CakePHP Project: WebManager
I have started work on a solution to a problem I have been searching for for quite a while. Finding nothing that satisfied me, a while back I started development on a new CakePHP project titled WebManager (DE WebManager to be precise).
The functionality will include the ability to manage the entirety of a business or individual's web presense, from domain names and websites to providers, datacenters, servers, and more. Manage them all in one place and interact with them in intelligent ways--get renewal reminders, login links to all services, relevant contact information displayed on related pages, and much more.
This project came about because I was tired of having to manage my various web assets in all different disconnected places--my registrar for domain names, my various hosting providers and control panels, all of my websites, pages, and projects around the web, and more. It was all just getting to be too much, and while there are a lot of organizational tools, none of them seemed to be designed for this specific type of management. In this, I saw a way to make something that works better for me.
The project is built with CakePHP 1.3, the MooTools Javascript framework, and the MochaUI interface to give users a full desktop-like experience on the web.
I am not sure yet what different versions I will offer, and whether this will be a locally-hosted product or SaaS (Software as a Service) hosted and provided by the Digital Empire. Only time will tell, and I should hopefully have some screenshots and more information posted soon.
Known Server Issues
No need to inform me about the following server issues, which I apologize in advance for:
- CPU time to generate some WordPress and Drupal pages is surpassing 30 seconds. I am actively looking into this and suspect it's some sort of VPS issue with queue times. This is my top priority.
- Caching is not working properly. No pages are being cached on most of my sites. The pages are still working fine, but because of the above performance issue this can become excruciating. I will have caching working properly by the time the previous issue is resolved.
- Our CDN is not set up correctly. We are using SimpleCDN to host many of our static assets, for performance reasons. It is correctly pulling most assets automatically, however you will notice some pictures in our posts are broken, and other links may not work quite right yet. This is being worked on actively as well.
If you have noticed anything other than these three problems, please let me know so I can work on those as well. I am assessing the entire Digital Empire infrastructure which is why things are taking longer than they otherwise would, but the end result should be a more stable, much faster network.
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Monitoring System In Place
In a further effort to make all sites and services in the DE network stable and ensure the highest uptime, we have deployed a full-scale monitoring server at an off-site location in Germany.
This means that we can get a full picture of our network and service status at a glance at any time. It also means we are notified when anything goes down, is running slowly, or becomes unresponsive. In addition, we have the ability to automatically bring things back online and resolve some issues without having to wait for me to fix them.
This is a big jump forward for our network infrastructure, and this means we are now running four full network servers in four different datacenters spanning three countries to provide our sites and services under the highest quality and most ideal circumstances.
Let me know what you think! Have you noticed a difference in any of our sites and services? Is there anything you'd like to see, or any changes you'd like made? We'd love to hear from you!
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Is it up or is it down?
I'd like to sincerely apologize if anyone tried to visit my blog, or any other Digital Empire site, and was not able to get to it.
For the past hour or so, I've gotten reports of the site being inaccessible sporadically. I have also seen this myself, as all of my equipment has been down for the past 15 or 20 minutes.
As you can see by this post, the issue seems to be resolved for the moment.
My current service provider is undergoing a management change, and is taking care of some long-standing issues, so hopefully these problems were a result of the firewall finally being set up properly.
My servers already ran great, but it was taking weeks to get any request through. I firmly hope (and expect) to receive better service going forward with the new owners.