My sites on the server usually handle the loads that are on them but i was getting a huge spike in traffic that was causing the server to start swapping in and out of the [...]]]> After noticing one of my servers was down i needed a solution to the server load problems i was having.

My sites on the server usually handle the loads that are on them but i was getting a huge spike in traffic that was causing the server to start swapping in and out of the swap….. which snowballed and caused the server to go from a load average of about 1 to well over 100!!!

What was to be done?

I already use supercache on all my sites along with widget cache.  This helps greatly but the problem is i am running multiple sites on these servers and i really need to prevent the servers from becoming overloaded.

I was using Apache + mod_fcgi and nginx on cpanel.  It worked well until i went over a certain amount of traffic at the same time.

I quickly replaced nginx with the varnish cpanel plugin which helped a little and caused the load to drop.

I also noticed that FCGI was running away with processes and helping cause the swapping.  Exchaning this for suPHP did help but i found the performance wan’t anywhere near as good.

As i am the only person on the server i have since moved to DSO which dropped my load average down to around 1 which is perfect for me.

The only problem being that dso runs as the apache user nobody:nobody.   as i wanted to change from super cache to w3 (as i’ve seen some stats indicating that w3 total cache can handle a higher load) i have had to go through sorting file permissions of each site so that the W3 plugin can write the cache.

playing around with APC , eAccelerator and memcached  i have found the best results are in using enhanced disk for my page cache and APC for the database, object and minify.  MY sites are now ready for any spike in traffic that can be thrown at them!

I wanted to get the top 20 or so tags from a wordpress blog and to use the tags for a loop of 3 posts from each tag.

The only function i could find to get the most used tags was wp_tag_cloud

by taking it [...]]]> I am probably trying to reinvent the wheel here but…..

I wanted to get the top 20 or so tags from a wordpress blog and to use the tags for a loop of 3 posts from each tag.

The only function i could find to get the most used tags was wp_tag_cloud

by taking it into an array i could get the top 20 tags.

$tags = wp_tag_cloud( array( 'number' => '20', 'order' => 'DESC', 'echo' => 'false', 'format' => 'array' ) );

I looped through this array using:

 foreach($tags as $tag)

unfortunately the wp_tag_cloud did not return a list of tag id’s for me to  loop through.

each $tag was in the format of a url,  i.e. <a id=”" href=”http://domain.com/tag/post_slug” style=”">tag name</a>

So i needed to extract data from this to find the tag.  i chose to extract the tag slug which would be in the url.

$tagslug= preg_replace(‘%<a .*? ?href=["\']([^"\']*).*?>.*?</a>%i’, ‘$1′, $tag);

returned the url for me.  Unfortunately my regular expression skills are pretty poor and couldn’t work out how to extract the slug straight away using markers. (my university professor would not be proud.)

so i took the url and ran another preg_replace on it to get the tag slug

$tagslug = preg_replace(“/.*\.(com|gov|org|net|mil|edu)\/tag\/([a-z_\-]+).*/i”,’$2′,$tagslug);

This finally returned the tag’s slug for me,  I had a wee function called get_tag_id_by_slug i made so i called that.

$thetagid= get_tag_id_by_slug($tagslug);

which returned the tag id number for me, so finally i could use
$term = get_tag($thetagid);

to get the actual term to use in my wordpress loop

$new_query = new WP_Query(‘r_sortby=highest_rated&r_orderby=desc&posts_per_page=4&tag=’. $term->slug);
while ( $new_query->have_posts() ) : $new_query->the_post();

My function to get the id from the slug is:

function get_tag_id_by_slug($tag_slug) {
global $wpdb;
$tag_ID = $wpdb->get_var(“SELECT * FROM “.$wpdb->terms.” WHERE `slug` = ‘”.$tag_slug.”‘”);
return $tag_ID;}

After doing all this i decided that its all very well to automate things but some of my most used tags were very similar and i didn’t want a loop containing the same 4 posts over and over with a new title.  So in the end i just went with.

$tags=get_tags(‘include=7,8,11,30,45′);

and looped that!

DOH!

It is a relatively simple plugin that pulls data from my arcade website Lingolux flash games.

