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About Me
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Bio/Description

Real old-school hacker, Linux/BSD Guru, PHP, Perl, Bash, JS, and especially Apache and Apache Htaccess – http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/htaccess.html

Goal is to become a Super Class “A” wizard-class programmer.

http://google.com/+askapache

Interests

Hacking for the hack value. Learning. Improving. Free Software. Servers (windows is NO server, barely an OS). GNU, Arch Linux, OpenBSD, Network Protocols, Page Speed, making code efficient and faster than fast. Space and Astronomy, Reading source code, Bash, JavaScript, Python, PHP, securitynow podcast, terminal multiplexers, SSH, tmux, shells. Any books on computing/hacking/or the history thereof.

http://www.askapache.com/about/

WordPress Origin Story

I discovered these htaccess tips and tricks (http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/htaccess.html) mostly while working as a network security penetration specialist hired to find security holes in web hosting environments around 2002. Shared hosting is the most common and cheapest form of web-hosting where multiple customers are placed on a single machine and “share” the resources (CPU/RAM/SPACE). The machines are configured to basically ONLY do HTTP and FTP. No shells or any interactive logins, no ssh, just FTP access. That is when I started examining htaccess files in great detail and learned about the incredible untapped power of htaccess. For 99% of the worlds best Apache admins, they don’t use .htaccess much, if AT ALL. It’s much easier, safer, and faster to configure Apache using the httpd.conf file instead. However, this file is almost never readable on shared-hosts, and I’ve never seen it writable. So the only avenue left for those on shared-hosting was and is the .htaccess file, and holy freaking fiber-optics.. it’s almost as powerful as httpd.conf itself!

Once I discovered what .htaccess files could do towards helping me enumerate and exploit security vulnerabilities even on big shared-hosts I focused all my research into .htaccess files, meaning I was reading the venerable Apache HTTP Source code 24/7! I lovingly custom compiled every released version of the Apache Web Server, ever, even the original NCSA versions, and focused on enumerating the most powerful htaccess directives. Good times!

Because my focus was on protocol/file/network vulnerabilites instead of web dev I built up a nice toolbox of htaccess tricks to do unusual things. When I switched over to webdev in 2005 I started using htaccess to improve websites instead of hacking servers. I documented most of my favorites and rewrote the htaccess guide for web developers. After some great encouragement on various BBS’s, forums and underground nets I decided to start a blog to share my work with everyone and see if there was any response. AskApache.com was registered and quickly rose to one of the top 20k most visited sites in the world (Alexa). I published my guide without holding much back (power to the people is how I roll), and it was quickly plagiarized and scraped all over the net. Today it has been reprocessed and plagiarized by so many so many times that most all of the htaccess articles and htaccess snippets out there in the wild today contain recognizable pieces of the original.

As a hacker and a free and proud citizen of the greatest country in the history of this planet, I believe that Information is freedom, and that freedom is information, but there can be neither without free access.. so askapache.com has the least restrictive copyright I could find. Anyone can copy, sell, republish, modify, diss, plagiarize, repurpose, use, etc., anything on my site! That’s the net I grew up with and love, and I’ll never be able to pay back what I gained from the generosity and truly remarkable genius of those that came before me and those who fight to keep it that way for future hackers (FSF.org, GNU, EFF).

That was in 2006 and the askapache.com site was launched running an early version of WordPress. And even then, as now, my passion has been to read source code, and even in that early version of WP I could recognize that it was something special, something that would survive. Initially I chose WordPress to familiarize myself with it as a blogging platform, back then so many other competitors and alternatives existed and for my job in the elite world of pen-testing I had to be familiar with as many possible. That’s about the time the term “blogging” became super hot, and have no doubt that I was also sampling a lot of other competing software, which continued until about 2010, when I finally decided WP was the uncontested champ, most especially because of how it is all about future-proofing and leverage through minimalism and power.

Committed [1475143] to Plugins Trac:
move screenshots to assets folder

2 months ago
Committed [1475142] to Plugins Trac:
make sure we only debug when told too

2 months ago
Committed [1475141] to Plugins Trac:
update to 5.1.1 to force resetting of html/css/js options

2 months ago
Committed [1475137] to Plugins Trac:
Add 5.1.0 update

2 months ago
Committed [1475135] to Plugins Trac:
delete unused files

2 months ago
Committed [1475134] to Plugins Trac:
large update to cse api

2 months ago
Committed [1474772] to Plugins Trac:
add assets folder

2 months ago
Posted a reply to _wp_link_placeholder in the Link Tool Options, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Here's a simple fix for at least preventing these links from showing up publically.. haven't…

5 months ago
Posted a reply to Petition to remove the Inline Linking tool from WP 4.5, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Here is one thing I did to prevent these _wp_link_placeholder links from showing up publically..…

5 months ago
Posted a reply to _wp_link_placeholder in the Link Tool Options, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
:0 Turned out to be 5% user-error, 90% lack of UX/scope, and 5% lack of…

5 months ago
Posted a reply to Petition to remove the Inline Linking tool from WP 4.5, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
:0 Turned out to be 5% user-error, 90% lack of UX/scope, and 5% lack of…

5 months ago
Posted a reply to _wp_link_placeholder in the Link Tool Options, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/36637

5 months ago
Posted a reply to Petition to remove the Inline Linking tool from WP 4.5, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/36637

5 months ago
Posted a reply to Petition to remove the Inline Linking tool from WP 4.5, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
fix??? My clients are pissed and now I'm having to debug 4.5 code on a…

