If you are someone who is comfortable placing some code in the correct place inside your theme then following will work for you.

In comes url-shortener plugin to the rescue.

First install and activate sharethis and url shortener plugins. Select your favourite url shortening service in the url shortener plugin.

Then place the code in your theme at the appropriate place e.g.

 <span class=’st_facebook’ st_url=’<?php echo wp_get_shortlink();?>’></span>

If you have wordpress <3.0, you should be upgrading, but for some reason you can’t, there is a slight difference in the code

<span class=’st_facebook’ st_url=’<?php fts_show_shorturl($post); ?>’></span>

So, I searched around the Internet for better solutions. The logically better solutions contained using the imap protocol to fetch the emails.

The first tool I came across was imapsync which uses imap to imap sync. But, I had to discard that option as it would involve me knowing passwords for all the users at both ends or resetting passwords on both the servers. There are other tools that would do two way sync. But that was again an overkill for my purpose.

Then I stumbled across offlineimap which is itself written in python. It fetches email from remote imap server and stores it in a local Maildir

First step was to reset the passwords for all the users on the remote server, this is a safe operation as the remote server is not in use anymore and will terminated soon. So, I reset the password of all the users

Be careful to use the above script as it is. It will reset password for all the users. Modify it to filter as per your requirements

So, now we are all set to setup sync on the local server. First of all, download offlineimap from your distro’s repository. Now we need to set it up to sync the emails. of all the users that exist locally. To do that, we need to add all the users information to the ~/.offlineimaprc file.

Here’s a simple python script to populate the .offlinelimaprc file.

That’s it. Simple enough, we are done. Now run the offlineimap command to get syncing.

Open a terminal and type following commands in it

sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0x1c9e product=0×9605
sudo usb_modeswitch -v 0x1c9e -p 0×9605 -V 0x1c9e -P 0×9605 -M “55534243123456788000000080000606f50402527000000000000000000000″

The process to set it up is pretty straight forward as explained in the webpy documentation.

I am writing this how-to to cover a couple of things which I didn’t find well documented and had to search around a lot to find

• To get web.py running with lighttpd and fastcgi you need to install the package flup. In debian it is known as python-flup.
• On this server, I run php based sites as well so I had to setup fastcgi for both. Here’s what the code looks like:

fastcgi.server = ( ".php" => (( 

"bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php5-cgi", 

"socket" => "/tmp/php.socket",

"max-procs" => 1,

"bin-environment" => (

 "PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN" => "4",

 "PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS" => "1000"

)

)),

"/code.py" => ((

"socket" => "/tmp/fastcgi.socket",

"bin-path" => "/path-to/webpy-app/code.py",

"max-procs" => 1,

"bin-environment" => (

 "REAL_SCRIPT_NAME" => ""

),

"check-local" => "disable"

))

)

• To use web sockets instead of unix sockets change

"socket" => "/tmp/fastcgi.socket",

to

Some of the changes I had to make were

LocalSettings.php

$wgUsePathInfo = true;

nginx.conf

try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?title=$1&$args;

fastcgi.conf

fastcgi_param  PATH_INFO          $fastcgi_path_info;

This isn’t a full fledged guide or a how-to but hopefully a pointer for people who are stuck while getting started with MediaWiki on dotcloud or nginx.

Since I disconnected my broadband a few months back, I have been living on Mobile Internet connectivity. So far I had been tethering my phone to the wifi router and then using LAN cable to connect to the PC. Horrible way to go, I agree! To simplify matters I got a USB GSM modem. It was as easy as pie to set up the connection on Ubuntu using Network Manager but with Arch, I decided not to go for nm-applet but manage it via CLI.

First I setup NetworkManager as instructed on the Arch Wiki and I got Wired Connection working in no time. The most important tool at this juncture was nmcli. I checked

nmcli dev

and it showed that gsm modem is being detected. But, on checking

nmcli con

It only showed the wired ethernet connection. Going through the man pages and googling for hints didn’t help at all. I finally turned to #nm IRC channel on Freenode.

Thanks to some excellent support, I was connected using the GSM Modem in no time.

Here’s the quick rundown

1. Create a new file in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections and as per the sample file. PS: You can generate uuid using uuidgen or input any random UUID as long it isn’t in use elsewhere in your system.
2. Now, chmod the file to 0600.
3. Restart NetworkManager
4. Voila! What have we here. I could now see the new connection in the list.

Now to get connected to the new connection. First we disconnect the Wired connection

nmcli dev disconnect iface <iface name>

And then connect to the new interface

nmcli con up id <connection id>

For those using MTNL Mumbai, you can use my settings

[connection]
id=MTNL
uuid=15d742f1-2b5a-421e-9f27-fcb1fc26d72c
type=gsm
autoconnect=true

[ipv4]
method=auto

[gsm]
number=*99#
username=mtnl
password=mtnl123
apn=gprsppsmum

[serial]
baud=115200

There are lots of articles on the Internet which will tell you what to do. So, instead of repeating the same, I’ll cover each aspect and links to articles which provide useful how-to’s on the same which I have come across while working on OnlyGizmos and iPhoneHelp

I’ll divide it into sections on basis of the type of hosting as it is usually the limiting factor on how much tuning you can do.

