Web Optimizer Plugin [Review]

Friday, November 6th, 2009

Ever since my Wordpress Optimizations ā€“ YSlow, PHP Speedy, DB Cache, Hyper Cache, and CSS Sprites post six months ago, Iā€™ve been keeping it pretty simple on the blog.

Not so many adjustments, not constantly trying out new plugins, but hereā€™s an update:

  • DB Cache: Hasnā€™t been updated since January, created some conflicts where I couldnā€™t edit a page. To edit a post (even small things like tags), Iā€™d have to turn off DB Cache, make the changes, and then turn it back on. I decided turn it off completely.
  • PHP Speedy: Hasnā€™t been updated since February. It caused some problems for me, for which I went on the authorā€™s blog to ask for some ideas on how to fix it, but I was ignored, and the comment was deleted. It wasnā€™t perfect for me, but I ran it up until a couple of days ago when I found Web Optimizer (covered later in this post).
  • cSprites (CSS Sprites): Last updated in June, but doesnā€™t work with caching plugins. Otherwise it was fine, but thatā€™s a big issue for most. I donā€™t run this either. Plugin author is nice though and does reply to comments.
  • Hyper Cache: This I use. In fact, I donated to the author, and he updates the plugin constantly. Not sure what the updates are but updates are usually a good sign.

Web Optimizer: Like I just mentioned above, Iā€™ve replaced with PHP Speedy with Web Optimizer. Web Optimizer does all the things that PHP Speedy does, but also quite a few additional things as well. I donā€™t think PHP Speedyā€™s GZIP ever worked right for me, or it had caused some other slowdowns in the process, but Web Optimizerā€™s seem legit. My YSlow scores are quite good, and the blog loading speed seems good (but thatā€™s hard for me to really measure because Iā€™m in Vietnam trying to access Bluehost, this siteā€™s US host). Web Optimizer even suggests using it with Hyper Cache.

I sent a bug in two days ago to the developers regarding Web Optimizer breaking the Sociable plugin, and I got a report it was fixed for the next version today!

Strangely, the plugin gets average review scores on its Wordpress plugin page, but I canā€™t see why itā€™s getting rated so low, even after reading about peopleā€™s issues and feedback in the forums. There are two versions of the plugin, a free version, and a $99 full one. See below for the comparison chart:

Christmas011

While $99 is a hefty charge in some ways, if the other benefits are as advertised, and you have a fairly well trafficked blog, Iā€™d suggest spending the $99 and getting it. Otherwise, you can always check out the free version (itā€™s not a trial version, itā€™s a fully operating version with less features) and see how you like it. Iā€™ve attached screenshots of my performance on various tests with Web Optimizer, free version, at the bottom of this article. In all, the plugin looks good, and Iā€™m a big fan so far- tons of features, support, and jeez, tons of documentation.

Widget Cache: Iā€™ve also been using Widget Cache, but Iā€™m not sure how good it really is. I canā€™t tell what itā€™s caching, but most reviews of it are quite positive so Iā€™m sticking with it until I hear otherwise or run into problems. I do see some comments that suggest it doesnā€™t work in the newest versions of Wordpress, 2.83+, however.

Also, from the Wordpress Extend page, thereā€™s:

How to know it works?

You can have a look at the source of the web page, and search 

<!--WP Widget Cache End -->

and I donā€™t see that in my source, so maybe that explains why I canā€™t tell.

 

My tests with Web Optimizer:

YSlow:

 Web Optimizer (1)

Web Optimizer (2)

Is My Blog Working:

Web Optimizer (4)

IE8 Performance:

Web Optimizer (6)

IE7 Performance: (oddly enoughIE7 loads faster than IE8 on the initial load)

Web Optimizer (5)

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06.11.2009 Blog 4 Comments

Is WordPress A Thankless Community? | Weblog Tools Collection

Saturday, July 11th, 2009
donate

Image by Mindful One via Flickr

Iā€™ve been thinking about doing this for a while, donating to plugin authors around the same time when I changed my blog theme, but I ended up not doing it. Who isnā€™t lazy about spending money when they arenā€™t forced to? It reminds me a little of Winamp. I wanted to donate to them for so long, but when I finally decided to, theyā€™d been bought by AOL, and didnā€™t need my money anymore.

