Diary of a Web Admin

Solution Proof Follow Up

2006-06-29T00:53:00.000-04:00

Alright, I feel a bit like I am rubbing this in. But there just simply is no better example of what I am ranting about here. Plain and simple - this just illustrates exactly how much money you can save by considering a new web host. And frankly, no matter how good your current host is - if they won't even talk to you about coming down in price, you would almost be out of your mind not moving.

About a month ago I posted how I moved a customer to a $5 a month hosting plan which successfully hanlded 120,000 plus page views in a month. This is running Vbulletin (which is DB intensive) and also offering videos and pictures.

While reviewing some upgrades (including the upcoming VBulletin 3.6 release) I took another look at the web stats. They have already cracked 200,000 visitors for the month (with several days left to go). This includes having 60+ visitors browsing the site at the same instance. This is easily more load than most websites every see on the internet.

This really illustrates the options that are available out there, even to some of the larger sites, to save some money with reliable web hosts.

Gulf Coast Still Needs Your Help

2006-06-20T19:52:00.000-04:00

Ahh, my first untechnically related post.

I don't intend for this to dive into any kind political rant. But I recently found some pictures on a website that sparked my interest. I've attached a few of their pictures from Biloxi. Amazingly this were taken only a month ago (according to the website). It's amazing the level of damage that still exists! And not just with individuals or homes, but places like resturants and Casinos (who you normally think of having nearly endless money... I know this isn't true, but certainly comes to mind). These pictures come courtesy of a casino information site, SEGaming.net. They have plenty more pictures over there. They are worth checking out.

Treasure Bay Casino

(or what's left of it)

US 90 Bridge

PHPBB3 Goes Beta (and other thoughts)

2006-06-20T19:40:00.000-04:00

A few random ramblings here:

PHPBB3 went Beta1. This is a pretty significant step for this long awaited version and the subject of two topics on this blog already. I've already had a chance to download and install this on a test site. Needless to say, I'm impressed. But for those who are familiar with phpBB2 who expect to simply roll into this new version as experts, you will be surprised. The interfaces are WILDLY different. Not necessarily a bad thing, but if you run a phpBB2 site and have any intention of upgrading to PHPBB3 I recommend hoping over to phpbb.com and downloading Beta1 and start getting use to it. Although there is a good chance that the software will change some between this at the RCs and then release, the general feel probably will not change much.

Consultants who talk 5 person companies into buying a Windows 2003 server and an Exchange server. This has to annoy me more than any other project I get. For two reasons. 1) People think they know Exchange, but don't. Which means these projects are 60% clean up and 2) They simply don't need it. Although Exchange/Outlook features are a draw, Exchange is really an Enterprise solution. It's a waste of money to purchase the licenses, not to mention the support costs and consulting costs to deploy this. Small organizations should consider hosted Exchange solutions. At around $6 a month per seat, I'd venture to say you would need 20+ people before it's even cost effective to deploy your own mail server.

Finding sites to link backs for search engine placement. This one came to mind while talking to a few friends of mine who run websites. One had a Google PR4 and another Google PR2 website. The really funny thing was neither had ANY idea. I was looking to build some additional link backs from sites (moderate PR sites that I don't link back to them). Not only were they willing to help, but their solid PR made these VERY valuable links! So food for thought - if you need some link backs, instead of falling into one of these internet marketing scams... just ask some of your friends. You might be surprised what you find.

Solution Proof

2006-06-07T00:10:00.000-04:00

While doing a project for a customer, I encouraged them to review their shared hosting option. They initial resisted, thinking that their usage was too high for a simple plan. If they went with shared hosting, they felt they needed to go with a premiere level package. They site draws 130,000 page views per month (and growing). This is an impressive traffic level. After some discussions with them I talked them into signing up for a $5/month plan. That's right folks, $5/month ($60 year) to host a website that draws 130,000 page views!

I bring this up as a following up to my previous post regarding the overpaying for web hosting. So many of my customers (and even my friends) insist that they need so much more than they do. They spend hunderds of dollars a year on web hosting and don't draw any where near the the traffic the site I mentioned above does.

This site runs vBulletin, it hosts videos and pictures. Although if you have an extensive application you may need something with a little more horsepower, for most sites, blogs, forums, and ecommerce sites there is no reason to go crazy with your hosting.

Just wanted to offer some proof to back up my encouragement on here, even with a larger site, to look at your options!

ModX CMS

2006-05-25T08:37:00.000-04:00

A recent customer project I had brought me in depth into ModX CMS. I had seen and used this CMS briefly. However, after developing a site with this CMS, it has quickly become my favorite CMS available. It's not as easy at Exponent CMS, nor does it have the community support or modules of PHPNuke. Howver, for a young CMS it has all of the major modules 90% of websites will need.

