I started writing for MakeUseOf, which is a blog for web application and other free, useful programs! I just posted an article on Ditching your cable company with free, legal alternatives.

Summary:

Ditching your cable company has never been more viable than it is today. The rise of online, streaming TV shows allows you to save on one of the most expensive household bills if you are willing to sacrifice a bit of the convenience of having either a cable box or DVR. The main question you will need to ask yourself is what shows you actually enjoy watching. Several name brand shows are now available online in free, ad supported formats; if your particular shows are not available then you may be stuck with your cable company, at least for now. More and more shows are always coming online, so keep checking back to see if your favorite show is available.

Click here to see full post!

The situation is: you have an web application or URL that you would like to force your users (or yourself) to use the secure https protocol rather than the unencrypted http protocol. This is easy to do with Apache and .htaccess.

Create or add to the .htaccess file in the root of the web directory you would like to force redirect for. Add the following lines:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}

This says that if https is off, reload the page at the same location using HTTPS instead.