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• RDLC - Adding a Data Source in VS2010

  - by Kezzer

  Greetings. I have an RDLC file and am wanting to add a data source to it, although without any luck so far. The data source is a custom class written by myself (just to add, we do this all the time). We recently converted over to the VS2010 RDLC format which caused some problems, but we've made some changes to our implementation that workaround the more major issues. So, back to the issue at hand, when I attempt to add my data source to the DummyDataSource list in the RDLC view in VS2010 it just does nothing, however it does add the data source to the list of data sources, but you can't select it from the drop-down list in the RDLC view which means I can't add the data source at all. Has anyone come across this problem? Is there anything I need to check? I've searched with fervour and had no luck.

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• Modifying ChangeSet in RIA Services

  - by Mohit

  Hi, I am using RIA Services Beta 2 with Linq2Sql and SL3. In my SL3, I have a datagrid where I can do some mappings of data (Updates, Inserts and Deletes). I override the Submit method when SubmitChanges() is called. In the submit method in the domain service, I do some validation. If a validation fails for a particular ChangeSetEntry in the ChangeSet, a ValidationErrors is added. Then I call the base.Submit(changeSet). So, if the changeset has 3 entities and one of the entities results in validation error, the other 2 entities are also rolled back. It looks like, RIA Services does an implicit transaction and hence it either submits all 3 or none even if 2 out of 3 does not have any validation error. Is there a way for the RIA service, to prevent rollback of the valid entities and only invalidate the ones that has validation failed. Inputs will be appreciated. Thanks Mohit

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• Finding the Geo-location on a Blackberry?

  - by Frederico

  I'm running into an issue when trying to geolocate users whom are using blackberry devices. Currently there are a few checks that I go through to geolocate the individual the first, using the navigator paramater inside browsers. if(navigator.geolocation) if this fails then I have a backup using a free service (for testing) from maxmind: See Here Yet this doesn't return back the city at all either. I've then tried using the JSPI that google maps proviedes, and echoing out the google.loader.ClientLocation: if (google.loader.ClientLocation != null) { document.write("Your Location Is: " + google.loader.ClientLocation.address.city + ", " + google.loader.ClientLocation.address.region + " lat: " + google.loader.ClientLocation.latitude + " Long: " + google.loader.ClientLocation.longitude); } else { document.write("Your Location Was Not Detected By Google Loader"); } When this didn't work I tried following the google maps 3.0 detect location seen here: Detecting Location I've done all this after seeing this work correctly in google latitude.. so I know there has to be a way to get the location... any thoughts, ideas on what I could possibly try? Thank you kindly

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• win32 API vs Linux Kernel API

  - by Nik

  Is there anything that can be done using Win32 API that cannot be done using Linux kernel API. I'm asking this, because back in Lab where I work we use Ixia and Agilent Technologies H/W. and these H/W (Signal processes or Packet generator) worth 10s of thousand of Dollars run windows as their OS. Why didn't they choose Linux. I've seen Linux in routers and firewall but not in real Heavy duty H/W like Ixia. This preference of windows over Linux made me think is there any limitation in Linux API or its just licensing thing.

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• SIlverlight 4RC threading - can a new Thread return the UI Thread

  - by Darko Z

  Hi all, Let's say I have a situation in Silverlight where there is a background thread (guaranteed to NOT be the UI thread) doing some work and it needs to create a new thread. Something like this: //running in a background thread Thread t = new Thread(new ThreadStart(delegate{}); t.Start(); Lets also say that the UI thread at this particular time is just hanging around doing nothing. Keeping in mind that I am not that knowledgeable about the Silverlight threading model, is there any danger of the new Thread() call giving me the UI thread? The motivation or what I am trying to achieve is not important - I do not want modification to the existing code. I just want to know if there is a possibility of getting the UI thread back unexpectedly. Cheers

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• PHP Flush: How Often and Best Practises

  - by Cory Dee

  I just finished reading this post: http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#flush and have already implemented a flush after the top portion of my page loads (head, css, top banner/search/nav). Is there any performance hit in flushing? Is there such a thing as doing it too often? What are the best practices? If I am going to hit an external API for data, would it make sense to flush before hand so that the user isn't waiting on that data to come back, and can at least get some data before hand? Thanks to everyone in advance.

