I really like using Vim in FreeBSD, so when I became more than proficient in it, I decided that I needed a version for Windows. For this I had two realistic options. First, I could use the text based version in Cygwin. For those that are unfamiliar, Cygwin is a Unix implementation that sits on Windows. Although this is very possible, it doesn’t offer the benefit of being graphical and won’t respond to mouse input. The second option is the best, it uses a Windows implementation of Vim called gVim. It has the benefits of using the mouse, copies to the Windows clipboard, and has the option of writing file EOL types in either Windows or Unix format. This works very well, and I have used it for a while, but it had one funny side effect. Any file that was modified with gVim, will automatically create a backup file named ~filename. This started to become very irritating because with almost all files, a backup file is not needed. Using the settings window, I’ve discovered that there is a set nobk option. This works well for the current file, but it resets the option when gVim is restarted. This describes the easiest way to go about fixing the problem while keeping the nice gVim features such as Ctrl+c copying to clipboard. It also points out the .vimrc file for gVim.

Lately I ran into a problem with name based virtual hosting. In Apache you have the option of running multiple domains from one IP using name based virtual hosts. The host name is sent with the HTTP request and Apache determines the correct DocumentRoot and folder permissions. Setting up virtual hosting is relatively easy and the Apache documentation on it can be found here. Now I had several domains that needed secure SSL communication, but there is a problem…