Well, I’ve always wanted to make this site that would shorten your affiliate links and finally did it today so check it out, it’s called CozyURL.com:

Well, here’s another site called CozyURL.com I made today in about 2 hours while chatting on G-mail with Josh.

I didn’t add any graphics so it’s fast and you can easily access it from mobile devices too.

It’s basically a site that will shorten URLs like http://sdfkcs.com/jdsf923jfdsaf to http://CozyURL/120.

It’s a free site and your link will permanently remain so please knock yourself out the next time you need to shorten that long GoogleMaps URL, or simply want to remember one number for viewing the site on your mobile phone.

I might open-source the code since some of you might like to make your own, so leave a comment if you want it.

via Zedomax Blog Network

I personally do not use green web hosting due to the fact that there’s no green hosting companies that can provide dedicated servers that match my requirements but if you are looking for a cheap shared hosting for your next web project, you might want to consider the Top 7 best green web hosting companies from our sister blog Keetsa:

(The above chart lists green hosting companies in the order of price per month.)

via keetsa eco-friendly blog, Zedomax Blog Network

Yey, we just launched another blog from our Zedomax Blog Network called BagWhiz, a blog about luxury handbags.

Why?

Well, bags are a great niche for blogging, you can read about my niche blogging strategies on my Adsense Optimization Blog over here.  I will be writing a book shortly called, “How to Make Money with Adsense and Blog Networks”, so watch out for that.  I should either be selling it for a little money or give it out for free as an e-book.

Am I a bag addict?

Oh no, but I made this blog for bag addicts.  If you are a bag addict, please do check out our new blog and bookmark it or at least tell your girlfriend about it.

BagWhiz, a blog about luxury handbags and bag reviews, was just launched by our blog network.

You will find interesting stuff like Coach Bags, Fendi Bags, LV Bags, and more.

You can also find the highlights of last 10 posts of Bag Blog or any of our other blogs at the bottom of this page.  (way at the bottom!)

via Zedomax Blog Network

A+Featured Entertainment, addict, bags, Blog, Blog, blogging, Blogs, Business, Business Ideas, coach bags, Consumer, Cool, e book, Entertainment, fashion, fendi bags, girlfriend, how to make money, how to make money with adsense, interesting stuff, Make Money Online, optimization, Web, Wordpress, writing a book A+Featured Entertainment, addict, bags, Blog, Blog, blogging, Blogs, Business, Business Ideas, coach bags, Consumer, Cool, e book, Entertainment, fashion, fendi bags, girlfriend, how to make money, how to make money with adsense, interesting stuff, Make Money Online, optimization, Web, Wordpress, writing a book

Well, I have been manually managing the dedicated server for this site for last 2 years or so but I found a better way to automate the server so it doesn’t ever go down due to overload.

One of the common problems in dedicated servers is the fact that load can go out of control and your web server along with it, causing you to hard-restart the server.

A better way to deal with this over-load problem is to shut down the HTTPD server (web server) before your server load gets to something around 2 to 5.

When the server load drops under 2, the script then can restart the server.

By doing this, you save a lot of headaches especially if you get “digged” or simply need the site up as much as possible.

Believe it or not, there’s no script that does this available free online so I made one for all you webmasters:


#!/bin/bash
loadavg=`uptime | awk ‘{print $9}’`
RESTART=”/sbin/service httpd restart”
# bash doesn’t understand floating point
# so convert the number to an interger
thisloadavg=`echo $loadavg|awk -F \. ‘{print $1}’`
if [ "$thisloadavg" -ge "5" ]; then
echo “Busy - Load Average $loadavg ($thisloadavg) “
httpd -k stop
elif [ "$thisloadavg" -le "2" ]; then
echo “Okay - Load Average $loadavg ($thisloadavg) “
pgrep httpd
if [ $? -ne 0 ] # if apache not running
then
# restart apache
$RESTART
echo “restart!”
else
echo “no restart!”
fi
else
echo “waiting…!”
fi


Save this code somewhere such as /root/checkload.sh.

Then add the following to your cron job.  (/etc/cron.d/sa-update for Fedora Linux)

*/1 * * * * root sh /root/checkloadsh

This will run the script every 1 minute to check the load and if load is too high, web server will be turned off, if it’s lower than 2 and web server is off, it will turn the web server on.

There’s a lot of things that can go wrong with your web server whether from extra traffic or whatnot, but this script will be handy and I do recommend it to anyone who’s having trouble with high-load web servers that go down often. (like this blog)

Now, go install this script, you will never have to worry about your web server dying from high load ever again.

You can also change the value of “2″ in the code to something higher such as 5 or 10, which will wait longer to shut the web server off if load goes high.

I didn’t write the code from scratch, I took 2-3 different scripts and mixed it up so here’s the resources I used for the code:

Load Average Script - This one is the main skeleton I used

Check/Restart HTTPD Script - This one I used to check HTTPD server before trying to restart it.

Cron Task Scheduler - I keep forgetting that the most left number is the minutes, darn.

NOTE - This is a simple solution to keep your dedicated server running on 1 server (like this one), if you can afford more servers, you will need to resort to load balancing the “servers”, load balancing here refers to balancing within 1 server.

