Improving Smut

Ohhhh smutish is one of those websites that i really didn't know what to do with ^^ it has been and done several things, so like 2 years ago i changed into a sort of aggregation of smut, i know i know, kinda lame, still it worked pretty good for a while, so what of it now, hummm still the same muhahahah, just newer software, better cache system, better feed discovery system, so it should work way WAY better now hehehe, well until the next time it breaks or i change my mind ^_^'

Improvements on Kudasai

 Yep yep, kudasai had a major improvement, that's how i like to do it hehehe try stuff out and keep improving, partly because of some complaints, partly cause it had some not so user-friendly "features", so here are some of the improvements:

• Stuff like using facebook connect or google's opensocial social widgets are all removed (and well both suck), i know it seemed like a good idea, but now i see it kinda sucks ^_^
• Took off a lot of links and or changed to pictures, so its easier to navigate around the site
• Bigger is better, so now the games take a way larger section of the screen, they are the reason you are in the site in the first place, who the hell wants to play in a tiny little window (my fault and one of the reasons i stopped using kudasai myself to play games), so now its nicer and more kawaii and no more flash distortions and cleaner gameplay, so now even if i put some ads they will be way under the games itself and wont interfere on your fun (yes there will always be a link to full-screen gameplay) heheh
• Removed the huge amount icons of "click here to bookmark/post" on the header, to just post to twitter and facebook like, simpler and nicer, also in 2 years i had like 3 bookmarks from there, in only a couple of days after the tweaks i already have several twitter posts and facebook likes, so success ^^
• Added a bunch of links to cool flash games/sites on the main page, with games like Auditorium, Infectonato 60sec, Wagakoto or Desktop TD (since some games shouldn't be hosted on kudasai, cause they have multiplayer or features connected to the site, or just look way cooler on their own site, but are still cool to play and nice for gamers to visit them too)
• Improved performance and caching, not that the site will be way more quick, but if there is a surge of visits or lots of visitors coming often, they will see that a lot of the site with cache easier and will perform easier on repeated visits and flash loading ^^

Optimize your WHM Cpanel

This isn't gonna be a how-to increase the performance of whm/cpanel, there are loads of awesome tutorials online and i'll link so some of those in the bottom, this is just some of the tips I've learned over the years, that can and do, and make a difference on the performance of your vps / vds / dedicated box using WHM Cpanel.

1) Disable Unused Services
WHM is a complete package it takes care of the services, of making and managing the account and updating the server and itself, because of its versatility it has all these services and more that you would want from a hosting server, however all of these services are not required and some of them are serious performance hogs, so these are the ones you should check out and if you dont need, disable:

• SpamAssassin Server (spamd) - If you dont need anti-spam, nowadays most e-mail software/webmail provide anti-spam protection, so no point running it on your server, unless mail security is essential, also if you need it, you need to configure it properly so at least its not such a big performance hit.
• Clamav Antivirus - Same thing as SpamAssassin, but for Anti-virus, and well clamav just detects the really blatant virus, so trojans and mallware might get trhough anyways, so you can disable this one, but if you need it its the same thing as SpamAssassin, configure the hell out of it.
• Cpanel Pro - Added features, but not really needed.
• Statistics Software - Well with google analytics and other offsite statistics software, you can live with just one stats software and webalizer is probably the lightest, disable the rest.
• Mailman - Just use a php or offsite maillists systems.
• Webmail - Unless you are hosting, most people are using pop3/imap or just offsite mail, so choose the most basic like squiremail, disable the rest.
• Entropy Chat - enable only if you need it.
• Melange - enable only if you need it.

2) Tweaking Settings

• Uncheck Conserve Memory at the expense of using more cpu/diskio (however if you need the added memory, check it, but you take a performance hit).
• Choose the best version for you of Apache, Mysql, FTP, PHP (just choose the one that fits better to your uses), and then tweak it, make some online searchs on how to change the apache config's or php settings (most are available right through WHM).
• Make sure the default catch-all mail address is set to FAIL, so that it uses as little CPU time/Disk Space as possible.

