You don’t hear this often… MySQL server crashed and the sites hosted in that server went offline for hours together. But, when a similar thing happened to my VPS, it wasn’t the case. My site was still online, while I was troubleshooting the issue with MySQL server. Ultimately, I could not figure out the issue and I had to purge the entire MySQL installation. However, I was still cool during the entire process. You may ask how. Here is what happened and how you can prevent the same for your own VPS too… Continue reading “MySQL Server Crashed – My Site was still online!”
Can’t afford Nginx? You have options!
Some background info: Last month, I had a hectic schedule (that’s why no posts last month) and worked on multiple websites at the same time. A few of them were on a shared hosting environment. As you know nothing can be installed on a shared host. Rest of them were being hosted in a managed webhost. A managed host doesn’t support third party tools including Nginx & Varnish. Additionally a managed web hosting provider hardly allows an outsider to install these too. Moreover, setting up php-fpm on a managed hosting is an easy way to mess up things.
Almost all those sites had more static content than dynamic content. Basically, Nginx is known for serving static files faster than Apache (there are other advantages with Nginx too, but that’s for another day). As only Apache was available in those managed webhosts and in those shared webhosts, basically, I put forward three options to my clients to get Nginx in an affordable way … Continue reading “Can’t afford Nginx? You have options!”
Script to Install and Upgrade Nginx from Source
Nginx is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server and reverse proxy. It is widely used in many really high traffic websites such as WordPress.com. It is also used here in tinywp.in since the beginning. There are plenty of methods to install it on any VPS or dedicated servers. The official installation instructions available from the official wiki. Here I show you my own script to compile it from source, install and upgrade using a bash script. Continue reading “Script to Install and Upgrade Nginx from Source”
Choose Your Plugins Wisely
Earlier I had a chance to look at two WordPress powered blogs inwhich the load time was affected due to outdated plugins that were no longer maintained officially. Let me share more details on both sites how un-maintained plugins can cause performance issues, if you don’t watch the signs and if you don’t fix those immediately. Continue reading “Choose Your Plugins Wisely”
Google PR vs Page Speed
Update: As of April 2016, Google has shut down PageRank data to the public.
Google has repeatedly mentioned that site speed, load time and performance of a site does matter for Google on search engine rankings. While I’m not into SEO and I rarely cared about Google PageRank in particular, I have been in shock for the past 10 days or so, even since my Piwik statistics showing me that this site’s Google PR went from nil to 5!!!!! Yes, that f-i-v-e, five out of the maximum of 10! Continue reading “Google PR vs Page Speed”
Custom Login URL for WordPress
From WordPress 3.4 onwards, we can log into WP backend using custom URLs such as yourdomain.com/login or /dashboard. For those who do not wish to wait that long, here is the quick tip on how to do it now without a plugin. Please note that rewrite isn’t a good place to implement it. That’s why it is going to be implemented as part of the canonical API in 3.4. Continue reading “Custom Login URL for WordPress”
Varnish for the masses – Gandi.net Simple Hosting Review
Last month, Gandi.net sent a tweet providing free hosting for a month on their simple hosting package. As I already purchased a domain from them and was already looking for a host, I immediately replied and received the promo code within minutes. I’ve been using their service for about 20 days now. So, here is a quick review on how it went on so far, how it fares comparing to other hosting providers, its advantages over others and its unique disadvantages! Continue reading “Varnish for the masses – Gandi.net Simple Hosting Review”
Remove Query String on CSS & JS Files
Have you seen WordPress version number as a query string after every CSS and JS file? You are not alone. It is easy to remove that string, even though there is little documentation available in the codex. Please note that it is different from what WP-Minify plugin adds in the minified version of the CSS and JS file. Having the query doesn’t allow certain browsers to cache the CSS and JS files. Once removed, it offers performance benefits on those browsers. Moreover, who would want to expose the version of WordPress at the end of these files? Continue reading “Remove Query String on CSS & JS Files”
