In preparation for upgrading a whole mess of sites to using the latest version of WordPress I decided it was time to finally upgrade my own site and to implement the new design I’d been working on for a while (for over a year now).

Check it out: www.gabrielserafini.com

Popularity: 10% [?]

For quite a while, RSS2.com has been slow. Ever since it hit, oh, around 1.4 million items in its database (now up over 2 million) the queries that were responsible for building the home page view had gotten slower and slower.

The old design

The problem was one of normalization, and the desire to not have data going into two places. The design originally worked this way:

1. Look up the latest posts. Find all the latest ones that have a distinct feed_id. This was running against the feed_data table, which now has over 2 million rows.
2. Next, look up the feed information for each feed_id found. Originally, I couldn’t figure out a way to do this all in one query. So this was another 10 individual SQL queries, looking up information about the feed needed to display on the home page (like the name of the feed, URL, etc.) This query did a join of the feed_data with the feed_info tables. This is what took progressively longer and longer, the more rows in the feed_data table.
3. Next, combine the results of finding the 10 most recent posts from the 10 most recently updated feeds into an array using PHP, then pass those results from the Data Access Object (DAO) to the presentation layer for output on the home page.

This ended up being really, really slow on the homepage load (like over 2 minutes). This was obviously too slow. I implemented caching at a number of layers to mitigate the problem, which made for a very speedy second page load, but the first one was still way too slow.

After consulting with my friend Ben, he agreed that it was an inherently expensive query to run. We agreed that it needed to be re-architected to be able to significantly improve performance.

The new design

The new design required creating a new table dedicated to the home page posts where, when a RSS feed is read, it inserts the most recent new item into the new table.

The new process works like this:

1. RSS feed is read. Any new items are first inserted into the main feed_data table, and the feed_info table is updated as well with a last checked timestamp.
2. Next, the new table is updated, using a MySQL REPLACE command, with the combined feed information as well as item information
3. The complicated 11 queries that used to be run are now replaced by a dead-simple single query that will only ever have to search through the total number of feeds in the system (currently 753 rows), instead of the over 2 million rows before.

These new changes have made using RSS2.com much more usable again, and it is way faster. The homepage loads in under a 1/2 second now, just like it should.

Check it out: RSS2.com - Really Simple News For You

Popularity: 3% [?]

Nice article on ALA about how to create a layout using almost pure CSS where there is a fixed-width sidebar and a dynamically resizing right-hand main content area without using Javascript to dynamically resize the page.

All right, class. Using CSS, kindly produce a liquid layout that contains a fixed-width, scrolling side panel and a flexible, scrolling main panel. Okay, now do it without JavaScript.

Check it out: A List Apart: Articles: Conflicting Absolute Positions

Popularity: 3% [?]

Some excellent articles here about good web building practices.

Welcome to Web Devout! This site is aimed at promoting the health of the Web by providing web developers and the public with the knowledge and tools needed to help the Web move forward.

Check it out: Web Devout

Thanks for the pointer, Ben.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Interesting…

Google Gears (BETA) is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using following JavaScript APIs:

• Store and serve application resources locally
• Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
• Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness

Check it out: Google Gears (BETA)

Popularity: 4% [?]

Looks like it’s time to upgrade again, lots of neat new features and good bug fixes in WordPress 2.2.

WordPress Blog - WordPress 2.2

Download WordPress 2.2 now.

Popularity: 3% [?]

The ScobleShow is the 700th feed added to RSS2.com. Congratulations, Scoble!

Check it out: ScobleShow: Videoblog about geeks, technology, and developers - Read it at RSS2.com

P.S. Support for displaying podcast enclosures is probably going to be coming soon so you’ll be able to play or download non-embedded audio and video podcast files directly in your browser. But that is probably for another night, since it will involve hacking on the MagpieRSS RSS feed parser a little bit so it knows that enclosures exist.

Popularity: 3% [?]

I’ve fixed it so that adding feeds to RSS2.com should work again now. There was a small flaw in the logic for adding the feeds that I hadn’t caught. All fixed now.

So far there have been almost 130,000 total items retrieved from almost 700 feeds since it the site launched in December.

Check it out and add your feed if you want: RSS2.com - Really Simple News For You

Popularity: 3% [?]

If you’ve ever tried to get your website featured on the front page of a site like digg, reddit, or Slashdot you might have felt frustration when you didn’t get the right number of votes to make it.

There is a site called RSS2.com that will automatically put your website’s content directly on its homepage.

How to get onto the homepage

Here are the 3 easy steps for you to take to get your website featured on the homepage of RSS2.com:

1. Go to the site and make sure that your RSS feed is in the database. The easiest way to do this is to paste in the URL for your RSS feed into the “Read a Feed” input box at the bottom of the page.
2. Verify that your existing site RSS feed was imported correctly. You should be forwarded to the page that shows you your feed’s page on RSS2.com if it was imported successfully. (For example, the page for this site is http://rss2.com/feeds/Gabriel)
3. Publish a new item on your website. RSS feeds are updated every 5 minutes so you should only have to wait for a minute or two. Refresh your feed page until you see your new item appear. Now check the homepage. Your new item should be at the top of the list, and will remain until 9 newer items are published by other people in their RSS feeds.

Bonus tip #1 - how to get into the top 30 feeds list

If you want to make it into the top 30 feed list (featured at the top of every page), all you have to do is tell people about your RSS2.com page that features your feed and increase your view count. The easiest way to do this is to use the RSS feed stats widget at the bottom of your feed page (copy and paste the HTML into your blog sidebar or another HTML page) — note that your site must allow <script> tags to enable the live updates of your RSS2.com feed stats information. You can also promote yourself to the top 30 by linking to your feed page in your blog roll and by sending the link to your friends.

Bonus tip #2 - Pretty site icon

To have your site icon show up nicely in the all feeds page and in the explore lists make sure you have a favicon installed for your website. RSS2.com will look for that and use it for your site icon. If it doesn’t find one, it will use a generic one that doesn’t set your site apart from any of the other ones. See the Wikipedia entry on favicons for how to get one installed for your site if you don’t already have one.

So, 3 easy steps to get your website content promoted on the RSS2.com website.

Try it for yourself: Submit your site to RSS2.com

(P.S. It usually accepts most Atom feeds as well as RSS feeds.)

Popularity: 3% [?]

If you like what I’ve been working on for RSS2.com, feel free to digg this submission and help get it linked on the home page. Let’s see if we can melt the server.

This new RSS feed aggregator site makes reading sites like digg fast and easy, with no clutter or distractions. There are 690 other feeds to read that are also available on the site. A really good resource for finding fresh new stories, focused on technology, design, and cool hunting.

read more | digg story

Digg it!

Popularity: 2% [?]