We’ve included different scenarios of how each command might be used – please let us know in the comments if there are any situations we haven’t covered properly.

If you’re a total beginner to this…

SSH (Secure SHell) is a protocol that allows you to login to a remote server and issue commands (with a DOS/Shell text interface). Using a command-line interface can make some tasks 10 times faster than doing them manually.

On a Windows computer, you can SSH using ‘Putty’ (you only need putty.exe). On a Mac, the ‘Terminal’ utility is already built into the OS.

cd – Go to a directory

Go up a directory :

cd..

Go to the ‘images’ folder (assumes the images folder is inside the current directory) :

cd images

Go to a specific folder (in this case we’ve gone right back to the server root) :

cd /var/www/vhosts/mywebsite.co.uk/httpdocs

ls – List files and folders

Output a simple list of all files and folders :

ls

Output an advanced list all the files and folders in a directory (showing permissions, owner, group, dates etc) :

ls -l

zip – Zip up files and folders

Zip up everything in the ‘forms’ folder (the -r flag zips up all sub-folders and files) into a new file call Dec2012FormsBackup.zip :

zip -r 20Dec2012FormsBackup.zip forms

Zip up everything in the current directory tree, apart from the ‘archive’ folder (the -x flag excludes folders) :

zip -r 26Dec2012Backup.zip * -x archive/\*

Zip up the contents of the httpdocs folder and put that zip file in another folder of the server (In this case we’re using the -v and -r flags together to suppress the output and recurse into the directory, and -9 flag to compress better) :

zip -vr -9 "/var/www/vhosts/destinationwebsite.co.uk/httpdocs/files.zip" "/var/www/vhosts/mywebsite.co.uk/httpdocs/*"

unzip – Unzip an archive

Unzip a .zip file into the current directory :

unzip 26Dec2012Backup.zip

cp – Copy files or folders

Copy an html file to another directory :

cp mypage.html /var/www/vhosts/mywebsite.org/httpdocs

Copy everything from websiteA’s httpdocs folder to websiteB’s :

cp -r /var/www/vhosts/websiteA.com/httpdocs/* /var/www/vhosts/websiteB.com/httpdocs

Copy everything in the current folder :

cp -r * /var/www/vhosts/website.com/httpdocs

Copy the ‘forms’ folder :

cp -r forms /var/www/vhosts/website.com/httpdocs

mv – Move files or folders

Move the ‘js’ folder into the ‘oldwebsite’ folder :

mv js oldwebsite

Move everything from the current directory into websiteA’s httpdocs folder :

mv * /var/www/vhosts/websiteA.com/httpdocs

rm – Remove (permanently delete) files or folders

Remove/delete a html file :

rm mywebpage.html

Remove/delete the ‘images’ folder and everything inside it (the -f flag removes prompting e.g. ‘are you sure?’ and -r recursively deletes sub-folders):

rm -f -r images

chmod – Change permissions

Change every file and sub-folder in the ‘pictures’ folder to ’777′ (note that 777 is the most open permission on linux) :

chmod -R 777 pictures

Change everything in the current directory to 755 (note that 755 is the default permission level files are given when uploaded via FTP) :

chmod -R 755 *

chgrp – Change group

Change everything to to the group ‘servergrp’

chgrp -R servergrp *

Change everything in the ‘photos’ folder to the group ‘psaserv’

chgrp -R psaserv photos

chown – Change owner

Change the owner of the ‘httpdocs’ folder (and all sub-folders and files) to ‘admin’ :

chown -R admin httpdocs

Change everything in the current directory to the owner ‘website_user’ :

chown -R website_user *

mysqldump – Export MySQL database

Format:

mysqldump -a -u USERNAME -p DATABASE > FILENAME.sql

Export the ‘wordpress_db’ database into the ‘wp_data_02may13.sql’ file :

mysqldump -a -u wordpress_user -p wordpress_db > wp_data_02may13.sql

mysql – Import MySQL database

Format:

mysql -u USERNAME -p DATABASE < FILENAME.sql

Import the ‘wp_data_02may13.sql’ file into the ‘wordpress_db’ database (assuming you’ve already uploaded the .SQL file to your server via FTP) :

mysql -u wordpress_user -p wordpress_db < /var/www/vhosts/websiteA.com/httpdocs/wp_data_02may13.sql

Having used all 3 tools pretty rigorously over the years, I compared 18 different factors and requirements that people usually look for in a CMS – and recommend the best tool for a blog, magazine, small business, corporate or complex website.