For even a remotely novice computer user can generate pages in Modx CMS if it's configured. Installation is about as easy anything (click next a couple of times, enter DB login information). Creating pages and subpages is simple. The ability to built custom keywords is great as well.

The thing that sold me on the CMS is how easily it integrates with just about any web template. Even if you custom design your own pages, this CMS makes it very simple to just lay out what you want as a readable webpage and then integrate a few keywords. Although I've used several other CMS systems that can accomplish this, very few have the powerful backend ModX does.

ModX CMS is more than just a CMS system. It's true a framework. It allows you to write custom snippets, taking advantage of the layers the backend uses to do things like manage files, read and write to a DB. It's intention is to become a full application framework. Although it is going to be some time before it truly reaches that goal, this CMS reminds me a lot of the power of Dot Net Nuke in a PHP/MySQL form. Plus, it's much easier to design for than DNN.

The community support for ModX CMS is small, but growing. Documentation is decent, it's generally enough to get you going. However, more advanced features are not well documented. It's documentation also is not a reference, it simple outlines basic how-tos, and generally does not provide very indepth information. So it's easy to miss a lot of the powerful features of even the most basic modules and 'snippets' (as modx calls them). However, the community forum does have a great 'Tips and Tricks' section that really helps you start to take advantage of some of the advanced features. The community development of third party plug ins is there, but coming along slowly. Most of the modules are something someone needed for their website and tossed together, as opposed to a 'product'. Although this generally produces very functional modules, they do lack the polish of the more mature CMS systems like PHPNuke and DNN.

I've been looking for an alternative to Exponent CMS for some time, and I believe this may be it. Exponent CMS is a GREAT CMS for building websites. However, it's limited community support, lack of documentation, and difficult templating have made it ideal for some projects, it certainly did not solve all of my needs. Exponent will likely turn into a top notch CMS in only a few years time, they are headed in the right direction. However, ModX CMS seems to do most everything Exponent can do, and does it today.

If you are building a simple community website, even a large one and are experienced with design but not coding - stick with PHPNuke or DNN. There community support and available modules will save you a lot of trouble. If you don't need a lot of modules or are into coding - and need a better CMS, or like me you need a CMS that can handle other peoples design templates without significant customization but efficient handles very large sites (hundreds of pages) you may want to look into ModX CMS.

It's my new favorite.

PHPBB 3 Update

2006-05-06T13:04:00.000-04:00

About two months ago I posted that I was eagerly waiting for PHPBB 3 to be released. Although for many of my customers I've been using vBulletin, often times the price and complexity simply isn't necessary. Well, PHPBB3 has moved closer to a Beta. They are currently debugging the Alpha release preparing for a beta. This has been a positive step forward in a long wait. It's free and community supported, so there is nothing wrong with the time frame. But as someone who is a big fan and heavy user of PHPBB2, this update is welcome news. The new version appears to be very solid. I would expect it will easily be a year before most people can use it. Even if they released it today, it would be months before many of the modifications people rely on will be available.

I plan on doing a full blown PHPBB3 vs VBulletin comparsion one day. I think these are the two best options available. IPB is a very nice board, but at it's price point, I've yet to find anything compelling to make it not worth the far more mature VBulletin or the free PHPBB.

Check out the latest PHPBB at area51.phpbb.com.

Large MySQL file to import?

2006-05-06T12:59:00.000-04:00

I recently ran into an issue moving a customers website from one host to another. The customer had a fairly large (50MB+) MySQL DB. Their new host did not offer SSH. This presented a real problem since MyAdmin import is generally ineffective with a file larger than a couple of MB, even over a high speed connection.

I found a great utility called Bigdump.php. It allows you to copy a .sql file (or even a gzip version of it) to you host and import it into the DB. This allowed a clean import of the 50MB with little or no hassle and in about 15 minutes (since it was reading the file locally rather than a upload from a remote computer).

If you ever have a need to import a large DB file into a MySQL DB, this is a great tool. Be sure to check it out!

http://www.ozerov.de/bigdump.php

Help Desk (Trouble Ticket) Programs

2006-03-13T20:34:00.000-05:00

Today I spent a significant amount of time digging through Help Desk programs for a 'for hire' job. The customer only had basic requirements. However, in my searching I found a considerable lack of powerful community supported projects. Many of the professional options were VERY expensive. I did, however, come a cross a few very inexpensive or free community supported Help Desk Trouble Ticket systems. The customers technology requirements were very relaxed, though they had a familarity with ASP and MS SQL. I have a few observations about comparing PHP/Perl/ASP community support and some of the products I liked most.

