Mediawiki on dotcloud

 Open Source, Technology  No Responses »
Feb 112012
 

Unfortunately, there’s no guide available for installing mediawiki on dotcloud and googling for it doesn’t turn up anything much useful. But, I had to move out LUG wiki to dotcloud. I proceeded with it while refering to drupal documentation. At the moment, I don’t have a guide on installing mediawiki but I can highlight the problem I faced.
The big problem lies in the fact that the setup of MediaWiki was done on Apache and dotcloud runs nginx. So, the problem occured mainly with getting the path right.
The savior comes in form of the MediaWiki documentation for nginx.

Some of the changes I had to make were

LocalSettings.php

$wgUsePathInfo = true;

nginx.conf

try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?title=$1&$args;

fastcgi.conf

fastcgi_param  PATH_INFO          $fastcgi_path_info;

 

This isn’t a full fledged guide or a how-to but hopefully a pointer for people who are stuck while getting started with MediaWiki on dotcloud or nginx.

 Posted by admin at 8:31 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

WordPress Performance Tips

 Open Source, Technology  No Responses »
Nov 152011
 

Do you find performance of your WordPress blog to be lousy? And have no clue on where to start with it?

There are lots of articles on the Internet which will tell you what to do. So, instead of repeating the same, I’ll cover each aspect and links to articles which provide useful how-to’s on the same which I have come across while working on OnlyGizmos and iPhoneHelp

I’ll divide it into sections on basis of the type of hosting as it is usually the limiting factor on how much tuning you can do.

Shared Hosting

Having your blog on shared hosting means there’s not much you can change but this is what will suffice for huge number of bloggers out there.

  • Caching Plugin: W3 total cache is the best and highly recommended plugin. With tons of features besides caching like Minification, CDN support, mobile support, Cloudflare integration it is by far the best cache plugin I have come across. For installation and configuration see this wonderful how-to from wpbeginner
  • Theme: Use themes which have been designed with SEO in mind. These themes follow the best practices to speed up your page loading time e.g. putting stylesheets at the top and minify them. The theme framework I would recommend is Thesis. It is a paid theme but having worked with it, I can say that it’s worth the price if you are serious about your website.
  • Scripts: Put javascript files at bottom as recommended in YSlow. This can be handled by W3 Total Cache.

Single Server

In addition to the above, if you have control over your server e.g. VPS or Dedicated server you can take following extra steps -

  • HTTP Server: Move over from Apache to Nginx. Here’s a good guide on moving over your wordpress blog to nginx.
  • MySQL Tuning: Run the mysqltuner script and follow the recommendations given by it to improve MySQL performance.
  • PHP Accelerators: Install PHP Accelerator like APC or XCache. List of accelerators is available on wikipedia. I recommend APC since it’s stable and is likely to be merged into PHP 6.
  • CDN: If you serve lot of static content and media do consider going with a CDN. And if you think you cannot afford CDN’s as they are too costly, think it over. MaxCDN offers excellent CDN at an affordable price of $39.95 for the 1st TB. Do check them out.

Multiple Servers

  • Memcached: One of the components I am yet to personally handle but have heard a lot of good stuff about it. It can provide superior object caching. It has a good support in W3 Total Cache thus making your work of integrating with wordpress easier.
  • Varnish: Place varnish in front of your HTTP server and see your websites fly. Here’s a good article on setting up varnish with nginx, w3tc and APC. And if it isn’t enough official website provides excellent documentation.

These are the things that I have learnt in the past one year. If you have something which I have not covered please share it with us in the comments.

 Posted by admin at 9:57 am

BarCampMumbai5 – The Experience, The Firsts

 BarCampMumbai, Events, Friends, Open Source, Personal, Technology  No Responses »
Feb 052009
 

Sunday February 1 2009 was the day when BarCampMumbai 5 was held with the same old enthusiasm but at a whole new venue – VJTI College, Matunga. The camp was host to many firsts for the BCM as well as for me.