Seeing this article this morning finally got me going for Wordpress, and I decided to leave a ā€œthank youā€ comment, wherever possible, or donate to the plugins Iā€™m using right now. Ended up donating to 6 authors, and Iā€™d definitely like to donate to more in the future, perhaps with Kiva certificates or something.

I encourage others to do the same, even if itā€™s just a little- donate, say thank you, or contribute your own code.

Is WordPress A Thankless Community?

Jeff Chandler on July 10th, 2009

Over the past few weeks, Iā€™ve noticed a disturbing trend. Many of the plugin authors I have spoken with throughout the community tell me that very rarely do they ever get a donation let alone a Thank You for releasing their work to the public. Based on the plugin authors feedback, end users demand more features, demand better support, and in the end, have this feeling of entitlement even if the plugin is available without a price tag. The reality is, that for a freely available plugin, youā€™re not entitled to anything. I donā€™t know about you, but I certainly would not like to be part of a community that is known as thankless.

Before I list a few ways of curbing this attitude, I must say that not EVERYONE in the community acts in the ways I described above. I know many of us have donated to plugin authors, have written reviews of plugins to give them exposure, have said thank you, etc. This post is not geared towards you but towards those who seemingly want to have their cake and eat it too.

Saying Thanks – I believe saying thank you is underrated these days. Saying thanks can go a long way in making a plugin author feel good about themselves for their contribution to the community.

Donate – Itā€™s pretty clear to me by now through asking plugin authors and other posts on the subject that there is no way to pay the bills through donations alone. However, donations are often seen as one part of the income generating strategy so whatever comes through is seen as a benefit. Iā€™ve donated over $100.00 so far in my time spent with WordPress which I know is small compared to what these plugins have enabled my sites to achieve but Iā€™m astonished at the amount of people who have not donated any cash at all.

Exposure – What plugin author does not like exposure? This can be done any number of ways such as a written review, a podcast dedicated to plugins, links to new plugin releases as WeblogToolsCollection.com is known for and overall, just spreading the word about the plugins you enjoy using.

Contribute Back – To support a plugin authors initial contribution to the community, we as end users can return the favor by beta testing new versions, submitting bug reports, helping out with translations, and helping to provide support.

Wrapping Up:

At this stage of the game, I think itā€™s unfair to provide a blanket statement covering the entire WordPress community as thankless. However, I know many plugin authors who are holding back from releasing their work to the community because they know they will be inundated with support, demands, etc, all for no price.

I think we sometimes have to sit back and remember that WordPress is a piece of great software but it doesnā€™t have every feature under the sun, that is where plugins come in. These plugins are generally patches, feature enhancements, or ways of providing functionality that are better than the core offering. Plugins are one of the thriving aspects of WordPress that bring people to the platform because if you canā€™t do something with WordPress, there is at least 1-3 plugins that will. I would really hate to see plugin authors jump ship from the platform simply because of the way the community treats them.

The WordPress platform and its end users have nothing to gain from having this happen so please, lets all do our part to show plugin authors the same love we show for WordPress.

*note* If you know of any other ways to help the situation, Iā€™m all ears.

Is WordPress A Thankless Community? | Weblog Tools Collection

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11.07.2009 Blog, Tech No Comments

More Wordpress Plugins to Live By

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

My Plugins Thereā€™s a fantastic number of plugins available for Wordpress. Itā€™s truly an amazing platform, and for the two years Iā€™ve been using the self-hosted version, thereā€™s been an incredible amount of support added, new (good) features that have been implemented, and a dizzying amount of customization plugins created. You can find the official directory for plugins here http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/.

Iā€™ve covered some of the speed plugins that I like few posts ago, and I realize everyone already knows and uses All in One SEO Pack (SEO Optimization), Akismet (comment spam) and Google XML Sitemaps, so here are 10 great plugins that you may not know about:

(Iā€™ve limited this to 10 so this post doesnā€™t get too out of hand, and in no particular order)

  1. WPtouch iPhone Theme: This plug-in makes your site optimized (readability) for the Apple iPhone, Apple iPod Touch, Google Android and Blackberry Storm. I donā€™t have any of those phones, so I canā€™t testify on how good it is, but I think itā€™s always nice to be able to reach an extended audience.
  2. MobilePress: Another useful plug-in to get your blog ready for mobile access.
  3. WP-PageNavi: Wordpress blogs by default show next and previous to go backwards and forwards in the blog. Change this so itā€™s paginated as you would see in a forum, like the below at the bottom of my blog home page.

