Linux and PHP web application support and development (Bromsgrove, UK)
Here’s why it’s a good idea …. (The server was upgraded on the 23rd of May. The graph shows CPU time – where yellow is idle and blue+green are used/busy).
We have a set of PHPUnit tests running against a Propel/PDO application. Recently, with a recent increase in the number of tests, we’ve found that we’ve been hitting MySQL’s max_connections or max_user_connections limit (see /etc/mysql/my.cnf on the MySQL server).
Today we received an email along the lines of : “Help! A customer’s website is slow and they’re complaining it’s taking over 2 seconds to load!”
The PHPNE 2014 conference is almost upon us (March 18th). See their website for more details. The schedule looks awesome – I wish I could make it. As mentioned before, Pale Purple has helped by sponsoring the event – and we’re listed on http://conference.phpne.org.uk/sponsors.html (Perhaps we should add a listing of conferences we’ve sponsored […]
PHP 5.6 is almost here (we hope) – so we’ve had a look at some of the upcoming changes, and here are the ones of most interest to us. In a nutshell – variadics & splat, constant scalar expressions and ArrayOf type hinting ….
While desktop users are generally getting faster and faster internet connections, it’s still the case that optimising a page’s generation and delivery can lead to a significantly better user experience. This is especially the case for mobile users – who are often on a relatively low speed and/or high latency connection. With this in mind, here […]
A useful way of ‘warming up’ in the morning is to spend 10-15 minutes doing a short task/exercise – partly to hone your skills as a programmer through practice and repetition – and partly just to get into the right frame of mind. See this article on wikipedia for more information and links, and one example String […]
Last Friday was the ShropGeek Revolution conference (which we sponsored, and found to be very useful). This weekend there is the annual PHPNW conference. Having sponsored PHPNW’s conference since it’s inception, it’s been great seeing it grow and get better and bigger each year. More info over at http://conference.phpnw.org.uk/phpnw13/
When developing applications, an initial implementation often involves multiple tasks occurring in real time, and in sequence. While this may function well initially, often over time as the system grows, performance issues crop up.
TL;DR version Use Solr as a ‘search engine’ for applications. It is fast. A lot faster than MySQL (at least in one slightly-scientific study we’ve undertaken). Further details below….