Hosting Thoughts

Migs, the high priest of Linux and server administration, whom I always look to for advice on such things, told me to write about my latest hosting issues and so I shall. I suppose this is a good way to talk and archive the recent problems I’d been having with the sites and what I do to fix it, and how I’m starting to realize that whatever ‘fix’ I do seems temporary since the site’s traffic increase again anyway that as soon as I enhance / improve performance, traffic increases again. I am therefore plagued, within days, by either mysql inefficiencies or run out of RAM. Anyway here’s a rundown:

Here’s a screenshot of Aug. 30’s mysql issues. WordPress serves that up when it can’t connect to the db. I emailed Rimuhosting about it and they figured out I was having issues with one of my favorite WordPress plugins called Counterize, which allowed me to produce those interesting stats at the footer of KikayEx which says ‘x number of visitors visited today, xx number the past 7 days. xxx number total since forever, and so on…‘. We activated an option on mysql to produce a ‘mysql-slow.log‘ which lists down all the mysql queries that take more than 2 seconds to complete. The results were stunning, as Counterize apparently had queries that take as long as 20 seconds, and at a given morning (not even a whole day), there were 40 queries already. Here’s how it looked:

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I was about to start writing about this tragic PBA event

at Ballex (Noli Eala’s disbarment), when I happened to speak (YM) with Ruby Gan, one of our faaahbulous sponsors at Kikay Exchange, and owner of the Schu line of women’s shoes. Of course while talking to her, I do what most people normally do, and that’s check out her blog.

And lo and behold, I chanced upon the results of our contest with her – an online contest where she asks schu owners to send in pictures with the theme ‘Are you wearing your today‘,(ongoing with still a month to go) and I was absolutely floored with the results so far. In particular, this one:

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by Aggie, taken at the very recognizable Bulwagang Pilipino steps, and this one:

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by Leah, showing how she uses her shoes for work.

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Kikay’s Nav Issue Fixed. My Biggest Annoyance Resolved.

Ok the long story is a few weeks ago, I blindly upgraded Kikay Ex to WP version 2.1.1 without really thinking, and before I knew it, my Previous Entries and Next Entries links at the bottom of the index (front) page disappeared, to my great horror and frustration. Apparently I wasn’t the only one, and it was a big issue with most other folks who did the same. Fortunately I had only upgraded Kikay at the time, but unfortunately, Kikay is the biggest draw of all the sites, so the fact that people couldn’t go through each and every page and post was a big issue.

To those who understand WordPress (and here’s the techie part), 2.1.1 deprecates (a fancy word for retires), the next_post_link and previous_posts_link, essentially keeping you, the viewer, from moving away from the first batch of post on the index page. I have been pulling my hair out trying to find a decent fix, but no go.

Enter Lester Chan’s WP-PageNavi 2.11 Plugin, and my prayers were answered. The truth is, I didn’t wanna use a plugin as I wanted to exhaust all efforts trying to find the ‘legal’ way first. But after two or so weeks searching (ok well maybe a total of 3 – 4 hours, which is already a lot still), I considered myself exhausted, and the fact that IT LOOKS GREAT, I decided to go for it.

So here’s how it looks like at the start:

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and after tweaking it’s CSS, here’s how it looks like now:

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doesn’t it look GREAAAAAT?!?!?! I added it on both the top and bottom areas.

Ok, now here’s the SEO explanation. (I have decided to include my SEO opinions to help people out who wanna learn these things):

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53.76 Kikays Don’t Mind Using Their Credit Cards Online

Here’s a screenshot of the results of our 3 month long poll on Credit Card Usage on Kikay Exchange. I’m also reprinting this article.

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Apparently, 53.76 people (48%) use their credit cards online all the time, while an even 29.12 people (26%), either haven’t done so yet but are ‘willing to give it a try’, or haven’t yet and ‘probably never will’.

This is an interesting insight into the mindset of, arguably, the most active consumer type – Women Shoppers – on Philippine internet today, re a terribly important topic – using their plastic to buy things online. Businesses hoping to take their business online would do well to take note.

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KikayEx attends its very first press event!

We received an invite to the “Dove Campaign for Real Beauty” website launch 4 days ago. I was actually wondering if someone was pulling our leg. After I confirmed however, we got this:

Hi there!

I’m glad to hear that you guys can make it to the exclusive launch event that will unveil Dove’s next Campaign for Real Beauty. You’ve been chosen to attend because of your influence in the blogging sphere, and we hope that you can help spread our message to other like-minded women.

See you there!

It was from Madz of OgilvyOne Worldwide, Dove’s PR. Funny how I’d always wanted this to happen, and when it does it sort of feels surreal. At any rate, we attended and had a great time:


Some people had more fun than others :)

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