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• Rails link to current page and passing parameters to it

  - by Faisal

  I am adding I18N to my rails application by passing the locale using url params. My urls are looking like http://example.com/en/users and http://example.com/ar/users (for the english and arabic locales respectively). In my routes file, I have defined my routes with a :path_prefix option: map.resources :users, :path_prefix => '/:locale' And locale is being set using a before_filter defined in ApplicationController def set_locale I18n.locale = params[:locale] end I also defined ApplicationController#default_url_options, to add locale to all urls generated by the application: def default_url_options(options={}) {:locale => I18n.locale} end What I want is to add a link in the layout header (displayed in all pages) that would link to the same page but with the other locale. For instance, if I am browsing the arabic locale, I want a "English" link in the header, that will redirect me back to my current page, and set the locale to english. Is there a way to do this in rails?

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• Problem with room/screen/menu controller in python game: old rooms are not removed from memory

  - by Jordan Magnuson

  I'm literally banging my head against a wall here (as in, yes, physically, at my current location, I am damaging my cranium). Basically, I've got a Python/Pygame game with some typical game "rooms", or "screens." EG title screen, high scores screen, and the actual game room. Something bad is happening when I switch between rooms: the old room (and its various items) are not removed from memory, or from my event listener. Not only that, but every time I go back to a certain room, my number of event listeners increases, as well as the RAM being consumed! (So if I go back and forth between the title screen and the "game room", for instance, the number of event listeners and the memory usage just keep going up and up. The main issue is that all the event listeners start to add up and really drain the CPU. I'm new to Python, and don't know if I'm doing something obviously wrong here, or what. I will love you so much if you can help me with this! Below is the relevant source code. Complete source code at http://www.necessarygames.com/my_games/betraveled/betraveled_src0328.zip MAIN.PY class RoomController(object): """Controls which room is currently active (eg Title Screen)""" def __init__(self, screen, ev_manager): self.room = None self.screen = screen self.ev_manager = ev_manager self.ev_manager.register_listener(self) self.room = self.set_room(config.room) def set_room(self, room_const): #Unregister old room from ev_manager if self.room: self.room.ev_manager.unregister_listener(self.room) self.room = None #Set new room based on const if room_const == config.TITLE_SCREEN: return rooms.TitleScreen(self.screen, self.ev_manager) elif room_const == config.GAME_MODE_ROOM: return rooms.GameModeRoom(self.screen, self.ev_manager) elif room_const == config.GAME_ROOM: return rooms.GameRoom(self.screen, self.ev_manager) elif room_const == config.HIGH_SCORES_ROOM: return rooms.HighScoresRoom(self.screen, self.ev_manager) def notify(self, event): if isinstance(event, ChangeRoomRequest): if event.game_mode: config.game_mode = event.game_mode self.room = self.set_room(event.new_room) #Run game def main(): pygame.init() screen = pygame.display.set_mode(config.screen_size) ev_manager = EventManager() spinner = CPUSpinnerController(ev_manager) room_controller = RoomController(screen, ev_manager) pygame_event_controller = PyGameEventController(ev_manager) spinner.run() EVENT_MANAGER.PY class EventManager: #This object is responsible for coordinating most communication #between the Model, View, and Controller. def __init__(self): from weakref import WeakKeyDictionary self.last_listeners = {} self.listeners = WeakKeyDictionary() self.eventQueue= [] self.gui_app = None #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def register_listener(self, listener): self.listeners[listener] = 1 #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def unregister_listener(self, listener): if listener in self.listeners: del self.listeners[listener] #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def clear(self): del self.listeners[:] #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def post(self, event): # if isinstance(event, MouseButtonLeftEvent): # debug(event.name) #NOTE: copying the list like this before iterating over it, EVERY tick, is highly inefficient, #but currently