First, though I'm sure this will draw a few negative reactions. The .NET community seems far more infant. Though I understand the relative youth of .NET in general, the number of community projects that have earned any reputation seems to be considerably lacking. I'm also reminded why PHP is still being widely deployed for so many web apps: the community support seems stronger. Though I found community supported projects for all three of the above technologies, it was very clear the maturity of the communities and the programs was evident with the PHP and Perl over the much younger .NET. If you are looking for a product that adheres to the Open Source idology, I think you will find either of these two technologies far more appealing. However, you can also clearly see the power of .NET. If you are looking for a purchase product, .NET all the way. If you are looking for a community supported project, I'd lean towards PHP. I will give props to probably one of the greatest CMS systems though, which is .NET, Dotnetnuke. Community supported, TONS of mods, and plenty of support. This is the future of .NET, using the support of the community with the power of .NET.

As for help desk ticketing systems I found three great community projects:

Liberum (ASP), One or Zero (PHP), and OTRS (Perl).

Liberum had the fewest features, but was very small and efficient and seems to be headed for being a great product. The biggest feature this product is missing is the ability to add attachments. This may not be important to everyone, so many who are looking at these products probably will not mind.

One or Zero was extremely refined. It can double as a Task Management product and contained all of the main features. It offers mod support as well as Themes. It was very open, only a few megs and very powerful. It even offers LDAP support for integrating into existing directories. This product was surprisingly mature, very comparable to some of the commerical .NET products I found. This was my favorite of the bunch. One or Zero charges $10 for the latest release, howevever previous releases are available for free.

The most feature rich of the bunch was OTRS (Open Ticket Request System). It too offers LDAP support and was by far the most mature of the free products. It is based on Perl and MySQL, though offers an XML DB interface and layer to allow it to function on nearly any DB system. I didn't get to spend as much time with this wonderful product as I would have liked since the customer decided they would prefer to support a php or .NET system instead. This is definitely worth the look!

I hope this brief look at free (or nearly free) Help Desk Ticketing Programs helps another web admin out. I spent a good 2-3 hours (not including the individual testing of each product) digging through commerical and junk products to find these jewels.

Web Hosting Price Wars - Jump on board!

2006-03-12T22:37:00.000-05:00

Recently while discussing with the owners of a site I run, I realized exactly how much they spend on web hosting. For those who aren't that familiar with the hosting options available out there, let me queue everyone in on a little secret. There is a hosting price war going on. Bandwidth and disk are going WAY up, prices are coming down. It never ceases to amaze me how people rarely shop around for the best deals. So often I run across people paying $10-$20 a month for web hosting for the most basic of websites. Even advanced web admins can save money these days. The primarily combatants in the hosting war are 1and1, GoDaddy, and Yahoo.

The prices have dropped to the point that you can now get web hosting with 5GB of disk and 250GB of bandwidth for $3 a month. That's right, 3 dollars a month. This is often more disk and more bandwidth than most companies even offer! If you run a website, big or small, take a look around at the pricing options available out there. The prices are dropping, and if your host is not on board, you are probably wasting a lot of money.

The same holds true with Domain Registration. The price of Domain Registration is down to around $6 a year. If you are paying more than this, you probably will want to look at switching. Plus, there are several big companies offering specials with a year free for .info domains, 1.99/yr with other purchase. Another thing that is becoming available, for free even (if you know how to shop), is Private Domain Registration. This prevents people from obtaining personal information about you by looking by the information on domains you own.

Don't sit by while the price war is going on. I've already begun moving several customers websites to newer, cheaper sites. I'm also encouraging others to do so as well.

PHPBB 3 (aka Olympus)

2006-03-10T22:29:00.000-05:00

Like many phpBB users I'm awaiting the release of phpBB 3. It has been in development for YEARS. Though I understand it's done voluntarily and is provided free of charge, that doesn't mean I'm not impatient about it. Over the last 6 months there seems to a flurry of activity and most of the key features seem to be complete. I'm debating spending the time loading up the CVS version just to try out. I have several phpBB that are modded to hell and back that really drag their performance down. None seem to drag down performance more than the subforums mod. This of course, is a built in feature with phpBB.

I've been keeping up with the development progress by reading the commit logs on area51.phpbb.com. As of now they still appear to be several months from beta, which means a release probably no sooner than the end of the year :(

I check back more often than I should, or they probably like. But I can't help it. It really looks like it will deliver a lot of the features that forces me to buy and run vbulletin, but free. The other big draw back is mods for phpBB3 will probably be slow to come out. In this area it may be another full year after it's release before the mod support is there to justify running it on anything but the most basic boards, or boards where I have to custom write my own mods anyway.

The Diary of a Web Admin

2006-03-10T22:17:00.000-05:00

Here I will be sharing my experiences as a Web Admin. I am a non-professional web admin who owns, operates and moderates a number of websites. My experience with MySql and PHP are pretty extensive and operate several phpBB and vBulletin forums. I've also been working with Exponent CMS, php-nuke, and several other CMS systems.

I will share details of significant projects, site designs, new sites. I hope to develop a pretty good archieve of experiences with all of these products, as well as an opportunity to share and learn from the readers.