Archive for the ‘Web’ category

Who I use for domain name registrations

January 21st, 2010

I get asked this on a fairly regular basis, often by people new to the domain and hosting scene.  I’ve got a lot of domains at GoDaddy that I’ve purchased over the years, but for most new domain purchases I’ve found omnis.com, and I’ve been very happy with them so far (just over a year).  (yes, that’s an affiliate link, so I’ll make a bit o’ cash if you click that and purchase something from them).

I don’t recommend their hosting plan, nor godaddy’s, nor anyone else’s for that matter.  I’ve managed my own dedicated servers for 10 years, and would have a hard time recommending any shared hosting plan for anyone, mostly because of the restrictions of freedoms I’ve found.  Many people may not need it, but I do, so I can’t specifically tell you to use omnis.com for domain *hosting*.  However, purchasing domains through them and pointing the name servers anywhere else (which they let you do easily) is fine (and what I do).  To be fair, I’ve not tried their hosting plan, so I can’t comment on it, which is why I don’t recommend it.

Why do I like omnis?  Price.  GoDaddy has lower initial pricing, assuming you can find a coupon code (and they’re all over the place if you look for them).  This can often get a .com domain name down to $7 from GoDaddy for the initial registration period.  Yes, if you buy 5 years up front, you’ll get the $7 price for 5 years.  However, most people don’t do that (I don’t – I try too many domain names every year).  So, purchasing for one year at GoDaddy is $7 (with coupon) and $8.95 from omnis.com.  Almost a $2 difference!  However, come renewal time, GoDaddy has steadily gone *up* for me year after year, and omnis.com hasn’t (so far).  Renewing that $7 .com for me at GoDaddy jumps to $10.69 plus some ICANN fee.  So, for 2 years, I’m at almost $18 with GoDaddy, and pretty much the same at omnis.com.  Following year, I’ll be saving money.

Is is worth it to try to save money on a 2-3 year time horizon?  Strictly by the numbers, no.  However, I’ve felt GoDaddy has become a bait/switch operation with respect to the higher domain name renewal fees.  Coupons or special deals might help in some cases, but I’d prefer to give my domain business to someone who doesn’t bait/switch or need to rely on massive promotions.  Yes, omnis are smaller, and yes, I might have problems with them at some point, but I haven’t in over a year, I don’t get upsold a huge amount of junk trying to check out, and the support I’ve had for the few questions I’ve sent in has been reasonable (typically answered by a human via email within a few hours max).

So, if you’re looking to help support a smaller domain registrar with decent service and decent prices, give omnis.com a spin.

Next magazine topic survey – winner announced

December 23rd, 2009

A few weeks ago, I posted a survey asking for input on the next magazine topic for Web Dev Publishing to pursue.  The results were interesting, but unfortunately the results were not definitive, and I’m left with the same quandry as before – which topic to choose.

The winner of the survey, selected at random, was Mark McDonnell.  Congrats Mark, I’ll be sending your Amazon Gift Card over today.

The top vote getters were (in no particular order)

  • MySQL
  • NoSQL
  • JVM Languages (jruby, jython, scala, clojure, etc)
  • Zend Framework
  • Database technologies

The votes were pretty evenly split between all of these topics, which leaves me with no clear direction as to which, if any, of these topics would make sense to pursue (from a demand standpoint).   There already was a MySQL PDF magazine, which has transitioned in to a “open source database magazine”, covering more technologies than just MySQL.  NoSQL, while interesting, has been criticized as just a ‘flavor of the month’ (though the interest shown in this survey was significant).  Zend Framework and JVM Languages are the two that seem the most promising.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

Learning new languages harmful?

December 22nd, 2009

After having spent much time with Groovy/Java, and a bit with Ruby and a bit with C#, I have a newer perspective on learning new programming languages.  Much of my thoughts are summed up by this post from Gustavo Duartes.  I liked his choice of words at the top – “language dabbling” – which largely describes my C# and Ruby experience.  I’ve done a little bit in them – some paid in C#, some not – but the bulk of my work is in PHP, with a small but growing bit in Grails.

