This featured section will contain blog posts with original content categorized by their respective companies. Original content in the sense that they are not from press releases or copied and pasted from somewhere else. These original content are either compiled by me (example: SingTel) or they can be items bought by me (example: Bluelounge).

For a start, I have listed 4 companies, and here they are:

• Apple
• Bluelounge
• Eneloop
• SingTel

I will add in more companies into the featured section when I have enough content to show.

Personally, I think Tumblr has too much features for me such as the sharing of Text, Photo, Quote, Link, Chat, Audio and Video. I personally going to use a microblogging service to share photos with some text only and hence Posterous fits my needs.

Posterous also supports CNAME mapping and hence my Posterous address is:

I have also made some changes to the site, bumping the version to 3.50 (if anybody is interested in the version number):

• Added Social box and placed it at the top of the right sidebar with links to my Posterous, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Google+ profile.
• Added Code Syntax Highlighting from Benjamin Lupton.
• Added Posterous feed to the welcome box.
• Added Sharing/Social Box in the single post view for sharing it via Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin.
• Added OpenGraph meta tags to the site.
• Upgraded Fancybox to 1.3.4.
• Upgraded WordPress to 3.2.1.
• Removed Docking Boxes from the sidebar and now the sidebar is not movable and the boxes in the sidebar are not collapsible or expandable.

What is Cacti

Cacti is a complete network graphing solution designed to harness the power of RRDTool’s data storage and graphing functionality. Cacti provides a fast poller, advanced graph, multiple data acquisition methods, and user management features out of the box. All of this is wrapped in an intuitive, easy to use interface that makes sense for LAN-sized installation templating s up to complex networks with hundreds of devices.

What is RRDtool

RRDtool is the OpenSource industry standard, high performance data logging and graphing system for time series data. RRDtool can be easily integrated in shell scripts, perl, python, ruby, lua or tcl applications.

Spent almost the whole day trying to get that installed but to no avail. Found this tutorial, Install RRDTool on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, followed it and I managed to get rrdtool up and running.

Next was the easy step which is to download Cacti and upload it to this server. PHP and MYSQL is needed to run Cacti and hence you need to create a MYSQL database and account for Cacti.

Once that is done, remember to import the existing database data/structure in cacti.sql into the database, if not you will get segfault errors when accessing your Cacti.

You will also need to create a cron job that runs once every 5 minutes to populate contents for Cacti, refer to Install and Configure Cacti.

Now what you need are templates/graphs to monitor your Apache, MYSQL, Memcached and even your server. For Apache and MYSQL you can use mysql-cacti-templates, even for Memcached, you can use that, but personally I am using memcached Cacti Template.

Remember that each scripts you download requires configuration in the script itself.

• For memcached, you need to enter your memcached IP and Port.
• For Apache, you need to have SSH account setup and mod_status compiled and ExtendedStatus set to On. By default, mod_status is compiled in all WHM installations.
• For MYSQL, you need to enter your MYSQL credentials.

Everything is up and running, now it is the time to create a custom graph if you want, you can take a look at Making Your Scripts Work With Cacti.

I created a custom script to pull the number of usersonline on my site via my WordPress WP-UserOnline plugin and populate it in Cacti.

If you are using iPhone/iPad, there is also an app for it called iCacti (Universal App) which cost USD$3.99. I bought it instantly when I discovered that there is an app for Cacti. Works well with https/http auth and normal login.

Blog – UsersOnline (Custom)

Server – Load Average

Apache – Requests

MYSQL – Command Counters

Memcached – Requests Per Second

Response Time Since 17th March 2011

That kinda irritated me. So on Saturday, 26th March 2011, I decided to optimize the site. I switched the home page to display 5 posts instead of the previous 10 posts so that it loads lesser stuff, but apparently it does not make a significant difference.

I found out that it is because of W3 Total Cache Minify and CDN options. Apparently, when these 2 options are enabled, it will parse your HTML output and minified any embedded Javascript in your page or replace URLs with CDN URLs if needed. And these are causing the overhead in processing.

What I did was to turn both options off and manually hardcode the CDN URLs inside my templates. Thanks to WordPress Filter APIs, I just need to do it in one file! My JavaScript are already minified by default, so I did not do anything to it.

And the result is a reduction of 2,000ms!

View: Current Performance and Availability Status lesterchan.net

$ curl –head lesterchan.net
curl: (52) Empty reply from server

I have still yet to figure out the problem yet. But it seems a simple Apache restart does solve the problem. I have about 2GB of RAM on this VPS server and I don’t think it is out of memory because I did check the RAM when this happens and it seems I still have more than 1GB available. Apache processes appears to be running as well. The last thing I installed on this server is XCache 1.3.1, I wonder if it has anything to do with it.

