This is a classic case of constantly learning something new about computers. In fact for those that know more, if you see any mistakes in what I have to say here…feel free to comment and correct me!

A few days ago I mentioned that we optimized the Virtual Private Server that Like that Idea runs on with Zend Optimizer. We didn’t see many improvements, but I think that I made the mistake in assuming what the optimizer did and didn’t do. From my online readings it appears that the Zend Optimizer works best for those applications encoded on a Zend platform (something we do not have). So I went looking elsewhere and found the open source application, eAccelerator.

eAccelerator is a free open-source PHP accelerator, optimizer, encoder and dynamic content cache. It increases the performance of PHP scripts by caching them in their compiled state, so that the overhead of compiling is almost completely eliminated. It also optimizes scripts to speed up their execution. eAccelerator typically reduces server load and increases the speed of your PHP code by 1-10 times.

I installed eAccelerator from the source on the Apache server. Although not as easy as installing the Zend Optimizer, any Web administrator or computer geek worth his or her grain of salt shouldn’t run into any problems installing eAccelerator. Wow, what a difference! Since the install, the server has been running very well and I think everyone should notice the improvements this time around. The VPS contains a variety of Wordpress, Drupal, and SMF sites…and they all are performing well. If I have a need in the future I’ll bring back the Zend Optimizer since eAccelerator is suppose to be compatible with Zend Optimizer.

Why are we seeing eAccelerator perform so much better than the Zend Optimizer? As the product’s name says, Zend Optimizer is an optimizer for your Web Server.? The eAccelerator package on the other hand is not only an optimizer, but also an accelerator, encoder, and caches the dynamic content (like the pages you see here at this site). So we’re not only seeing the CPU work less because of the code being optimized, but we are also seeing less hits to the database on the server because of the caching. In essence, the server is providing pages faster to our readers but having to work less in providing those pages.

Documentation and support for eAccelerator is rather weak, so I can see why those needing more dependable support may want to purchase the Zend products.? However, so far for this little ‘ol VPS from Dakota Hosting is keeping us happy. If we run into problems with eAccelerator or the VPS I’ll let everyone know. Otherwise, this is the last computer geek article for awhile and we return to normal programming. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen a book review or product recommendation for the family…one of the original purposes of this site.

This looks like a night of upgrades for Like that Idea. Earlier this evening, we upgraded the server with Zend Optimizer. Now we’ve upgraded Wordpress to version 2.0.2 which is mainly a security release though a few other bugs were fixed. During this upgrade we also upgraded the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin to version 3.1. The plugin upgrade adds not only tagging suggestions from Tagyu but also Yahoo. Finally, I renabled the Wordpress chaching, but of course once again I’m not seeing that much difference in performance due to the enabled chaching. I wish someone could point me to a good reference to how caching works in Wordpress 2.x.
Are there any negatives to doing all these changes in one night? Well, yes. If there is a significant boost or degradation in performance for this site…I won’t know if it was due to the chaching, Wordpress upgrade, Ultimate Tag Warrior upgrade, or the Zend Optimizer! However, I don’t expect problems to develop (last famous words of an over-confident system administrator).

We host Like that Idea and WebCMS Forum through Dakota Hosting on one of their Virtual Dedicated Servers (also known as Virtual Private Servers or VPS). Dakota Hosting’s normal hosting plans have always been optimized for php using Zend Optimizer. However with the virtual as well as dedicated servers you manage the servers yourself and have to install the “extras” yourself. By default the self-managed server does not come with an optimizer for PHP. So today we loaded the free Zend Optimizer. Hopefully, visitors to our site will notice some performance improvements. Although we haven’t had problems before…occasionally our articles get some broader online attention than normal and we like to be ready for those busy periods.

Installing Zend Optimizer was probably the easiest thing we’ve done so far on our server. Put it this way, it was a lot easier to install the optimizer than installing Wordpress or Drupal (both of which are not too difficult to install either). If you have a server you manage yourself, you can get the Zend Optimizer at Zend’s Website. We found a good but dated explanation of how the optimizer works in a publication called New Architect.

We would like to hear from our regular readers if they notice any improvements since we installed the optimizer. We’re always looking at different solutions for tweaking the server! Any additional suggestions for improving performance are also welcomed.

We may eat a lot of pizza in our home, but I don’t think we have big enough stomaches to eat this extra-extra-large pizza:

A pizzeria is vying for a spot in Guinness World Records for the world’s largest commercially available pizza. The $99, 150-slice pizza isn’t a one-time deal. In fact, The Big One is already available, though Mama Lena’s Pizza House has had few takers so far.

The would-be recordsetter measures about 3 feet by 4 1/2 feet and takes up nearly all the space in the shop’s brick oven.

The current record holder is a 4-foot diameter pizza offered by Paul Revere’s Pizza in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Dubbed the Ultimate Party Pizza, it uses more than 10 pounds of dough, 48 ounces of sauce and about five pounds of cheese.

