Archive for the 'Web' Category Page 2 of 13



Moved to a New File Server!

After waiting a long 5 months for DreamHost to straighten out the problems with my slow site I decided to file a support ticket. The reason I hadn’t done so before was because I know that they’re up and down sometimes, they even have a site devoted to that called DreamHost Status. and because I’m a loyal DreamHost customer and have been for 2 years I decided I would give them some time to fix their problems. A couple months went by, like 2 or 3, and I was beginning to get frustrated. The problems weren’t that bad back then, my site was slow but it would eventually load, and it wasn’t all the time. I figured that with this type of inconsistent problem, if I had filed a support ticket then, my problem would easily be dismissed as a problem on my end, either with my connection or with my site’s code. I was positive this wasn’t the problem though because before, my site loaded near instantly. In fact I began to notice my blaenkdenum.com sites were slower after, well, I got that domain name and hosted them with DreamHost. I was assigned to the rizzo file server, which I didn’t know at the time, and since then I’ve been experiencing problems.

DreamHost

Recently, the last 2 months or so my site, if you hadn’t noticed, has been nearly inaccessible. At times it would literally take 4 minutes before it even began rendering. For this reason I was thinking it might have to do with the domain name, but I eventually dismissed that theory since I have the domain registered with DreamHost themselves. I eventually got really pissed off because my site was completely inaccessible and I decided to file a support ticket. The first guy took the easy way out and blamed it on the SQL server. Obviously I got even more pissed off but coincidentally an hour after that, my site seemed faster. That was when I posted the “Site is Loading Faster Than Ever” post which apparently was short lived.

Fortunately a nice person at DreamHost, Brian, was kind enough to reply despite having no obligation to as far as I can tell to tell me that the problems were actually caused with the file server and said that they were currently being fixed but that he was also looking to move me away from that file server. He also gave me information on what cluster I’m on, mail server, SQL server, web server, and dataglob, as it all seemed really confusing to me.

So now I’m on a new file server and everything seems faster than ever, nice and smooth. I hope it stays this way for a long time if not forever, and I hope I have a nicer experience on this file server than the other, and already it’s proving to be true. :)

DreamHost is Green!

Site is Loading Faster Than Ever

I was really pissed yesterday that I finally decided to file a support ticket with DreamHost. I know they go up and down a lot but I had waited 2 months for them to sort this out and still nothing. I don’t know if any of you noticed but the site was taking 4 minutes to even begin rendering, and not just with me but with various other friends. This was the last straw so I decided to file a ticket. Of course the only and usual excuse was that it must’ve been an SQL server load issue, when I strongly believe that wasn’t the case seeing how even directory listing pages were experiencing the same problem, like http://www.blaenkdenum.com/downloads/projects. Who knows, maybe it was, but whatever it was it seems to be over. I could go on and on about the whole story, I typed up a very long description and message in the ticket and I definitely don’t feel like going over it again especially now that the problem seems to be fixed.

It’s like if Dream Host has some special big red button that they push whenever someone files a ticket having to do with site slowness. This button gives the ‘complainer’ the highest priority possible on the shared server he’s part of to make it seem like the problem has been solved when in fact it is merely a temporary fix. I’m just joking but it definitely feels this way sometimes. I’ve refused to get excited about the site’s speed for now, although I do admit it has been loading faster than ever. I hope that it will remain this way forever and not just until tomorrow or this week. How much nicer it is to have pages load as they should ;)

April Fools Online 2008

April Fools on the Internet has grown to be a very widely practiced custom and goes further than the typical ‘made you look’ feel of the April Fools we’re used to. Many huge sites and corporations participate in this event, marking April 1st of any year the day that you have to think twice before you believe anything on the Internet. With articles which sound like they came out of The Onion, it’s a great day to browse the net (If you don’t already do it every day haha). Since it might be difficult to find these ‘tricks’, it’s best to look in Social News sites, namely Digg (Which also participates in this event, as do many other sites).

Anyways, here are some of the April Fools jokes that I’ve found. If I find a Digg submission page for it I’ll post that instead because many of the comments on Digg are great.

» Zelda Movie Trailer: A trailer for an upcoming movie about the Zelda Video Game Series.
» RickRoll by Phone: Now you can prank call/rick roll people by phone.
» Digg’s April Fools Day Joke: Digg a story and look at the new digg count.
» New World of Warcraft Hero Class: Bard
» Amazing new Gmail feature!!!: GMail now has a feature that allows one to put their own time stamp. So if you were supposed to email that message an hour ago, just put the time stamp to ’sent two hours ago’ and you’re good.
» gDay Mate: Lets you search tomorrow’s content (See what team wins the football game, etc.). In my opinion funnier than the GMail one.

I’ll update it as I see more.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.5

WordPress 2.5 just came out and this morning I didn’t waste a single second in upgrading to it. Thanks to DreamHost’s one click install I was able to upgrade with, well, one click. Afterwards, I just made some small changes and now I’m running this frickin sweet WordPress 2.5. WordPress.Org also got a face-lift, and now both the software and the site have a new…refreshing, lite feeling to it. WordPress has always been my favorite open source web software, and to me seems like a great example and model for many other open source projects out there.

This new version is just amazing. Aside from the things mentioned in the changelog linked to above, there is now automatic plugin updates. So the first thing I did after installing was go to the plugins section, and where it used to just tell me that there were new versions of plugins, it now also has a link to automatically upgrade, essentially upgrading my plugins in literally less than 3 seconds. Life has never been easier. And the administration interface is just a lot more nicer, I can’t explain it, it just feels ‘right’, fresh, like a new beginning.

To my delight, everything seems to be working fine, the cache, the theme, my plugins, etc. I had to revert to 2.3.3 on T.I.P.’s site because the integration systems (i.e. bridges) for most software such as phpBB’s WP-United, MediaWiki, and Vanilla Forums are all broken because WordPress 2.5 adds extra security by salting the password hashes and encrypting the cookies. Discussion for adjustment to these changes is going on in the Vanilla forums at Lussomo, though I don’t think it’ll lead to anything unless my old friend SirNot who happens to be a developer for Vanilla helps out.

I know I haven’t written much in a while, and I really intend to but I’ve been pretty busy lately. Ironically, I’m having Spring Break the week after this coming week, which is really weird because most schools had it the week of Easter or the week after, and I have it almost a whole month after. So my plans are to begin writing more often, and also to create some screencasts for some friends that have been waiting for months. I also intend on working on the WordPress reCAPTCHA plugin and fixing iLirix (Most likely create a GUI for it and make different lyric engines be modules to the program).

Anyways, for the time being, take care.