has to be done because of how new listeners are added to the queue while it is running #(eg when popping cards from a deck). Should be changed. See: http://dr0id.homepage.bluewin.ch/pygame_tutorial08.html #and search for "Watch the iteration" print 'Number of listeners: ' + str(len(self.listeners)) for listener in list(self.listeners): #NOTE: If the weakref has died, it will be #automatically removed, so we don't have #to worry about it. listener.notify(event) def notify(self, event): pass #------------------------------------------------------------------------------ class PyGameEventController: """...""" def __init__(self, ev_manager): self.ev_manager = ev_manager self.ev_manager.register_listener(self) self.input_freeze = False #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def notify(self, incoming_event): if isinstance(incoming_event, UserInputFreeze): self.input_freeze = True elif isinstance(incoming_event, UserInputUnFreeze): self.input_freeze = False elif isinstance(incoming_event, TickEvent) or isinstance(incoming_event, BoardCreationTick): #Share some time with other processes, so we don't hog the cpu pygame.time.wait(5) #Handle Pygame Events for event in pygame.event.get(): #If this event manager has an associated PGU GUI app, notify it of the event if self.ev_manager.gui_app: self.ev_manager.gui_app.event(event) #Standard event handling for everything else ev = None if event.type == QUIT: ev = QuitEvent() elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN and not self.input_freeze: if event.button == 1: #Button 1 pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos() ev = MouseButtonLeftEvent(pos) elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN and not self.input_freeze: if event.button == 2: #Button 2 pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos() ev = MouseButtonRightEvent(pos) elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONUP and not self.input_freeze: if event.button == 2: #Button 2 Release pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos() ev = MouseButtonRightReleaseEvent(pos) elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEMOTION: pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos() ev = MouseMoveEvent(pos) #Post event to event manager if ev: self.ev_manager.post(ev) # elif isinstance(event, BoardCreationTick): # #Share some time with other processes, so we don't hog the cpu # pygame.time.wait(5) # # #If this event manager has an associated PGU GUI app, notify it of the event # if self.ev_manager.gui_app: # self.ev_manager.gui_app.event(event) #------------------------------------------------------------------------------ class CPUSpinnerController: def __init__(self, ev_manager): self.ev_manager = ev_manager self.ev_manager.register_listener(self) self.clock = pygame.time.Clock() self.cumu_time = 0 self.keep_going = True #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def run(self): if not self.keep_going: raise Exception('dead spinner') while self.keep_going: time_passed = self.clock.tick() fps = self.clock.get_fps() self.cumu_time += time_passed self.ev_manager.post(TickEvent(time_passed, fps)) if self.cumu_time >= 1000: self.cumu_time = 0 self.ev_manager.post(SecondEvent(fps=fps)) pygame.quit() #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def notify(self, event): if isinstance(event, QuitEvent): #this will stop the while loop from running self.keep_going = False EXAMPLE CLASS USING EVENT MANAGER class Timer(object): def __init__(self, ev_manager, time_left): self.ev_manager = ev_manager self.ev_manager.register_listener(self) self.time_left = time_left self.paused = False def __repr__(self): return str(self.time_left) def pause(self): self.paused = True def unpause(self): self.paused = False def notify(self, event): #Pause Event if isinstance(event, Pause): self.pause() #Unpause Event elif isinstance(event, Unpause): self.unpause() #Second Event elif isinstance(event, SecondEvent): if not self.paused: self.time_left -= 1

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• World of Warcraft addon — SetCursor not working when hovering over WorldFrame

  - by Amit Ron

  In my World of Warcraft addon, I want to set the cursor to a certain image. I do this using SetCursor. Problem is, whenever the cursor exits my frame and hovers over the WorldFrame, the cursor is reset back to the normal one. I know of a certain addon that does overcome this problem, but I am not too sure how, because its source code is messy as hell. (The addon is Gryphonheart Items, in case you asked yourself.) How do I make the cursor stay?