Shared Hosting

Having your blog on shared hosting means there’s not much you can change but this is what will suffice for huge number of bloggers out there.

• Caching Plugin: W3 total cache is the best and highly recommended plugin. With tons of features besides caching like Minification, CDN support, mobile support, Cloudflare integration it is by far the best cache plugin I have come across. For installation and configuration see this wonderful how-to from wpbeginner
• Theme: Use themes which have been designed with SEO in mind. These themes follow the best practices to speed up your page loading time e.g. putting stylesheets at the top and minify them. The theme framework I would recommend is Thesis. It is a paid theme but having worked with it, I can say that it’s worth the price if you are serious about your website.
• Scripts: Put javascript files at bottom as recommended in YSlow. This can be handled by W3 Total Cache.

Single Server

In addition to the above, if you have control over your server e.g. VPS or Dedicated server you can take following extra steps -

• HTTP Server: Move over from Apache to Nginx. Here’s a good guide on moving over your wordpress blog to nginx.
• MySQL Tuning: Run the mysqltuner script and follow the recommendations given by it to improve MySQL performance.
• PHP Accelerators: Install PHP Accelerator like APC or XCache. List of accelerators is available on wikipedia. I recommend APC since it’s stable and is likely to be merged into PHP 6.
• CDN: If you serve lot of static content and media do consider going with a CDN. And if you think you cannot afford CDN’s as they are too costly, think it over. MaxCDN offers excellent CDN at an affordable price of $39.95 for the 1st TB. Do check them out.

Multiple Servers

• Memcached: One of the components I am yet to personally handle but have heard a lot of good stuff about it. It can provide superior object caching. It has a good support in W3 Total Cache thus making your work of integrating with wordpress easier.
• Varnish: Place varnish in front of your HTTP server and see your websites fly. Here’s a good article on setting up varnish with nginx, w3tc and APC. And if it isn’t enough official website provides excellent documentation.

These are the things that I have learnt in the past one year. If you have something which I have not covered please share it with us in the comments.

And as to my mood, I have had the most amazing week of my life, coincidently after quitting Twitter and Facebook – 3 days cycling trip to Pune and Panchgani, a close friends wedding, nice tweetup where I met lots of people. The time spent outdoors and in real life is just what I needed. It has given me a much needed high. And with some of my very good friends likely to meet me this month, I hope it will be just what I needed.

With each passing day, the traffic situation in Mumbai is worsening. Big traffic jams, accicents, parking woes, etc. Various solutions have been proposed to combat this problem.

Here's a slightly outdated statistical information on the traffic growth in Mumbai from 2005 to 2008. An annualised growth of 12%! That was 1.5 years ago, it has worsened further now.

This problem has been widely debated and discussed topic everywhere. I had the opportunity to be a part of it on two occasions, once on twitter and once during Raxit's session at BCM6. This prompted me to express my views on the topic on this blog.

Many solutions have been proposed to solve our traffic problems – promote public transport, improved road conditions, car pooling, levying of taxes in certain zones, allowing different vehicles on odd and even numbered days.

Preferred Solution

Public transport is the most viable solution, according to me. I am basing this on certain assumptions

• Only road transport is covered
• The scenario described is that of Mumbai, it may or may not apply to other places

Reasons

1. Less Congestion: Mass means of transport like buses and trains can carry higher number of passengers in lesser space compared to vehicles like cars and bikes.
2. Reusability: Once a person reaches their destination, the same space can be taken up by somebody else. Thus, there's resusability of the same space. In case of private vehicles the space lies vacant till used again.
3. Space Saving: Since public transport is reusable, we need a lower number of public transport vehicles. Also, that mass means of transport can fit in more people per area. This leads to saving of space for parking and while plying the vehicles on the road.
4. Flexibility of Timing: As compared to other options like car pooling, public transport is much more flexible with respect to time. Trains are much faster over longer distances, over shorter distances cabs and autorickshaws can take you to your destination as quickly.
5. Lower Total Cost: Mass transport options like buses and trains are cheaper to travel. Though, cabs and rickshaws may sound expensive, when considered with option of sharing it becomes cheaper. Add to that, the cost of maintenance is to be borne by the vehicle owner unlike public transport.

My Story

But, there are reasons why I use public transport lesser:

• Is much less fun unless when travelling in a big group over longer distances.
• Going out and exploring some nice places is better done in your cycle, bike, car as compared to public transport
• Going out biking with a group of friends once in a while is a must.
• Trains and buses are too crowded, which makes me choose my 2 wheeler over those.

Still, I tend to balance between using public transport and my bicycle (now that my bike is stolen), though I tend much more heavily towards my bicycle.