There’s no doubt that digg can provide an emourmous boost to your traffic. It’s great for ‘new’ articles and blog posts to give them a big rush of initial popularity. But it’s also useful for older articles - if you can keep the digg count ticking over, then you might have a shot at some of the long-term popular lists.

So, with this in mind, I wrote an article on how to display digg counts (like in the image above). It goes into some detail about how to retrieve the counts in PHP and via AJAX. And there’s full source-code as ever.

The article is a guest post over at Stylized Web - so head over there now to read it! Here’s the link:
http://stylizedweb.com/2008/04/09/stylize-your-digg-count/

Please ask any questions you may have here so I don’t keep having to head over there to check

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Posted by admin in guest posts, tutorials
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Here's another quick tips for the 'Custom slug, custom page' plugin. Do you have any affiliate offers on your blog? Want a quick way to mask the ugly affiliate URLs?

Stage 1

Install the Custom Page plugin. You can download it from this page: http://aciddrop.com/2008/02/16/wordpress-plugin-custom-page-slugs-with-custom-content/

Stage 2

Once you've installed the plugin, go to Options | Custom Page | New Page.

• For the slug, enter the URL you would like your visitors to see
• For the content enter this code:
  CODE:

  <?
  header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
  header( "Location:http://www.affiliateurl.com?trackingid=78236374637");
  ?>

  Enter your own Affiliate URL in place of my example above.

Click submit!

That's it.

Demo

Here, try this lovely link: http://aciddrop.com/free-remote-pc-access

Advanced tip

You can easily include some tracking to store a record of how many times the link was clicked, the page it was clicked on, the browser, the user's I.P etc. Just create a database table in your Wordpress DB to include the relevant info, then insert it into the database before the redirect.

More cunning plans

I've got a few more cunning uses of the plugin to come, so make sure you subscribe to my feed to stay up-to-date!

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Posted by admin in php, tutorials, wordpress
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Do you have more than one website? Or a friend with a website? Wouldn't it be great to easily be able to promote your Wordpress blog on those other sites? Maybe you'd like to:

• Display an up-to-the-minute listing of your latest posts?
• Or show a listing of your most popular or most commented posts?
• Maybe show some live stats from your Wordpress blog on another of your sites?
• Or, what about displaying some of your Wordpress site's ads on your non-Wordpress website?

How can we easily achieve this:

Stage 1 - install the Custom Page plugin

First you should download and install my 'Custom Slug, Custom Page' plugin from this page:
http://aciddrop.com/2008/02/16/wordpress-plugin-custom-page-slugs-with-custom-content/

The plugin allows you to create a page with a custom slug, with whatever content you like and - importantly - with full access to the Wordpress functions and plugin architecture.

Stage 2 - create a Custom page with the content to promote

Let's make a custom page that displays a list of the 3 most recent posts on my blog. So, once you've installed the plugin, click on Options, then Custom Page, then New Page:

For the slug, let's enter "recent-posts":

Now, for the content. First let's enter some code to create the recent posts lists. If you're not a coder, don't worry, just paste this in (you can't damage anything). Include the starting <? and final ?>.

Thanks to http://mtdewvirus.com/code/wordpress-plugins/ for the code. OK, so now all we need is the HTML for the document, and some CSS to style our bulleted list. (Just paste this into the content box, below the code you've just pasted in)

You can change these styles as you see fit, or just leave it as it is. You should change the image for the bullet to one of your own. Finally we, just need to add the body of the document, and to close the HTML tags:

Submit the page, and then click on Manage. Your new page should be available to manage, and you will see a link to it. It will be like this: http://aciddrop.com/recent-posts (but with your domain instead of aciddrop.com). Click the link to view the page. You should get something like this:

Your new custom page

Ok, great. Now what?

The final stage is to get this page to display on your other blog or site. The easiest way to do this is through an iframe. This is an HTML tag that you can use to display a page within another page. So, let say we want to display the info an other Wordpress blog, in the sidebar.

Open up sidebar.php of the theme you use (or whichever file displays the sidebar), and paste in this code where you would like the info to be displayed:

Of course, you should change aciddrop.com to your own domain. You may need to adjust the width and height depending on the info that you are displaying. That's it!

Demo

Just have a look in the right hand bar of this site, and you will see I'm using this technique to display recent posts from both this blog, and another one.

Other uses

The technique isn't restricted to just displaying recent posts. Any time you would like to easily display info from your blog on another site you can use it. Please let me know if you come up with some other ingenious uses.

As usual, please let me know of any bugs/feedback/comments.

Want to hear of other ingenious uses for the plugin? Or be the first to try out my upcoming PHP Speedy Wordpress plugin? Then subscribe to my feed!

