I was recently trying to Force a SSL connection on a folder on a site that I was developing. This sounds like an easy enough task. After a few hours of attempts that ended up sending the secure folder in a infinite loop. This was a puzzle. I followed several sets of documentation that each of them agreeing on how to handle the problem.

To force the SSL on the folder I ended up having to do this to the .htaccess file:

#Force SSL on a specific directory
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /dashboard/
RewriteCond %{ENV:HTTPS} !on [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.websitenamehere.com/dashboard/$1 [R,L]

A simple explanation:
The .htaccess file is located in the /dashboard/ folder.

The folder we are trying to force is /dashboard/

Please note that I was trying to do this on a Rackspace Could Site. (The documentation that they provided was incorrect.)This may have something to do with the fact the normal ways for forcing the secure connection were not working. I couldn’t get rackspace to verify if the loop was being caused by their server configuration. Hopefully this post will help someone that is having the same issue with rackspace and forcing ssl on a folder.

For the record this is once of the ways that I tried but was not sucessfully at implementing. This may work on non Rackspace Cloud Servers.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} somefolder
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.domain.com/somefolder/$1 [R,L]

I’ve been searching to fix a bug in a site that I am developing. It a bug where if you load content using ajax that contains a fancybox link, you can not load the fancybox because fancybox is executed when the page and DOM where originally loaded. You need to find a method to reload fancybox. I’ve tried live and livequery, but after a few hours of fighting they would not work. After an intense google battle I came across this blog post:

http://alex.mamchenkov.net/2010/05/21/jquery-fancybox-with-ajax/

This blog contains the solution that I was looking for. I’m going to post the solution here as well. I figure the most places this is posted, the more people will find it when they are looking for it:

$.getJSON(ajax_url,function(HTML) {

    // populate my DOM with some HTML here

    // make fancybox reinit
    setTimeout(
        function() {
            $("a.some_fancy_box_element_class").fancybox();
        },
        600
    );
});

I hope this helps someone.

Gmail – Simple. The best email out there. No to mention the fact that it keeps out 99% of the spam that I receive.

Twitter – I’ve been using twitter for 565 Days now and while I am not most active at posting content to twitter I do read the tweets of those that I follow on a constant basis. Twitter is a vital for knowing what is happening in the real time. I’ve used it many time to find what what is happening around me. If you have never tried search.twitter.com you should. There is so much information out there its crazy

Delicious – I’ve had several computers over the years and with each new one I’ve lost all of the bookmarks that I make in a browser. I don’t know about you but I bookmark a ton of stuff, whether is be important coding tips, funny website, or what every. I bookmark it all. With delicious all of my bookmarks are kept online and are synced to each browser that I use. Now there is no need to worry about loosing my book marks.

Google Reader – I pretty much get all my news from google reader. I subscribe to a bunch of different blogs and its nice to but its nice to have all the information aggregated into one place.

Google Wave – The ship is still out on this one, but I’ve been using it more and more a lately. Most people seem to have a tough time describing what google wave is. Simply put, its a collaboration tool. The staff at Wrecked Started using it last issue and it seemed to help the process along. Google Wave still has a way to go, its got some weird bugs, but all in all its pretty sick. I’m looking forward to using it in the future.

Facebook – It seems like everyone is using facebook now. I think that it has finally overshadowed Myspace. I’m on Facebook a couple time of day seems what everyone is up to. Its amazing how it draws you in.

Dropbox – I wasn’t sure whether or not to put dropbox on my list. Its technically not a website, its more of a tool. Dropbox allows me to sync all my files across multiple computers and have a version online (Thats my justification for putting it in this list) that I can always access. There is no thinking involved. I edit a file, its uploaded automatically to the web and sent to my other computers. I don’t have to think about it. I love it.

Chartbeat - Chartbeat is a another great web based  tool to monitor web-traffic to a site in realtime. I use this constantly with Wrecked. This is almost always open so I can see what is happening on Wrecked. It allow to me to see what people are looking at, how many people, where they came from, and all the other good information that a person running a website wants to know. It also sends me alerts to spikes in traffic so that I know what content is becoming popular and how people are finding it on the internet.

Hulu – I don’t know what I would do without Hulu. I watch probably 90% off all my TV on Hulu.

Thats it thats my list. Its not really that big, but its all web based stuff that I use everyday. I might add to this list as I add sites that I use everyday.. I’m not sure yet.

After writing this I find that I’m using more and more google apps then before, first just gmail, then last year I started using google reader, now this year google wave. (Google is also the voice mail client on my phone). I think they are taking over the world.

The main video rss feed:
http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/videofeed/

The video feed for the Formula D Channel:
http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/videofeed/formula-d

International Channel:
http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/videofeed/international

Drift Alliance Channel:
http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/videofeed/drift-alliance

We’ll see how these work out and if there are no problems they should roll over to the site in a few days… Please let me know if you run into any problems with the feeds so I can make sure that are working properly.