Notes

Picking up from Slide 7…

The wrong software or tool can stop you from doing great work

Because of that, I believe as much as technology is an amazing enabler of ideas, if you pick the wrong technology, it can do the opposite and actually disable you.

It’s really frustrating when you have to go through a long process to do something pretty simple. Has anyone used Magento Commerce? Yeah you guys know what I mean.

The frustration is twice as bad when you’re a UI person, because, the chances are, you’re a perfectionist, and you want to spend almost all of your time improving the UI.

Warning

A lot of what I’m about to say is from personal experience. So that that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m correct, because I’m drawing on my experience from a sample of few dozen projects.

I will say I don’t have any loyalty particular towards any tool or technology – I use anything that gets the job done. For example, right now I’m using Windows on this Mac. Don’t ask why, it’s a long story; all my friends hate me for it.

OK, so let’s talk about CMSs…

Content management vs. Web Page building

Many clients use CMS’s like web page builders. We as designers and developers concentrate on the skin and have a space in the middle of the page where the client can add text, pictures, video and tables using a WSIWYG editor. And that’s exactly what happens. The client will add all kinds of weird stuff into that middle space, and they will style it in ways that you thought impossible.

I’m sure many of you have had sites you’ve looked at 6 months after you handed it over, and it looks wrecked. Well, it’s partially your fault, because you allowed them to do that.

On simple sites, say a portfolio site, or a blog or when there are less than 25 content pages on a site, you can use any CMS, it doesn’t matter. Personally I like CMSMadeSimple for simple business sites – clients love it.

But on big, complicated website, you can get into all kinds of trouble.

Let me illustrate…

Breaking down the content

If anyone has experience with databases, you know that you’re supposed to break down the data to the lowest level. For example, if you have a person database, their name, address, age, height would be stored in separate fields. If you didn’t do this and mixed it all together it would lead to data duplication and make it hard to find anything.

Let’s take a real example – imagine we have a university website:

Events – News – Departments – Faculty – Student Work – Publications – Research

Each of these sections has content which is connected to each other.

For example, the same news story might appear on the News page, Department page or Faculty page (if it was relevant). Also, Publications and Research can appear on Faculty pages. There are lots of other linkages, but the point is that we do not want to duplicate content and manually link things together.

Defining the content

You can see that using the database model is useful here – I need to define, map the different types of content and link them together:

• Content is usually a mash of data, text, images, media and tables
• There are relationships between content
• Content is re-used (not necessarily in the same format)
• There is a mix of ‘streams of content’ vs. ‘static content’

Knowing this stuff help you in your design, because we design around content.

Let’s talk about EE 2, WordPress 3 and Drupal 7

1. Will this CMS make my life hard and screw up the output? Is setting up the structure of content and templating easy? Will the CMS add extra markup and junk to the output?
2. Will my clients be able to use the site when they left alone? To use a WSIWYG editor properly, you need to know HTML, which clients don’t know. I would prefer to give them simple ‘forms’ to fill out when add they content.
3. Regularly updated – big dev teams with successful companies driving them.
4. A big, friendly community – useful forums with help for newbies.
5. Lots of plugins – high-quality, updated and supported.

Out of the box, for some reason all 3 CMSs assume you’re going to build a blog.

Also, each CMS is fairly limited out of the box, but by adding plugins, it changes how useful that tool is.

Recommended Plugins:

You will notice most plugins are for ExpressionEngine because EE is not very useful without them! WordPress has thousands of plugins, but in many cases there is no clear leader in a particular category, so none has been recommended.

• Defining content: Matrix (EE), Low Variables (EE), CCK (Drupal)
• ContentRelationships: Playa (EE), Views (Drupal)
• Content Structure & Heirachy: Structure (EE),
• Displaying Content: Structure (EE), BluePrints (EE), Views (Drupal), Panels (Drupal)
• File Manager: Assets (EE)
• Performance: W3 Cache (WP), CE Cache (EE), Boost (Drupal)
• Publishing Workflow: Better Workflow (EE), Workbench (Drupal), Rules (Drupal)
• Search: Low Search (EE)

So which one would I pick?