  1. First time BCM was held outside IIT-B.

  2. First BCM without any sponsorship. It was jokingly called as recession camp by a few of us.

  3. First time I had the responsibility of handling something on my own

  4. I took a first session at BarCamp

  5. First opportunity for me to live tweet from an event

Taking up a session was an awesome experience for me. I haven't spoken in front of a crowd since college days, when we used to have presentations in front of the class. And I am glad that I was able to speak better than I did at college. Also, the amount of response I received from the crowd was unexpected. I expected to have 3-4 people attending the session, so I decided to go for a BoF. But in the end had to adjust it to accommodate an audience of 15+.
There was a downside though, I almost attended no session at all throughout the whole BarCamp. The opportunity to meet up people and do something more than made up for it.
Icing on top of the cake was when some of us went to see the play -The Park, at Horniman Circle. It was a perfect way to end the nice day. Thank you Thakkar for informing about the play. My next blog post would be on the play. It was too awesome to not have it's own separate post.

 Posted by admin at 2:45 am

Communication with simple emerging technologies

 Technology  No Responses »
Oct 262008
 

Seeing a friend giving directions to another friend on how to reach the given location, over twitter made me realise all over again as to how much we can achieve using such simple and relatively cheap technologies available to us today. A GPRS enabled mobile phone and a twitter account is all that was needed in this case to make it possible.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. With more websites and applications coming up with various interactive contents and cell phone with never before heard of features & ultra portable laptops coupled with internet on the move, we are all set for a big change in ease and style of communication. It can now happen in absolute real time, at lower cost. But, unlike previously it need not be one to one anymore. The cost still remains the same if it is for a group or for one on one interaction. At the same time service providers stand to gain as they have more subscribers subscribing to such services.
To top it all, India is already getting ready for high speed Internet connectivity on the move with technologies like wimax, evdo and 3G. Once those technologies perpetrate to the masses we will be able to have world wide video conferencing while travelling in a local bus or train.
What we really need is technologies like wimax to reach the remote parts of our country to realise the true potential of these technologies. We have all been dreaming and speaking of the day when the technology will be advanced enough to make any kinds of communication – audio, video, real time, delayed, private, group, one-to-one, open to public and so on. The technology to change these dreams to reality is here. But, there are 4 areas that need to be worked upon:
1) Reaching critical mass
2) Right implementation for the right people through proper segmenting and need-based product/service customisation
3) Ease of use and good interface
4) Adequate security
As always this development will have both positive and negative impacts but technology has to evolve and people will adapt to it.
It is going to be great to see this unfold in front of us. The dynamics of communication are changing – the cost of communication is going down and the user has choice to make on appropriate mode of communication to select.

 Posted by admin at 10:24 am

BCM4

 BarCampMumbai, Events, Open Source, Places, Technology  No Responses »
Sep 122008
 

BarCampMumbai is back again. The same venue, different format.
BCM4 is happening on 4th-5th October 2008 at IIT Powai. Yeah, you read it right it's a 2 day event this time around. There are some other changes too, for better and for worse – as you see it. This time around only way to get to the barcamp is to get involved. You can either volunteer for helping manage the event or you can register as a speaker. A good thing for me as I already wanted to give a shot to volunteering but was a bit late last time around.
You can register for volunteer at Volunteer's Page or register your session in Registration Document.
There's also a logo competition running at BCM this time around for all you creative people.

"BCM
Venue:- SJMSOM, IIT, Powai, Mumbai
Date:- 4th to 5th October 2008

To get news and updates about all the happenings till the countdown clock ticks you can

  1. Join mailing lists and get in touch with the enthusiasts and discuss at http://groups.google.com/group/barcampmumbai2

  2. Follow the blog at http://blog.barcampmumbai.org/

  3. Follow on twitter at http://twitter.com/bcm4

 Posted by admin at 6:04 am

Technology and customer service

 Personal, Technology  No Responses »
Jul 242007
 

Don't worry I am not gonna bore you with any management theories. Just 2 incidents that happened with me yesterday.

