Monthly Archive for November, 2006

How to speed up WordPress

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 12/11/2006
in Blogging, Technology and WordPress
. 10 Comments

In my last post, I was wondering how to fix the issues people were having leaving comments on this site. Attempts to leave comments were timing out and the comments were not being posted.

Fortunately I had lots of great suggestions from readers on how to resolve the issues and I think it is now fixed (famous last words?).

The fix also seems to have had the knock-on effect of drastically speeding up the site - wohoo! A big thank you to everyone for your great suggestions.

The steps I took to resolve this were:

  • I turned off this theme’s Ajaxy live commenting
  • I cleared my moderation list and my blacklist
  • I updated Akismet to the latest version (1.2.1)
  • I activated WordPress’ object cache by adding 
    define('ENABLE_CACHE', true);

    after the 

    define WPLANG;

    line in wp-config.php

Of those changes, the last one (suggested by James (aka MacManX)) appeared to have the most dramatic positive effect. The site is now running way faster and comments seem to be posting successfully.

This site averages around 1750 unique visitors a day according to Awstats and about 3-4 times that according to Webalizer (Awstats strips out visits from robots/spiders/bots, etc.) so I am guessing that the comments were timing out because the site/server were under pressure.

Turning on the WordPress object cache took the pressure off and is now letting the comments through.

Sincere apologies to anyone who had problems recently leaving a comment on this site - hopefully it won’t happen again.

Commenting problems on this site

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 10/11/2006
in Blogging, Technology and WordPress
. 23 Comments

I have had several reports from people who have had issues trying to leave comments on this site and it concerns me greatly. Conor made six attempts to leave a comment this afternoon (fair dues to his persistence)

I initially thought it had to do with the number of comments in my Akismet queue but I have been deleting that regularly recently.

Some commenters have speculated that it is due to a lack of memory on my hosting company’s server.

The managing director of my hosting company responded to that comment saying that:

A lot of the plugins and anti-spam measures can slow down comments etc, considerably, as each and every request not only involves several SQL queries but a number of DNS lookups and other processes.

That’s all well and good but the only anti-spam plugin I have on the site is the default Akismet plugin which ships with WordPress so it isn’t that.

Anyone any ideas where the problem might lie? WordPress (I recently upgraded to 2.0.5)? My hosting company? Somewhere else?

If you have problems commenting here, please email me at tom@tomrafteryit.net

Do startups use Open Source?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 10/11/2006
in Technology
. 26 Comments

I was very much of the impression that startups these days, because they want to keep spending to a minimum, would be more likely to use Open Source tools to develop their applications. The likes of MySQL instead of Microsoft SQL Server, for instance.

This view was re-inforced by an interview I did with Salim Ismail for the it@cork pre-conference podcast series where he said all his startups used open source software.

However, after a chat with Microsoft’s Rob Burke on his blog, now I’m not so sure!

In my comment, I said Microsoft’s SQL Server should support other platforms and in this way, startups would be more likely to use it (i.e. if they didn’t have to splash out for a Windows license). Rob’s answer surprised me though, he said:

Our group at Microsoft Ireland can, quite literally, not adequately keep up with the demand we get from local startups (and larger ISVs) who see the value of the platform for the data tier and want to find the best on-ramp. You may have noticed - we’re hiring two more evangelists! :)

So startups in Ireland are choosing Microsoft SQL Server in droves? Why? The latest version of MySQL has stored procedures, triggers and views. It is platform independent, has a very strong support community and runs some of the better known sites on the web like Craigs List, Del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr, and Wikipedia, to name but a few.

If you chose SQL Server, you are locked into the Windows platform and although there are free versions of SQL Server to start out with, a fully licenced version to run a web site will cost you tens of thousands of Euros/dollars.

Why would any startup choose SQL Server? What am I missing?

Plaxo - good idea, poorly executed?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 10/11/2006
in Web 2.0
. 8 Comments

I have a Plaxo account. I set it up last year to try it out. It seemed like a good idea, an online address book where I could store all my contacts info and have those data available whereever I had an Internet connection.

The reality though is a little different.

When I set up my account I followed the instructions for importing my contact info from my Mac Address Book. The import failed. I tried again several months later. Same result. I didn’t try any more after that.

A contacts db with no contact data is useless and I wasn’t about to invest time in manually entering the hundreds of contacts I have into Plaxo one by one.

I get the occasional email from Plaxo telling me that someone else has added my details to Plaxo and that I can now add their details to my account. I worry about the amount of emails Plaxo sends out - it must get annoying for some people to be constantly receiving update requests.

I received such an email this morning so I logged into Plaxo for the first time in months only to be amazed at how slow it now runs. It was like swimming through treacle!

It is a shame really - I like the idea but the execution, in this case is very poor.

