As such, despite having no problems with my previous host (Laughing Squid, which I still recommend), I decided to switch to a Virtual Private Server (VPS) so that I could have more flexibility and control over my server environment. I selected VM Storm based on a review of  “low-end” VPS providers (since this is my personal tinkering platform I don’t need to pay extra for a high-end name). I then added Nginx as my Web server, Varnish as a front-end cache, WordPress for blogging, and W3TC as a WordPress performance enhancer.

The Virtual Private Server

Remember that with a basic VPS, no one administers the system for you (unless you pay extra, of course). You need to make your own size estimates, then install and configure your Web server and everything else (the OS itself was installed by the provider). This, of course, is exactly what I was looking for, since I wanted to experiment.

While I probably could have made it work with an even more compact environment, I went with 512 MB of memory to give me some breathing room. I decided on Ubuntu 11.10 Server because I’m familiar and comfortable with Ubuntu, and because there are lots of online Ubuntu resources and help available.

The Web Server

I’m most familiar with Apache, a free, open-source, incredibly flexible and powerful Web server. But since I was interested in experimenting, I decided to try an alternative: Nginx(“engine x”), a fast and compact HTTP server that now powers sites like WordPress.comand CloudFlare. It’s known for its resource efficiency and speed, so it’s a perfect choice for smaller VPS setups (and it too is open source and free).

(Note: I thought about Lighttpd, another fast and compact Web server, but Nginx proved be easier for me to get going the way I liked.)

The Front-End Cache

Nginx is fast, but I wanted more. So I put Varnish in front of Nginx. What’s Varnish?

Varnish Cache is an open source, state of the art web application accelerator. You install it on your web server and it makes your website fly.

Basically, it’s a server-side caching proxy. It listens for HTTP requests, serves them really fast if they’re in its cache already, or forwards the request to Nginx if they’re not. Want to survive a Slashdotting? Use Varnish. (And then add CloudFlare for good measure!)

The Database

I went with MySQL (of course). It works. I added phpMyAdmin to help administer it, and put that behind Nginx running SSL with a self-signed certificate. I could have bought an SSL cert, but what’s the point? I know who I am, and no one else needs SSL access to my install anyway. (I’m not selling stuff through my site.)

The Software

While I could have experimented with other solutions for blogging, I wanted to stick withWordPress. It’s flexible, extensible, and nice to work with. It isn’t always the fastest or most optimized thing out there, but that’s what Nginx and Varnish are for!

WordPress was really designed for a LAMP environment: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. So replacing Apache with Nginx had the potential to create some challenges–which it did! But fortunately, Nginx is an increasingly popular choice, and one of the most powerful WordPress plugins out there (W3TC–W3 Total Cache) has added support for it, which made everything easier.

W3 Total Cache

W3TC is more than a cache. It bills itself as a “performance framework,” and although I often prefer the Unix “small-tool” philosophy, W3TC really shines. To be honest, it’s options for performance enhancements encouraged me to think about using a VPS in the first place, just so I could play with them. It handles disk and database or object caching (using memcache or PHP APC), content-delivery networks (like Amazon CloudFront), and even Varnish cache purging.

Resources and How-To Guides

• WordPress on Nginx (nginx.org)
• Supercharge WordPress (openlogic.com)
• How to build the ultimate Ubuntu/Lighttpd/PHP/MySQL server, and keep it running(nanotux.com)
• Sample Varnish config for WordPress (github.com)

That said, here are six of my current favorites:

Around this date in the past… — Widget Edition
By Joan Junyent Tarrida
This little plugin gives you a widget that shows posts from, well, around this date in the past. It’s quite useful to help “bubble up” articles you’ve written previously and that may otherwise be lost in the past.

AutoThumb
By Mathias Geat
AutoThumb incorporates phpThumb into your site in a simple, yet powerful, fashion. It automatically pipes images through phpThumb, resizing them based on the attributes you apply to the img tag. These smaller images are then delivered to browsers, as well as being cached for future redelivery. (The original images can be hosted locally or remotely.)

Free CDN
By Phoenixheart
Free CDN automatically rewrites the URLs in your site (images and more, depending on what you select in the options) so that they are delivered to your visitors via CoralCDN. CoralCDN is a free content-delivery service that, while not necessarily speeding up delivery of content, does reduce the bandwidth and load required by your server. This makes it ideal for limited hosting providers or for hosting your blog at home.

fw-post-image
By Myriam Faulkner
This simple little plugin builds on the thumbnail feature included with WordPress 2.9. Once you have this plugin installed, if you do not explicitly set a thumbnail, WordPress will scan the images you put into your posts and use the first one it finds as the thumbnail (note: it favors local images over remote ones, but supports both).

Simple Facebook Connect
By Otto
This plugin adds a series of smaller plugins, that let you add Facebook Connect features to your blog. Most useful, I think, is the support it adds for visitors to login to your comment system using their Facebook identities.

WP Smush.it
By Dialect
WP Smush.it takes advantage of Yahoo’s Smush.it service to automatically reduce image file sizes and improve performance when you upload images into WordPress.