But anyway, I have been using Pingdom for a couple of years and it has a nice iPhone App that alerts you via Push Notification if your server is down. I have it check my site every 5 minutes.

I recently tried out WatchMouse as recommended by colleagues and it seems much better than Pingdom in terms of features and node locations. But it is a little expensive (cheapest is USD$35 per month), considering I don’t earn anything from this site. There is a free account on it though, I just have to put up a small banner on my site (which I did on the right menu). The free account is good enough for me, they check this site once every 20 minutes for the free account.

The feature I like most about WatchMouse is the Public Website Health Status Page and it is available on the free account as well, check out, http://status.lesterchan.net/ (yeap, they even allow you to have CNAME). I have also set up a new Twitter account, @lcstatus which basically adds like a RSS feed for http://status.lesterchan.net/ (announcements section).

A WatchMouse Public Status Page enables your organisation to display information about the availability and performance of your critical services. You can post announcements, annotate current issues, and optionally set up a special host name (CNAME) so people can access the status page using your domain name, e.g. status.yourdomain.com. It is an easy control channel through which you can transparently inform visitors about the status of your sites and web services.

All WatchMouse Public Status Pages are hosted on Amazon’s Cloud infrastructure so they are available even if your site or service is not.

View: http://status.lesterchan.net/

In terms of control panel, previously I am using DirectAdmin and now on the VPS, I am using CPanel. As CPanel is much more popular than DirectAdmin, there are tons of resources and tutorials available out there. I followed this tutorial, Memcached and PHP with cPanel, and got memcached up and running within 15 minutes on the VPS!

CPanel allows the importing of a DirectAdmin account, however I did not make use of that. Rather, I use Rsync, to copy the files between servers and mysqldump to dump the database from one server to another. I created the subdomains manually using CPanel and with regards to email accounts, I started afresh as I do not use my domain email for any purpose.

Once the above is done, I logged in to namecheap and change the IP for both NS1 and NS2 to point to this server’s IP address. Give it about 24 hours for the change to propagate and bingo!

I make a noob mistake of not updating my CDN provider, NetDNA, with the new IP and because of that I have wasted a few hours trying to figure out why all my CDN content are returning a 403 Forbidden error!

That basically sums up the migration plan I did to move this site from Frro to Vodien.

This site will be offline for a few hours between 10pm 18th December 2010 (GMT +8) to 6am 19th December 2010 (GMT +8) for migration of server rack.

Details as followed:

There will be a scheduled relocation of co-location server rack space within the data centre at Creative Resource (the “Data Centre”).

This scheduled migration is part of M1 Net Ltd (M1 Net)’s ongoing endeavors to progressively upgrade the facilities and services. This upgrade will help to prevent potential network failures, optimize the network’s redundancy resources, and maintain the network infrastructure with up-to-date industry standard protocols.

The new racks are designed to incorporate an Earth Leak Relay (ELR) system and will be linked to dual power supply feeders and each individual rack will be linked to a different Distribution Board and UPS. With the ELR incorporated design, the new racks will have greater tolerance for power trip failure and will offer better protection to your servers from any power disruption caused by other end users’ servers/racks. This will also help to ensure the continued efficiency of the network to better serve your needs and requirements.

Please be assured that there will be no change in your service offerings and that as our valued customer, you will continue to enjoy the same quality of service as before.

Sorry for any inconvenience caused =)

They have 10 data centers around the world and provide CDN services for more than 200 large websites such as:

• Mashable.com
• Templatemonster.com
• BuySellAds.com
• Uservoice.com
• SitePoint.com
• Earthday.org
• VentureBeat.com
• Mahalo.com

Check out their Customers Page that comes with case studies.

Setting Up
This is my first time setting up a CDN and it took me only 30 minutes to do it and after that the bulk of the time is waiting for Starhub DNS servers to get refreshed/flush so that my static.lesterchan.net CNAME works.

If you are using WordPress (like me), the plugin, W3 Total Cache, makes it a no brainer to hook onto NetDNA’s CDN. Just download W3 Total Cache, upload it to your /wp-content/plugins/ folder and read the Installation Guide.

NetDNA – Manage Zones

NetDNA – Create A New Pull Zone

W3 Total Cache – General Settings

W3 Total Cache – CDN Settings

DirectAdmin – DNS Settings

And that is it! You now have a working CDN for your WordPress powered site! You may want to play around with W3 Total Cache settings to further optimize your site through JS/CSS Minification, Object Cache, Database Cache, etc.

