Enabling chrooted sftp access for WordPress automatic upgrades

Create wordpress user specifically for the auto update and add the user to the www-data group:

  • sudo adduser wordpress
  • sudo adduser wordpress www-data

chgroup the wordpress dir to the www-data group:

  • sudo chgrp -R www-data /var/www/wordpress

Add the following to /etc/ssh/ssd_config to chroot the wordpress user to the wordpress directory:

Match User wordpress
ChrootDirectory /var/www/wordpress
AllowTCPForwarding no
X11Forwarding no
ForceCommand /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server

Restart the sshd service:

sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

Setup the sftp userid and password in the wordpress settings and select sftp.

Enabling SSL for Apache2 on Ubuntu

Edit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf – add:

LoadModule      ssl_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_ssl.so

Generate SSL certificates:

https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/serverguide/C/certificates-and-security.html

Add SSL config and 443 port to a new Virtual Host in apache2.conf – for example:

<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerAdmin your_admin@email.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/your_doc_root
SSLEngine on
SSLOptions +StrictRequire
SSLCertificateFile path/to/server.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile path/to/server.key
ServerName your.server.name
DirectoryIndex index.php
</VirtualHost>

Add a listen port on 443 to /etc/apache2/ports.conf:

NameVirtualHost *:443

Fixing Joomla Purity CSS layout issue in Firefox

I just discovered that the jSeblod CCK extension for Joomla has some layout issues with Firefox. Luckily there’s some posts in the Joomla forum with similar issues, although not necessarily related to jSeblod, but the issues are related to the display of HTML tables with the Purity template.

The fix as pointed out in the forum is to add a ‘float:left’ to the CSS for tables. Tracking this down to the exact table being using using Firebug, editing this css file:

templates/ja_purity/css/template.css

and adding this CSS fixes the issue:

table.admintable {
float:left;
}