It’s interesting to note his acceptance of “more than one”, but focusing on the “minimal required set”.  We tend to think of languages as Java,C#, Python, etc., but competent web developers need to have a handle on SQL and JavaScript as well.  Many also get into Flash/Flex/Silverlight too, and while CSS isn’t a *language* specifically, it’s something most web developers should be acquainted with.  So, regardless of your serverside language of choice, there’s going to be 2-4 other technologies you need to be at least competent, if not proficient, with.  This may be more the realm of small shop and independent developers – people working on larger teams or in companies with divided responsibilities may be able to get away without knowing any SQL or JavaScript, for example.

One of Gustavo’s points was that you lose momentum on your main language when you start dabbling with others.  There may be a point there, but I suspect some people end up looking at other languages when they reach a plateau in one.  That was certainly my point I reached with PHP.  Having used it since early 1996, there’s only so much more I feel I can do with it.  Yes, the language is evolving slowly, and I’m not keeping up with the ‘best practices’ of namespacing and such in 5.3, and I could probably architect my apps somewhat more strictly using some of the bigger frameworks out there.  However, one of the things you end up learning when you look at other languages is where some of the defects are in your primary language.  You may start to see the new ‘best practices’ as work-arounds in language deficiencies.

It’s easy to point at PHP and talk about how “it sucks” and all that, but I’ve had experiences with some friends who’ve moved from Java over to PHP.  While this was a somewhat unwelcome move at first, given PHP’s reputation amongst the ‘enterprise crowd’, at least one of my friends is really enjoying being able to be much more productive – more functionality in fewer lines of code – and rethinking some of his approaches to web development.  Moving from any statically typed language to a dynamic one is certainly a shift for people to make (and the reverse movement is true as well!), and rethinking those problems we’ve taken for granted can be a real eye-opener.

In the short term, yes, it’s a productivity loss, as Gustavo points out.  In the longer term, it can really provide you with many more tools in your toolkit for attacking new problems.

One caveat I’ve noticed to this is the old saying “choose the right tool for the job.”.  Great in spirit, but my experiences have borne out that rarely is the definition of “right” able to be agreed on.  ”Right” for who?  The DBA?  The sysadmin?  The developers?  I had a project I’d recently prototyped in Grails (after an initial first pass prototype in PHP 6 months earlier).  The Grails environment allowed for much more rapid prototyping and modeling of data, relationships, screens, and so forth.  However, when it came time to accept it, I was told we could *only* build the app on a traditional LAMP stack (I was looking forward to using PostgreSQL on this project as well).  Why?  Because the limited system administration staff didn’t have the time to learn new skills to manage the new technology choices.

While initially I was bummed out, I can understand the decision making process.  I was able to take the db tables from Grails and wrap another PHP ORM layer around them so I didn’t lose all my work, but it certainly put to rest the maxim “right tool for the job.”  Who gets to decide?

So, even if you learn new languages and technology, you might not always be able to use the most appropriate tool from a pure technology/productivity standpoint.  And sometimes knowing that there are better options out there that you *can’t* use for various reasons adds a level of frustration to the mix that you wouldn’t have.  Perhaps we should all stick to just knowing one language and one language only, right?  :)

Cloud computing – still a bit too pricey for the average project

December 22nd, 2009

I wrote this to Brian Hitney after we’d briefly touched on cloud computing in my podcast with him last week.  I thought I’d post it here for any reaction from the rest of the internet…


Another point on the economics that isn’t brought up is the cost of data transfer and data storage in the cloud, which is often more than you’d pay for ‘normal’ equivalents.

I’ve got a server that I lease and pay $84/month for.  Included in that I get 750 gig of transfer.

With azure, 12 cents per compute hour for 24 hours x 30 days = $86 - about the same base rate.  But… let’s say I’m pushing out between 150 and 200 gig of bandwidth per month.  200 gig at .15 cents extra is $30.  Factoring in I store about 40 gig of data on that server, that’s another $6.  To replicate my setup on Azure (or Amazon) would cost me about $38/month more, which is a 40% premium over what I can get in the ‘non-cloud’ marketplace. As my data needs scale up, the differential gets bigger.  EC2 pricing is roughly equivalent for storage and xfer, but the base computer rate is cheaper for linux images than for windows images.

