Blog

Use Laravel Jetstream with Bootstrap

Originally published on 3 January 2021. Laravel 8 contains an excellent authentication application called Jetstream, however many users were surprised that they can no longer work (out of the box) with Bootstrap. Fortunately, there is a possibility to combine Jetstream with Bootstrap through nascent-africa. However, we were not satisfied enough with this package so we decided to make our own package for Fortify (the backend of Jetstream). FortifyUI Before introducing our package, let me thank zacksmash for offering a simple base for Fortify. FortifyUI, as the package is called, installs Fortify for you and configures the most important settings. Fortify x Bootstrap (Tabler) Our free package hosted on GitHub allows any Laravel developer to set up a fully functional Laravel application with authentication using just two commands. The package does not use Boostrap itself but Tabler, a framework based on Bootstrap. This gives you a better layout but maintains the simplicity and speed of Bootstrap. The latest version of our package includes a version of Tabler that is technically the same as Bootstrap 5 and therefore also includes the advantages of Bootstrap 5. Below is a brief installation guide for the package. 1. Connect to your server using SSH 2. Run the composer create-project laravel/laravel appname command 3. After the successful installation require our package using the following command: composer require proxeuse/fortify-tabler 4. When the download is completed run the php artisan fortify-ui:tabler command to start the installer. Walkthrough the installer and run php artisan migrate afterwards. 5. Done! You’ve successfully installed the Proxeuse/Fortify-Tabler package. More information will be added to this page shortly. At the moment, detailed installation instructions and awnsers to the most asked questions can be found on GitHub. Screenshots Login Screen Password Reset Profile Edit Page Public Registration Page Two Factor Authentication Page Re-confirm Password Page

Our first year as Proxeuse

Originally published on 24 August 2020. The Dutch version has been archived on old.proxeuse.com. We have reached a milestone! We have been operating under the name Proxeuse for a year now, and we are proud of that! Establishment Proxeuse started in August 2018 as a small hosting company operating under the name Hostify. This name later turned out to be used so much by other companies that it affected our operating results, so in the summer of 2019 we decided to completely change it. From 24 August 2019, all communications, websites and the like would operate under the name of Proxeuse and we would slowly phase out Hostify. In the meantime, we hardly use the name Hostify anymore and it’s also almost nowhere to be found in (official) documents. Growth In the past year, we have grown enormously. Whereas last year we only offered our services to 5 customers, all of which were running on third-party servers, at the end of 2019 we switched to dedicated servers that are fully managed by us. Since then, we have introduced several additional services, such as Proxcloud, Proxcraft, Reseller Hosting and more. Our customer base has also grown to more than 50 customers from all over the world. We are very proud of that. Besides extra services, we also started writing several extensions for (our) systems in PHP and Python. We offer this software with a small fee (sometimes even for free), and thanks to our love for open-source software, it is licensed under the GPLv3. Mission & Goals In the past year we have also developed a goal, we decided to distinguish ourselves in the field of privacy from other large parties on the market and thus offer a more privacy-friendly service. In addition, we want to contribute to a fair, safe and open internet by implementing open protocols, using open-source software and offering certain services for free. We are also developing a number of open APIs that will become available (free of charge) to third parties. Future We plan to introduce a number of new services very soon, including WordPress Hosting, Email Only Hosting and more. As you have come to expect from us, these services will be privacy-friendly but also easy to manage. Stay informed about new products through our website and blog. Of course, we will continue to strive for a better, fairer and more privacy-friendly internet.