Arguments against business blogging?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 9/11/2006
in Blogging, Business blogging and Technology
. 4 Comments

A couple of commenters on a recent post raised issues I hear time and again when I discuss the advantages of blogs for businesses:

  1. Blogging has a poor perception
  2. Blogging takes too much time
  3. Blogging allows people to make negative comments on your site

Let’s deal with each of these points:

1. Blogging has a poor perception
Unfortunately this is still very much the case. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard variations on the “Blogging is something done by lonely teenagers in their bedroom…” line.

The fact of the matter is that, yes, blogging is something done by lonely teenagers in their bedrooms. Then again, phone calls are also done by lonely teenagers in their bedroom, that doesn’t take from the fact that the phone is a fabulous communications tool.

Similarly, a blog is one of the most effective communications tools yet created. Blogs are now used as part of the communications toolset internally and/or externally by many of the Fortune 500 companies.

2. Blogging takes too much time
This one is harder to refute. Yes, blogging does take a significant amount of time.

Having said that, Jonathan Schwartz, President and CEO of Sun Microsystems blogs regularly. Sun is a fortune 500 company. If the President and CEO of a Fortune 500 company can find time to blog, so can you.

But wait, Sun is a technology company, you say, he has a greater need to blog. Rubbish!

Look then at Michel-Edouard Leclerc. Who? Michel is CEO of the Leclerc distribution group in France, a multi-billion euro company with 85,000 employees. Leclerc finds time to blog regularly.

Look at Margot Wallstrom, vice president of the European Commission who also finds time to blog regularly.

Look at Mark Cuban, an American entrepreneur and billionaire. Cuban is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, an NBA basketball team; and Chairman of HDNet, an HDTV cable network. Mark is a regular blogger.

In fact here is a list of other high profile CEO bloggers - and the number is growing daily.

3. Blogging allows people to make negative comments on your site
Yes it does, and this is a good thing!

If people are going to say something bad about your company/product/service, they will say it whether you have a blog or not. However, if they say it on your blog, you get to see it immediately and you get to respond to it quickly.

If your blog has built up a readership, there is a strong chance that one of your readers will jump in and answer on your behalf. This looks even better, especially if the person leaving the negative comment was incorrect in their assertion or was trolling.

On the other hand, if the person leaving the negative comment is correct in what they say, you get a chance to shine with respect to your customer service. You respond by thanking them for their feedback and making you aware of this shortcoming on the part of your product/service (if you were previously unaware of it, then you have just received very valuable market research).

You could ask the commenter if they would like to be involved in the issue resolution process because they obviously have something valuable to contribute.

Suddenly, you have turned a negative situation around into a positive one.

A former boss of mine used to say that a customer who had a complaint which was handled well was going to be a far more loyal customer than one who never had any complaint.

Negative comments are great. They give you free market research on your products, they give you a chance to shine as a customer champion and by publishing them on your site, you are showing that you are fully transparent and that you can embrace criticism.

What other arguments are there against business blogging?

Microsoft Vista finished

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 9/11/2006
in Microsoft
. 3 Comments

With the two simple words “It’s time“, posted on the Windows Vista blog, Jim Allchin announced to the world yesterday that Windows Vista has been released to manufacturing.

Via Rob (well done Rob, you beat Scoble to the post by 48 minutes!).

Vista is Microsoft’s new operating system, replacing Windows XP

The official Microsoft press release is here.

Released to mnufacturing means that the code has been finalised and sent to be pressed on DVDs for subsequent distribution and sale.

When will you be able to get your hands on it? Well, according to Sven Hallauer, release manager and director of program management at Microsoft:

Microsoft is hosting a series of events around the world on November 30 to officially recognize business availability of the 2007 Microsoft Office system, Exchange Server 2007 and Windows Vista, and we announced today that the worldwide general availability launch is January 30, 2007. So yes, everything is on track and we’re very excited about it.

The next question is will your PC or laptop be able to run Vista or will you need to upgrade your hardware to run it?

According to Microsoft, a the minimum spec to run Vista is:

  • A modern processor (at least 800MHz).
  • 512 MB of system memory.
  • A graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable.

However, to be able to benefit from the new interface, your computer will need to be a Windows Vista Premium Ready PC which includes at least:

  • 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor1.
  • 1 GB of system memory.
  • Support for DirectX 9 graphics with a WDDM driver, 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum)2, Pixel Shader 2.0 and 32 bits per pixel.
  • 40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space.
  • DVD-ROM Drive3.
  • Audio output capability.
  • Internet access capability.

The hardware manufacturers are rubbing their hands with glee!

There is a lot of talk about this new operating system because it took so long to come this far. I’m wondering if Microsoft, after six years writing an operating system, finally managed to produce an operating system which is secure!

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