Microsonic Development

Hey everyone,

The new year has brought a tremendous amount of work along with it and I want to thank all of you. I definitely prefer an abundance of work to a scarcity of work, and that is surely the situation I find myself in today. As soon as I finish these projects up, however, I will be writing some new tutorials.

In the recent and current projects I’ve received I have encountered some tasks that I have found unusual and so took some time to figure out an efficient way to complete the task. Not that some of the things haven’t already been done, but since they are new to me I will try (being not far from the situation of the user seeking help since it was just days or weeks prior that I was in also in that situation) to explain them as thoroughly and simply as possible.

It seems the more familiar a topic becomes, the more difficult it is to relate to the issues of those just learning and that is why I try to write tutorials as soon as I have done something I find intriguing, but also familiarity (as you can see in the PHP/Salt tutorial) is not always a bad thing either because you can easily increase complexity and security. So more or less, it’s a give and take and I’m now beginning to ramble.

So in the meantime, hang tight, subscribe, and I will hopefully get these projects done quickly to write some more tutorials. Yes, I know I have been saying this for over a month, but the Holidays were very busy fortunately or unfortunately and work has to come first to tutorials since it’s a source of income as I’m sure it is for many of you (and so hopefully a bit easier to sympathize with my cause).

Regards,
Dennis M.

I would just like to thank every user for coming to the site! Unfortunately, my posts have been slow in the past few months (due to many out of town visits as well as the Holidays). Also, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone as well! I hope it’s a wonderful holiday season for you and your family.

Regards,
Dennis M.

Web traffic; it’s the “money-maker” for many webmasters. But is all traffic really a good thing? Well, this is a topic that isn’t quite “black and white” so to speak. Traffic can have many affects on a site, both positive and negative. Ultimately, good traffic is defined as frequent visitors, or a visitor who buys your product (if you’re selling something). Bad traffic, on the other hand, consists of mostly anything else: spam, abusers, web-surfers, etc.

We will begin by discussing the positive effects of all traffic. Having good traffic, obviously, cannot hurt you. There is no way that comes to mind that I can think of in which good traffic will hurt your site; be it resale value or otherwise (thus its name, “good” traffic). If you’re getting tons of good traffic, your site is booming, and if you ever want to sell it, that raises it’s value!

Now, bad traffic can also have some (temporarily) “positive” effects. If you’re running a site which does not worry about visitor comments spam hits and robots shouldn’t be much of a problem for you. In fact, they may make your stats look great at first glance, and you may even be able to catch a gullible buyer and convincing him or her (by not saying anything more than to look at the visitor count) that the traffic is great! However, for those serious domainers, etc. they will check those stats down to the IP’s of the visits. When they track back all those IP’s to public proxies, and known spam bots they will throw the name back in your face and your sale will fall through.

So in the end, all traffic does not quite turn into good traffic. It is indeed a great factor for any sale of a site, but visitor turn around is what really matters. So when analyzing your own traffic, check as if you were buying your site up and take steps to minimize spam traffic!

Regards,
Dennis M.

Hey everyone!

As many of you may or may not know, Microsonic used to be a hosting company. From 2005-2008 I ran the site as “Microsonic Hosting.” In 2009, however, I decided to make it a more specialized place consisting of my thoughts and sharing my skills with others. Today, however, an idea ran across my head: re-open the hosting branch. So in this topic, I’ll take you through my head a bit more.

Well, what does this entail? The mere thought makes one wonder what would happen to the current site. Well, it would remain the same. As I mentioned, it would be a “branch” of Microsonic Development. I actually run “Microsonic Development” as a freelance programming company, so I may even revamp this to being much more than simply a blog! A hosting company that is not run by C/O’s who know very little about what they’re selling, but rather a professional selling services to another professional. Keeping in mind the reason I closed up shop in the first place, however, is also very important.

Due to lack of business and trying to keep prices low, costs built up and I ended up taking a loss on the whole project unfortunately. Not that I am in it to solely make a profit, but just like for everyone else, finances are tight. But then again, in retrospect it is important to think about what caused the collapse. My lack of advertising was the ultimate beast that did it in in the first place. All clients I had were extremely happy and very upset when I announced the initial closing of the company, however, had more people known about the satisfaction perhaps more members would have joined.

So now, as I continue to ponder my own thoughts, what are you personal thoughts? Perhaps I should specialize? Rather than web hosting, perhaps I will provide shell or VPS hosting? Let me know what you think! Your thoughts are, as usual, very helpful for me as they inspire my decisions about how to proceed in certain actions and what kinds of articles to write!

Regards,
Dennis M.

I’d like to begin this post with an apology to all my subscribers. It has been over a month since I’ve posted anything! This is because I have been involved in a very large project which I should hopefully be finishing very soon (yes, I’m still not finished with it). And without further adieu:

Server Maintenance. It’s a love-hate relationship really. One never knows how long it’s truly going to take, so you generally lose a lot of precious uptime due to it. On the other hand, it keeps the system running strong and fast so it can keep up with other servers.

This server even has some scheduled maintenance coming up very soon (I believe Sunday October, 11 at 9:00am CST, but I could be wrong). But it’s not always a thing to get angry about. In the time it takes to update the server, most people won’t lose any clients.

Most companies or users try to find a time (analyzing statistics) where their traffic is the lowest. During this time is when they normally try to schedule maintenance if it’s possible. This already minimizes the amount of clients lost. Also, maintenance normally lasts an hour or so (but I’ve had experiences with up to 24) and then you come back to a much faster working network.

So overall, this server maintenance thing is really a blessing in disguise. Although you will get some immediate frustration that you cannot access your site, you will be able to come back to a quick server. Not only quick (by way of RAM), but many times a quicker internet speed as well (a connection update!).

Regards,
Dennis M.