LAMP SERVER CONFIGURATION
The recommended server of choice for websites is a LAMP server running on a Linux machine. Preferably this also uses cPanel 10. Why? cPanel 10 lets you do practically everything. You can not only configure about every website service imaginable (FTP, EMAIL, webalizer stats, cronjobs, subdomains, redirects, phpMyAdmin, etc..) but it normally also includes pre-packaged CMS packages such as Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, phpBB, etc.
A really great hosting company that I use is Arvixe. Trust me, I have have been around the block and found companies that meter additional services for a nominal fee. Honestly - these should not cost anything. Also it is very frustrating when you need to add a subdomain or change an .htaccess file or who knows what and the hosting company says it costs extra. I will not mention these companies since I would rather not promote them in any way. So use Arvixe, their support is superb and I have had 99.9% uptime with them over three years with only one crash. Even then they were aware and fixing it before I noticed.
DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATION
There are quite literally hundreds of domain name regristrants out there. But there is one that is cheap, is fast and lets you configure the domains practically any way possible. This is NameCheap. Also if you ever need to push or pull ownership of a domain from one company to another it is quite painless. (at least on their side. I have had to do this before.) The one most people go with (again I choose to not promote in any way) seems to use an advertising campaign that exploitive of women, which I do not agree with.
So yeah, use NameCheap. Also use the coupon code “switch2nc” to get a discount!
CMS INSTALLATION
Various CMS (Content Management Systems) have been used such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, ZenCart and more. However, each seemed to have various limitations and shortcomings, or needed major code updates to get it to do certain things. So I decided to write my own. It is called UltraPanel PRO. I must say myself it is pretty sweet. It now uses dynamic tables in the database so it is super easy to reconfigure the CMS for almost anything. It has full session management which is SSL and SSL3 complient. (There was much forethought put into this.) Needless to say it is quite secure. This is a good thing, because eCommerce is built in. A user friendly admin area allows for category configuration, adding/editing/deleting products, and sales reports are built in. So far it works with Paypal, Google Checkout, UltraCart, Authorize.Net, and is a cinche to add in practically any other transaction server API.
But wait theres more!
The admin area also has a detailed access log. It can track robot/spider and admin access and automatically filter that out of the report! Not only this, but a simple cronjob will automatically email a daily traffic log. In other words, when you see a visitor on your website, you can be sure it is a real person, and not an artifical program scanning your site.
Do you need to setup an affiliate or coupon system to give rewards to other people sending leads or traffic to your site? This is built in also.
UltraPanel PRO is 100% PHP. There are no CGI hard coded scripts. It is clean, debugged and documented code.
DATABASE DESIGN
MySQL is a glorious wonderful way to use a database. That is, of course, it is not overly threaded, non-indexed and excessive JOIN and UNION queries are used. In fact, MySQL is such a wonderful feat of design, no other database I have seen or used could handle these monstrous types of queries. I don't believe in poor code, and there are better ways to lookup data than loop a query in a while loop. (can we say... too many queries?) So long story short - I can say a database I design is going to be done right the first time. I also have enough forethought to add certain things to ensure it will run quickly when the critical-mass starts to arrive. I have created databases that are still quick and stable that have over 1,000,000 records. Just to comprehend how much data this is... consider that this database took four hours to sort from A to Z. (on the flat file) But keep in mind, this was just a maintenence routine. Know that even unsorted a lookup would still only take about 300ms with 30 simulationous users.
TEMPLATING AND CSS
I may be one of the strange programmers out there, but I actually enjoy using CSS. In the 15 years HTML has been around I have heard nothing but bad words about it from fellow programmers. But do you know what? It makes things so much easier! It might be the extra effort to make things cross-browser compatible. It might be the different syntax in code. It might be the developer app they use. But I use something better. There are special markup coloring schemes for practically any language out there. Now do you see why CSS is fun for me?
Plus, I love the fact I can change the background color scheme to BLACK. Trust me. When you sit and code for hours on end.. a white background really rots your eyes.
LOGO DESIGN
I do logowork - but I can tell you honestly I would rather just program. In fact, I know there are much better graphic artists out there than I. Actually, it will take me twice as long then they would take. Which is why I normally charge half the cost on logowork for that reason.
But on a good note - I am quite the expert at this awesome program. In fact, I have hundreds and hundreds of different graphic projects I have worked on. I use this tool every day, I know it like the back of my hand. Do you need something more complex with multiple layers? No problem!
PROJECT SCOPE
There is not much I have not worked with in the 25 odd years I have grown up with computers. I have witnessed technology grow from antique tape drives to HD DVD. I started with BASIC and jumped straight into assembly. From there I worked with building windows applications in pascal then Delphi. After the millenium, I realized there was a very strong trend to have things web-based. At that point I researched every web programming language and found PHP used with MySQL and AJAX simply is the best you can get. It blows .NET, Perl, CGI, and most anything else out there out of the water. Quite simply put, companies should quit trying to invent a new platform or programming language to become the new defacto standard.
It takes time for programmers to relearn these languages. Ultimately, in many cases we are forced to learn.
What happens is you get JAVA and FLASH - which end up needing their own plug-ins and rendering tools. It is in a way trying to re-invent the wheel, when the wheel is already round. Sure, most people know that JAVA and FLASH are both languages that are needed to browse the web nowdays, but would it not be nice if HTML did what you wanted it to in the first place?
Which is why I prefer AJAX. This is the end-all solution that allows a web browser truely interact with a website in almost every way possible. Not only this, but you can have a realtime experience like no other. Need to fetch data while typing it in? Easy as can be. Personally, there have been some issues with FLASH 10 hogging resources. (100% CPU usage) I also havent been able to muster up the ungodly cost of the Adobe Flash Developers Suite. Which is too bad, because if it was cheaper, my ActionScript 3.0 skills would come in quite handy!
I truely hope this has provided a bit of insight into what exactly I do, what I have done, and if I can help you with what you need. Please contact me for a quote.
thanks in advance,
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