I don’t believe there are any bad intentions at work, but I do think it’s not always clear to people what their obligations are when using Creative Commons licensed images in their blog. (My focus is on the attribution aspect of the licenses, not those pertaining to commercial use, sharing, etc. I am also relying on version 3.0 of the license, but this discussion should be applicable to all the versions.)

So how can we do better?

We can do better by making sure the images we use are properly licensed. For Creative Commons licensed images, this means putting in proper attribution that meets the standards of the license. I plan to do this going forward, and I also plan to spend time going back over images in my old posts to make sure they meet licensing requirements as well.

The Key Provisions in the Creative Commons Licenses

There are two key provisions of all the Creative Commons licenses that are critical for proper use of images in a blog. First, section 4(a) requires that a copy of the license or a link to the license be included with the work. Second, section 4(b) requires that you provide the name of the owner (or who they designate), the title of the image, and a link to the work (but make sure you don’t suggest they are endorsing you).

So What Does this Mean for Bloggers?

As a blogger you should provide the following information along with the image you are using in your article:

• the name (or screen name) of the creator (or who they designate);
• the title of the image, if there is one;
• the specific Creative Commons license and version under which the image is licensed;
• alternatively, if the creator of the work requests you attribute it in a specific way, you should do as they ask.

Ideally, you should link as many of these items to either the original source, or to their canonical location online. While section 4(b) implies that you must provide the URI of the CC license, in practical terms naming the license should be enough (the Creative Commons FAQ says, “it is nice if the license citation links to the license on the CC website”). This is, I think, especially true if you link to the location where the image originates and where the original copyright and license terms are explained (for example, linking to the Flickr page for a CC licensed photo stored on Flickr — actually, this is mandatory for Flickr images if the image is hosted by Flickr).

In practical terms, I think the following example is the kind of attribution that is appropriate under the license:  “Agatha on the porch” by Flickr user Kristopher Nelson, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 license. This citation includes (1) the title of the picture, (2) where it comes from, (3) who created it, and (4) what license applies.

Captions with WordPress

In WordPress, you can put this information in as a caption in the popup image add/modify box.

Because the WordPress caption is styled with CSS (via the “wp-caption” class that WordPress puts in), you may make it appear in a variety of creative ways. You can even “filter” the code produced by WordPress if you want the HTML to appear differently.

Captions with HTML & CSS

If you do not use WordPress, you could use HTML and CSS similar to the following (courtesy of the W3C site):

[sourcecode language=“html”]
<div class=“figure”>
<p><img src=“eiffel.jpg” width=“136” height=“200” alt=“Eiffel tower”></p>
<p>Scale model of the Eiffel tower in Parc Mini-France</p>
</div>
[/sourcecode]

And some CSS:

[sourcecode language=“css”]
div.figure {
float: right;
width: 25%;
border: thin silver solid;
margin: 0.5em;
padding: 0.5em;
}
div.figure p {
text-align: center;
font-style: italic;
font-size: smaller;
text-indent: 0;
}
[/sourcecode]

(For more about this, including additional discussion and examples, see Figures & Captions at the W3C site.)

Rollover Image Captions with jQuery

Another approach would be to use jQuery and a plugin such as jCaption or Captify, which will automatically generate sophisticated rollover captions. These look very nice and keep your site design clean, while providing all the required information.

Using the Title Attribute of the Image Tag

If you choose, you may instead put all the information into the title attribute of the <img> tag, along with linking the image to the source page, like this:

[sourcecode lang=“html”]
<a href=“http://www.flickr.com/photos/krisnelson/4213915751/”><img title=”&quot;Agatha on the porch&quot; by Flickr user Kristopher Nelson, used under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 license.” src=“http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2677/4213915751_050a74b704_s.jpg” /></a>
[/sourcecode]

Like jQuery-based approaches, this has the benefit of making the information fully available (although you cannot insert links, so make sure the image itself links to the source page). It also keeps your page design uncluttered. It doesn’t look as nice as the rollover approach, but it is simple to implement on any site.

Use Zemanta

Zemanta allows you to easily select and insert images into your posts (along with related links and more). It takes care of adding appropriate captions and links so you don’t have to. It’s image selection is good, but I like to pick my own images generally, and to style them my way. Nonetheless, it’s an excellent tool that I recommend highly.

Or Just Put it at the End

Finally, you could also add a simple attributional note to the bottom of your posts. This is a straightforward and easy approach, allows complete information and full links.

Conclusions

Creative Commons licensed images are a wonderful resource for bloggers. Use of such images is free and easy — provided you follow a few requirements that primarily serve to acknowledge the creator of the work. If you, like me, didn’t always do the best job of this, take some time to go back over your posts and make sure everything is in order. And remember, whether you use CC licensed images, pay for stock photos, use your own, or rely on the public domain, photographers and authors will always like to hear from you if you like their work, so let them know.

So just remember to check to make sure the images you want to use are licensed properly, and that you’re meeting the terms of the license, and enjoy!

