Born On The Web

After I learned how to use PHP to move files to S3. I was looking for a way to do this in a transparant way, so you’ll still be able to use your own domain name when storing your files on S3.

Twitter uses S3 for storing its user avatars, try loading the timeline and you’ll see the amazonaws.com url coming up in your browser status bar. While this is just a small and visual annoyance, it becomes an issue when people start linking directly to your files stored on Amazon S3. The direct link to a file on S3 will look something like http://aws.amazonaws.com/your_bucket_name/your_file_name . This is not exactly pretty and you’re missing out on a lot of Google juice. In this post I’ll show you how to avoid this in a few simple steps. Only thing you need is an S3 account and access to your DNS config file.

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I’m explaining this to a lot of people recently so I guess it was time to make a blogpost about it.

I manage a few domains, mostly for myself, but also for a couple of friends. I do this because my hosting packet is pretty extensive, it doesn’t cost me more if I add extra domains to  it.

The only thing I found that was a pain, was managing dozens of emails for each domain. Most hosted mailboxes get pretty spammy after a while and have a limited storage. So for me, google for domains really came as a solution, and now I use it almost exclusively for handling my emails. Here are a few reasons why :

• It provides unlimited storage , well not unlimited, but I haven’t met anybody who came close to the limit.
• It has a nice and lightning fast interface (a real upgrade for users who are used to work with squirrel mail)
• It supports imap and pop3 access
• It’s free
• It can be accessed on a mobile phone.(via web or a mobile tool)
• Easy to use control panel to create new users, you can create extra administrators, administrators can create aliases for email addresses. (so most of my friends can manage their emails themselves)
• Easy to create mailing lists
• Possibility to use more than only email: docs, chat, sites, …

However changing email provider without any problems is considered impossible. Since I’ve done it a few times now, I think I’ve found the best way to do it. Without loosing any mails.

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Before I worked on flapi viewer I had never worked with a web service, I tought it was something incredibly difficult. But it’s not difficult at all, if you know how to use xml, you can work with web services. In this article I’ll explain you how the REST web service works, how to use the flickr REST service, in the end I’ll show you how to make a simple php web application that communicates with the flickr web service. After reading this article I hope you’ve overcome your fear for web services :-) .
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