This is going to be a bit of a tip with some Linux evangelism thrown in. So, I apologize in advance.

So, I tinker a bit with Web Development (see Quanta Plus). Far be it from me to claim to be a professional developer, because I don’t get paid for it, but I like to think I know my shit. Just humor me. Actually, the simplicity of my tip will probably work against the whole “know my shit” thing. So, wait it out and you will be rewarded with my humility.

Lately, all I’ve been doing is playing around with themes on my blog sites. One of the most frustrating things is developing on a production server. So set up a test server, you say! I did, so shut up. So, now I use my test server to test the themes before I copy them to the production sites (and no, the theme for this site isn’t done). Well, that is a huge pain in the ass too! So, laziness being the mother of good code and practice, I came up with a solution. I still develop on my test server, but I’ve created a symbolic link on my production server files. So, when I change the test server files and upload the project, it uploads to the test server. When I want to propagate it to the production server, I just load that project and hit upload. Since the theme portion is a symbolic link to the test server files, it uploads the finished product, and I save about seven clicks by not having to copy it back and forth! SEE!? Simple!

Here comes the Linux evangelism part. What is a symbolic link, you ask? Ahhh, my simple Windows user, a symbolic link is one of the most ingenious creations in computing. Am I right, brothers and sisters in *nixland? My friends on Unix, Linux, and BSD (including OSX) know the joys of the symbolic link.

It’s a very simple idea. Basically a symbolic link is a link in your file system that points somewhere else. Could be a file or a directory. You Windows users might then say, “well, that’s a shortcut, dumbass!”

Oh, simple Windows user, you don’t know the power of the symbolic link! Unlike shortcuts, symlinks are transparent to programs. So, programs read them as their linked counterpart, which is SUPER handy. Sure, you Vista users have Junction Points now, but it really pales in comparison… Come on, Microsoft! Symlinks have been around for YEARS! Get with the program, already!