More Resources

• Five sources of free images for your blog
• How do I properly attribute a Creative Commons licensed work? — from Creative Commons
• Best Practices for Creative Commons attributions — how to attribute works you reuse under a Creative Commons license
• Creative Commons Search — easily find CC licensed images

Image by adria.richards via Flickr

1. Login LockDown — adds extra security to WordPress by restricting the number of failed login attempts.

2. SexyBookmarks — sure, there are many ways to add lists of sharing icons and links to your posts — but this one is pretty.

3. wp-Typography — easily improve the typography on your site, em and en dashes, hyphenation, and much more.

4. WP Greet Box — give a simple little welcome message to visitors coming via various referrers, like Stumbleupon or Digg.

5. WP Minify — compress CSS and Javascript to speed up page loads. It can be a little tricky — I find I have to specifically exclude all 3rd-party scripts and stylesheets — but it’s highly effective.

If WordPress were a country, our Bill of Rights would be the GPL because it protects our core freedoms. We’ve always done our best to keep WordPress.org clean and only promote things that are completely compatible and legal with WordPress’s license. There have been some questions in the community about whether the GPL applies to themes like we’ve always assumed. To help clarify this point, I reached out to the Software Freedom Law Center, the world’s preeminent experts on the GPL, which spent time with WordPress’s code, community, and provided us with an official legal opinion. One sentence summary: PHP in WordPress themes must be GPL, artwork and CSS may be but are not required.

via WordPress › Blog » Themes are GPL, too.

Lloyd writes at A Fool’s Wisdom that:

Talking about licensing really is the suck. Matt’s article became necessary lately as some commercial theme developers have been very aggressive to WordPress community members, who have shared theme code as allowed by WordPress’s viral GPL v2 license.

It frustrates me when I read commercial theme developers complaining about people “stealing” their themes after the thousands of hours they have worked. They make no mention of the hundreds of thousands of hours others have worked on WordPress (counting on the  GPL protecting their freedoms ).

via Commercial WordPress Theme’s PHP Code is GPL 2 Too.

The main point of the legal opinion is that any WordPress theme is so entwined with the main WordPress code as to make it a “derivative work,” and thus subject to WordPress’ copyright and licensing (which is the GPL).

There has been some disagreement in the community about this legal opinion — based on the “viral” nature of the GPL — that WordPress themes also need to be GPL. The main argument against seems to be based on the idea that a WordPress theme could function independently of WordPress. If this were possible, then it would not be an independent work at all.

James Vasile, who wrote the opinion, noted that there might be a situation like this, but that it would be unlikely:

[I]magine using WordPress to serve a single static page. You would use a WordPress theme that does not contain any php but is simply HTML. The HTML would look a lot like data that just passes through the PHP process to the client and does not include any blog entries or sidebar functionality.

It’s a trivial case that turns WordPress into a very complicated version of cat, but that theme would probably be a separate work.

via comments to CMS Themes and the GPL.

I must say that I find the legal opinion to be strong and defensible, and the alternative opinion — that themes are not derivative works — much less convincing based on current copyright law. Actually, as much as I appreciate the GPL, I do not think this is necessarily correct public policy, even if it works in this specific GPL case (right result, perhaps, wrong policy basis). After all, if WordPress carried a non-GPL, more commercial license, then themes could be banned or controlled in very negative ways — a result I would not appreciate.

To restate again, I think themes would legally be too tied to WordPress and are indeed bound to the GPL — I don’t like the law that makes it so — but I do generally like the GPL (which undermines traditional licensing, but is only powerful because of public-policy problems with the law).

Finally, Mark Ghosh, in an article provocatively titled “Licensing is the vehicle, our users are the environment, writes:

In all of our vacillations, are we getting away from our core philosophies? The freedoms that the GPL and WordPress have offered to the folks who choose to make money from WordPress, are also designed to help another, larger group of people. The people who use the software.

via weblogtools collection.

Indeed.

1. BackType Connect / IntenseDebate — BackType incorporates Twitter mentions into your comment stream.

It unfortunately is not yet compatible with another favorite plugin of mine called IntenseDebate, which adds comment threading and other useful tools to the default comment functionality in WordPress. It can also synchronize with the basic WordPress system, so it is easy to turn on and off.

2. DB Cache + Hyper Cache — DB Cache speeds up database access by caching common queries. Hyper Cache makes static versions of Web pages (like WP Super Cache, but I’ve found it more focused and streamlined in its approach). The combination excels at reducing server resource consumption and serving the maximum number of visitors with the minimum resource use.

3. Tweetable — Automatically sends your new postings to Twitter, with the nice bonus of adding your blog name to each post. So, for example, my postings say “via in propria persona.” It also integrates Twitter into your WordPress dashboard, allowing you to easily Tweet from within WordPress.

4. WP Greetbox — Adds a message automatically to the top of your postings to encourage visitors to subscribe, Stumble, etc. Visitors from Digg get an encouragement to “Digg this,” those from StumbleUpon to “Stumble this,” etc.

5. Zemanta — While not perfect, this is a must-have plugin that makes it easy to add contextual information to your postings: pictures,  tags, and related links.

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