Work | VisualComa

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been walking on a very thin sheet of ice. Wordpress 2.7 came out and life was wonderful, plugins were getting updated almost daily and things seemed to be just fine. Then out of no where I found a twisted up wrench on the ground, and wouldn’t you know it all the gears to the blogs were sitting right next to it.

Sabotage!!! Some hates me,,, No actually somewhere in the midst of all the updates one of the plugins came back just a little more beefed up than I expected.

Gigpress is pretty awesome plugin with some great options and great widgets. It’s fairly easy to manipulate and the php is easy to understand if you want to mess with the guts. But!!! Gigpress does a lot of work so it comes with a lot of queries, usually not a problem, but the latest version mixed with the Bluehost server didn’t cut it.

Here me out though, Gigpress isn’t all bad. Due to some unfortunate events I moved one of my projects to Dreamhost in hopes of finding some other solutions to my problem. (I’ve been looking for a good reason to check out Dreamhost for a long time, I guess I got my wish.) I did quite a few test and found that regardless of 20+ queries that Gigpress asks for Dreamhost served it up 54 queries in 0.462 seconds, not bad. Bluehost was serving 54 queries in 2.542 seconds… Ouch!!!

So what did I do? I found a different plugin. Might I recommend Gigs Calendar. I stayed away from it for a long time because it’s admin is said to only work with Firefox and Safari. So be sure to read the Other Notes on the plugin from the WP Plugin Directory.

Take my advise, don’t over look your query load just because you’re not seeing a problem… it will come back to bite you…

Try these functions in the footer of your theme, if there not already there.
echo get_num_queries();
timer_stop(1);

I’ve been using these for ever, but I’ve never appreciated them more than I do now

January 1, 2009Tags: Bad Query's, BlueHost vs DreamHost, Database Querys, Web Hosting@11:33 pm

Coming Up 2009

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Work

It’s December already and wouldn’t you know it, 2009 is right around the corner. So what’s in store for the New Year? Lots of things!!! I’ve got big plans for 2009, most of them are unknown, but if 09 is another year of Growth and Networking like 08 was I expect good things.

2008 has been such a good year for my work that I’ve decided to start a small personal business. My plan is to keep it simple and keep it focused. My goal is to keep records and stay organized.

VisualComa will be the name, and I’ll be primarily focusing on Development, Design and Updates specifically for Skorinc. My long term hope is that by 2010, I’ll be forced to seek out other good Designers and Developers.

As most of you know I am the Theme Developer for Skorinc, building and maintaining the guts of all the sites. A year ago I would have laughed if someone told me I’d be in TN working from a laptop dreaming about html and css. Who New???

One thing is for sure, as 2008 comes to a close there is one person I think we can all agree has played one of the biggest rolls in the blogging underground as a serious goto guy for the CMI, that’s right I’m talking about Brody Harper.

Brody and I have known each for a long time, (20+yrs) and about a year ago we were talking about some random stuff as usual, and out of left field he said, “You want to build me a blog?” I said, “Yeah, I could probably do that. Why?”

I think we all know that answer to that question, and with out a doubt there were some gears all ready turning when he asked.

So keep your eye’s peeled and be sure to follow Skorinc on Twitter to keep up on the end result of what I do. Also if you want to be involved with some of our shenanigans through out the holiday season sign up for Brody’s email list.