Do drop NetDNA a visit if you need CDN services for your website. You can request a quotation by filling in this form.

Here are some of the Flickr APIs that I am using for the gallery:

• flickr.collections.getTree
• flickr.collections.getInfo
• flickr.photosets.getInfo
• flickr.stats.getCollectionStats
• flickr.stats.getPhotosetStats
• flickr.stats.getPhotoStats
• flickr.stats.getTotalViews

The weird part about Flickr API is that it does not return my collection views properly. For some reasons it is always 0 and I am guessing that no one viewed the collection yet (DOH!). But it would be good if they accumulate all the views in the sets and counted it towards the collection views.

Also all the stats API does not return the total number of views for that particular collection or set. I have to always pass in a date in order to get a view count for that particular date.

PS: If you like my gadgets picture, you will like the Me Collection on Flickr! I can’t think of a proper name, so I decided to use the word “Me”.

• Total Hits: 11,295,850
• Total Files: 10,659,533
• Total Pages: 969,383
• Total Visits: 269,297
• Total KBytes: 44,774,958
• Total Unique Sites: 174,310
• Total Unique URLs: 21,043
• Total Unique Referrers: 32,179
• Total Unique User Agents: 7,386

December 2009 Daily Traffic

• Hits per Day: Average: 364,382 – Max: 444,751
• Files per Day: Average: 343,855 – Max: 421,241
• Pages per Day: Average: 31,270 – Max: 44,055
• Visits per Day: Average: 8,687 – Max: 10,084
• KBytes per Day: Average: 1,444,353 – Max: 1,830,334

Note: Green denotes increase, Blue denotes no change and Red denotes decrease when compared with November 2009.

Previous month site traffic: November 2009

1. Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.
2. Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss. This is the first wave of our many planned media-handling improvements.
3. Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.
4. Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).
5. We now have rel=canonical support for better SEO.
6. There is automatic database optimization support, which you can enable in your wp-config.php file by adding define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true);.
7. Themes can register “post thumbnails” which allow them to attach an image to the post, especially useful for magazine-style themes.
8. A new commentmeta table that allows arbitrary key/value pairs to be attached to comments, just like posts, so you can now expand greatly what you can do in the comment framework.
9. Custom post types have been upgraded with better API support so you can juggle more types than just post, page, and attachment. (More of this planned for 3.0.)
10. You can set custom theme directories, so a plugin can register a theme to be bundled with it or you can have multiple shared theme directories on your server.
11. We’ve upgraded TinyMCE WYSIWYG editing and Simplepie.
12. Sidebars can now have descriptions so it’s more obvious what and where they do what they do.
13. Specify category templates not just by ID, like before, but by slug, which will make it easier for theme developers to do custom things with categories — like post types!
14. Registration and profiles are now extensible to allow you to collect things more easily, like a user’s Twitter account or any other fields you can imagine.
15. The XML-RPC API has been extended to allow changing the user registration option. We fixed some Atom API attachment issues.
16. Create custom galleries with the new include and exclude attributes that allow you to pull attachments from any post, not just the current one.
17. When you’re editing files in the theme and plugin editors it remembers your location and takes you back to that line after you save. (Thank goodness!!!)
18. The Press This bookmarklet has been improved and is faster than ever; give it a try for on-the-fly blogging from wherever you are on the internet.
19. Custom taxonomies are now included in the WXR export file and imported correctly.
20. Better hooks and filters for excerpts, smilies, HTTP requests, user profiles, author links, taxonomies, SSL support, tag clouds, query_posts and WP_Query

At that time I was in Hong Kong and couldn’t upgrade this site at all. I came back yesterday and perform the upgrade today. Everything went smoothly, looks like not much changes that will break plugins compatibility as the current version of my plugins works fine as well.

I hesitated for the upgrade because I know WordPress 2.9.1 will be out latest by next week but nevertheless, I still proceed on with the upgrade.

I also updated my resume to reflect my final academic results and now the academic section of it is 100% completed.

• Total Hits: 11,232,870
• Total Files: 10,594,601
• Total Pages: 907,322
• Total Visits: 252,818
• Total KBytes: 43,674,815
• Total Unique Sites: 158,597
• Total Unique URLs: 19,509
• Total Unique Referrers: 33,582
• Total Unique User Agents: 7,265

November 2009 Daily Traffic

• Hits per Day: Average: 374,429 – Max: 420,985
• Files per Day: Average: 353,153 – Max: 397,883
• Pages per Day: Average: 30,244 – Max: 42,058
• Visits per Day: Average: 8,427 – Max: 9,499
• KBytes per Day: Average: 1,455,827 – Max: 1,815,226

Note: Green denotes increase, Blue denotes no change and Red denotes decrease when compared with October 2009.

