options such as how to get some detailed information about any of the requests. One of the most useful options is ‘n’ to switch from the bytes statistic to the HTTP return code value. Great for seeing where those 2xx, 3xx, 4xx and 5xx requests are coming from. Use this one also to check out what’s hot in realtime on your site, what pages are transmitting most frequently and which assets might be worth optimising.

http://code.google.com/p/apachetop/

Personally, there are many things that I have had exposure to in university and also along my career path which would be fascinating to delve a bit deeper into. Neural networks / AI have always been one of these subjects for me. I for one can’t wait to see what they will offer!

Check out this link to Forbes for further detail…

M.I.T. Game Changer

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/jf3-maintenance-mode/

It also has some nice IP blocking and cookie features in there to allow access to the right people. I’m currently using this in an installation where the company in question wanted to ready sites with posts before pushing them out live. Not a bad plan but it can be tricky to implement.

As a bonus here’s a little code fragment to tell which sites are in and out of maintenance mode…

$options = $wpdb->get_results("
    SELECT option_value
    FROM {$wpdb->get_blog_prefix($blog->blog_id)}options
    WHERE option_name = 'wpjf3_mr'
");

// If you like you can decode the JSON returned here with json_decode
if (!strstr($options[0]->option_value, "YES")) {
//Do something if the site is not on the list of sites in maintenance mode.
}

$blogs = $wpdb->get_results("
    SELECT blog_id
    FROM {$wpdb->blogs}
    WHERE site_id = '{$wpdb->siteid}'
    AND spam = '0'
    AND deleted = '0'
    AND archived = '0'
    ORDER BY path
");

$sites = array();

foreach ($blogs as $blog) {
    // Get the sitenames
    $sites[$blog->blog_id] = get_blog_option($blog->blog_id, 'blogname');

    // Get the tagline out for the blog description
    $sql = "SELECT option_value AS tagline FROM {$wpdb->get_blog_prefix($blog->blog_id)}options WHERE option_name = 'blogdescription';";
    $description = $wpdb->get_results($sql);
    $tagline[$blog->blog_id] = $description[0]->tagline;
}

cursor: hand;

Well, that’s an IE only supported CSS word. Use this one instead…

cursor: pointer;

Job done!

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.something\.co\.uk [NC]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.something.com/$1?%1 [R=301,L]

Contact me on blog@spindicator.com and let’s have a chat.