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• Handling redirected URL within Flex app?

  - by fortpointuiguy

  We have a Flex client and a server that is using the Spring/Blazeds project. After the user logs in and is authenticated, the spring security layer sends a redirect to a new URL which is where our main application is located. However, within the flex client, I'm currently using HTTPService for the initial request and I get the redirected page sent back to me in its entirety. How can I just get the URL so that I can use navigatetourl to get where the app to go where it needs to? Any help would greatly be appreciated. Thanks!

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• PHP form class

  - by Oli

  I'm used to ASPNET and Django's methods of doing forms: nice object-orientated handlers, where you can specify regexes for validation and do everything in a very simple way. After months living happily without it, I've had to come back to PHP for a project and noticed that everything I used to do with PHP forms (manual output, manual validation, extreme pain) was utter rubbish. Is there a nice, simple and free class that does form generation and validation like it should be done? Clonefish has the right idea, but it's way off on the price tag.

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• Conditional includes in Classic ASP - where the file may not exist on the server

  - by Brent

  I am currently in a situation where I have to make some additions to an application written in classic ASP using server-side JScript on IIS. The additions that I need to make involve adding a series of includes to the server-side code to extend the application's capabilities. However, the inc files may not exist on the server in all cases, so I need the application to fall back to the existing behavior (ignore the includes) if the files do not exist, rather than generating an error. I know that this can't be accomplished using if statements in the JScript code because of the way that SSI works, and have not come across any ways of dynamically including the code on the server side, where the files may not exist. Does anyone know of a way to accomplish this in classic ASP? Any help would be much appreciated.

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• Convert byte array from Oracle RAW to System.Guid?

  - by Cory McCarty

  My app interacts with both Oracle and SQL Server databases using a custom data access layer written in ADO.NET using DataReaders. Right now I'm having a problem with the conversion between GUIDs (which we use for primary keys) and the Oracle RAW datatype. Inserts into oracle are fine (I just use the ToByteArray() method on System.Guid). The problem is converting back to System.Guid when I load records from the database. Currently, I'm using the byte array I get from ADO.NET to pass into the constructor for System.Guid. This appears to be working, but the Guids that appear in the database do not correspond to the Guids I'm generating in this manner. I can't change the database schema or the query (since it's reused for SQL Server). I need code to convert the byte array from Oracle into the correct Guid.

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• Instance validation error: '2' is not a valid value for QueryType. (web service)

  - by Anthony Shaw

  I have a web service that I am passing an enum public enum QueryType { Inquiry = 1 Maintainence = 2 } When I pass an object that has a Parameter of QueryType on it, I get the error back from the web service saying that '2' is not a valid value for QueryType, when you can clearly see from the declaration of the enum that it is. I cannot change the values of the enum because legacy applications use the values, but I would rather not have to insert a "default" value just to push the index of the enum to make it work with my web service. It acts like the web service is using the index of the values rather than the values themselves. Does anybody have a suggestion of what I can do to make it work, is there something I can change in my WSDL?

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• Mercurial branching a branch doesn't display right in hg serve or hg view

  - by Mystic

  I've been doing some development on a branch and realized that before it could be complete something else need to be done first. I decided that I would branch my current branch and do the requiste changes in that branch then merge them back together and then merge my working branch into default. Basically I expected this: | | + requiste work branch commit. | |/ | + working branch commit |/ +Default branch commit and in the end what I expect to do is this: + Merge into defualt |\ | + Merge requisite work into working branch | | \ | | + requiste work branch commit. | |/ | + working branch commit |/ +Default branch commit What I'm getting in both hg view and hg serve is this: | + requiste work branch commit. | | | + working branch commit |/ +Default branch commit However, when I look at the commit log "requiste work branch commit" is marked as a part of a different branch. Am I doing something wrong? Is this a bug in hg view and hg serve? Anyone experienced this before?

