Posted on July 2, 2009 by Andy Bailey
What this cliché expression doesn’t add is “if you haven’t got a lifejacket, you learn to make one fast or drown”
Oh the fun of metaphoric rainy days. This week just about everything to do with databases, servers, operating systems and hard disks went a bit squirly. Luckily, it all being digital stuff, I wasn’t prone to panic 
This is what I learned by fighting digital fires all frickin week.
- 1GB of RAM isn’t really enough for a million hits plus website if there are tens of thousands of complex mysql statements happening every day.
- Ubuntu can crash too.
- Linux may be more powerful but that just means the crashes are even more spectacular.
- UKFast have really awesome tech support who can answer your call in two rings and be all geeky with your server and do fantastic things while they talk to you on the phone like you called to chat about the weather.
- Crisis makes you code better.
- An external hard drive isn’t a ’safe’ place to store important data if you let other people use it to “just copy some mp3’s”
- Having another partition for your my documents folder is a really really good idea.
- Life without tweetdeck on my work pc is a bit pants
- Tweetdeck on Ubuntu is also a bit pants when you can’t unlock your default keyring
- It feels like a genius stroke to send a copy of my menu.lst from /boot/grub/ to my gmail address
- Blogging about it makes it better.
- Coding stuff because you need it, makes it worth more when it works.
- If I didn’t have my missus to ground me, I would have stabbed at least 3 people this week. seriously, with a spoon! (because it hurts more)
- It’s bloody hot in summer when you can’t go out.
What have you learned this week?
Filed under: News | Tagged: crisis, error 15 file not found, menu.lst, tweetdeck, ubuntu | No Comments »
Posted on June 24, 2009 by Andy Bailey
Support Tickets
I did some pretty fancy tweaking of code today to see if I can replace the support tickets system on ComLuv, the system at the moment isn’t bad but the last support ticket management software I used was far superior and allowed me to reply to closed tickets and create canned responses.
It will need some more work to integrate it into the dashboard of the site but I’m pretty confident I can do it.
Theme
I feel the need to tweak themes too, I found an old mockup image on my hard drive that I had for a client that never took up the job and I contacted someone about converting it to a WP theme. I love how it looks and I’d really like to have the format for ComLuv so I can start on tutorials and other features.
That’s not to say the current one isn’t great, it’s just that I’m all for “get it done” then “make it work” and then “make it pretty” and then “do it all again until I have what I want.
Newsletter
I had a bit of a nightmare with my newsletter software taking up too much resources while being on the same server as ComLuv so I took steps to transfer it to another server and use the ComLuv SMTP connection to do all the sending. Hopefully this will fix any issues I was seeing..
Tutorials & Videos
I have the new pc set up with a screen recorder and I have a list of videos that I’d like to produce for tutorials on the ComLuv site. I tested it out and my quad core monster can handle the capture on a widescreen so I can do HD videos and host them on Vimeo
Remote Images & Scripts
I have done some serious optimization on the blogger version of CommentLuv so that now there are very few calls to the ComLuv server for images and scripts. This one thing should dramatically decrease the server load during busy times.
Work
And now I have to tweak the system in the shop. The tweaking never ends!
Filed under: Blog News, PHP, Social Networking, Wordpress | Tagged: blogger, Code, comluv, commentluv, PHP, psd, support, takeaway, themes, tweak | 1 Comment »
Posted on June 21, 2009 by Andy Bailey
I usually spend the first part of Sunday doing the weekly books for the takeaway, it takes up most of the morning to go through each days takings and tot it up in an accounts package and check the figures off the parallel sheet. It’s a good system and helps me to know exactly where any errors have happened.
Today though, I did my usual shower, shave, coco-pops and coffee and started fiddling with some bits of the site, which took me off on many tangents of code and template glory until I had a fully moved fiddyp.co.uk on the ComLuv network and rebranded parts of the whole network to be in line with the CommentLuv feel.
6 hours I was at it! I really must get a bumper sticker ..
“WPMu admins can be at it all night”
But really, I’m having so.much.fun!
It Grows!
Looks like the network is growing rapidly and the latest version of CommentLuv hasn’t had a support ticket about a bug for the last 12,000 downloads. Can I has stable?
So far, the new API has given some luv to more than 50k comments on blogs around the world and has attracted more than 200 new blogs and hundreds more registered users. The new-started-only-last-week database has already recorded approximately 20k unique websites (those that have a feed), processed 4k info page displays and recorded over 9k clicks from users on peoples last blog/tweet/digg links.
happy boy!
It’s just starting..