If you haven’t been following our latest Google Chrome Tips and Hacks, you will need to check out the following two posts:

Recap of Google Chrome Tips and Hacks #1

Recap of Google Chrome Tips and Hacks #2

Here’s the re-cap of Google Chrome Tips and Hacks #3:

Chrome Tips - How to install Greasemonkey scripts in Google Chrome - This is a simple howto for enabling your Greasemonkey scripts from Firefox.

Firefox Hack - Chromi Fox Theme for Firefox - You can install the Chromi theme for Firefox to make your Firefox look like Google Chrome browser.

Google Chrome Wordpress Blog Theme - Someone has created a Google Chrome theme for your Wordpress blog.  Go knock yourself out.

Google Chrome still leads by over 50% on Google Chrome Hacks Tips blog

Google Chrome Comic sold for $372! - Can you believe it?  Someone bought the Chrome Comic book for $372!

Firefox and IE copies Chrome’s “Incognito” mode - Wow, this was a simple but surprising feature recognized by all major browser makers.

Chrome Hack - How to update your Google Chrome browser to the latest version! - Yes, this one is actually a hidden feature on the Google Chrome’s about page.

Chrome Tips - Learn how to add GMail Bookmark to your Chrome! - Yes, this bookmark allows you to jump straight to “Compose Mail” section of GMail on Chrome.

Did you know Google Chrome’s Address Bar is also a Google Search Bar? - Yes, Google did monopolize the search section and I am glad since I don’t use Wikipedia, Amazon, and the other stuff that much on Firefox.

Chrome Hacks - How to run Java and Java applets on your Google Chrome browser - You need to download a beta-version of the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) in order to run Java on Chrome.

Microsoft Office Live doesn’t support Chrome browser at all, go figure.

Check out more from the Google Chrome Tips and Hacks Blog:

• Chrome About Hacks
• Chrome CSS
• Chrome Development
• Chrome Features
• Chrome News
• Chrome Resources
• Chrome Rumors
• Chrome Security Flaws/Bugs
• Chrome Speed Tests
• Chrome Stats
• chrome themes
• chrome tips
• Chrome Videos
• Google Chrome Hacks

Subscribe to this blog or the Chrome Hacks Blog to stay updated on the latest Google Chrome Tips and Hacks news!

Today, I saw that Hackszine’s Jason Striegel has postsed a blog post about Memcached and MySQL.

Well, basically Memcached is an open-source software for your web server that allows you to cache almost any MySQL query.

In other words, it caches your MySQL queries.  But to do this, you do need to check the Memcached cache before doing the actual MySQL query.

So what’s the point?

Well, certain Wiki softwares like MediaWiki already comes with built-in support for Memcached.  I have used a similar strategy for one of my custom sites, SiteHoppin.com.

Memcached is also designed for server-farming, meaning you are only limited by number of servers and gigs of ram.

Unlike PHP accelerators, Memcache is really a database cache, thus can give you some extra performance if you implement it right.

Now if the developers at Wordpress started implementing Memcache, that’d do a lot of good for bloggers.

That said, if you want to explore Memcached, you can check out Jason post over at Hackszine.

For MediaWiki implementations, you will have to digg a little deeper. (You can start here)  You can buy this book called Wiki Professional.

Other Resources:

Memcached Official Website

Strategies for Using Memcached and MySQL Better Together
Memcached and MySQL tutorial (PDF)

Well, I have been struggling with one of my dedicated servers and just found this cool script that will auto-restart the Apache httpd server if it goes out.

Save the following as restart.sh:

#!/bin/bash
# Apache Process Monitor
# Restart Apache Web Server When It Goes Down
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Copyright (c) 2003 nixCraft project <http://cyberciti.biz/fb/>
# This script is licensed under GNU GPL version 2.0 or above
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------
# This script is part of nixCraft shell script collection (NSSC)
# Visit http://bash.cyberciti.biz/ for more information.
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------
# RHEL / CentOS / Fedora Linux restart command
RESTART="/sbin/service httpd restart"

# uncomment if you are using Debian / Ubuntu Linux
#RESTART="/etc/init.d/apache2 restart"

#path to pgrep command
PGREP="/usr/bin/pgrep"

# Httpd daemon name,
# Under RHEL/CentOS/Fedora it is httpd
# Under Debian 4.x it is apache2
HTTPD="httpd"

# find httpd pid
$PGREP ${HTTPD}

if [ $? -ne 0 ] # if apache not running
then
 # restart apache
 $RESTART
fi

Then setup a cron job like this: (usually in your sa-update file under /etc/cron.d)

*/5 * * * * root /root/restart.sh  >/dev/null 2>&1

via cyberciti

There’s also a program called Monit that will do more automation.

If you are a webmaster and you run a dedicated server, you might want to watch this video and learn some insights into MySQL performance tuning.

Jay Pipes, MySQL employee and co-author Pro MySQL, gave a great presentation to Google employees which covers a number of techniques for tuning performance on MySQL. His examples include debugging and analyzing problems as well as best practices for table and index design, query and join operations, and server variable adjustments.

via hackszine

- catonmat

Hi All,

We just launched private beta testing of SiteHoppin Toolbar.

You can e-mail me at zedomax [at] gmail.com to get a private beta invitation code then go here.

Remember, we are only looking for 1,000 beta testers at this point so I highly suggest you get in early as the doors will close within couple days.

Here’s a screenshot of the new SiteHoppin Toolbar:

Basically, it let’s you surf the web, bookmark sites, and hop them really really really fast. And also, private beta testers will become the “power” users, just like power users on Digg…

Cheers~

Max