5 months ago
Posted a reply to _wp_link_placeholder in the Link Tool Options, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
This is happening on several of my sites as well... working on a fix now..…

5 months ago
Created a topic, Very useful, on the site WordPress Support Forums

5 months ago
Posted a reply to Redirect Entire Site to HTTPS, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Ok actually I just used my headers tool to check https:// wakeup and there is…

8 months ago
Posted a reply to Redirect Entire Site to HTTPS, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Code from Dipak is in the right direction, but I'd reverse the blocks. So: <IfModule…

8 months ago
Created a topic, Used on Enterprise, on the site WordPress Support Forums

10 months ago
Committed [1043319] to Plugins Trac:
add icon to legacy path

2 years ago
Committed [1043317] to Plugins Trac:
Add aa_BGLABEL default for old js.

2 years ago
Posted a reply to Pathetic plugin. waste of time, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
5.0.2 fixes the issues with the previous versions. What exactly did you dislike?

2 years ago
Committed [1043315] to Plugins Trac:
Plugin Settings getting wiped-out on activation/deactivation now FIXED!

2 years ago
Posted a reply to can't make it work, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
It should certainly work on hostgator, actually the latest update was built and tested on…

2 years ago
Posted a reply to Could not access my own site and admin after running P3, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Thanks to the developer for such excellent feedback. I would make an educated guess and…

2 years ago
Posted a reply to Asks for password twice, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
This happens when it's redirected. So if you goto http://x.com/wp-login.php and it redirects you to…

2 years ago
Closed ticket #11175, in Core Trac:
wp_check_invalid_utf8() should drop invalid utf-8 chars only instead of ...

2 years ago
Posted a reply to Site all broken (no css?) on MOBILE, help!, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Yeah it appears your htaccess file has malware in it.

2 years ago
Posted a reply to wp-login.php not really protected - bug, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Done. Future version will give more control over this, and test for it, since it…

2 years ago
Posted a reply to Plugin not working, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Please upgrade to the latest version. Also, what are you trying to do with a…

2 years ago
Posted a reply to Bug ? Settings lost if plugin is disabled then re-enabled, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Ya photoM it's a 1-off procedure, from now on you can upgrade every time a…

2 years ago
Created a new ticket, #29717, in Core Trac:
wp_check_invalid_utf8 - pcre tricks and failsafes, +mb_convert_encoding, ...

2 years ago
Posted a reply to Bug ? Settings lost if plugin is disabled then re-enabled, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
There ya go, fixed in 5.0.0. Please try it out and let me know of…

2 years ago
Posted a reply to Bug ? Settings lost if plugin is disabled then re-enabled, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Fixing now...

2 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Introducing plugin icons in the plugin installer, on the site Make WordPress Core:
This is really helpful Nacin, thanks!

2 years ago
Created a topic, BEST Enterprise-Level High-Perf Caching Plugin Ever, on the site WordPress Support Forums

2 years ago
Created a topic, Best in class, on the site WordPress Support Forums

2 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Dashicons in WordPress 3.9, on the site Make WordPress Core:
This is a really great feature! I just wish there were 10x more icons, why…

2 years ago
Posted a reply to No errors, but no output either, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Thanks Jan. Hey try the new version and see if that fixes the problem.

2 years ago
Posted a reply to AskApache Debug problem, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Hmm. Very strange, I just released a major update with many new modules, and added…

2 years ago
Posted a reply to Never got it working before., on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Works now, and is much faster.

2 years ago
Posted a reply to AskApache asks for password on my main site, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Install Firefox firebug extension or use chrome developer tools. Then clear your browser cache and…

3 years ago
Posted a reply to AA PassPro/Better WordPress Security conflict, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Fixed.

3 years ago
Posted a reply to AA PassPro/Better WordPress Security conflict, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Look for an update within 2 weeks.

3 years ago
Posted a reply to AA PassPro/Better WordPress Security conflict, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Thanks for reporting this in such detail. I will fix this in the next version,…

3 years ago
Posted a reply to WordPress debugging with awesome bit, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
The ultimate goal and ultimate compliment. Thank you!

3 years ago
Created a topic, A real improvement, great plugin, on the site WordPress Support Forums

3 years ago
Posted a reply to Can I Safely Uninstall Ask Apache Password Protect Plugin, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
WARNING: If you lock YOURSELF out of your site: DO NOT JUST DELETE PLUGIN. This…

3 years ago
Posted a reply to 500 Server Error, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
There is also a SID in the plugin named rewrite loop to prevent redirect loops.

4 years ago
Posted a reply to 500 Server Error, on the site WordPress Support Forums:
Good description and question, here's what I'd suggest. 1 Remove all askapache lines and/or .htaccess/.htpasswd…

4 years ago

AskApache Debug Viewer

Active Installs: 500+
AskApache Google 404

Active Installs: 1,000+
AskApache Password Protect

Active Installs: 4,000+

Plugins

AskApache Debug Viewer

User rating
AskApache Google 404

User rating
AskApache Password Protect
Compress JPEG & PNG images
P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler)

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WP Super Cache

User rating

WordPress.org

Profiles

askapache

Bio/Description

Interests

WordPress Origin Story

AskApache Debug Viewer

AskApache Google 404

AskApache Password Protect

Plugins

AskApache Debug Viewer

AskApache Google 404

AskApache Password Protect

Compress JPEG & PNG images

P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler)

WP Super Cache

Code is Poetry.