Previous month site traffic: October 2009

• Dell PowerEdge 860
• Single Dual-Core Intel Xeon 3050, 2.13GHz, 1066MHz front side bus, 2MB cache
• 2x 1GB ECC DDR2 667 SDRAM
• 1x 250GB & 1x 500GB 7.2K RPM SATA II Hard Drive
• CentOS Release 5

I also have a backup server provided by Vodien Internet Solutions which I will rysnc to manually every week.

• Dell PowerEdge 2950
• 2x Intel Quad Core Xeon E5420
• 16GB Ram
• 4x 300GB SAS RAID 10
• CentOS Release 5

If you are looking for web hosting, do check them out, their support response time is fantastic!

WordPress Theme
This theme is developed by me and hence it is not available to the public as I want to keep it unique. I am using Facybox to display single images in a modal window. Yes, I am using jQuery as well. For some of my feeds like my Twitter feed and WordPress Plugins feed are retrieved and parsed using SimplePie which is included in WordPress.

There is also a iPhone version which is optimized for iPhone viewing, just visit this site in iPhone and it will redirect you to the iPhone version.

Most if not all of the pages in this website is validated as XHTML 1.0 Strict.

WordPress Plugins
I am a WordPress plugins developer however not all the plugins I developed are used on this website as I think plugins like WP-Ban and WP-PostRatings are not necessary as I don’t wish to ban any people from my site or getting my post rated.

I modified only one plugin which is the Breadcrumb plugin by Dan Peverill to have my plugins’ breadcrumbs such as WP-Email and WP-UserOnline displayed using it.

There are also two plugins which I created personally for this website, lesterchan.net Plugin houses several of the functions used in this website and WP-GalleryViewer powers my Gallery. Both of them are not available to the public as it is highly customized to this website.

• Akismet
• Breadcrumb – Modified
• Digg Button
• Google XML Sitemaps
• lesterchan.net Plugin – Not Available
• WordPress.com Stats
• WP-CommentNavi
• WP-DBManager
• WP-DownloadManager
• WP-EMail
• WP-GalleryViewer 1.00 – Not Available
• WP-PageNavi
• WP-PluginsUsed
• WP-Polls
• WP-PostViews
• WP-Print
• WP-RelativeDate
• WP-ServerInfo
• WP-Stats
• WP-UserOnline

Full Details on my Plugins Used Page.

Tracking
I am using the following statistical tools to track and analyze my site traffic.

• Webalizer
• Google Analytics
• WordPress.com Stats
• Extreme Tracking (Depreciated)

URL Shortener
I am using lc.sg as my personal URL shortener and it is powered by YOURLS which is initially developed by me but now, it is developed mainly by Ozh himself. Ozh if you see this, thank you!

Others?
If I missed out anything and you wish to know more about it, do leave it in the comments and I will try my best to add it in.

Just would like to share the stuff I did on this website to improve it’s SEO:

• Age of domain does matter, I bought lesterchan.net way back in 24th January 2004 which makes this domain close to 6 years old.
• I am using Google XML Sitemaps to send sitemaps to various search engine.
• Post title always appear first in the browser title bar before the domain name or website name, eg “Site Traffic October 2009 « Blog | lesterchan.net”.
• I allow bots to crawl my whole website using <meta name=”robots” content=”all” />
• From a user perspective, I always think what search term might the user Google for and I use that as the post title. eg “Windows 7 Pricing in Singapore” or “SingTel iPhone 3GS Price Plans”. All these post has become my most viewed posts.
• Produce content that users really want in order to get them to link back to you. Example, my highest viewed page is my WordPress Plugins Page.
• Register your website with Google Webmasters Tools.

Tools used to track my website:

• Webalizer
• Google Analytics
• WordPress.com Stats
• Extreme Tracking (Depreciated)

Feel free to add in more SEO tips in the comments.

