If you are seeing this blog post, it means the DNS has resolved correctly for you. I have moved the site from my dedicated server in Frro to a VPS in Vodien. I did it because I wanted to play with more Linux stuff. And if I did it on the dedicated server at Frro, it may screw some of the sites hosted there and may cause downtime for them which is a absolutely no-no.

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.

*UPDATE* And we are now back up after about 3 hours of downtime!

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 =)

NetDNA, a Content Distribution Network (CDN) company, is now sponsoring lesterchan.net! So now I am offloading all my static files (Images, CSS & JavaScript) to NetDNA’s CDN services.

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.

I have integrated Flickr API with this site using Dan Coulter‘s phpFlickr. The newly added gallery page is called Flickr Gallery. The gallery lists all the photos I have uploaded to my Flickr account. As you can see, I no longer upload photos directly to this site gallery anymore as it is a PITA to manage them. I have since moved on to Flickr for all my photos.

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”.

December 2009 Total Traffic

• 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