Drupal and EE are not brilliant without certain Plugins.

WordPress is still primarily a blogging tool.

So which one?

All of them … with conditions

• Blog = WordPress
• Magazine = WordPress
• Small Business = WordPress or CMSMadeSimple
• Big Corporate = Drupal
• Data-driven / Complex = ExpressionEngine or Drupal
• E-commerce = ExpressionEngine

Bonus Tip

If you come across the problem of clients cutting and pasting from Word into your WSIWYG editor, then I have a cool tip.

You should use CKEditor, and at enable the following plugins in the config:

• pasteFromWordRemoveFontStyles
• pasteFromWordRemoveStyles

In addition, you can remove extra buttons to eliminate the problem of weird markup getting into the website.

Thank you!

There are two big hurdles people face when they’ve decided to start blogging: firstly, deciding the focus of the blog (what you want to say), and secondly, getting over the fear of ‘going public’ and ‘exposing’ your personality and intellect to the world (how you’re going to say it).

Tip #1 : Clarify the focus until its crystal clear

Most problems start at this stage (especially on ‘company’ blogs), where the focus of the blog doesn’t build upon the author’s expertise or interests.

1. Are you doing it for yourself or your company?
2. Are you speaking as a person (I …) or an organization (We …)?
3. Are you going to talk about personal issues and experiences or strictly to topics such as politics, business, design?
4. Are you going to write snippets of news or longer essay-style articles?
5. How often are you going to publish?

After running through these questions, its highly advisable to run your ideas by a friend or family member to get their thoughts on the potential of your blog or difficulties your focus might create.

In our case, we wanted a company blog where team members would talk about issues and news that mattered to them. The focus would be limited to topics relating to design, development and business. We decided to have a mix of different types of content: tutorials, links, mini-galleries and publish at least once a week.

Tip #2 : Be true to yourself

The anxiety of ‘going live’ and the fear of putting something into the public domain is significant. I believe it is rooted in the fear of making a mistake and being exposed or embarrassed. Anything that might create a negative impression is usually avoided.

One should be aware that we all practice ‘impression management’ – we act and want to be seen in the way we think of ourselves. For example, I may want my friends and family to perceive me as a funny, caring and reliable companion, or my clients to think of me as an honest, capable and trusted advisor. We force ourselves to act in a certain way in situations to maintain this impression. This is especially true when it comes to small business and startups, who pretend to be ‘big’, because they think being seen as ‘small’ is a bad thing.

1. Do you want people to know who you are or stay anonymous?
2. Are you doing it for publicity or just because you want to express your opinion?
3. Do you want to talk about one side of your personality or are you going to open up and
4. Does your blog have a name or brand or do you want to keep it a simple ‘blog’?

Being ‘real’ with your readers will create an emotional bond that will increase trust and convert them into loyal readers.

In our case , we wanted to become transparent about who we are, our interests and hopefully grow our audience by providing use links, resources and tutorials that people want to read. We’ve added photos for each author so people know we’re real people. We decided to name our blog ‘Downtime’ partly because we wanted to talk in a personal voice with our readers and also a pun on the fact that our core business is to offer scalable, ultra-reliable web hosting.

Tip #3 : How to write your first blog post

There seems to be 2 strategies to this:

1. A ‘Hello World’ type post where you introduce yourself or your company and what you plan to do with your blog.
2. Start publishing content immediately, without any reference to yourself.

Study the market leaders in the segment you’ve decided to focus on. Look at how they wrote their first post: length, tone of voice, topics covered. You can find good quality blogs on sites like 9rules.com.

We’ve lent a little more towards strategy #2 – with this first blog post, we’re hoping to give readers useful information on how to start writing, but also also talk about ourselves a little.

Bonus Tip : Start writing!

To wrap up, I’d recommend you start writing your first blog post right away – keep it super simple and on point. The look and feel of your blog doesn’t have to be perfect right now – change it later when you have at least 20-30 posts under your belt. Writing content is pretty stressful if you haven’t done it for a while – but the anxiety reduces each time you publish and make something go live.

So what are you waiting for? Jump into your blogging software right now and publish your first post today!