Munin is a “networked resource monitoring tool that can help analyze resource trends and ‘what just happened to kill our performance?’ problems.” According to Max, you can install children on multiple servers and have them report back to aggregated data on a parent. It’s useful for monitoring site performance because you can configure notifications if the site load goes above a certain number, etc. This would be worth looking through at some point in the near future.
Tag Archive for 'CoPress Hosting'
One of the time-consuming parts of an archive transfer currently occurs when we migrate a database with a large number of authors and attempt to add each author as a user. Personally, this is my preference because it means we keep the integrity of the data as true as possible (the other option is to assign the post to the default user and then store the author data as a custom field). The import slows down, however, as the number of users in the database increases largely, I think, because WordPress isn’t optimized to handle a large number of users, let alone content from a large number of users.
As such, I think it might be worthwhile to make it standard operating procedure to import authors as custom fields and then have a secondary script that checks the custom field for author information and then creates the user if the author doesn’t exist or assigns the post to the author if the user does exist.
Related to the time required to migrate archives, I wonder if we should go back to importing the content directly into the database and bypassing the creation of WordPress eXtended RSS files. If we did this, we could likely automate more of the process. Thoughts?
We’ve started putting some of the documentation related to hosting and support on the wiki. This will be a repository of information related to configuring new sites, solving common problems, and so on. As a note, please do not to add documentation which could compromise the security of our operations or the privacy of our clients. This documentation should detail how to do different things, but not reveal specific settings.
I worked on documentation today for configuring WordPress sites on Slicehost including enabling email notifications and automatic plugin upgrades.
Two things we didnt cover tonight that we need to figure out in the next couple of days. First, we should institute time tracking for at least all hosting requests, but preferably all project-related work. With this information, well be able to see what type of work is taking the most time and price it accordingly. Im open to whether we upgrade Basecamp to track this information, use another tool, or everyone does it on their own. I’d think that a group tool would be most effective though.
Secondly, we need to have an on-call calendar so that we can rapidly respond if something goes down, even if it means calling the most knowledgeable person. I think we should split up days of the week as well as holidays.
AreMySitesUp? hasn’t been all that reliable for us and I’m ready to start moving over to another service. The one I’m seriously considering is Pingdom which offers a nice set of services with their free, one site account. I think the way we’re going to go about this is to sign up a new account for each client because this will also allow us to give the client access, and ownership if they’d like, of the account. The question I have right now, however, is whether I should sign up with an email address that will email both us and them with downtime reports, or whether we should just be recipients of the data.
My reason for is one of transparency so that they can be clued into the process of how we respond to site issues, etc. but my reason against would be whether they actually want to know that information or not.
In the interest of trying to develop their capacity to do this on their own, however, I think it’s pretty important to be tuned into as much of the process as possible. Thoughts?
… is quite simple, thanks to a powerful application for the Mac called Sequel Pro. I think Will mentioned it to me first when I was migrating the database for CM Life. Anyways, for the task of restoring a database on one of the Liquid Web servers from backup, it’s a very useful tool because it lets you avoid the chore of using PHPMyAdmin. There are a couple of idiosyncrasies in regards to logging in, however. First, in the “MySQL Host” field if you try to enter “localhost,” you’ll get a prompt as to whether you want to connect via socket or SSH. Using SSH changes the setting to “127.0.0.1″ which you want to do.
Second, you’ll need two sets of credentials to properly log in. The first are for the MySQL database itself; you’ll want to use the username and password combination found in the wp-config.php file. The second set of credentials are for the server itself. Use the domain for the Liquid Web server, then the account name and password combination for the site you want to restore.
Once you’re in, restoring the database should be as simple as File -> Import.
Yesterday morning we sent out our first CoPress newsletter to all clients. We worked quickly in order to push it out this week and there’s definitely some things that we’ll be able to do better next time. This is sort of a mind dump of those ideas so that we have them around and so that everyone can add to them.
Somethings that will be done in the future…
- Graphics and layout - We definitely need some things to spruce up the newsletter. The text seemed a bit heavy at the length that we did. Lauren will be creating a sweet banner graphic and we’ll need to use some section headings for the next newsletter.
- The small things - Among other things we should be signing these either as from the team or as from the individual team member that sent it out. I forgot to do that for this one and it seemed a bit unprofessional. I’m open to suggestions though as to whether these should be signed by the team, CoPress Hosting, etc. Thoughts?
- Keeping track of usage - We’re using bit.ly for tracking the links within the newsletter and since yesterday most of the links in the email got at least a half dozen clicks. To gauge our effectiveness we’ll want to keep close watch of these.
- More fine-tuned settings - Hopefully future versions of Courier will be adding more fined tuned subscription and mailing settings so that those who are simply users on our site but not clients will have the option to unsubscribe. This will help make it so that people don’t view the newsletter as spam.
That’s all I got for now. Any thoughts and feedback on the email are much appreciated and will be taken to heart for future newsletters. At least we now have a way to reach out to our growing base of clients and community.
The overall intent of this document is to provide a set of goals for CoPress to steer itself towards in the last three months of 2009. These goals presented as milestones encompass the entirety of our operations, and will give us more specific criteria for determining whether we’re scaling like we’d like to. In short, benchmarks to determine whether we’re on course with where we want to be. At the beginning of 2010, we’ll be able to look back upon this, critically reflect, and define plans for the first six months of the new year.
Managed Hosting
Scaling Managed Hosting, currently our primary business and project for expanding the market, is a top priority for fall 2009. We’re shooting for 75 Managed Hosting clients launched or signed and started with sandboxes by the end of fiscal year 2009.
Getting potential clients to commit to switching during the school year might present some difficulty. One strategy will be to convince them of the merit of working on the redesign for a couple of months, and then relaunching their site over winter break 2009. Most student newspapers should be able to make the transition successfully in that period. With adequate planning, the launches will be within the scope of our abilities and we’ll be able to handle their archives as they come and as our resources allow.
Continue reading ‘Strategic goals and benchmarks for last quarter 2009′
A quick update about the weekly newsletter that Daniel and I are planning on sending out to all hosting clients. It’ll be a way for us to not only send out weekly summaries of what’s going on in the community but if there’s ever a situation like the earlier Wordpress exploit we’ll be able to quickly contact all clients and advisers.
Here’s what we’re thinking:
- Keep it short and simple – probably just a simple text email of about 200-250 words.
- Summarize what’s going on in the Forum, on the wiki, posts from the blog.
- Welcome new clients. Introduce new clients to the rest of the community. Might give people new ideas of what to do with their own sites.
- Encourage clients to spread the word about CoPress. I still think that word of mouth is our best way to advertise and who better to do that than the schools we’re already helping.
That’s it for now. If you have ideas about other things we should be including in this we’d love to hear them.
A couple quick updates from the call that Daniel and I had this Tuesday about all things hosting.
- New client information doc – We’ve condensed all information into a central Google Spreadsheet so that now the information for billing, hosting setup, and contact information is all in one document. Hopefully this will help us know where we’re at with everybody as we expand.
- Client outreach letters - Because of some unexpected work for that thing called school I wasn’t able to get letters out on Thursday, but a batch of 5-10 outreach letters will be going out first thing Monday morning. The revised letter is on Google Docs and is shared with the team if you have ideas or critiques.
- Education Sessions – Daniel and I will be brainstorming and drafting up some initial sessions to run clients through starting the week of October 7. We’ll be capping these at around 10 people but will be open to doing multiple sessions on a topic if there’s the demand for it.
That’s all for now.
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