    4. Page 1 of 94 1 2 3 4 5 Ā» … Last Ā»

  4. WP Security Scan: ā€œPerform security scan of WordPress installation.ā€ Yeah.
  5. Secure WordPress: Another good security-related plug-in to have. Remove common methods hackers use to analyze your Wordpress installation and find weaknesses that can be secured.
  6. Twitter Tools: Letā€™s you set up your Blog with Twitter. I use it to update Twitter every time I write a new blog post, but you can also use it to add a widget to show your newest updates, update Twitter from your blog, and post daily/weekly compilation posts of your Tweets during that time. (This plug-in is not being used for Twitter update in the upper right of my blog, however, that one is part of the Imagination theme.)
  7. Search Unleashed: You ever the search option (Ctrl-F) in Firefox 2 or 3, and you can highlight the search query on the page so you can find the text easier? Search Unleashed can do that for people who search directly on your blog automatically as well as for those who come to your blog after searching on Google.
  8. Photo Sidebar Widget: There are plenty of Flickr plugins for Wordpress, but not many Smugmug ones. This is the one I use to preview new content from my Smugmug account.
  9. Global Translator: As you can see below or in my right sidebar, you can translate my blog into different languages. Global Translator is a great plug-in in that it caches the translations so that when a user access them, they stay on your blog rather than be taken to a different website showing your site in a frame. This is also great for Search Engines because each new cached page in a different language is considered a real page and can be found by users searching in that language. To simplify what that means, imagine you write the blog post ā€œMore Wordpress Plugins to Live Byā€ in English. Thatā€™s one page youā€™ve written now indexed. Now, you enable 10 (in the plug-in settings, you can pick exactly which/how many languages you want to support. Iā€™ve picked the ten most common languages in the world in addition to SE Asian languages) translation languages in Global Translator. Through the plug-in, you will have effectively written 11 posts- the one in English, and the additional 10 in other languages. Users searching in their native language will find your post.

    10.  Global Translator

  10. Comment Relish: This emails users who leave a comment for you automatically. Think of it as a follow-up ā€œthank youā€ to those who comment. You can create a custom message to let users know how to subscribe to your blog or whatever else youā€™d like.

Iā€™ve talked about this before, but I really recommend Windows Live Writer for composing your blogs.Itā€™s like Microsoft Word for blogs- itā€™s easy to use, itā€™s free, and it has a lot of great features- spell check, drafts, image handling, blog preview within your theme, etc. I also recommend getting the Zemanta Plug-in for it- it will automatically find copyright-free photos for you to use in your new blog post, as well as suggest recent articles and links related to whatever youā€™re writing about in the post.

Download Links:

 

Enjoy!

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31.05.2009 Blog, Tech No Comments

Wordpress Optimizations – YSlow, PHP Speedy, DB Cache, Hyper Cache, and CSS Sprites

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

YSlowGrade Iā€™ve been researching and learning about speed optimizations for Wordpress for the last couple of months. Bluehost has always been slow for me in Vietnam, and while I didnā€™t think I could change that in the end (I am not so sure it is their fault really), why not try to do some enhancements?

In the end, after spending many hours reading and trying out different things, here are my suggestions. I wonā€™t go into too much detail on everything, if youā€™re hard core, youā€™ll be able to read up by yourself, but letā€™s assume you just want to do some quick and easy things to noticeably help your blog site out.

Thatā€™s what this guide is for.

First, look into installing Firebug and YSlow (the screenshot above is YSlow running for my site) for Firefix: Firebug and YSlow (you need Firebug in order to run YSlow) are Firefox extensions from Yahoo that helps you understand how your site is slow. Oftentimes, itā€™s not just purely the max download size of your site that causes slowdown, itā€™s how the files are processed by your browser- the best comparison I can think of, though not entirely accurate, is traffic on a freeway. Letā€™s say you have 100 cars. If you have 5 lanes, 20 cars per lane may not be so bad. But if you put all 100 cars into just one lane, there will be major slowdown. Using tools like YSlow can help you see if youā€™re really using all 5 lanes for your web site. When running YSlow, remember to choose ā€œSmall Site or Blogā€ under ā€œRulesets" in the upper middle area of the interface. YSlow (Why Slow?) will give you a numeric grade based on how well optimized your site is (I got 100%!). Again, it doesnā€™t guarantee that your site is fast, itā€™s more about finding big issues that you may be able to fix and YSlow has great documentation to explain what each of their scores mean.