• Total Hits: 11,689,658
• Total Files: 11,018,107
• Total Pages: 974,268
• Total Visits: 255,532
• Total KBytes: 46,133,578
• Total Unique Sites: 156,167
• Total Unique URLs: 19,650
• Total Unique Referrers: 40,161
• Total Unique User Agents: 7,102

October 2009 Daily Traffic

• Hits per Day: Average: 377,085 – Max: 426,525
• Files per Day: Average: 355,422 – Max: 401,470
• Pages per Day: Average: 31,428 – Max: 49,795
• Visits per Day: Average: 8,242 – Max: 9,374
• KBytes per Day: Average: 1,488,180 – Max: 2,527,577

Note: Green denotes increase, Blue denotes no change and Red denotes decrease when compared with September 2009.

Previous month site traffic: September 2009

• Total Hits: 11,514,395
• Total Files: 10,832,441
• Total Pages: 881,091
• Total Visits: 234,920
• Total KBytes: 43,696,408
• Total Unique Sites: 160,044
• Total Unique URLs: 18,486
• Total Unique Referrers: 33,504
• Total Unique User Agents: 7,675

September 2009 Daily Traffic

• Hits per Day: Average: 383,813 – Max: 426,493
• Files per Day: Average: 361,081 – Max: 405,169
• Pages per Day: Average: 29,369 – Max: 40,079
• Visits per Day: Average: 7,830 – Max: 9,390
• KBytes per Day: Average: 1,456,547 – Max: 1,690,368

Note: Green denotes increase, Blue denotes no change and Red denotes decrease when compared with August 2009.

Previous month site traffic: August 2009

• Total Hits: 11,487,833
• Total Files: 10,711,544
• Total Pages: 918,191
• Total Visits: 237,324
• Total KBytes: 44,732,224
• Total Unique Sites: 167,558
• Total Unique URLs: 20,287
• Total Unique Referrers: 34,270
• Total Unique User Agents: 7,288

August 2009 Daily Traffic

• Hits per Day: Average: 370,575 – Max: 434,458
• Files per Day: Average: 345,533 – Max: 405,993
• Pages per Day: Average: 29,619 – Max: 62,980
• Visits per Day: Average: 7,655 – Max: 8,560
• KBytes per Day: Average: 1,442,975 – Max: 1,840,247

Note: Green denotes increase, Blue denotes no change and Red denotes decrease when compared with July 2009.

Previous month site traffic: July 2009

• Total Hits: 13,017,194
• Total Files: 12,118,199
• Total Pages: 892,110
• Total Visits: 245,909
• Total KBytes: 50,145,139
• Total Unique Sites: 175,508
• Total Unique URLs: 21,045
• Total Unique Referrers: 36,102
• Total Unique User Agents: 7,331

July 2009 Daily Traffic

• Hits per Day: Average: 419,909 – Max: 526,326
• Files per Day: Average: 390,909 – Max: 486,750
• Pages per Day: Average: 28,777 – Max: 38,911
• Visits per Day: Average: 7,932 – Max: 9,152
• KBytes per Day: Average: 1,617,585 – Max: 2,183,182

Note: Green denotes increase, Blue denotes no change and Red denotes decrease when compared with June 2009.

Previous month site traffic: June 2009

• Total Hits: 12,353,277
• Total Files: 11,498,846
• Total Pages: 928,925
• Total Visits: 238,957
• Total KBytes: 47,913,285
• Total Unique Sites: 174,547
• Total Unique URLs: 20,253
• Total Unique Referrers: 36,590
• Total Unique User Agents: 7,286

June 2009 Daily Traffic

• Hits per Day: Average: 411,775 – Max: 543,863
• Files per Day: Average: 383,294 – Max: 509,580
• Pages per Day: Average: 30,964 – Max: 101,269
• Visits per Day: Average: 7,965 – Max: 12,416
• KBytes per Day: Average: 1,597,110 – Max: 3,532,779

Note: Green denotes increase, Blue denotes no change and Red denotes decrease when compared with May 2009.

Previous month site traffic: May 2009

• Total Hits: 10,860,869
• Total Files: 10,143,164
• Total Pages: 735,381
• Total Visits: 208,951
• Total KBytes: 39,734,204
• Total Unique Sites: 159,587
• Total Unique URLs: 18,455
• Total Unique Referrers: 31,496
• Total Unique User Agents: 6,488

May 2009 Daily Traffic

• Hits per Day: Average: 350,350 – Max: 444,741
• Files per Day: Average: 327,198 – Max: 417,216
• Pages per Day: Average: 23,721 – Max: 28,148
• Visits per Day: Average: 6,740 – Max: 8,153
• KBytes per Day: Average: 1,281,749 – Max: 1,448,784

Note: Green denotes increase, Blue denotes no change and Red denotes decrease when compared with April 2009.

Previous month site traffic: April 2009