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• FlowDocument contents as text

  - by tyndall

  What is the best way to get back the XAML/XML value of a FlowDocument? I noticed there isn't a .Value, .Text, .Caption, .ToXml(), etc... UDPATE: I'd like to be able to get access to it initially to serialize to disk or database. Treat it as its own document format. Later translating it to other formats would be nice. Also been wondering: Any equivalent to a hyperlink (opens in new browser window) in a FlowDocument? Any workaround?

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• iPhone SDK: How to centre content in a UIScrollView during setZoomScale?

  - by Russell Quinn

  I'm using a UIScrollView to show photos. If they are zoomed out so they are smaller than the scroll view in one dimension then the content is centred using contentInset and contentOffset. This all works fine for scrolling and manual zooming. However, if I use setZoomScale (with animated YES) then when zooming out the scroll view sets the top left edge to 0,0 during the animation and then snaps it back afterwards. It seems like the zoom animation ignores the contentInset and contentOffset settings. Does anyone have any idea how to overcome this problem? Thanks, Russell.

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• Force WPF to Commit Changes on Focused Element

  - by John L.

  I'm working with VS2010, WPF and EF. I've placed controls on my window by dragging an entity out of the Data Sources toolwindow. I used the "details" setting so my entity is represented by several labels and textboxes. I've also added a button with the following code: _context.SaveChanges(); When I'm editing data, the changes in whichever textbox has focus are not committed back to the DB. Everything else commits just fine. If I shift focus to another element prior to hitting the save button, it commits as well. I've experienced the same thing with the DataGrid. I know I'm missing something simple, but I can figure it out. Any ideas on what I'm missing? Thanks!

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• GetWindowPlacement/SetWindowPlacement not working in WinForms for high DPI

  - by RandomEngy

  I've got a legacy WinForms app and I want to save the window position and size across sessions. I've been using GetWindowPlacement and SetWindowPlacement during the FormClosing and Load events. The problem I'm getting is that at higher DPI settings (Such as Medium, size at 125%) the sizes keep inflating. I'll call SetWindowPlacement on it with a certain size, but when GetWindowPlacement is called, those numbers come back 25% bigger, even though the window was the same size all along. The same sort of problem exists when saving the size of a resizable element within the form. Now this works fine if I create a new WinForms project: The size stays stable even when running at the higher DPI. I'm guessing there's some legacy setting in the bowels of the project or some arcane Form setting that's messing it up, but I can't find out where. I've called IsProcessDPIAware on both projects and both are true. Does anyone know what might be causing this?

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• How to reset iPhone simulator

  - by Stefan Mayr

  My app uses the location service. To test what is happening when the user presses 'Don't allow' when the simulator asks for the permission to access the location service (when the app is started for the first time) I need to reset the simulator. This because the question was answered at the beginning of the development process with allow. So no more questions are asked. Reseting the Simulator with "Reseting Content and Settings.." don't bring back the question at the start. What I am doing wrong? thx in advance

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• How to tell whether Code Access Security is allowed in library code

  - by Sander Rijken

  In .NET 4 Code Access Security (CAS) is deprecated. Whenever you call a method that implicitly uses it, it fails with a NotSupportedException, that can be resolved with a configuration switch that makes it fall back to the old behavior. We have a common library that's used in both .NET 3.5 and .NET 4, so we need to be able to tell whether or not we should use the CAS method. For example, in .NET 3.5 I should call: Assembly.Load(string, Evidence); Whereas in .NET 4 I want to call Assembly.Load(string); Calling Load(string, Evidence) throws a NotSupportedException. Of course this works, but I'd like to know if there's a better method: try { asm = Assembly.Load(someString, someEvidence); } catch(NotSupportedException) { asm = Assembly.Load(someString); }

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• How can I use the SSRS ReportViewer from VS 2008 in a VS2010 project?