Of course, how to actually improve the scores is the hard part, so letā€™s identify some ways that can help with the common problems identified by YSlow.

  1. PHP Speedy. PHP sites often use PHP Speedy in order to help quicken things, and guy who wrote it has done a Wordpress-specific version as well. Iā€™ve compared it to other plugins or sets of plugins that do similar things, but PHP Speedy seems to to the best choice. Be wary of running multiple plugins that do the same thing, as that could could slower speeds. PHP Speedy by default loads JavaScript files at the top of your CSS, but you can hack it so it will load at the bottom (your site will feel like itā€™s loading faster). You can also let Speedy gzip and minimy (basically makes your files smaller) your site for smaller downloading size, though you should let your server handle that if possible, like in your .htacess fileā€¦.
  2. Your .htaccess is another big way to not only make your site more secure but also improve its speed. If youā€™re not sure what this is, basically look for this file in your root directory. Here are some optimizations in mine, which include Zlib compression, .htaccess file protection from outside access, some basic DOS-attack prevention, cache optimization, and ETags settings. If you get any errors, you may want to check with your Hosting Service to make sure they support all the settings below; it took me a long time to figure out which compression settings would work on Bluehost. Just paste this in your root .htaccess file:

    # php_flag zlib.output_compression On

    # protect the htaccess file
    <files .htaccess>
    order allow,deny
    deny from all
    </files>

    # disable the server signature
    ServerSignature Off

    # limit file uploads to 10mb
    LimitRequestBody 10240000

    #ETAGS/CACHE

    FileETag MTime Size
    <ifmodule mod_expires.c>
      <filesmatch "\.(jpg|gif|png|css|js)$">
           ExpiresActive on
           ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 year"
       </filesmatch>
    </ifmodule>

    # disable directory browsing
    Options All -Indexes

  3. FastCGI: Ask your hosting service about it.
  4. cSprites: cSprites uses a technique called CSS Sprites to eliminate multiple loading of images. Letā€™s say you have 10 different images on your post. Instead of making the browser download 10 images (browser has to ask the server 10 times, back and forth), you can combine all those images into 1 larger image. The user canā€™t tell the difference in terms of the images, but on the system, itā€™s usually faster overall this way. One problem I noticed, however, is that it may not work with caching plugins wellā€¦, which I discuss next.
  5. Caching Plugins: Most people probably know about WP Super Cache. WP Super Cache is a super popular caching plugin, but Iā€™ve been using DB Cache and Hyper Cache. Some people, including me, have tried using both together, and like the results. I have been using both for a couple of months and I like what I see so far.YSlowStats Like I said though, cSprites isnā€™t quite 100% compatible with caching plugins yet, but the author has said heā€™s working on a version that will be.

So there you go. If you donā€™t know how to install plugins or have a friend who can help, then I suggest not tampering with anything as if something goes wrong, you wonā€™t know how to get the site back up.

As for I Spit Hot Fire, with these new changes you should hopefully feel that the site is fairly quick (especially if youā€™re from the US), but if you donā€™t let me know!

With the caching settings enabled in my .htaccess file, you should also notice that your browser downloads virtually nothing each time you come back to the site (see screenshot), really making things quick.

By the way, here are some sites that go into more detail about if your site code is validated (follows standards, is clean and causes no problems) and how fast your site really is:

Next: Iā€™ll tackle some common plugins I like a lot, including security tools.

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20.05.2009 Blog 25 Comments

My New Theme!

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

My new theme is finally done! You can see it all around you now, like the Matrix. ISHF May 2009I really liked my old theme and Iā€™d been using it for about 1.5 years before the change, but I had feedback Chung and [[Trench]] saying white text on black background wasnā€™t such an ideal reading environment. In this new theme, I still get my blackish (granite) background, well, I guess itā€™s still white font on a dark background.

But hopefully you like it, or Iā€™ll have to customize this theme, which is actually quite easy.

