xavodim

I recently needed to convert a MySQL table in a blog database from InnoDB to the engine MyISAM. This was needed because InnoDB doesn’t support the FULLTEXT, which is required to run ‘WordPress Related Entries 2.0‘. I was getting frustrated at first, but I finally found a quick explanation on what SQL statement could easily convert a table into whatever database engine you prefer. Here’s the code I found on MySQL Developer’s website:

ALTER TABLE myTable ENGINE=MYISAM

Of course you could replace MYISAM with whataver engine you want you table to run in (InnoDB, ISAM, HEAP, etc.).

Here’s a better better explanation of the differences between the various MySQL database engines from Builder.com. I only changed the posts table in the Wordpress database, as I don’t really see a need to switch any of the other tables yet. Since MyISAM is the fastest engine for multiple reads I might change my mind later, but at this point I don’t think its necessary.

Technorati Tags: MySQL, database, engines, InnoDB, MyISAM, tools, Wordpress, plugins

Paul at PaulStamatiou.com has written “5 Ways to Speed Up Your Site“. He outlines methods you can use to speed up the loading of your website or blog.

The five ways are:

1. Reduce Overall Latency by Reducing HTTP Requests
2. Properly Save Your Images
3. Compression
4. Avoid JavaScript Where Possible
5. Strip Extraneous PHP Calls

I’ve already implemented #4 on the few sites I operate, but I’ve failed to make sure I’ve saved my images correctly or optimized the number of http requests made on each page.

Paul was able to significantly reduce the size of his main page:

Over the past few months I have become somewhat of a website optimization specialist, bringing my own site from an over 250kB homepage to its current 34kB.

These tips should actually become standard practice in web site design and development. Too many websites are harboring the idea that broadband in every home and business means the days of optimizing site code is over.

Technorati Tags: design, optimization, Paul Stamatiou, website, blog, speed

I had signed up to be notified when WetPaint was going to become available to us normal slobs, and I finally got the notice.

TechCrunch has a write up on the launch of the service.

I’m contemplating using it to create a wiki for the koi hobby, mainly for filtration and fish care articles. I can’t wait to try it out, and I’ll post about it as soon as I’ve created one.

Technorati Tags: wiki, web 2.0, software, web app, wetpaint, free, web development

Obviously, I haven’t been posting on this blog in a while. Who has time when the world is coming to an end? In any case, imagine my surprise when I found out my itsy bitsy blog became a haven for comment spammers. I even got a little bit of nasty post fodder for my spam apathy.

I realize it’s my responsibility to take care of shite like this, so I’ll take all the blame for anyone who was a victim of spammage in their RSS readers. So I do apologize. I’ve sifted through and manually deleted 200+ spam comments and installed the Akismet plug-in for Wordpress to remedy the issue. It’s worked extremely well on my other blog, and I don’t know why I didn’t take the 5 minutes I should have to install it over here two months ago.

According to Akismet’s “Spam Zeitgeist”, 92% of all comments are spam. I guess that’s probably pretty accurate. And considering they’ve caught 52,544,282 spam comments to date, they probably know a little bit about the issue.

If you’re looking to stop all those pesky comments with Akismet too, be sure to stop by Wordpress.com and sign up so you can receive an API key. Akismet will not work without a Wordpress API key, which is actually very clever to make sure you have to go through a number of steps before spammers can get their hands on one. The more steps you include the less likely a spammer will foolow through.

Technorati Tags: spam, akismet, plug-in, comments, wordpress

I have to admit it, I still use some blog exchanges. Yes, I know it’s empty traffic, but since I’ve found a few blogs I really like using Blog Explosion, I can’t discount the fact that someone else won’t do the same. So I surf for credits every few days. Sue me.

But there are some interesting opinions out there about what these so-called “blog traffic generators” are really all about. Mohammed at Webtrafficideas doesn’t think they’re worth the time and effort. I would tend to agree, especially since it’s pretty difficult to determine if anyone that makes a hit on your site actually reads anything, let alone comes back.

I’ve used BlogExplosion, BlogSoldiers, Blogazoo, BlogCicker, and BlogMad for a few months now, and I can honestly say that while you do get a few more unique visitors before your credits run out, your pageviews, comments, and incoming links aren’t affected. So what this equates to is ‘empty traffic’. I suppose the allure is watching the hit counter increase at a steady rate, but what are you really setting yourself up for? You’re ensuring that you’ll have to keep participating with the traffic exchange sites just to keep the number of visitors you have at a consistent level.

And how much time does that leave you for actually writing intelligent and thought-provoking posts? Not much. After I learned most of this, the hard way, I started trying different strategies for increasing traffic to my blog. Here are a few tips I learned:

1. Keyword Optimization
   You don’t have to cram your posts full of keywords you want the search engines to notice, but using tags for the various social bookmarking sites, as well as blog aggregation sites like Technorati and Icerocket, does help.
2. Content, Content, Content
   It’s been cliched to death, but the king of all traffic generation methods is having captivating content. If you focus your content toward a group of people that will find your specific content interesting, then you’re already most of the way there.
3. Posting to social bookmarking sites
   This goes hand in hand with #1. Tagging your posts and submitting them to sites such as Del.icio.us, Reddit, Furl, Spurl, and Blink allow users of those sites to search for posts with certain tags or combinations of tags. The easier you make it for web surfers to find your posts based on its content, the more likely they are to actually be interested in what you write. Directions on how to do that via Wordpress.

I believe the main problem with traffic exchanges is that no one using them has any real reason to stay on a blog they found and keep reading. Actually the incentive is to click on the next blog as soon as your eligible for a ‘credit’. So unless you have something very flashy on your front page that will keep people engaged long enough to read more than one post, you really don’t stand a chance of earning any more readers.

Technorati Tags: blogs, blog exchanges, traffic exchanges, tags, traffic, technorati, del.icio.us, icerocket, spurl, furl, blink, reddit

The Bloglines Reader Yahoo! Widget makes it easy to keep all your RSS subscriptions up to date right on your desktop. I was looking for something so I could quickly keep track of updates to my feed subscriptions directly from my desktop without needing to open up a web page or seperate program. I had tried the gdRSS Reader plug-in for the Google Desktop Sidebar, but it locked up the side bar at times and I had to enter each RSS feed by hand. Both of those issues turned out to be way to frustrating for me to keep using the plug-in.

Then I remembered that the Yahoo! Widget Engine might offer a widget that met my needs. I wanted something easy to setup, easy to enter my subscriptions, and was always open on my desktop. It seems that the Bloglines Widget is the ticket. I’ve only used it for a couple of hours, but so far, no problems and it worked flawlessly with my Bloglines account. You can even have it automatically hide the feeds with no unread entries, and/or have the directories automatically collapse if they have no unread feeds, as seen in the picture below:

Overall, it’s a very convenient little mini-program. The only drawback I might mention is that it seems quite large if you have your directories expanded, but maybe that’s just my preference.

Technorati Tags: google desktop, yahoo! widget engine, widget, plug-in, rss, feed, feed reader, subscriptions, desktop

Lara asked if I could provide a little more insight into how I set up the 3-column layout I mentioned in an earlier post. Here’s what Lara wrote:

It would really be VERY helpful if you explained the mods you made to the php files here as well. For example, are you still using sidebar.php? If so, where? I’ve been playing with this for two days now and can’t seem to figure out how to modify the index.php and home.php pages to work this out… and I even went and copied your css completely from the other site.

Maybe you could just do the fix in the old theme and then re-release it as a “IE de-bugged” format? SOMETHING!?

Fair enough Lara. So considering I kept the same CSS style information, here’s the layout of the

<!-- Larger container that houses all of the containers for the 3-columns within it -->
 


<!-- Contains both the main center com��V���BF�R&�v�B6�FV&"���
 


 

   <!-- Right sidebar     This space can be individualized for each page, since it does not use    a php function call to pull up.  I haven't written anything to include a new php    function like <?php get_sidebar(); ?> for this right-side version.  I'm sure its    possible, but I don't really have the time to try and write it at this point.    -->
   

 

   <!-- Typical content column for posts -->
<code>   

</div>
<code> 


   <!-- Show Left Sidebar -->