Tech Blog

It has been said many times by many people, but I have to reiterate again how important it is to have a website that loads quickly.  Researches have shown that visitors to a page has the patience to wait only four seconds before hitting the Back or Esc button and off they go.  However, I have encountered so many content rich sights that take well over that before the page is loaded with content I am interested in.  Some sites just do not have anything showing before the page is up, others will have random images appearing and pushed into place as more are loaded, but the content is no where to be seen.

So what can you speed up the load time for your site.  For one thing, if you are using more advanced technology than static HTML files, which most site are in this category these days, you need to make sure the server hosting the site is fast enough.  A lot of sites are running on the cheapest shared web hosting services and as we all know, the cheapest is not always the best.  These services do give you a lot on paper, but with their bogged down servers you will never be able to utilize half the resources they allow for your account.

Now, if your hosting service or your own server is plenty fast with enough bandwidth, then it is time to look closer at the details.  Like I mentioned before, if you are running a static HTML site, these tips will not help you.  But you do have many other problems of how on earth will you update your content or design across the entire website.  That is another post.  But for the majority of us using databases to generate dynamic content, the database is a big culprit in site latency.  Databases need to be optimized for the hardware and the application it is running.  Optimizing a database starts from the design of the schema to the implementation of regular maintenance processes.  Again, there can be books written on how to optimize a database and maybe I will write one someday.

Anyhow, if you are running a site that is slow, don’t just ignore it.  Spend some time to figure out why it is slow and solve the issue.  It would be a shame to lose all those potential visitors to slow load time.

Tags: Uncategorized, server, website speed by frank
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Strangely, invoking the PHP SMTP mail() function after outputting any HTML within a PHP page will cause Firefox to intepret the PHP command twice, thereby sending out 2 duplicate emails. This was happening using PHP5, FF1.5, and Windows IIS6. The issue is fixed by simply placing the mail() command as the first part of any script, before any headers or output are called. I cannot ascertain yet why this is occurring. Any ideas, anyone?

Tags: Uncategorized by ben
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The RIAA just lost a lawsuit recently against a woman for pirating music. They lost on the premise that she uses a wireless network at home the she never bothered to secure. Therefore, anyone could have gotten onto her network and shared pirated music through her IP address making it hard to prove that she was the one committing the felony.

Tags: Uncategorized by frank
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Shared hosting has always been a popular choice for hosting a small website with POP email service. It is inexpensive and will usually provide everything you will need. However, one of my clients encountered some problems with their email shared hosting. The issue is with the proliferation of spam, ISPs are banning emails sent from known offenders based on their IP addresses. Since you are sharing a server with many other users, if they spam but your ISP does not catch on, the IP address used will be banned by other ISPs. This would render your email server ineffective as some emails will be filtered out as spam by other ISPs even though they are legitimate emails.

Therefore, it is very important to choose your ISP wisely. A good ISP should be on top of monitoring spam and resolve the problem quickly if they are on the blacklist.

Tags: Uncategorized by frank
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Millions of people have shopped Ebay in the past. In most cases, winning an auction on Ebay means shelling out some dough. Wouldn’t it be nice if you get paid for winning an auction instead?

The founder of Ebay is involved in launching a new website called Prosper.com. It is a person to person lending and borrowing service. In this case the seller would be the borrower who places an amount and the interest rate he is willing to pay. The bidders are the lenders who would bid on any portion of the loan with the interest rate they are willing to accept. Once the auction is closed, the lenders offering the lowest interest rates win. Prosper.com then handles all the monthly payment and collection services.

Here comes all the money under the mattresses. Watch out, Citibank and Chase!

Tags: Uncategorized by frank
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