This current theme is Imagination by CSS Jockey, Mohi Aneja. Heā€™s basically built a layout which you can then customize in terms of colors to your heartā€™s content right from the Wordpress Admin, no CSS knowledge necessary. Well documented for idiots like me as well. He gives a number of color themes to the layout, so if you like a more blue theme, or more white theme, he already has it pre-built in.

Heā€™s simply done an amazing job, and the theme is free. 

Before deciding to go with this theme for good, I had hired Jai from http://www.blogohblog.com/ to finish out the Blamatic theme for me. Ahā€¦that didnā€™t work out. I liked Blamatic a ton, but just ended up loving Imagination before finding someone in Vietnam to finish Blamatic for me. Pat, Blamaticā€™s designer, did tell me that another developer is working to finish it soon, so thatā€™s another theme I recommend.

Some of the major differences between the new and old look are:

  • Versus the old three column theme, I think this theme feels simplified but more focused and still with a strong aesthetic.
  • This themeā€™s not fluid width, so if youā€™re on super high resolution, then youā€™re seeing the text take up a very small part of the screen.
  • Moving from two widget columns to one, I had to drop my Last.FM widget and reduce the number of pictures for my SmugMug Widget to 1. At first I wanted to show everything about me, widgets galore, but once I accepted the one widget column, I realize it helps me focus more.
  • Iā€™ve now added widgets for Most Recent Posts and Most Popular Posts and News From Vietnam, which is an RSS feed of Chao Vietnam on BlogSpot. Iā€™d rather show articles from Intellasia, but itā€™s banned on some ISPs in Vietnam, including mine. If you go to the Chao Vietnam, you start to question where these stories are coming from, but Iā€™ve looked up enough articles to know theyā€™re coming from real newspapers- donā€™t just the site on how it looks. Last weekend, I saw that a bunch of articles on the website were from the English version of Thanh Nien daily, so I think itā€™s fairly safe to read in the sense itā€™s not made up gossip garbage.
  • I really liked to show one blog at a time the way my last theme did. I donā€™t think it made so much sense to go with one again in the new one, but Iā€™ve limited the default view to latest 3 blogs rather than the 5 or even 10 other bloggers use. I donā€™t feel that the blog home page should be so long, and I also know the 30 people who come here each day arenā€™t reading this site like they would Kotaku. People are mostly coming here from searching and just reading a specific article.
  • New Favicon for ISpitHotFire Iā€™ve added a new favicon! If you see a star, you may need to hit Ctrl-F5 to refresh your cache, but you should see a smaller version of this half US and half Vietnamese flag. My old favicon was probably unrecognizable unless you knew my old dinosaur toy logo, so I wanted something a little more immediately understandable. I just took two pictures of the respective flags, cropped them in Powerpoint (thatā€™s right, I edit photos in Powerpoint), combined and resized them to square dimensions. I like it, itā€™s Vietnamese-American, and I hope no one else has done it yet.

In the change for a new theme, Iā€™ve been reading and researching a lot about Wordpress, including speed optimizations. Iā€™ll be posting about my experiences and lessons to share over the next week or so. Hopefully, you feel that the site is reasonably quick now, especially if youā€™re in Vietnam. Iā€™ve also decided to become more visible online, so I have some ideas on how to build a bigger audience for this site, even though I talk about nothing interesting or even focus on one particular subject. And Iā€™m not a hot girl.

But I believe and more on that later as well too.

Anyway, I hope you like the new look, and feel free to give your thoughts!

Andā€¦ hereā€™s one last look at the old theme:

ISHF March 2009

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12.05.2009 Blog, Tech 7 Comments

Avoid www.blogohblog.com for Theme Design Work [FAIL]

Saturday, April 18th, 2009
EPIC FAIL.

Image by locusolus via Flickr

(What a simple blog title Iā€™ve chosen today)

Unfortunately, I had a bad experience with BlogOhBlog recently, and its owner Jai Nischal Verma, and thatā€™s why my new theme is taking a bit longer than I was expecting. For now, Iā€™m using the Wordpress default, which is quite nice and error free.

The Story:

Originally, I was randomly checking out different themes for the site. I really liked the Blamatic theme, but it had a number of big errors, so I wanted to find someone who could help fix it. Stumbling upon BlogOhBlog.com, I contacted Jai Nischal Verma, who quoted me a price of $75 for my requirements. A few days later, I had some additional requirements, for which he then quoted me a new price of $100.