  - by Adrian Grigore

  Hi, I'm working on an ASP.NET MVC 2 / .NET 3.5 project which includes SSRS 2008 reports. After migrating to VS 2010 RC, the new web forms report viewer has been giving so much trouble that I'd like to use the old report viewer from VS 2008 again. Now I'm just wondering what would be the easiest way to do that. The report viewer is embedded in a Webforms ASPX file which is loaded in an IFrame by the the MVC view. Report parameters are currently stored as session variables, and for security reasons I would prefer not to change that for HTTP POST or GET parameters. So I can't just put the report viewer in a separate application and build that with VS2008. Moving the entire project back to VS 2008 is not an option. So, what's the easiest way for me to use the VS 2008 ReportViewer in VS 2010? Is there way to grab an assembly from VS 2008 and use that in my project? Thanks, Adrian

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• PHP Include Windows XP Notepad++ Editor - Nav Include Not Working - Nav Disappears

  - by Lorianna Sprague

  I am creating a website, and have a tabbed horizontal menu. In order to cut back on the number of files I have to edit when I have to make changes to the menu I want to put the navigation in a separate file that I can call using a PHP include statement. When I do this, however, the nav disappears entirely from the page. The rest of the content remains, and there are no error messages. I have been looking for answers for this for weeks, and have tried every version of the PHP include statement that I could find. None of them worked. This was the last attempt. I have the file "nav.php" in a folder named "includes" in a main dir called "testsite" I use Windows XP, use NotePad++ as my text editor, and have been testing in Firefox. I can't find an answer anywhere - any help would be appreciated. Lorianna

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• Developing FIrebug like web application for CSS things.

  - by vishwanath

  I am developing a web application for web designing. One part of it includes changing CSS styles on the run and saving the same back to server. I see that, first part of my motive is implemented there in firebug, where I can view CSS style rules applied to a particular HTML element and can change them to view the effect. An earlier question at SO lead to me firebug lite source code https://getfirebug.com/firebug-lite-debug.js , which is far less confusing than full version of firebug. My question was that, is there any way I can get documentation of the firebug/firebug lite code which can speed things up for me. After some googling I found out that there is Firebug API http://getfirebug.com/developer/api/firebug1.6/ But don't know how much useful it is for me. Any alternative way to do this is also welcome.

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• From Bluehost to WP Engine, My WordPress Story