At the backend Lingolux uses a simple wordpress WP_Query loop to pull data from the site as specified by the [...]]]> I have made a plugin for wordpress to display up to 200 flash games within your wordpress blog.

It is a relatively simple plugin that pulls data from my arcade website Lingolux flash games.

At the backend Lingolux uses a simple wordpress WP_Query loop to pull data from the site as specified by the plugin.
This allows the user to select the number of games and whether to display new games, top games, or both.

Although most blogs will cache the page themselves i did not want my plugin to overwhelm my website so i implemented a simple caching system in php.
I found the information here


$cachefile = "cache/".$reqfilename.".html";
$cachetime = 5 * 60; // 5 minutes
// Serve from the cache if it is younger than $cachetime
if (file_exists($cachefile) && (time() - $cachetime
< filemtime($cachefile)))
{
include($cachefile);
echo "";
exit;
}
ob_start(); // start the output buffer
?>
I placed the wp query here
// open the cache file for writing
$fp = fopen($cachefile, 'w');
// save the contents of output buffer to the file
fwrite($fp, ob_get_contents());
// close the file
fclose($fp);
// Send the output to the browser
ob_end_flush();
?>


This provided some simple caching of the backend.

The plugin also uses a simple lightbox to display the flash.
You can see the plugin in operation here and you can download it from the wordpress site here
Flash Games Page

How about adopting The South American style system?

An “opening tournament” where each of the 10 play each other twice, a champion is declared.
Relegation wise, they could have 1 or 2 down 1 or 2 up (or playoffs [...]]]> I think the 10 team league could work…. but only if they did something radical!

How about adopting The South American style system?

An “opening tournament” where each of the 10 play each other twice, a champion is declared.
Relegation wise, they could have 1 or 2 down 1 or 2 up (or playoffs whatever = extra tv money etc).

Then comes the “closing tournament” every team plays each other twice again and another champion is declared. If the same team wins twice then they are the “overall winners” but if you have 2 different teams then you get a huge money spinning “champions playoff” a game to decide who gets the champions league place. The the other european spots can be decided with the much the much touted playoffs based on league positions over the 2 seasons.

This would give the other teams more of a chance of winning the league as you don’t have to play the old firm 4 times a season, other problems that usually affect challengers (injuries, suspensions and squad size) don’t cause as many problems as each season only lasts half a year.

It would alleviate the huge economic hit of being relegated as you now have the possibility of being promoted twice a year.

It would also introduce the huge money spinner playoffs everyone wants.

TV still get their 4 old firm games a year and the fans get more of a chance of winning the league!

The idea of B teams should be scrapped.
It would be horrible to be stuck in a league with Ranger/Celtic reserves… i can’t imagine many Raith Rovers/Dunfermline/Falkirk/etc fans wanting to go watch their team vs reserves!
Placing them in regional leagues is pointless too… what benefit would they get out of playing milkmen and posties week in week out?
They need to reintroduce the reserve leagues and encourage the big teams to link up with smaller teams for year long loans for the young players who are 5th/6th choice at their current clubs!

yup thats right its only a dns block!

Its a combination of Arkanoid, Breakout and Peggle using Box2d Physics it provides a unique gameplay experience.

I programmed the game using FlashDevelop and Adobe’s Flex API

The Menu Music, Losing Music and Winning music was made by Seven Acre Smile , you [...]]]> My first game has been launched.

Mr Crabbys Beach Ball Adventure

Its a combination of Arkanoid, Breakout and Peggle using Box2d Physics it provides a unique gameplay experience.

I programmed the game using FlashDevelop and Adobe’s Flex API

The Menu Music, Losing Music and Winning music was made by Seven Acre Smile , you can listen to the full songs here http://www.myspace.com/thesevenacresmile

The Graphics were completed by Daniel Martin.

I decided to that my own site would be the primary sponsor of this game. You can play it now on my Flash Game Portal LingoLux.com amoungst other places on the internet.

I shall talk more about LingoLux in the future.

I’ve had this little card for ages but since I’ve been using vista 64bit i’ve been unable to use my Yuan pd300 (dvb2go)  stick…

The Yuan site is terrible and has no links to any sort of drivers…. and from what i remembered they even required a cdkey to use their drivers/software!!!