There’s a big play to push ‘cloud’, and given the markup, I can see why.  The hardware is commodity, and is essentially a one-off investment, but the data xfer is the lifeblood, and I’m actually a bit fearful of putting so much reliance in the hands of just a few monolithic companies who will then charge us a premium to move our own data around.

If I had a huge amount of number crunching to do, without much data storage or xfer needs, current ‘cloud’ offerings make sense.  And for potential adjunct service in a pinch, or for testing.  But as a long term strategy investment, the pricing needs to change and/or there needs to be more value in the mix for my taste.

Next magazine topic survey – enter to win

November 24th, 2009

I’m turning to the community to help determine what our next magazine topic should be.  Please visit http://webdevpub.com/topics to give your input on what you’d be interested in reading more about.  Entrants who submit an email address will be entered to win an Amazon gift card, to drawn on our around December 9.

Do you have web development knowledge to share?

November 21st, 2009

Consider working with Web Dev Pubishing to publish your knowledge as an ebook.  Learn more or just submit your idea.

Latest JavaScript Magazine available

November 5th, 2009

The November JavaScript Mag (JSMag) is now available.  Here’s a quick run down of what’s inside:

* Shea Frederick completes his overview of the IDE landscape for JavaScript developers

* Jay Garcia dives in to the ExtJS Component Lifecycle

* Christian Tiberg explains how to use StorageEngine (YUI) in your apps

* Tom Hughes-Croucher demonstrates making Yahoo Query Language even more useful with server-side JavaSscript

* Kyle Simpson walks you through JSON-P error handling

* Matt Henry covers the latest Community News

Have a closer look!

JSMag is now 10% off when purchased as a 12 month subscription!

PDF Watermarking web service

October 22nd, 2009

I’ve got a PDF watermarking web service I’m considering opening up as a service for others (currently using it internally for my own projects).  If this is something that sounds like it would be of interest to you, let me know.  It should be a pretty easy integration piece, but I’d be interested in getting some feedback on how you’d be planning to use it (what tech, mainly).  Also, this would likely be a paid service, either on a ‘per use’ limit basis, or some flat monthly pricing.  Frankly, I’m a little surprised that I can’t find one out there – I’ve got to think this exists already, but I’ve not seen one.  If you know of one, let me know.

PHP On Windows – presentation slides

September 19th, 2009

I gave a talk today at the Raleigh Code Camp titled “PHP On Windows”.  It was decently attended, given the attendee focus at a Microsoft-sponsored event.  MS has been embracing PHP much more publicly over the last year or so, and I reviewed some of the steps they’ve been taking (auto-install on IIS7, recent bytecode cache from MS, etc). The slides I used were relatively sparse, as some of the presentation was simply doing some code on Windows.

I will probably expand on this talk and may give it again at some point.  If you have any good resources or info about PHP on Windows, let me know.

Progress on six week test – looking for authors

September 18th, 2009

As a quick followup to my previous post (http://michaelkimsal.com/blog/six-week-test-followup-custom-business-cards/) I wanted to drop a quick update here.  Six weeks isn’t too long if it’s your only activity.  Trying to fit in a six week project in the midst of other projects and deadlines is hard, but you already knew that!.  I’m 4.5 weeks in, and have a basic site template up, and am working on the info gathering portion (nearly done, but can be improved) and then paypal and google checkout integration.  Given my current workload, hitting Sept 28 is still possible, but it’ll be tight!

re: timing – the designer I worked with had me on somewhat lower priority than I’d hoped, which ate up a lot of the 4.5 weeks – I was hoping to be where I’m at now about 1.5 weeks ago.  However, I did not convey any sense of urgency to him, nor give him a deadline, so that rests entirely with me.  I satisfied with the first round of design that we did, so I can’t complain (about anyone except me, anyway!)  Lesson learned: have hard deadlines in place with people you work with :)

If you’d like to be involved in testing or giving feedback, give me a shout or leave contact information.  I’m specifically looking for feedback and testing from self-published authors (of any genre).