Something I'm going to share with you today is how to delete a batch of files in Linux (a CentOS distribution in this instance) using the built-in find utility and some regular expressions.

Use case: It turns out that the backup utility for WordPress doesn't delete old backups that it stores on your server. As these files build up, they typically consume a lot of space, and eventually fill up your hard disk.

If you've ever moved your WordPress site to another location, you'll find that all your images end up broken because they all point to the old domain.

The problem is, all the image paths stored in the database are static, so you've got to update them to the new location.

Ever been stuck with a single, wired internet connection, but needing to connect more than one computer to the internet?

You'll be glad to know that with Ubuntu, it's easy to share an internet connection by creating an ad-hoc wireless network. It happened us recently on holiday - we had a single wired network connection, but two laptops. Both machines were wireless enabled.

Here's how to set up the connection:

We maintain a couple of Facebook fan pages for Unreality TV and its sister site, Unreality Shout.

Drupal's currently my content management system of choice. But like virtually any CMS, Drupal needs some SEO tuning to make it more attractive to search engines.

I've set up a number of websites using Drupal, and this post will gather together some of my standard actions for optimizing. I'll try to be as exhaustive as possible on this post, starting with the basics and moving toward more complex optimization techniques.

This post, for the most part, looks at Drupal modules that can automate the SEO process for you. None of this negates the need to have an accessible theme design and to do the usual SEO activities such as building backlinks to your site. Let's get started...

In the Windows environment, keyboard shortcuts help us get things done more efficiently, without wasting time using the mouse to navigate. Part of the difficulty in migrating to Ubuntu is that many of the old Windows shortcuts don't work anymore. In this post, I've hunted out some useful keyboard shortcuts to help you navigate Ubuntu more professionally.

Drupal's default way of displaying categories really bugs me. They compile all the categories into an unordered list, which adds a lot of pointless complexity to the theme.

Coming from the WordPress school, I'd much prefer to have a comma-separated list of categories. Well, after an epic battle with my node.tpl.php file and much searching on the Interwebs, I've come up with a solution. It's based heavily on a code snippet used in this Lullabot article.

Because Ubuntu is a free operating system, they don't feel the need to shove the version in your face in quite the same way their commercial counterparts do. So, when you're on the threshold of doing an upgrade, it's nice to know what version you're upgrading from.

There's a quick, command based way to discover what version of Ubuntu you're using:

cat /etc/issue

Alternatively, for a more detailed output, try this command:

Sweet! A new version of Ubuntu is always an exciting occassion: the release schedule is always way more frequent than Windows, and there's always some fascinating development that makes the upgrade worth your while.

So, tonight I'm upgrading my older version of Ubuntu from 8.10 to the latest release, which is 9.04. Otherwise known as Jaunty Jackalope, although the emphasis on animal names seems to be significantly played down on this version.