Replace Google Fonts and Font Awesome on your WordPress site

Originally published on 9 July 2020 in Dutch. This version has been machine-translated. Are you unsure how much information companies like Google, Facebook and Cloudflare collect about the traffic on your website? Would you rather no longer use services such as Google Fonts, Google Analytics, Cloudflare CDN? Then read this blog article, maybe there is something in it that you can apply to your own website. Google Fonts In order to remove Google Fonts from your website, you must first ensure that they are loaded in a different way. You also don't want to replace them with fonts that are installed by default on the user's computer. Therefore, you will have to download them to your hosting provider's web server. If you use WordPress, there is a handy plugin for this, OMGF (Optimize My Google Fonts), which you can install in one click via the dashboard. Once you have installed and activated the plugin, an additional sub-item will appear under Settings. There, click on Optimize Google Fonts. Then you will have to choose between different options, automatically detect it or manually select all fonts. We explain how to use the automatic way. Click the blue Auto Detect button and wait for the page to reload. Then open the homepage of your website in another tab. Once it has loaded you will be returned to the OMGF settings where a message will appear with the option to reload the page. Click on that. Wait again for the page to reload, now all Google Fonts on your website should appear in the list. Check that this is correct and add any additional fonts now. We recommend that you enable Preload on each font to improve performance. Then click Download Fonts and wait for all fonts to be downloaded. Then click Generate Stylesheet. After the stylesheet has been generated, you need to click on Advanced Settings to enable the first option (Auto Remove). This option attempts to block all requests to Google Fonts domain names. Don't forget to press Save Settings at the bottom of the page. Check You can now use DevTools in Chrome or Developer Tools in Firefox to check whether all requests to Google Fonts are indeed blocked. Follow the steps below: 1. On your keyboard, click the F12 key or press the right mouse button and then click Inspect (Chrome) or Inspect Element (Firefox). 2. From the menu that has appeared, select the Sources (Chrome) or Debugger (Firefox) tab. 3. Check in the list that now appears on the left whether you see a Google Fonts domain name. The most famous Google Fonts domain names are as follows: - fonts.googleapis.com - fonts.gstatic.com - etc. If you still see domain names from Google Fonts in the list, I recommend that you purchase the Pro version of the OMGF plugin at a reasonable price. You can do this via the developer's website: https://woosh.dev/wordpress-plugins/host-google-fonts-pro/. You can also choose to install an additional plugin whose sole function is to remove and block all requests to Google Fonts. This plugin is called Disable and Remove Google Fonts and is also available in the WordPress Plugin Store. After activating the plugin, check again whether Google Fonts is not actually loaded via the step-by-step plan above. Please note that you may need to clear your website's cache! Font Awesome CDN (Cloudflare) On our websites we used Cloudflare's Content Delivery Network to load the Font Awesome Stylesheets. Since we once again have no control over the user data collected, we decided to remove it. For us, that was a pretty easy process because we were able to disable loading them from Cloudflare in our theme. However, we had to make sure it was loaded in a different way, otherwise all the icons would be replaced by squares. And, as you can imagine, no one wants that. Add manually The first step is to download the web version of Font Awesome from their website. Click Download Free for Web to download the correct ZIP file. Once the file is saved to your computer you need to unzip it. For this you can use the built-in function of your operating system (Windows, macOS or Linux) or software from, for example, 7ZIP or WinRar. Once you have unpacked the .ZIP file, you need to open a connection with the (S)FTP server of your web host. You do this via FileZilla or WinSCP (on Windows). Contact your hosting provider for more information. Before you start uploading, it is useful to create a Child Theme; there are numerous manuals for this on the internet. We can also do this for you for a small fee (from €15, including VAT, depending on the size of your website). In the folder of your Child Theme you can upload the folder of Font Awesome. Then open the functions.php file of your Child Theme and add the code below to the file: /** * Enqueue Font Awesome 5 Free * @author Proxeuse */ add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'enqueue_fontawesome' ); function enqueue_fontawesome() { wp_enqueue_style('font-awesome-free', get_stylesheet_directory_uri().'/fonts/font-awesome/css/all.min.css', array(), '5.13.1'); } Check that the file location matches, in the example above we assumed /fonts/font-awesome/css/all.min.ccs. If you have no idea what to adjust, please send us an email. We are happy to help you. It is now important to ensure that Font Awesome is not loaded by an external party. There is often a line in the theme's functions.php that does this. Please feel free to contact us, we can discuss with you how we can block it. Speed You may be thinking, “But what happens to the speed of my website?” We can be brief about that, it will go up! The visitor's browser only needs to request one domain name, which saves a lot of calculations. As can be clearly seen in the images below, our website loads half a second faster after implementing the above processes. That is really a big improvement. Other parties If you want to be sure that no third-party resources are loaded on your website, please feel free to contact us. We will check, without obligation, which parties are (hidden) on your website. We will send you a report with recommendations after our analysis. An example is to collect, host and process the statistics yourself instead of dependence on Google Analytics. In addition, it is of course important that your hosting provider clearly indicates what they do with the data you entrust to them. It is also important that your hosting provider uses software and hardware that is trusted and has control over it. At Proxeuse we work with software from parties such as Plesk, Nextcloud and WordPress. We also use hardware from brands such as AMD and Toshiba. Curious about all our benefits? Take a look at our website or contact us. Conclusion It is relatively easy to ban Google Fonts from your website with little technical knowledge. Font Awesome (Cloudflare), on the other hand, is a bit more complicated, but is certainly possible for someone with more technical experience. In addition to the privacy considerations, it also brings a number of speed benefits. So you are not dependent on the big tech companies. Take control into your own hands!