Web Development

Why is my database slow?

Not part of my Don’t Assume series, but when a client states “Why is my database slow””, you need to determine if indeed the database is slow. Some simple tools come to the rescue here, one is Firebug .

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Some Drupal observations

I had the opportunity to review a client’s production Drupal installation recently. This is a new site and traffic is just starting to pick up. Drupal is a popular LAMP stack open source CMS system using the MySQL Database.

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Javascript Helpers

Combined with my old favorites of Dynamic Drive , DHTML Goodies and Brain Jar , I’ve added the following to my list of Javascript sources. Mochikit JQuery

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Improving your web site compatibility with browsers

Every website page content uses two basic elements, HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) . Each of these has various standards, HTML has versions such as 3.2, 4.

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Brand identity with undesirable domain names

Choosing a domain name for your brand identity is the start. Protecting your domain name by registering for example .net, .org, and the many more extensions is one step in brand identity.

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To www or not www

Domain names historically have been www.example.com , written also with the protocol prefix http://www.example.com , but in reality www. is optional, only example.com is actually needed. www. is technically a sub-domain and sub-domains incur a small penalty in search engine optimization.

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An intestesting approach to free hosting

I came across the OStatic Free hosting service that provide Solaris + Glassfish (Java Container) + MySQL. They offer “Now you can get free Web hosting on Cloud Computing environment free of charge for up to 12 months.

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Project Darkstar

It may sound like either a astronomical research project or a Star Wars spin- off, but Project Darkstar is an open source infrastructure from Sun Microsystems that states “simplify the development and operation of massively scalable online games, virtual worlds, and social networking applications.

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Installing Buildbot

BuildBot is a system to automate the compile/test cycle required by most software projects to validate code changes. Here is my environment. $ uname -a Linux app.example.com 2.6.18-53.el5 #1 SMP Mon Nov 12 02:14:55 EST 2007 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux $ python Python 2.

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Getting Started with Simple DB

With my continued investigation of evaluating alternative data management with cloud computing options, I’m now evaluating Amazon Simple DB . Still in restricted beta, it helps to have a friend on the inside.

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Generating Word Clouds

I came across a wicked cool tool at wondle.net . I wanted to create a word cloud for the back of a business card, now I know how. <img src=“http://wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/05557/Ronald_Bradford_About_2"style=“padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd” />

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Setting up on EC2

Thanks to my friend Dustin, and his EC2 demo using Elasticfox Firefox Extension for Amazon EC2 I got an EC2 image setup. With other references Link 1 ,Link 2 ,Link 3 I was also able to create my own AMI.

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Working with Google App Engine

Yesterday I took a more serious look at Google App Engine , I got a developer account some weeks ago. After going though the getting started demo some time ago, I chose an idea for a FaceBook Application and started in true eXtreme Programming (XP) style (i.

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Trying out Google App Engine

I got my registration for Google App Engine this morning after being Waitlisted previously . Between flying for about 15 hrs tomorrow and then the 2008 MySQL Conference & Expo where I’m presenting and running an Exhibitors booth, fat chance I’ll get to look into this much over the next week.

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