The Ubuntu Hardy Heron is upon us. It was released last week. I have already been using it for over a month now, all the way back to the first beta releases, and I can say it’s a well polished release, with some new features and usable by beauty and geek alike. For the first time, suspend really works on my laptop (even with a proprietary graphics driver) and that is something to celebrate. Maybe we could have an Ubuntu Release Party next time ?

But, there is a downside to this release: Firefox 3.0 beta 5 is still quite unstable, with several bugs, and particularly bad Flash support. Bug #192888 is particularly nasty and annoying, since you have to trade crashes for lack of sound within flash animations. If you need to use Firefox 3.0, then hold off on the update for a couple of days until an update comes down the apt pipe . Beyond that, another great release by the Ubuntu team.

(Foto by suneko posted at Flickr, shared under a Creative Commons License.)

Lately I’ve been working on some web projects, nothing major, one of which is the template for this blog. One thing that always bugs me is the workflow for web development. What is the best workflow for such projects, that require server side testing ?

How to develop a Wordpress theme without major hassle ? Or a php website for that matter ?

Option 1

Deploy a local http server, and test it as you code it on your local machine.

Downsides

• Requires deployment of local http server and mysql server and wordpress/custom stuff.

Upsides

• Fast code/test/fix cycle.
• If you screw up, just reinstall or star over.
• Does not bother visitor on production sites.

Option 2

Code directly on the server. Through ssh.

Downsides

• Remote work is usually slugish.
• Requires exporting the X windows for minimal usefulness.
• Too much work to get into a usable state.
• Direct work on the database/project/software.

Upsides

• Direct work on the database/project/software.
• Already deployed server/php/mysql/wordpress whatever software.

But I recently found a third option that seems viable.

Option 3

Mount the remote working directory through sshfs.

Downsides

• Remote work can be slugish.
• Direct work on the database/project/software.

Upsides

• Direct work on the database/project/software.
• Simple deployment. Just mount the damn thing and be on your way.
• Take advantage of your desktop/development environment.

This is the latest and greatest solution so far. But this still doesn’t sound like perfect, because if I want to code a wordpress theme/template I have to enable it and work on my production website, which hinders both development and visitors.

Has anyone got a great solution for this ? A great workflow ? Or am I just being lazy and should install everything locally ?

I just added enabled the OpenID Wordpress plugin to my blog, so you can now post all your comments using your OpenID if you have it.

Fair to say I like having an OpenID enabled blog, but I’m not that happy with the plugin, since it mashes together two separate things: The OpenID URL, which is the identity URL itself, and the commenter’s website, which are two different things in my opinion.

A workaround, if you want people to check your website, is to add your website or blog URL to your identity page at your OpenID provider.

Updated to wordpress 2.5. Nothing to see here, move along.

My top ten looks like this:

$ history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head
161 ls
85 cd
46 vim
33 make
28 clear
21 ll
16 rm
15 svn
14 sudo
10 touch

What does your top ten look like ?