Tech Blog

I have been using Biznik for a while and have been pleased with their features and the community they have built. Changes they have made to the site and services have been well thought out and fair to the users until the latest one that took away the ability to see who has viewed your profile. It had been a feature that was available to all members, even the basic free membership since day one, but they decided to take it away in order to drive basic members to upgrade to a paid membership. It stirred up some criticism with many different viewpoints ranging from features should never be taken away to businesses can change features offered anytime in order to be profitable. One interesting and important point was that taking away a feature that helps both paying and non-paying members connect is always a bad thing as it takes away from the building of a community. Since the community is the value brought forth by Biznik, they are in fact lowering their value proposition to all members by taking this feature away. I am sure it was a difficult decision for them as they must try to increase revenue to keep afloat but in doing so, might hinder their value hence stifling growth. A rough estimate of their current annual revenue is $77,000. Certainly just squeaking by with three people working and technology costs.

Tags: Tech Companies, web startup // Add Comment »

Mystery solved.  One of our servers became very sluggish in responding to requests.  When I tested the server by pinging continuously, request timed out for about 10% of the pings.  It turned out that the NIC was malfunctioning.  Replaced the ethernet card and all is well again.

Tags: hardware // Add Comment »

The error comes up when trying to use file based session storage instead of database. Apparently, the configuration for what directory to store the session is not in the configuration files but in the database table “configuration”.

If you upgrade your php to version 5.2.1, the database session storage breaks. Therefore, I had to switch to file system based storage. But the catch was that I no longer could log into admin as the session could not start. The configuration.php files did not have this constant.

The way to fix this is to log into your database and update the session directory record.

“UPDATE configuration SET configuration_value=’/your/new/direcotory/’ WHERE configuration_title=’session directory’;”

System Specs:
php.5.2.1
zencart 1.3.5
apache 1.3.37
MySQL 5.0.45

Tags: E-commerce, Open Source, admin // Add Comment »

Using the SqlMembershipProvider, you may encounter the error message, “The password provided is invalid. Please enter a valid password value. “, which is not very clear as to the exact problem. Apparently, the default setting in the .net membership configuration requires a password with a minimum of eight character and at least one non alpha numeric character such as “!@#$%^&*()”.

Tags: .net, Coding, asp.net // Add Comment »

Microsoft just made a bid for Yahoo for 46 Billion with the goal to compete against Google for online ad revenue.  It does make sense that if Microsoft wants to compete, they need something much more robust than MSN.  However, I wonder if they could properly integrate an internet company like Yahoo into the Microsoft culture.  Internet businesses need to remain nimble in order to attend to ever changing end user needs.  That is what Google does that makes it so competitive.  On the flip side, we all know how long it takes Microsoft to release software.  An interview of an ex-employee of Microsoft who moved over to Google stated that while at Microsoft, he worked on code that would not be released in a piece of software for ten years.  In comparison, at Google he would write code that would be immediately posted on the Google Labs section of their website and within 24 hours, thousands of users have downloaded and used.

It is not to say that Microsoft is incapable of running Yahoo in the high pace internet manner, but is a matter of will they.  I guess we are a ways away from knowing as Yahoo has not even responded to today’s unsolicited offer.

Tags: Tech Companies // Add Comment »

It has been a very hated tactic used by some spamming sites that register misspelling of well known sites in order to trap the unsuspecting surfers. At one point, if you were looking for the president of the United States and typed “whitehouse.com”, you would see a different Bush, as the domain is a porn site. Same as domain names like nasa.com, yahoe.com, and on and on…

However, only spammy or porn sites would use such a tactic, right? Unfortunately, that is no longer true. I just came across netflicx.com when I really wanted to go to netflix.com and I was brought to… guess what, Blockbuster.com. Blockbuster decided instead of building a better online video rental site, they would join the ranks of spam and porn sites by misleading people. Hmm, great business plan.

I wonder if there are other examples of this type of activity in the corporate world. If I find anymore, I will be sure to post them.

Tags: domains, spam // Add Comment »

Much headache to get this to work. The following format will allow dynamic url with multiple variables in the query string in a itemtemplate.

<asp:HyperLink ID=”HyperLink1″ runat=”server”
Text=”Link Text”
Target=”_blank”
NavigateUrl=’<%# “~/mypage.aspx?var1=”+ Eval(”Var1″) + “&var2=” + Eval(”var2″)%>’>
</asp:HyperLink>

NOTE: Make sure any literal between <%# and %> uses double quotes NOT single quotes.

Other methods for handling dynamic NavigateUrl

Tags: Coding, asp.net // Add Comment »

Everybody likes fresh items. We look for fresh food, fresh air, fresh baked good, etc. So why would be go to a website that does not have fresh content? The answer is that we don’t. More importantly Google, Yahoo, and MSN do not like stale content either. They will crawl the website less often. They will rank the website lower or not at all.

Therefore, it is very important to have new content all the time. Some websites are built very beautifully with sharp designs and animation. These sites are great to look at, but generally are not very dynamic in content. These sites are static and stale. In order to have new content for a website, the website owner needs to be able to add new content regularly. A content management system (CMS) is what is needed to facilitate this requirement. CMS software have administrative portal for content providers to add content. Some can even be updated via email such as Wordpress, a blogging software. This type of software allows a writer to type in content as if they were using Microsoft Word and will not need to change any HTML code just to update content.

So, please take a look at your business website and ask yourself if it is fresh or stale and start adding content if you have not recently.

Tags: Internet Marketing, Search Engine, Website Content // Add Comment »

Clients are always trying to determine if they should host their own site in house or using an ISP. While in the past I would definitely suggest using an ISP, it is not so cut and dry as the cost of servers and bandwidth have decreased dramatically. These days, I can build a server that is super fast for around $1,000. Getting a DSL line with static IP addresses cost around $75 per month. It allows for ease of system upgrade and for more advanced integration into business systems through programming. While there is the down side of power backup issues and hardware failures to contend with, it is still a viable option if the website is not a mission critical application.

Tags: System, hosting, server // Add Comment »

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 // Add Comment »