Update October 2016 4 years ago, since this answer is used as a reference by many, and while I learned a lot from security perspective during these years, I feel I am responsible to clarify some important notes, and I’ve update my answer accordingly. The original answer is correct but not safe for some production … Read more
The HTTP_HOST is obtained from the HTTP request header and this is what the client actually used as “target host” of the request. The SERVER_NAME is defined in server config. Which one to use depends on what you need it for. You should now however realize that the one is a client-controlled value which may … Read more
The word “deployment” can have two meanings depending on the context. You are also confusing the roles of Apache/Nginx with the roles of other components. Historic note: This article was originally written on November 6, 2010, when the Ruby app server ecosystem was limited. I’ve updated this article on March 15 2013 with all the … Read more
Apache Tomcat is used to deploy your Java Servlets and JSPs. So in your Java project you can build your WAR (short for Web ARchive) file, and just drop it in the deploy directory in Tomcat. So basically Apache is an HTTP Server, serving HTTP. Tomcat is a Servlet and JSP Server serving Java technologies. … Read more
Data Storage: Specify the utf8mb4 character set on all tables and text columns in your database. This makes MySQL physically store and retrieve values encoded natively in UTF-8. Note that MySQL will implicitly use utf8mb4 encoding if a utf8mb4_* collation is specified (without any explicit character set). In older versions of MySQL (< 5.5.3), you’ll … Read more