In the end, he finished perhaps less than half the work; it looked great on FireFox and Opera, but was trash on every version of Internet Explorer, which is still over 70% of the world.

Here was the last round of emails:

Jai,
Regarding the widgets issue in Firefox, the issue is not caused by the widgets. If you looked at the screenshot, you would understand what I mean.

My requirements were clear, and I was upfront about them. For example, the requirement clearly asks for fixing of all bugs and standards compliance. If there were any issues about how difficult the tasks were, you should have brought that up when you issued the quote, or perhaps even midway, when you realized the requirements were difficult. What happened, however, was that you turned in the work twice, saying you had completed all the tasks, but in fact had not. And then when I asked about the tasks that had not been completed, you said they were too difficult or impossible and that you were done with the project.

What you have left me, then, is an unusable theme. I am certainly not going to use a theme that only works for 20% of the world. Now, I will need to find someone else to start over on the project.

If you are not going to finish this project, then I expect my money back, as an incomplete project has absolutely no value to me. I have switched the theme for the site.

Sincerely,

Michael

From: Jai Nischal Verma
Sent: Sunday, April 12, 2009 10:20 PM
To: Me
Subject: Re: Custom Order from BOB

Hi,
I am sorry to say but the theme blamatic has too many issues. It uses sifr library to render your header titles in flash (try and right click on your header titles and you will know or your blog title) which can cause rendering errors in IE so I cannot really help it. According to my advise, you should just trash the theme or should have done it by now. Your choice.
I will not make any more changes as I have done enough fixing for $100. Plus you keep ranting about widgets issues. Dude, I am not responsible for fixing your widgets as you can install 100 other plugins and complain about their widgets.
Jai.

Right after I received his email, I noticed he had gone in my site (he had FPT and Admin access) and started deleting things from my site, (think about how scary that is), including his work, so I had to cancel his accounts.

I donā€™t doubt that Jai is a very skilled and intelligent guy- I tried to look up negative feedback on him before I contracted him, and nothing came up, so that had made me feel confident going with him originally. His website is nice and you can learn a lot about design and Wordpress from him. Overall, he seemed trustworthy. Unfortunately, at least for my situation, he was not. I paid him $35 of the $100 up front, with the rest due at completion.

The big issue was not so much that he didnā€™t complete the project, but that he lied about it. He twice said all the requirements (that he had accepted and were laid out for him clearly- he could have asked for more detail if they were not) had been completed, and I had to basically call him out and show examples of the errors still left. Am I supposed to believe that he didnā€™t know about the errors? That he didnā€™t know it was completely broken in IE, among numerous other errors and incomplete tasks, yet still asked for the full $100 both times?

When I called him out on the incomplete work, he started to say how X requirement was too difficult or Y requirement was creating the problems, that my ā€œunprofessionalismā€ was to blame, and he refused to do any more. Some of the things he did finish, were things I could have done myself (and have in other themes), but thatā€™s why I had asked for a quote on the full package of fixes, so I could let a professional do his magic and so I wouldnā€™t have to worry and spend my own time.

SIFR003

Incidentally, in the e-mail above, Jai blames the sIFR library for his inability to fix the theme, but sIFR themselves claim otherwise (see left for IE6+ compatibility): ā€œOf course sIFR degrades gracefully when used in an non-supported browser: the default HTML text will be shown."; ā€œsIFR is supported by the following browsers: IE6 and above.ā€

Perhaps after he started, he learned my requirements were too difficult for him, or he had underestimated them. He tried to lie about it and blame me instead of being upfront and saying, ā€œI made a mistake in the quotation, can we renegotiate this?ā€ or ā€œThis is causing some issues, can we do it this way so that I can make it fit your requirements? I would have listened and found a compromise with him.

But he didnā€™t. Now I have an unusable theme and lost time (anyone whoā€™s had to audit someone elseā€™s work knows how time consuming it is) and $35 in the process.

This really sucks and some other words not fit for this blog.

If Iā€™ve learned anything from working the last few years is that you have to be really careful when working on projects with outside partners, regardless if youā€™re the client or the contractor. Iā€™m really glad I only paid $35 up front. Normally, Iā€™m used to paying in full with Internet transactions, like on EBay, but I thought I should ask for a tiered payment just because I knew how projects can go. Trying to imagine if I had paid the full $100 and had this happen, I would have gone absolutely berserk.