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Posted by admin in php, tutorials, wordpress
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Version 0.4 is now available. It now features:

• An installer.Lots of people were having problems with the paths, so we now have an installer that*should* take care of everything very easily. If you need to change anything you can either just re-run the installer, or change the config.php file directly.
• Full support for relative image paths in your CSS, in multiple CSS files. Image paths in CSS are now converted to absolute paths, so you no longer have to worry about where to cache the CSS.
• Added support for different rel types. (rel=”alternative” and rel=”stylesheet” are cached separately)
• Added support for conditional comments in the HEAD tags (this also fixed the problem of commented out stylesheets)

It's available from this page: PHP Speedy

-----------------------------------

Version 0.3 is now available.

• Added check for gzip compression compatibilty.
• Added check for external javascript files
• Fixed bug in head grab function

It's available for download here: aciddrop website speedup v0.3

You can see the new demo online here:

• web-site speed boost test page WITH compression
• web-site speed boost test page WITHOUT compression

Many thanks to those who contributed with bugs and fixes.

-----------------------------------

Version 0.2 Info

Following feedback on the compression class (thanks to all who commented), version 0.2 is now available.

Changes include:

• Added support for different CSS media types
• Fixed bug in relative file paths.
• Improved file cleanup function
• Changed file versioning to by date instead of by file size
• Added check for trailing slash on cachedir

You can see the new demo online here:

• web-site speed boost test page WITH compression
• web-site speed boost test page WITHOUT compression

In testing this new version I found a couple of gotchas:

• Don't use it at the same time as my Smarty output class that joins the CSS and Javascript. Apache will get confused.
• Don't comment out any stylesheets in your HTML if they're not in use. The class can't recognise that (yet!).

Also, for those wondering if it works with Wordpress, I changed the code of this Wordpress theme to use the new class.

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Posted by admin in php, tutorials
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Major New Update - PHP SPEEDY: latest version available here

----------------

There are 4 relatively easy ways by which you can speed up the time it takes a browser to download a page:

• Make fewer HTTP requests
• Add a far-future expires header
• Gzip your page's components
• Minify your JavaScript, CSS and HTML

Following on from my post on joining CSS and JavaScript files, I have written a PHP script which will automatically do all of the above. All you have to do is call the following at the top of your page:

The code

And the following at the bottom of the page:

The Demo

That's it! Before I go into the details, the impatient amongst you can check out the test pages here:

• web-site speed boost test page WITH compression
• web-site speed boost test page WITHOUT compression

The class can be downloaded here: site speed boost class download

Requirements

• A server running at least PHP4. For JavaScript minification to work as well, PHP5+ is required.
• You should set the folder where you are running the class from as writable

Setting basic options

Options can be set with a comma separated string as follows:

The string can contain 'css', 'javascript' and 'page' depending on which elements you would like to be compressed. Any element contained in the string will be gzip encoded and minified.

Setting advanced options

Alternatively, an array can be passed to the class constructor with an advanced set of options. This array would set all the compression options to on:

You can change this array to add or remove all the available options.

Note that "cachedir" should not include a trailing slash. If your CSS files contain relative links for background images, you should set the CSS cachedir to the same directory the standard CSS files are stored in.

Speed gains

On my test page the load time with the compressor turned on was generally below second, and without the compressor between 3-5 seconds. The Yahoo Yslow rating went from F(45) to A(97).

Test page with Firebug, before compression

Test page with Firebug, after compression

Test page with Yslow, before compression

Test page with Yslow, after compression

Download

Please see the updated page

Credits

The JavaScript minification uses jsmin-php.

Subscribe

If you liked this tutorial, please subscribe to my RSS feed for more of the same.

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Posted by admin in php, tutorials
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This tutorial will go through the setup of MySQL database replication. I will also talk about how to get everything working smoothly again after a server crash, or if you wish to switch databases. I will try to explain what is going on behind the scenes for every step (something I've found missing from other tutorials). This is written specifically for MySQL 5.0 on Centos 4, but should be very similar on other Linux distributions. It should also work this way with MySQL 4.x.

The theory

We have 2 servers, one of which is a Master and the other which is a Slave. We tell the Master that it should keep a log of every action performed on it. We tell the slave server that it should look at this log on the Master and whenever something new happens, it should do the same thing.

You should follow the instructions below with two console windows open - one for the Master and one for the Slave. Also note that I will capitalise the first letters of Master and Slave to indicate I am talking about the servers.

Configuring the Master

First of all, we need to create a user on the Master server that the Slave will connect as. I call mine 'slave_user'. Log into mysql as root and create the user:

mysql -u root -p (log into MySQL)

Now, we should edit the my.cnf file (usually in /etc/my.cnf), in the [mysqld] section and tell MySQL that it's going to be a Master:

The first line tells MySQL to start writing a log, and tells it where to write the log. Make sure this directory is empty of all replication logs, especially if you're starting again after replication has already been used.