  - by thatjeffsmith

  This is probably the longest blog post I’ve written in a LONG time. And if you’re used to coming here for the Oracle stuff, this post is not about that. It’s about my blog, and the stuff under the hood that makes it run, AKA WordPress. If you want to skip to the juicy stuff, then use these shortcuts: My Site Slowed Down How I Moved to WP Engine How WP Engine ‘Hooked’ Me Why WP Engine? I started thatJeffSmith.com on May 28th, 2010. I had been already been blogging for several years, but a couple of really smart people I respected (Andy, Brent – thanks again!) suggested that I take ownership of my content and begin building my personal brand. I thought that was a good idea, and so I signed up for service with bluehost. Bluehost makes setting up a WordPress site very, very easy. And, they continued to be easy to work with for the past 2 years. I would even recommend them to anyone looking to host their own WordPress install/site. For $83.40, I purchased a year’s worth of service and my domain name registration – a very good value. And then last year I paid $107.40 for another year’s services. And when that year expired I paid another $190.80 for an additional two year’s service in advance. I had been up to that point, getting my money’s worth. And then, just a few weeks ago… My Site Slowed to a Crawl That spike was from an April Fool's Day Post, I think Why? Well, when I first started blogging, I had the same problem that most beginner bloggers have – not many readers. In my first year of blogging, I think the highest number of readers on a single day was about 125. I remember that day as I was very excited to break 100! Bluehost was very reliable, serving up my content with maybe a total of 3-4 outages in the past 2 years. Support was usually very prompt with answers and solutions, and I love their ‘Chat now’ technology – much nicer than message boards only or pay-to-talk phone support. In the past 6 months however, I noticed a couple of things: daily traffic was increasing – woohoo! my service was experiencing severe CPU throttling – doh! To be honest, I wasn’t aware the throttling was occuring, but I did know that the response time of my blog was starting to lag. Average load times were approaching 20-30 seconds. Not good when good sites are loading in 5 seconds or less. And just this past week, in getting ready to launch a new website for work that sucked in an RSS feed from my blog, the new page was left waiting for more than a minute. Not good! In fact my boss asked, why aren’t you blogging on Blogger? Ugh. I tried a few things to fix the problem: I paid for a premium WordPress theme – Themify’s Grido (thanks to @SQLRockstar for the heads-up) I installed a couple of WP caching plugins I read every WP optimization blog post I could get my greedy little eyes on However, at the same time I was also getting addicted to WordPress bloggers talking about all the cool things you could do with your blog. As a result I had at one point about 30 different plugins installed. WordPress runs on MySQL, and certain queries running via these plugins were starving for CPU. Plugins that would be called every page load meant that as more people clicked on my site, the more CPU I needed. I’m not stupid, so I eventually figured out that maybe less plugins was better, and was able to go down to just 20. But still, the site was running like a dog. CPU Throttling, makes MySQL wait to run a query Bluehost runs shared servers. Your site runs on the same box that several hundred (or thousand?) other services are running on. If you take more CPU than they think you should have, they will limit your service by making you stand in line for CPU, AKA ‘throttling.’ This is not bad. This business model allows them to serve many, many users for a very fair price. It works great until, well, until it doesn’t. I noticed in the last week that for every minute of service, I was being throttled between 60 and 300 seconds. If there were 5 MySQL processes running, then every single one of them were being held in check. The blog visitor notice this as their page requests would take a minute or more to be answered. Bluehost unfortunately doesn’t offer dedicated server hosting, so there was no real upgrade path for me follow and remain one of their customers. So what was I to do? Uninstall every plugin and hope the site sped up? Ask for people to take turns on my blog? I decided to spend my way out of the problem. I signed up for service with WP Engine and moved ThatJeffSmith.com The first 2 months are free, and after that it’s about $29/month to run my site on their system. My math tells me that’s a good bit more expensive than what Bluehost was charging me – to the tune of about 300% more a month. Oh, and I should just say that my blog is a personal blog even though I talk about work stuff here. I don’t get paid for blogging, I don’t sell ads, and I don’t expense the service fees – this is my personal passion. So is it worth it? In the first 4 days, it seems to be totally worth it. Load times have gone from 20-30 seconds to less than 5 seconds. A few folks have told me via Twitter that they notice faster page loads. I anticipate this will indirectly lead to more traffic as Google penalizes you in search results if your site is too slow, and of course some folks won’t even bother waiting more than 5-10 seconds. I noticed right away that writing posts, uploading pictures, and just using the WordPress dashboard in general was much more responsive. So writing is less of a chore now, which means I won’t have a good reason not to write How I Moved to WP Engine I signed up for the service and registered my domain. I then took a full export of my ‘old’ site by doing a FTP GET of all my files, then did a MySQL database backup, exported my WordPress Theme settings to a .zip file, and then finally used the WordPress ‘Export’ feature. I then used the WordPress ‘Import’ on the new site to load up my posts. Then I uploaded the theme .zip package from Themify. Then I FTP’d the ‘wp-content’ directory up to my new server using SFTP (WP Engine only supports secure FTP – good on them!) Using a temporary URL to see my new site, I was able to confirm that everything looked mostly OK – I’ll detail the challenges and issues of fixing the content next – but then it was time to ‘flip the switch.’ I updated the IP address that the DNS lookup tables use to route traffic to my new server. In a matter of minutes the DNS servers around the world were updated and it was time to see the new site! But It Was ‘Broken’ I had never moved a website before, and in my rush to update the DNS, I had changed the records without really finding out what I was supposed to do first. After re-reading the directions provided by WP Engine and following the guidance of their support engineer, I realized I had needed to set the CNAME (Alias) ‘www’ record to point to a different URL than the ‘www.thatjeffsmith.com’ entry I had set. Once corrected the site was up and running in less than a minute. Then It Was Only Mostly Broken Many of my plugins weren’t working. Apparently just ftp’ing the wp-content directory up wasn’t the proper way to re-install the plugin. I suspect file permissions or file ownership wasn’t proper. Some plug-ins were working, many had their settings wiped to the defaults, and a few just didn’t work again. I had to delete the directory of the plug-in manually via SFTP, and then use the WP Dashboard to install it from scratch. And here was my first ‘lesson’ – don’t switch the DNS records until you’ve completely tested your new site. I wasn’t able to navigate the old WP console to review my plug-in settings. Thankfully I was able to use the Wayback Machine to reverse engineer some things, and of course most plug-ins aren’t that complicated to setup to begin with. An example of one that I had to redo from scratch is the ‘Twitter @Anywhere Plus’ plugin that I use to create the form that allows folks to tweet a post they enjoyed at the end of each story. How WP Engine ‘Hooked’ Me I actually signed up with another provider first. They ranked highly in Google searches and a few Tweeps recommended them to me. But hours after signing up and I still didn’t have sever reyady, I was ready to give up on them. They offered no chat or phone support – only mail and message boards. And the message boards were rife with posts about how the service had gone downhill in the past 6 months. To their credit, they did make it easy to cancel, although I did have to do so via email as their website ‘cancel’ button was non-existent. Within minutes of activating my WP Engine account I had received my welcome message and directions on how to get started. I was able to see my staged website right away. They also did something very cool before I even got started – they looked at my existing site and told me by how much they could improve its performance. The proof is in the web pudding. I like this for a few reasons, but primarily I liked their business model. It told me they knew what they were doing, and that they were willing to put their money where their mouth was. This was further evident by their 60-day money back guarantee. And if I understand it correctly, they don’t even take your money until after that 60 day period is over. After a day, I was welcomed by the WP Engine social media team, and was given the opportunity to subscribe to their newsletter and follow their account on Twitter. I noticed their Twitter team is sure to post regular WordPress tips several times a day. It’s not just an account that’s setup for the sake of having a Twitter presence. These little things add up and give me confidence in my decision to choose them as my hosting partner. ‘Partner’ – that’s a lot nicer word than just ‘service provider,’ isn’t it? Oh, and they offered me a t-shirt. Don’t ever doubt the power of a ‘free’ t-shirt! How awesome is this e-mail, from a customer perspective? I wasn’t really expecting any of this. Exceeding expectations before I have even handed over a single dollar seems like a pretty good business plan. This is how you treat customers. Love them to death, and they reward you with loyalty. But Jeff, You Skipped a Piece Here, Why WP Engine? I found them on one of those ‘Top 10′ list posts, and pulled up their webpage. I noticed they offered a specialized service – they host WordPress installs, and that’s it. Their servers are tuned specifically for running WordPress. They had in bolded text, things like ‘INSANELY FAST. INFINITELY SCALABLE.’ and ‘LIGHTNING SPEED.’ And then they offered insurance against hackers and they took care of automatic backups and restores. The only drawbacks I have noticed so far relate to plugins I used that have been ‘blacklisted.’ In order to guarantee that ‘lightning’ speed, they have banned the use of the CPU-suckiest plugins. One of those is the ‘Related Posts’ plugin. So if you are a subscriber and are reading this in your email, you’ll notice there’s no links back to my blog to continue reading other related stories. Since that referral traffic is very small single-digit for my site, I decided that I’m OK with that. I’d rather have the warp-speed page loads. Again, I think that will lead to higher traffic down the road. In 50+ days I will need to decide if WP Engine is a permanent solution. I’ll be sure to update this post when that time comes and let y’all know how it turns out.

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