Some people think that if you do some work, you should automatically get credit for it. For example, you ordered Pho at my restaurant, but I was out, so I decided to give you Bun Bo Hue without asking you and letting you know that I was out. I gave you something, it may not be what you ordered, but you got something. So now you should pay me the price of the Pho. Right?

No.

Avoid BlogOhBlog and Jai Nischal Verma.  He may be capable of doing good work, but as I learned unfortunately, itā€™s a gamble to see if he will take responsibility for his work commitment.

If youā€™re considering him and youā€™d like to learn more about what happened, feel free to comment or ask me. Iā€™m more than happy to forward the email thread and let you judge for yourself.

Time for me to look for another coder.

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18.04.2009 Blog, Tech 9 Comments

April Fool’s FAIL

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

Fail002

Iā€™m submitting this to Fail, but I doubt itā€™s anywhere near great enough to make it.

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03.04.2009 Blog, Random, Tech No Comments

My Site, Now in Vietnamese!

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

image

I really like this site. After all, Iā€™m spending money on it, and only a few people occasionally read it, so it must have some value to me. Wordpress is really fantastic, and if I were in the US, it would be so much better (because of how slow my US-based host is from here).

Now, with the newest version of the Global Translator plugin for WP, the developers have just included Vietnamese as one of the translations (you can click on the flag above, or click http://www.ispithotfire.com/vi/)

I havenā€™t gone through it super in detail, but from the examples I saw, it looks pretty good. As in I, with my lousy Vietnamese, could read the translation of my English and understand what I was sayingā€¦.in the translated Vietnamese!

So I could basically learn Vietnameseā€¦.from myself.

This also means more Vietnamese people can reach this blog, which could be troublesome in the future (note to self: donā€™t talk trash about Vietnam anymore)

PS. I just noticed that ā€œHomeā€ as in ā€œHome Pageā€ gets translated as ā€œFamilyā€. So your home really is your family.

I learn something every day!

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28.10.2008 Blog, Tech, Vietnam No Comments

Windows Live Writer is a Godsend [Review]

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

International website connections from Vietnam can be very slow. That means that say you want to browse YouTube from Hanoi, the connection is much slower than if you were to connect to Clip.vn or Cyworld Studio. Itā€™s not just because of distance, itā€™s more of that Vietnam only has 1 undersea cable connecting to outside of Vietnam. There used to be two, but pirates stole the other cable due to a snafu in Vietnamese politics early in 2007.

That said, this WordPress blog is hosted on Bluehost, a US provider. Access is pretty damn slow for me from Hanoi. Iā€™d be pissed off at Bluehost, but everyone in the US says my blog is fast for them, and Bluehost has a good reputation overall, so Iā€™m sticking with them. Writing blogs online, even accessing blogs can be a real pain the ass, so when I started to look for desktop blog writing solutions last year, Microsoftā€™s Windows Live Writer has been starting to get mention as a good solution even though it was just in beta.

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From Wikipedia:

ā€œWindows Live Writer, developed by Microsoft, is a desktop blog-publishing application that is part of the Windows Live range of products. It features WYSIWYG authoring, photo-publishing and map-publishing functionality, and is currently compatible with Windows Live Spaces, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, Wordpress, Community_Server, PBlogs.gr, JournalHome, the MetaWeblog API, the Moveable Type API, and all blogs that support RSD (Really Simple Discoverability).ā€

Iā€™ve heard other people say this as well, and mention it as possibly the best solution out there, and for me at least, I love it. Cannot go without it for posting.

Hereā€™s what the interface looks like, you can close or open different sidebars (in the screenshot, Iā€™ve opened the bottom and right sidebars):

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(donā€™t worry, you can adjust UI colors if my orange is not your thing)

Everything you need to write posts- tags, categories, scheduling dates, inserting (and editing pictures), etc. You can preview your new post in your actual theme without needing online access too.

The only thing it canā€™t do (and I wouldnā€™t expect it to be able to) is support your Wordpress editor plugins.

Two issues so far that Iā€™m not sure will ever be fixed, but still wouldnā€™t sway me from using WLW.