The second line chooses the database to write the log for. You should change this to your database. The third line gives the server an ID (to distinguish it from the Slave).

You should also make sure skip-networking has not been enabled.

You should now restart the Master:

(MySQL restart commands may vary)

Configuring the Slave

Again, we should change the /etc/my.cnf of the Slave server, in the [mysqld] section:

Line 1 gives the Slave its unique ID. Line 2, tells the Slave the I.P address of the Master server - so you need to change the I.P here.

The remaining lines set a retry limit, and tell the Slave the user, password and database it needs to replicate. We also tell the slave what to use as its relay log. It's best to set this directly, or MySQL will create the name from the hostname and should you change hostname, replication will fail.

You should also make sure skip-networking has not been enabled.

You should now restart the Slave:

Getting the data onto the Slave

On the Master...

I'm assuming you have a live Master server, and an as yet empty Slave server. This stage depends on whether data is constantly being added to the Master. If so, we will have to prevent all database access on the Master so nothing can be added. This means your server will hang during the next step. If no data is being added to the server, you can skip this step. On the Master server, log into MySQL and do the following:

mysql -u root -p (log into MySQL)

Now we will use mysqldump to get the data out. So, still on the Master server:

Make sure you change my_database to your database name, and my_home_dir to the name of your home directory (or another directory of your choosing). You wll now have a file called database.sql.gz in your home directory. This is a gziped copy of your database.

On the Slave...

Now we need to copy over the gzipped file. On the Slave run the following:

Make sure 128.0.0.1 is the I.P of the Master. This will copy the file from the Master and put it in your home directory on the Slave. Now we just need to import into MySQL:

mysql -u root -p (log into MySQL)

Ready to rumble...

On the Master...

Now we're ready to kick things off. We need to find the position the Master is at in the logs. So, log into MySQL and run the following:

mysql -u root -p (log into MySQL)

This should give you an output along these lines:

Keep that on-screen.

On the Slave...

Log into MySQL and do the following:

mysql -u root -p (log into MySQL)

First we stop the Slave. Then we tell it exactly where to look in the Master log file. We use the values for our previous SHOW MASTER STATUS; command on the Master. You should change 128.0.0.1 to the I.P of the Master, and change the user and password accordingly.

The Slave will now be waiting. So all that's left is to...

Back on the Master...

We shoud already be logged into MySQL, so all you have to do is:

To release the tables from lock. Note you only have to do this if you previously ran FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK;

And the recovery part?

Several times it's happened to me that a server has crashed, or a hostname changed or whatever, and I've had a real trouble getting replication to work again. The solution has been to clear out the logs.

On the Slave

Clear out any replication logs from /var/lib/mysql or whever the logs are being stored, as stated in my.cnf. This usually does the trick:

On the Master

Again, get rid of the logs, as per where they are stored in my.cnf. For me it's the following:

This should give you a fresh start on things. You can now start again from the beginning...

Final Notes

My database doesn't use InnoDB tables - it's all MyISAM. However, the MySQL manual recommends adding this to my.cnf for InnoDB databases:

See here for more info: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/replication-howto-masterbaseconfig.html

References

Thanks to the following for their help:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/replication-howto.html
http://www.howtoforge.com/mysql_database_replication
http://www.gra2.com/article.php/setting-up-database-replication-on-mysql

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Posted by admin in mysql, tutorials
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Update: A script is now available to do this, and much more, here: site speed boost script. This script doesn't rely on Smarty.

One of the keys to getting your pages to load quicker is to make fewer HTTP requests. So, for example, if you have 6 javascript files it would be much quicker for you to join all the JavaScript together into one file and serve that instead. However, doing this manually is a pain. Even using a tool to join them together can be a pain. Far easier would be to set up a PHP script to automatically do it for you.

Example

This plugin can automatically turn this:

into this:

Smarty

This script is an output filter for Smarty, a template engine for PHP. If you don't already use Smarty, the script can be adapted and used with PHP's output buffer functions. If you do use Smarty, setting this up with be a breeze.

Installing the Plugins

You should call

from within your application. Then just drop the plugin files into your Smarty plugins directory. Make sure you specify a "cachedir" in the plugins. This is the directory where the joined files will be stored. It should be writeable by the server.

Joining Javascript

Your JavaScript links should contain src and type tags. For example:

This is the only requirement for the HTML of your page.

The script will take the JS within the files, join it together, and create a new file. The new file will be saved in the directory you specify, and a new link to it created.

Joining CSS

Your JavaScript links should contain href and type tags. For example: