WordPressHelp

Database Admin Tool

admin — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 19:13:29 +0000

I don’t know how many folks, like me, have had troubles using phpMyAdmin to perform large MySQL database restores, but if you have, then perhaps this little set of pointers will help you out. I know this process has made my life easier.

As most of you probably already know, phpMyAdmin is a wonderful toolset. It makes database management and editting both simple and straightforward. However, one of the major drawbacks to the phpMyAdmin toolset is that it is VERY slow to upload large amounts of SQL or perform Database restores using the Import function. For those of us with large and very large MySQL databases this presents a major issue. So what can be done to get around the problem?

The obvious conclusion is that a tool other than phpMyAdmin is needed. MySQL Administrator is the tool I have discovered that works best for me. The tool is starightforward, secure, and fast. The process I have found to work is as follows:

Download and install MySQL Administrator (and set it up so that it is able to log directly into your database server). This is easy to do; the only gotcha I encountered is: remember not to use http:// in your url address.
“Connect” MySQL Administrator to the system where you keep your MySQL DB.
Using the Backup function, create a backup of the DB and store it somewhere easy to locate.
When you need to do a restore (or ‘yes’ even a copy) all you need do is log into MySQL Administrator, connect to your database system and access Restore Backup. Interestingly this backup need not have been generated via MySQL Administrator; I have used phpMyAdmin generated files successfully.
If you are performing a simple restore, all you need to do is point the restore to the target DB and wait. In my expereince, it takes about 5 minutes to restore a 25MB database.

If this were all that we could do the tool, that would be enough, however, there are other useful functions that you can employ with a couple of small ‘tricks’. For example, if you want to create a new DB and freeze an old one, all you need to do is:

create the new database per your usual process (remember the name you give to this new DB).
backup the database you want to clone
open a copy of the ‘backed up’ database in your favorite editor (I use geany)
do a gloabl search and replace of the old database name with the new one- per the name you created in the first step above
restore this editted file into your blank database using the functions within MySQL Administrator
point your application to the database of your choosing– now that you have at least two.

I find this process to be extremely helpful in upgrading and testing systems.

I hope this little tutorial helpful. I wish I had figured this out years ago, myself.

We’re Green!

admin — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 02:45:45 +0000

We are pleased to announce that as of today, our website is “Green”. We have just moved to a new host that certifies a net zero carbon footprint. We know this is not a huge contribution, but every little bit helps.

To learn more about this please visit the Ambient Webs LLC We Are Green page.

Free Web Conferencing- DimDim

admin — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 14:10:11 +0000

Because there are times when reliable, affordable (read Free) web conferencing would make everyoneâ€™s lives easier, I thought you might appreciate this new and highly regarded Open Source offering- it is called DimDim.Â DimDim may be found at: http://dimdim.com.

I am registered as: rabideau on the DimDim site.

We will be exploring utilizing this technology for transitioning ideas etc. to our client base.

WordPress Site Performance

admin — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:49:19 +0000

For those of you who have been kind enough to spend time on our site, we thank you AND we are pleased to say that we have made a significant breakthrough in our site’s performance.

The long and short of the issue is Plugins. Plugins can act as a significant drag on your site’s performance. We have noticed load times on this site approaching 11+ seconds (wayyyy to slow!). Now the load times are running at about 4.5 seconds (we think that’s much better!). In order to solve this load dilemma we have been using a set of free tools from Pingdom.

Areas of problems we noticed in our debug process included:

misplaced and missing image directories in the tarski theme (we now have three directories of our little gif images… because of the errant calls within the theme internal calls)
broken image links (yes we were part of the problem too…)
numerous poor (read slooowwwwww) plugins; these are all removed

Additionally we have learned to remove any unused (not active) plugin. Inactive plugins can still act as a performance hit. And lastly, I scrubbed our DB. Numerous plugins had left a trail of unused tables and rows in our DB– the worst culprits were a forum plugin and an audit trail plugin.

Again, thank you to everyone for sticking with us. We appreciate your patience and hope you will find our little lessons-learned useful.

800+ cross referenced links!

mark — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:29:02 +0000

The TreeMagic-Banyan tools on this site now provide easy access to more than 800 cross referenced WordPress articles.Â These articles are read and cross referenced using AmbientWebs unique SWEDÂ based technologies and served on our Banyan portal.
To gain access to this wealth of WordPress knowledge from the world’s leading WordPress sites, simply double-click on any word and open the WP Banyan Portal.Â Let us know what you think.Â Use our contact form to provide us with your observations and feedback.

WordPress Information Central!

mark — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:55:51 +0000

WordPressHelp (WPH) is very pleased to announce that we have implemented the newest release of TreeMagic-Banyan thereby aggregating the web’s most important WordPress information all in one location!!!

In our continuing efforts to make WordPress easier to use, WPH now affords WP developers & users the opportunity to double-click on any text word on this site and gain “instant” access to related WP resource information from:

WordPress
Lorelle
Automattic
WordPress Themes
WordPressHelp
AmbientWebs and
TreeMagic

Users may access the information from these sites either individually (via the drop-down menu which appears when you double-click on a term) or in a collective, intelligently, pre-processed and correlated fashion (via the WP Banyan Portal). This Web 3 functionality allows users access information ‘on-the spot’ and then return to the source for continued reading and information gathering.

If you have additional sites you wish for us to incorporate in our WP Banyan Portal and TM-Banyan Search function, please use our Contact page to let us know.

WebMaster Tools

mark — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 04:12:08 +0000

Most of these pointers are courtesy of: http://mywebresource.com

CSS Guides

mark — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:38:15 +0000

CSS: Style Sheet Guidelines

Web applications should always adhere to W3C standards and validate correctly. Numerous excellent CSS style Guides are available that discuss the how-tos of achieving these objectives, below are a few:

References:

Tutorial:

Style Master CSS Tutorial

Online Guides

mark — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:39:20 +0000

Over the years we have come across numerous useful websites; sites that communicate useful information on web development, standards implementation and more. A few are listed here (we’ll update this list as time goes on…)

Standards

The following sites provide detailed information on web standards. Please remember that all of sites should adhere to applicable web standards! Use these sites to ensure your code complies with the relevant standards.

Tools

Dynamic Drive- Scripts and add-ons
Cleanup your CSS
CSS Menus & More (Stu Nichols)
CSS Page Layouts
Morgue File- Free Open Source photos
Rounded Box Generator
Spiffy Corners- generate nice css boxes
Stock Xchange- Free Open Source photos
WebSite Audit
WebSite Grader

Tutorials

Ajax Tutorials
CSS Listmania
Fix IE Bugs- Explorer Exposed
w3schools Tutorials (html, css, and more)
Web Style Guide
W3c compliant Site Listings

Web Site Analysis

mark — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:44:25 +0000

Goals

Establish an overall goal for your web site. Who will your audience be? What information do you want to convey to this audience?

Targets

Which of the following will your audience be using?

Web browsers (FireFox, Netscape, Internet Explorer, AOL, Opera, lynx)
browser versions (2.0+ 4.0+, 5.0+, 6.0+, 7.0)
platforms (Windows, MAC, UNIX, Linux)
screen resolution - The most popular screen resolutions at this time is 1024 x 768.

Design your site so that it meets the specifications of the target (s) chosen. See www.thecounter.com/stats to see current statistics regarding the most frequently used browser versions, monitor resolutions and operating systems.