4) Upgrade / Update
This one is simple... not always having the latest and greatest is the best course of action, but there is a tendency for newer software to have better performance, less bugs and genereraly more secure, so when in doubt, always update, in this case, its setting up whm to update itself to the CURRENT or STABLE releases and make sure security packages are also on automatic, also from time to time running the easy apache, and the updates on the Software section (Server and System).

5) Keep an Eye on it and Adjust
Since every box is different (although im talking here about LAMP+WHM/CPanel), there are multiple variations of LAMP (using CentOS instead of Debian, or php4 instead of php5), also it depends on the sites/services you are doing with the box, if your sites are dynamic you kinda want to adjust php, if its a file server, you kinda can move to nginx (or another lightweight server, instead of apache), if you have a lot of Mysql work, its another thing, so not all rules or changes will work best, so keeping an eye on the performance of the box is important, not only if the CPU and RAM are good, but also how quick your pages load.

I know there are a lot of more tweaks you can make so check these articles for more in depth tweaking (or just make a search yourself), however just doing the ones i told should keep your box humming away pretty good ^_^

Check ...
Optimizing cPanel/WHM
Optimize High-Traffic Servers
Configuring and Optimizing MySQL For WHM Dedicated Server/VPS

Choosing the right Apache? Apache 2.0 vs Apache 2.2

Well i ordered a new box and found out that it was running Apache 2.0.63, a very stable version of Apache (still used by lots of webhosts), but since like a year ago, i've moved to the 2.2 branch, so to decide what was the best choice i decided to do some testing between both version to choose, humm performance wise?, and yes i know 2.2 is much better regarding speed, but performance is not just about speed, so i just installed one and then the other, did some tests and let it run for a full 24hours midweek (cause weekends the traffic drops a bit)

So what are the results, interestingly enough... im gonna make some charts ^_^

Average 24h CPU Load (Restricted to 1CPU)

Average 24h Memory (Restricted to a total of 1GB)

Average Requests of File Types

Ok charts are cute but were are the numbers? well there isnt a point or need really, since the site hosted (and test files) on the box are not a perfect benchmark of Apache's abilities, this should be considered above all a real world test, than a well measured test, but we can take a conclusion out of this, just looking at the charts, Apache 2.2 branch does seem to perform faster than the Apache 2.0 branch, although that performance increase is traded by a slightly higher cpu and memory consumption (about 0.3% memory increase and about a 6% CPU load increase ), hummm i can live with that,  2.2.15 WIN! hehehe, besides newer software has a tendency to bring better performance and security, and in the long run thats always smart thinking.

New Portuguese Search Engine

Yep, i had some requests and some tweaks to do, so i made a new site, its called PT1 or Portugal1, its based on google search with a portuguese free directory of the best portuguese sites we like (the search engine and all the added services are done, stuff like quick link search engines for firefox or search toolbar with some cool stuff ), the directory is still not live yet, also ill add more services later on, but for now it looks simple and cool and works like a charm ^_^

Moving to Asynchronous Tracking

So in this move to... well move faster hehehe, im pushing Google Analytics Asynchronous Tracking on all S2R sites that use Google Analytics (almost all, the ones that don't, they use Reinvigorate ^_^ ), although I've tested through this past week the speed changes between normal code and the asynchronous code, i can say i don't see much of a speed difference, that could be, because well, my sites already run fast, but anyways when you join all of those little tweaks that speed sites up, it makes a big difference, especially if you get bursts of traffic ^_^

New and Improved S2R

yep i made some improvements on S2R heheh, just making it nicer, still all of this "google now adding speed as another factor in ranking" is making everyone all nervous and getting CDN and doing all this changes, well i've always tried to make my sites, quick and easy, both in the webdesign/structure/hosting side of things, because i want my sites to be fast..., so... well im always trying to put one less picture in a site, or offload content or optimize code or have faster better hosting anyways, so i guess no change here ^_^'