Today we set up automated daily backups to an Amazon S3 account for a Drupal site. Coincidently I was also setting up a different testing site and did so by pulling last night’s backup. The reinstatement of the files and database went flawlessly. However upon pulling up the site at a test address it displayed [...]
web maintenance
Is Another Site Slowing Your Website Down?
As discussed before, it is best to avoid reliance on third parties to facilitate critical parts of your Web site (widgets, feeds, api integrations, etc). The reasoning being that if the third party has an issue, goes down or changes it could have consequences on your site’s performance. However sometimes a site might be reliant on [...]
Who Controls Your Website, You or Your Developer?
It is not so uncommon for us to get calls from frustrated Website owners that are having trouble making simple edits to their Website and/or using features and functions that the site has. It’s not that they do not know how to use these features or how to make updates, but that their developer has [...]
Third Party Integration Holding Your Website Hostage?
Plugins, XML, widgets, APIs, etc. are all so convient because they allow you to easily include content, functions and features from third parties without much effort beyond the initial setup. Most modern sites have at least a few third party integrations even if we are just talking Facebook, Google or Twitter. Of course those big three probably [...]
An Open Source Success Story
I was reminded this week why I became such a fan of open source. We were working with a WordPress plugin and doing some Web maintenance whereby we had to add this plugin to the site, test it and then set it up. The core functions of the new plugin seemed to be working fine. [...]
Keeping Up with CMS Security
Our friends at Andigo Media posted an article earlier this week on CMS security. They were nice enough to include a couple quotes from me as well. Some great points are made regarding the fact that CMS based systems are simply not build and forget about it platforms, but rather require regular attention especially from [...]
How to Manage a Website Part 3
How To Manage a Website Part 3: Programming Languages (Webware) As Web servers answer requests for information and ‘serve’ this information in a usable manner, it takes another component to actually decipher what it is the programmer had intended to happen when it is requested. For example, how does a Website pull the correct title [...]
How to Manage a Website Part 2
How to Manage a Website Part 2: Web and Database Servers Despite the fact we typically refer the computer that runs a Website as a ‘server’, these computers typically have multiple servers or ‘serverware’ installed on them. A typical configuration includes a Web server and a database server. One of the most common configurations to [...]
How to Manage a Website Part 1
Because of what FatLab does, I am often asked what it means to ‘manage a Website’. I wrote a recent article, ‘I Bought a CMS, Why do I Need Web Support?’ that addressed why having a content management system doesn’t necessarily mean someone might not need anyone help you maintain a Website. Because this is [...]