  1. If I upload a heavy post, one that has a lot of images or a video, WLW is likely to, from my understanding, essentially time out. Will get an error and not upload. I think this is primarily due to the speed in Vietnam. Itā€™s not always predictable when this will happen, however. Sometimes I get the error, but the post is uploaded anyway. Itā€™s a bit annoying.
  2. Not enough plugins. There are some good plugins, but the development (one new plugin might appear every month, one good plugin, much less often) is very slow. Iā€™m surprised that usage of WLW is not that high, or that theyā€™re arenā€™t more plugins since the software is so good.

Additional things I would ask for are more formatting options (I donā€™t think I can adjust font), and more blog management directly from the desktop UI (you can do some, but itā€™s so slow from my connection), but thatā€™s about it. Itā€™s a great piece of software, and itā€™s free. Iā€™d pay for it though, definitely.

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26.06.2008 Blog, Reviews, Tech No Comments

A Bit Snooty to Me, Bluehost (Customer Support)

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

Dear Customer,

Thanks for contacting us.

We apologize for the trouble you have been having.

We run shared hosting servers, with about 500 accounts per server. This setup is what makes our hosting fees so low; but, naturally, this causes resource usage issues, namely that if one account uses too much of a type of resource, the less it can be used by the other accounts.

This is easy to administer when it comes to bandwidth and HTTP connections, because a cap can easily be set. The cap is high enough for those types of issues that most customers never even hit them, anyway.
MySQL CPU issues are another story. The problem is that there are so many variables involved in this specific area that you can really only resolve an issue once it’s been created, not before it’s happened, like with other resources.

Ultimately, what can happen, then, is that one customer on the server can abuse the MySQL resources so much that it temporarily brings MySQL down for the entire server. At this point, we can suspend that particular account easily, and force them to optimize their scripts — but not until the issue has occurred. (If an account causes this issue three times, they are suspended indefinitely.)

You need to look seriously in your ā€œtmp/mysql_slow_queries/ folderā€ in your root folder, at the problems you have been having, because they are ones you are creating. You have numerous slow queries every day that are affecting not only your site, but everyone else’s on your server. Please, look through these and correct them.

We recommend that you update your scripts, but you can repair some of the tables by going into “phpMyAdmin”, then select a database in the “Repair DB:” drop down, then click the “Repair DB” button, then hit the “Go Back” link & repeat the repair for other databases in your account.

You can optimize the tables by going into ā€œphpMyAdminā€, selecting the database, Click on the link “Check All” link, then in the “With selected:” choose the “Optimize table” option.

We appreciate your business. Thank you for using BlueHost.

(name withheld)
Level 1 Support Engineer
Bluehost.com
888-401-4678

As Iā€™ve mentioned before on this blog, I like Bluehost. Theyā€™ve saved me with some timely backup recoveries in the past, and their response time for support has always been good. Their speed is slow from Vietnam (I ran a tracert, and there are almost 20 hops from here to their servers,) but speed from what others tell me is great in the US, and I recently paid for another year of service. (about $100 USD)

A couple of days ago, my friends in the US were telling me that this site was super slow and I contacted Bluehost to ask what could be done about it. Not blaming them, I was asking if I had done something, basically wanted to know how I could prevent such issues in the future if I were the issue.

I got the above (likely mostly based off template) e-mail in response. The biggest problem I have is with the wording.

To me, itā€™s a little snooty, a little snarky. Seems like he wants to say, ā€œyou or people like you are making the server slow, YOU need to get into your logs and stop slowing us down, you should not complain since you pay such low rates.

I had Emil look into my logs, and it turned out I was not the culprit for the slowdown. And yes, while my rates are good, they are not substantially low, like too good to be true or anything.

Thereā€™s no way that I can tell to review my CPU usage to see what Iā€™m really using, or when I cause (if I do) cause such issues.

I wouldnā€™t mind paying a different rate for better coverage, especially global, almost like insurance. (Bluehost only has 1 plan that I could find) People who donā€™t abuse or get traffic from different areas can pay to get a different kind of hosting, while others who abuse can be lumped into a server with other abusers and pay different rates themselves. I definitely donā€™t want to be an abuser and want to be a good neighbor to the other websites hosted on my server, but this reply from Bluehost does nothing to help with that and leaves a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

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25.06.2008 Blog 1 Comment