There’s still a huge amount for me to do with regards to the site like adding advertising options, custom themes, editable css files, affiliate payments for selling adverts, custom text link ads and much much more. Stick around, you might see something you’d like to take advantage of. I have big plans for this network, I hope you can be part of the fun too.
Let me know if you’d like to see anything in particular on the site or in the plugin..
Filed under: Blog News, Social Networking, Wordpress | Tagged: blogs, comluv, commentluv, growth, plugin | 1 Comment »
Posted on June 19, 2009 by Andy Bailey
Let me tell you something, there is nothing more prone to getting me anxious than noticing or being notified of an error on a CommentLuv release when I’m at work and it’s busy. NOTHING!
Shear panic sets in,
- “what about all the people who just downloaded it?”
- “oh dear, I have to send out ANOTHER email to the members, how many sweary replies will I get from people that can’t find the unsubscribe link that’s just below the bit that says “unsubscribe here”?”
- “what new language will I have to learn to overcome this problem?”
Instant research, google refusing to display. FTP details lost again. customers constantly ringing in orders.
take a moment. feel acid build in belly.
read the error and use Yahoo (pah!) to search for an answer.
Minutes later, realize that it’s a Wordpress bug… “phew!, not my code!” .. moments later … “oh shit, how will I fix this then?” .. hours of messing up peoples change and forgetting to save an order while thinking about all the above..
.. minutes after rushing the close-up at work … “I’ll just rewrite the htmlspecialchars_decode function and use that instead” ..
head.scratches
expletives.shouted
Solution tested on php4 blog. Works. Send out a couple to those who are experiencing the error.
wait with baited breath for them to reply that it works before I can update the repository.
they do! in email and on twitter. good on ya @mitch_m!
CommentLuv v2.7.61 gets uploaded to the repository.
wait with trembling trembles to see if the jamungous amount of people that have to update again will do it and not get in a fuss and disable it instead.
oh gosh. writing software for free is fun!
Filed under: Blog News | 7 Comments »
Posted on June 11, 2009 by Andy Bailey
enough with the twitter updates please mr. twittertools! sorry about that, who really needs to see twitter updates? (although i did notice google indexing more tweets and sending me alerts about them)
anyhoo, I am fiddling with some code right now for the Blogger / JS-kit version of new CommentLuv and will hopefully have that up ready for the weekend quiet time. I’ll put up some easy install instructions too so it should be case of click a button and the code gets installed to your blogger dashboard.
I’m hosting the script files myself on my ukfast server, the last server (when it stayed up) managed to serve those files ok so I think it should be fine for the switch on with this new super dedicated and supported server. If it gets too much, then I can look at using Amazons’ S3 service to serve everything. I researched on their service before and it seems to be fairly inexpensive to do. Although now, I’m paying for the server so I might as well use its resources. If things get so big that it needs a massive upgrade then that can be dealt with at the time. (Dragons Den? lol)
Please let me know about any errors you’re experiencing or glitches with the CommentLuv API, site or plugin by submitting a support ticket at The ComLuv Network
I still can’t believe how many hits and links come through to my sites from this plugin, last night there were over 1300 downloads of the plugin from the wordpress repository! and more than 1500 comments processed by the API.
Talking of the API, it is being updated before the weekend so I hope you can be patient, I am but one man and have only 2 coder peeps to pester/hassle/question/demand/poke/tweet about the server and API. And to top it off, I work full time in a takeaway (Fired Wok Chinese Takeaway and Delivery in Lancaster, Lancashire - tasty food chop chop!) which I luv. (seriously, I luv that job)
Filed under: Blog News, Blog Tools, PHP | 2 Comments »
Posted on June 10, 2009 by Andy Bailey
Posted on June 9, 2009 by Andy Bailey
Posted on June 8, 2009 by Andy Bailey
Posted on June 7, 2009 by Andy Bailey
Posted on June 6, 2009 by Andy Bailey
I’ve just created the new readme file to go with the plugin and intend to release it to the public on Monday!
This version does things a little differently like adding a little bit of data along with the link to the comment. The data is there to aid in accurate stats for when a comment gets deleted by the admin or if a visitor clicks on the link or views the info box.
It’s been working nicely over at ComLuv on the sub blogs with only a few minor style tweaks to get it working on all the themes I have over there, I’m going through the last bits of tweaking while it’s on here so I can make sure it plays nice with a single user blog too.
You can see it working by commenting on this post, if you’re already a commentluv member then it should be able to bring back your posts ok and if you’ve started a blog at ComLuv then you’ll be able to visit the site and add more sources to your returned posts by visiting the member page.
Don’t worry about any strangeness happening here over the weekend with comments, it’s just me fiddling with the code!
Filed under: Blog News, PHP | 12 Comments »