Chris K Designs

The biggest complaint I hear from people who use MySQL driven sites on inexpensive shared hosting services is a decrease in performance over time. Most of the time this decrease is no fault of your hosting provider, but the cluttering of your database.

Like any computer storage device, a database is simply a collection of data that through time, use, and abuse can grow unorganized and cluttered. I uncovered a few scripts people had written in this article at noupe.com. Not only did I want to have my databases optimized, I also wanted the backups to be created. So what I have in for your enjoyment is a script that will optimize your database, backup the database to a file including the timestamp (to avoid overwriting), and it will also email you upon warnings and errors.

To install this script you place it in a folder that you can call something like ‘supersecretfoldername’ and put a password on this folder. When the script is run it places a backup in a folder named ‘_db_backups’ in the directory parent to the ‘supersecretfoldername’ folder.

As a bonus, if you use this in conjunction with GoDaddy hosting services, you can use this as a Cron Script to be run without your interaction and the backups will be in GoDaddy’s default database backup folder. GoDaddy’s Hosting Control Center will also email you the script results as part of their Cron Manager interface.

Download the script.

If you are using GoDaddy you will want to set the file permissions to ‘Executable’ through their ‘File Manager’ (Help Article). You can then use the ‘Cron Manager’ from within the ‘Content’ section of your Hosting Control Center. Here you can set the email address they will send your results to, your scripts, and their frequency

Most of us get the whole Twitter idea. Some, still can’t grasp it. This week Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy.com, put a video up on his blog explaining Twitter is possibly the most simple way. Check it out below. When you are done watching, head over to bobparsons.me for more videos and blog posts from Bob.

When you are done, go ahead and follow me on twitter @cklosowski.

Video after the break. Continue reading “Still don’t get this Twitter thing?” »

So I found a great site if you are a fan of indie music. Hearya.com offers up daily posts about indie bands and newly released tracks as well as where to download the tracks. The tracks are typically of high quality and you can usually purchase them on the Amazon Music Store as well. This means, you can help out the indie music scene as well by purchasing their tracks if you want to (there is usually a few tracks you can download for free as well though).

Please go check them out at hearya.com.

Be sure to check out their Best Albums of ’09 list as well. They keep on updating this list as the year goes on.

Recently many newspapers have been closing their doors and ceasing all print media due to pure costs of print overhead. It simply costs too much to print and distribute physical editions these days. Aside from cost, there are some that claim the print media is a burden on the environment as well.

There was a rumor online that Wired Magazine is looking to cut the web content in lieu of keeping the print media alive after a large amount of layoffs. Not only is this counter intuitive, but it’s counter culture right now. While web content reigns supreme due to it’s cheap overhead cost, this publisher is going to keep their costly print edition going. This got me to thinking, what happens to a graphic designer or layout designer when print media is reduced or dies?

Most people will argue that a graphic designer can still work in a web-based world, and while this is somewhat true there are parts of print media that you cannot replicate digitally. Graphic designers always have one very important thing that web-designers do not…medium control.

You can write all the code you want and test your design or site in every browser, but nothing is going to guarantee that your viewer is on a computer that supports the site, that has enough screen real-estate, or that their screen is calibrated for color. Graphic Designers in magazine, news paper, or other print mediums are typically given specific dimensions into which their design is effectively placed to create an emotion or feeling. Web Designers can never feel this sort of control for the success of their work. So what happens to all of these designers? Here are the questions I pose to you, my designer readers and friends:

• Are we all to just fold and start working digital only?
• Is the print media even salvageable in this economic downturn?
• With ‘sustainability’ being such a buzz word, is print doomed for being too wasteful?
• Do you still subscribe to a print edition of anything?

Let me know what you think in the comments. I’m very curious to see what discussions arise.

The Updated Today plugin has been updated to version 1.6. In this version I have corrected the error that drafts would invoke the ‘Updated Today’ banner and now only posts or pages with the ‘publish’ status will cause the banner to be displayed.

You can download directly from my site at the plugin page or from WordPress.org.

The plugin has been updated to version 1.6.1 to fix a Z-Index issue with some themes. Should be live soon at WordPress.org