Gnorb.NET

For as long as I can remember, I’ve seemingly had an uncanny ability to kill just about any computer I’ve touched. In college I crashed more than one system (at a time) composing music in Finale and Cakewalk. At home, I’ve killed my share of Windows systems by trying to do too many things at once. I’ve even endangered more than one Linux system, or would have if X didn’t crash before I was done with it. And to my surprise, today I found out that my site was beating the life out of my database.

If you’ve tried to hit the site recently, you may have noticed a “too many CPUs connecting” error pop up. Apparently, my server was complaining about too much traffic coming into the site. Frankly, I find that almost ridiculous, since I don’t normally get more than about 400 visitors per day. (Once in a while it’ll peak at 2,000+, but not often.) Nevertheless, it seems as if many of my Wordpress plugins and addons have been hitting the database a bit too hard every time someone comes to visit. Here’s an example:

When someone pulls up a page, the server has to display all the code and images on the site. On top of that, the server has to query the database for the page’s content. Like most web pages today, my site relies heavily on database interaction, not just because of the main article, but also because of the website topics, the “most popular pages” list, the “recent entries” list, the “recent comments” list, the miniblog, and a few other little things I have running in the background. Add to that the fact that there are a few people checking the site via RSS, spiders crawling deep into the site, and that people actually visit the front page, so more than one article gets served up, and you have your equation for trouble.

In response to this, I’ll be making a few changes to the site, including possibly a complete theme change (even though I’ve loved TypoXP, I might return to regular old Kubrick), in order to optimize the website performance. I’ve started by eliminating all of the “most recent comments” lists from the site, since those seem to have been taking an especially heavy toll. I’ve also eliminated a few redundant features which, while small, were apparently affecting the server more heavily than I’d anticipated. If that’s not enough, I’ll then begin to alter the internal pages in order to lighten the load, since about 90% of all visitors enter via individual pages within the site and not the via the front page.

Anyway, if you anyone reading this has any experience with matters like this and can offer advice on the matter, I’m all ears. Frankly, if I can help someone else avoid these same mistakes, then by all means let’s do it.

If you ignore it, it’ll go away, right? Not quite.

If you’re reading this through an RSS feed then you may have noticed that some posts seem to show up over and over again. (I’ve been having an issue with my Bloglines account and I can only presume, based on the evidence, that the problem is on this end.) My sincere apologies for that. I’ll try to get to the bottom of that issue. Hopefully, this won’t annoy you all that much. I tried to ignore the problem, thinking that after a while it would stop.

It didn’t.

I then tried to re-create those posts by deleting the original and creating a new post with the same title and content.

That, aparently, hasn’t worked as well as I’d expected.

So now I’m in the scratc-my-head-and-ask-myself “WFT?” process. Please bear with me while I find out what’s going on.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

I’ll try to keep this short: I decided not to continue using and hacking away at the theme I was using before. Kiwi is an absolutely awesome theme, but to get it to do what I needed it to do was almost impossible. Overall, it just had too many technical challenges for me to cope with. (I’m pretty much a baby when it comes to PHP, and some of this stuff required someone more experienced.) As such, I decided to go to a theme which had previously caught my eye, but which I had passed up in lieu of Kiwi, TypoXP. This theme is a bit like Kubrick, but generally easier. (I think it’s actually based on Kubrick.) Over the next few weeks/months I’ll be moving things around in order to make the site less bloggy and more professional looking. The biggest issue here is keeping it clean and easy to read.

(By the way, Ski, I haven’t forgotten about you just yet. I’ll be writing that design article for you that I promised. I’ve been looking at blogger and it’s all pretty easy stuff. It’s just a matter of properly documenting it all.)

The second thing: I’ve added a number of plugins which should make the site a bit more interesting.

• I added a set of social bookmarking site links at the bottom of every story, so if you have a Shadows or Del.icio.us account, you see something here you want to put up on Fark, or you want to track your comments using Co.mments, I’ve got you covered.
• I added a search engine tracking tool which figures out what search engine you came from, your search terms, and articles which you may be interested in based on those search terms. Frankly, this is one of my favorite plugins. If you want to test it out, go to your favorite search engine (preferably Google or Yahoo) and type in “Gnorb florida”. Look for the first gnorb.net link you see (should be the first one anyway) and after clicking on it, take a look at the top of the side bar. The message containing all the aforementioned information will be there.
• I added an email obfuscator which covers up emails to keep them safe. If you type gnorb@gnorb.net, the email will be obfuscated in the code and spammer bots won’t be able to grab your email address. (Do a “View Source Code” to test this out. Look for this sentence and try to find the email address.
• I added a list of the most recent posts to the sidebar (viewable everywhere except the front page, where all the most recent articles are, anyway) as well as the most recent comments, so Junior now essentially has his own section on the site, sort of. (I need to figure out how I can get more commenting to happen here. I’m starting to feel all lonely and stuff.)

There’s still a few other things I need to do, such as add a “Blogging Buddies” roll (Quantum, Ski, anyone else — I gots y’all covered), a “most popular articles” list, and do some improvements to the search capabilities, something the previous theme had a royally hard time with for some reason. I also want to see if I can strike a deal with some online comic creator to feature their comics on the site. (Something tells me that’s a bit of a ways off, though.) Still, I think I’m happy with what I have right now, as most of the site now works just fine (which is more than I could have said for my bastardized version of Kiwi).

Oh, and I brought back the alternating headers, at the request of Junior, although they’ll need a bit of fixing. (Of course, if you’re an online comic creator or artist looking for a place to prominently feature some of your work, I’d be more than happy to talk about lending that space out to you.)

With that, if there’s anything you’d like to see, anything you’d think would make a good addition, or anything you feel I can do better here, whether it involves my writing, site features, or whatever, then this is the place to tell me. (And yes, I will be adding more online games. That’s another thing: I need to create a group of links somewhere that emphasizes the online games available here. People seem to like those. I also need to create a section outlining my own favorites from this site. I’ll be the first to tell you that though I’m no Hemingway, I’ve written a good amount of stuff I really enjoy reading. I’ve also written some stuff that I refuse to delete solely on the principle of completeness, which is another way of me saying “What tha — did I write that? What was I, drunk?!” But I digress…)

If you have something to say, say it. Consider this an open thread.

If you frequent this site you may have noticed that I’ve recently been “experimenting” with a number of different themes and schemes.

That’s because I’m bored.

By that I don’t mean that I’m bored right now, it means that I’m bored with the way the site looks. You’re probably not (I hope you’re not), but then again you probably don’t look at this site as much as I do. (If you do you’re a sick, sick individual. Go outside and get a life.)

At any rate, I’ve been looking at making a few changes to Gnorb.NET and I’d like to get readers’ opinions regarding the next theme (or themes). The following is a quick look at and review of some of the themes I’m considering installing or getting inspiration from. (Getting inspiration != copying.)

Read the rest of this entry »

More links, more fun, and some tools for your blogging enjoyment.

SemioLogic: Wordpress is a wonderful tool, but if you’re looking for a CMS, by itself Wordpress just isn’t enough. The SemioLogic Wordpress plugin turns your blogging software into more of a content management system, allowing you to set up both static content sites and dynamic content sites from your Wordpress install. As of this writing, version 3.2 for WP 2.0 just came out, so go ahead and try it out.

Pizza Guy Delivery Stories: It seems the more your job forces you to deal with people, the stranger the stories are you’re able to tell. This collection of stories comes from pizza delivery drivers all over the country. If you’ve ever worked customer service or tech support (or in delivery, for that matter) you’ll enjoy this set of tales and not feel bad at all for these people, because you’ve been through similar, if not the same. Funny, funny stuff.

How Readable is Your Site?: If you run a website (likely a blog) then you’d probably be interested in seeing how readable your site is. This tool will help you figure out if you’re writing for the masses or if you’re better off saving your words for top secret government. Overall, my site’s just a bit more complicated than Mark Twain, but less so than TV Guide. Still, some posts should have been academic papers instead.

HUGE list of linux commands. On one page: This page just warms my command line-lovin’ heart: it’s a massive collection of a buttload of Linux commands, with a short explanation of each one, organized alphabetically within sections. (This link provided to you by Digg.)

Need to Email Large Files?: DropSend allows you to send files of up to 1GB and doesn’t require installing any application to your computer. (Source: The Evangelical Outpost)

If you have any seriously interesting links you think readers should know about (no cas1n0 or p)rn sites, please), drop me a line in the comments section.