A tip for Mama Lena customers: Call ahead. The Big One takes about 15 minutes to prepare and another 20 to 25 minutes to bake, said Rob Carrabbia, whose wife, Wendy, owns the pizzeria in the suburban Pittsburgh town of McKees Rocks.

We had great intentions to continue to keep everyone up to date on a new site that we’re building using Drupal, a content management system (CMS). The idea was as we were building the site we intended to write down how we did it so others could learn with us. Well if you look at our Drupal blog here at Like that Idea you would see that we have not had too many posts in the blog. Have we given up on the idea? No hardly, we are just so busy with other projects (including the project of raising a family) that we have had to prioritize and put some of our ideas on the back burner.

I have no doubt the new site focusing on content management systems will eventually be up and running, the question is when and not if it will happen. I suspect that once Drupal 4.7 has been released is when we’ll start working on the site.

In the meantime, We would like to recommend a few places that you can go to learn about Drupal and other content management systems. First, if you haven’t visited the handbooks at Drupal.org lately, you should. A lot of changes have been taking place in the user support documentation at Drupal.org and most of it is for the better. If reading isn’t your thing, Drupal users don’t have to wait for the movie to come out since it is now available at Lullabot. Lullabot is providing both audiocasts and videocasts on a number of Drupal topics. The Lullabot video for managing menus and links with Drupal is very well done.

Last but not least, if you have questions about content management systems and how they can help you build a Website; please consider joining in on the discussions at our sister site, the WebCMS Forum. While most people think of a Web content management system as only Web Portals, the forum also considers software that manages blogs, forums, shopping carts, and photo-galleries to also be variations of a CMS. WebCMS Forum is still a new site, but it already has had a promising start with a number of users of different CMS applications coming together to share their ideas and learning from others. I already find myself learning a lot and like to see it when those from Drupal, Mambo, Joomla, e107, SMF, phpBB, Wordpress, osCommerce, and others express their thoughts and ideas on their own favorite CMS. I you don’t mind me saying it, I hope you like that forum!

I know this has already made the Internet rounds, but I’m too impressed to not post it here. A remake of The Simpsons introduction we all see everytime the cartoon starts was done by Sky TV for airing in the UK. Only this introduction uses real actors and not animated characters! A link to the video can be found at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=49IDp76kjPw . The following excerpt is from a Reuters-Yahoo article:

Painstakingly crafted by Sky (BSY.L: Quote, Profile, Research) and its ad agency Devilfish, the video was originally intended as an on-air promotion for the Sky One network, which airs new episodes of “The Simpsons” in the UK.

The company decided to release it on the Internet as part of a word-of-mouth brand building exercise, tapping into the red-hot Web video sector.

“If we had only showed it on air, you might turn to someone and say that was really cool,” said BSkyB communications director Matthew Anderson. “Putting it online, there’s a fantastic discussion between millions of people — it’s bringing the Simpsons to them instead of having them tune in.”

After less than a week, the video has been viewed millions of times at online video sites like YouTube (http://youtube.com/watch?v=49IDp76kjPw) and Google Video.

After countless years in grade school working hard on science fair projects and not receiving a ribbon, I finally gave up and wrote a “non-experimental” paper on computers in the eighth grade. Despite the paper being weak, I finally won a ribbon (third or fourth place) in the school science fair. Remember, this was the early 1980s and everyone was still fascinated with the then new concept of computers entering “everday” life. Why am I going down memory lane? Well I came across an article on the 60th anniversary of Eniac, the “first” computer built which of course was mentioned in that paper of mine some 25 years ago.

Though, only to find out after reading the article, ENIAC wasn’t the first computer and really didn’t do a whole lot. They just had a good public relations department that explained well to the American audience what role the computer would play in the future. If you read the article you’ll find (not included in my excerpt) that the PR people went so far to include the placing of flashing light bulbs on the computer console so that people had something to look at besides vacume tubes and switches. Still, you have to admit it was an amazing engineering achievement.

Compared with other computers that performed such practical functions, ENIAC was an odd bird in technical terms. It relied on a 10-digit decimal system, rather than the binary systems of ones and zeros used by virtually all subsequent computers, even those developed by Eckert and Mauchly. Programs could not be stored on ENIAC. It didn’t really employ conditional branching–the if/then statements that form the cornerstone of modern programming.

And only one ENIAC, in fact, was ever built.

“It was a monstrosity. It was rapidly overtaken by general purpose machines,” thundered Jay Forrester, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and one of the leading computer architects of the last century. “There wasn’t anything in it that survived into modern machines, except maybe electricity.”

But supporters respond with an indisputable fact: It worked. Until it was immobilized by lightning in 1955, ENIAC performed computational problems relating to the development of the hydrogen bomb and other military projects. Penn professor Irving Brainerd once even speculated that during the 80,223 hours ENIAC operated, it crunched more calculations than had been performed by all humanity since time began.