Incident 1:
2 weeks back I had lost my cellphone. I bought a new one 2 days back. I went to The Hutch Shop yesterday to get a new SIM card as I needed my old number back.
I was greeted by a friendly customer service representative as soon as I entered the shop. I thought

Wow, things have improved here. I will get my work done fast and have my phone working within a day hopefully.

He told me it would cost me Rs. 99, I knew about it and went ahead. Then he asked for some photo identification. I checked and I had none then ":-(" . They wouldn't accept my library card, which was the only photo identification I had then. It was so frustrating not to get the card when I've been already waiting for 2 weeks without one.
I just left the place feeling disappointed. Why can't TRAI make use of technology for such things and make our life easier. Why do I have to show documents again when I am getting back my old number, not a new one. As it is, everything is computerised at Hutch. Why not just extend it to the whole of tele-communication industry? Makes life much easier for everyone.
I am again thinking of moving to Airtel if I get some good offer. Airtel seems to have much better offers but only for existing customers ":-("
Incident 2:
After leaving from Hutch Shop, I filled up my CAT form then went to British Council Library to submit books that were due today. Then I went up and borrowed a couple of books. Everything went fine till this point. While checking out the books, the barcode reader while reading from the card, seemed to be giving some error. Then, we realised that I had got the old card that expired last year.
I was about to leave without taking the books. Then, the person at the couter called me back and asked me to show my card. He looked up my name and other details in the card and queried the database for my name, got my new membership number and used it to issue the books.
Pretty neat and well planned thing. Keeps the customers happy and loyal to the organisation.
This isn't the only thing they do for customer satisfaction. They also allow members to renew, search, request books online from their site. They also take feedback from the members quite seriously. I haven't personally had problems with them in the 4 years I have been using their service.

 Posted by admin at 6:14 pm

Sify Clowns Around

 Technology  No Responses »
Jul 172007
 

Last couple of days have been really frustrating for sify users in and around Mumbai. Sify has been randomly blocking ports which are not used by an average Internet user.
On 12th of July, sify people decided to block port 22, which is used for ssh. It's not such a commonly used port but many people depend on flawless functioning of such ports for their work and communications. ssh being a secure way of accessing remote PC's is quite essential for many people.
On 13th, pradeepto put forth the query reguarding the same on the ILUG-BOM mailing list. It was confirmed after a few more people responded as to facing the same problem.
The next day, they opened up the port 22. But, the joy was short lived. Now, they blocked ports 143 and 993, which are used for IMAP emails. Considering the importance of emails in this Information Age, this is really a huge problem for sify users relying on IMAP.
Again, pradeepto put up another mail reguarding this new surprise of sify.
Since, not many people use IMAP, not many other people had much problems. Port 143 has been opened up as of now, but port 993 is still blocked. Port 993 is important, as it transports IMAP over SSL.
It's much better security wise to use encryption. Thus, ssh and ssl are quite important protocols for secure communication.
Read the hillarious and frustrating account of pradeepto with the sify people reguarding the incident –
Pradeepto's Blog entry on Sify Woes
And my ISP is not Sify. Now, people will be wondering as to why I wrote this post then.
There are 2 reasons for that -
1. To show the pathetic state of ISP's we have here. This kind of annoying things are carried out by almost all the ISP's. Most of it goes unnoticed as it doesn't affect majority of the audience. But, there have been instances of silly ones too which was noticed by public at large, like the blockspot incident.
2. Because I feel releived that I haven't had to face such issues with my ISP, Hathway. Not, that I haven't had any problems with them. One of my major problems has been their DNS server. I almost always find their DNS servers too slow or down. So, I decided to solve that problem by running my own DNS server. It's a straight forward thing so there hasn't been any problems with it. Otherwise not much to complain as compared to other ISP's in India.

 Posted by admin at 12:14 am
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