Mike Boone has posted a very useful tutorial on how to get MySQL gem and MAMP 1.7.2 up and running. So, to recap and make the tutorial compatible with Snow Leopard and MAMP 1.8.x, here is what you need to do:

1. Download the latest MAMP dmg file.
2. Download the 1.8.2 (or whichever the latest one you could find) components file from this page.
3. Unzip, mount the dmg, then copy the MySQL source file (mysql-5.1.37.tar.gz) to somewhere on your hard drive.
4. Untar the MySQL source file, and `cd` to the source file directory.
5. Compile the library:

   
$ ./configure --with-unix-socket-path=/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock --without-server --prefix=/Applications/MAMP/Library

   $ make -j2


6. Copy the compiled libraries into MAMP:

   $ cp libmysql/.libs/*.dylib /Applications/MAMP/Library/lib/mysql

7. Copy the MYSQL headers into MAMP:

   
$ mkdir /Applications/MAMP/Library/include

   $ cp -R include /Applications/MAMP/Library/include/mysql


8. Install the Ruby MySQL Gem, on Snow Leopard:

   
$ sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql_config


   On Leopard:

   
$ sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386" gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql_config


Enjoy!

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Please check out the code on Github.

So far I’ve only spent a little bit of time to make it work on Kohana 3.0, but I will be addressing some known issues and adding more features in the next few days. :)

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The code works with Zend Framework 1.8+, where a new Autoloader class has been introduced.

You can put the code in an appropriate place in your application, it could be in the base controller, or if you’re using Kohana 3.0, in the bootstrap file.

You now no longer need to manually ‘include/require’ Zend Framework files. :)

if ($path = Kohana::find_file('vendors', 'Zend/Loader'))
{
	ini_set('include_path',
	ini_get('include_path').PATH_SEPARATOR.dirname(dirname($path)));

	require_once 'Zend/Loader/Autoloader.php';
	Zend_Loader_Autoloader::getInstance();
}

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Well, my personal take is, I will *try* to make my sites and apps compatible with IE6, but only if the consequences (i.e. increased development time and code complexity) are negligible.

Naturally, I would want to direct my IE6 users to a “stop IE6 / save the developers” kind of site, encouraging them to upgrade their browser. After some quick Google searches, I can’t actually find one that is simple and pretty.

So, I reinvented the wheels. Meet WhichBrowserForMe.org!

Please spread the site around and tweet about it, so more and more web developers and designers can start using it, and hopefully more and more users will become aware of the fact that using IE6 is a bad thing.

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In a nutshell, Wuit will develop a series of open source and commercial applications, stay tuned. :-)

Meanwhile, please feel free to follow us: @wuitcom, @fredwu and @scotti3g.

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1. Enter “about:config” into Firefox’s Address Bar.
2. Right-click on any item in the list of preference names, select “New,” then click “Boolean.”
3. Enter “google.toolbar.firstrun.done” as the new preference name, then click “OK.”
4. Select “True,” then click “OK.”

Now my only problem is finding pages which actually have something written about them in Sidewiki. So far the only page I’ve seen with comments was the Sidewiki page itself… :)

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This is a major rewrite which fixed the known issue of not being able to change slides instantly via pagination clicks.

The new version also adds automatic photo caption display.

Enjoy! :)

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There was even talk that the way Russ wooed a girl while waiting for a ferry in Australia was staged. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. I wouldn’t be surprised if Russ has marketing people pushing his lothario image.

Search for lothario in Google News or Goolgle Image search and you’ll no doubt see several Russell entries on the first page of each.

So what does all this have to do with this site? Well, if you’re developing a web app, an iPhone app or some other bit of software you can do yourself a world of favours by establishing your brand.

When you’re Russell Brand you can get the media to push your brand fairly easily. When you’re Joe Schmoe software developer you have to do things a little differently. Media outlets will generally be more than happy to publish articles about your product of service provided your article has a unique and newsworthy spin to it (and isn’t a clear promotional article).

As an example, let’s keep with the lothario theme. Say you have a dating web site you want to get press coverage for. Instead of writing an article saying “here’s my great dating web site and you can join for free”, you might write an article on celebrities that have tried internet dating. Or maybe write about how the number of people getting married who met on the net has jumped X% in the last 5 years.

Whatever your angle, make it interesting, make it memorable.

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The word cloud is getting a lot of attention lately, almost like web 2.0. Marketing gimmick aside, I believe cloud computing does offer a tremendous amount of advantages over traditional computing environment.

At Envato, we use a number of providers for our server needs. We currently have servers with Media Temple, Slicehost and Engine Yard.

Even though Envato was already using Slicehost for some of their applications, I still did my fair share of research before making a suggestion to move away from Media Temple.

I have eventually nailed down to three service providers: Slicehost, Linode and VPS.net.

For Envato, we decided to go with Slicehost, because we already have some servers there, and they offer bandwidth pooling. We would have given Linode a deeper look if they had offered backups (their backups system is still in beta).

Having said that, I was very very impressed by VPS.net, so I decided I should sign up anyway, for my personal projects.

Let’s compare the three services: Slicehost, VPS.net and Media Temple.

Vertical Scalability

As some of you might know, Envato serves over 12 million page views a month, and is growing rapidly. Scalability is becoming more and more important to us. This is the primary reason why we opt to using cloud servers.

Slicehost

Slicehost is one of the first cloud VPS providers out there, they are reputable and reliable. Scalability is based on their VPS plans, which is flexible, but not flexible enough, compared to VPS.net’s offerings.

VPS.net

VPS.net, a new service offered by the UK2 Group. Scalability is offered on a node-basis, a node consists of 0.4Ghz CPU power, 256MB RAM, 10GB storage and 250GB bandwidth. As you can see, this is much more flexible than Slicehost’s plan based approach.

Media Temple

Unfortunately Media Temple is very limited in terms of vertical scalability. (dv) has only three options, the most expensive one costs $150/m. If you need any more power, you’d have to fork out $750/m for a Nitro server.

Virtualisation Technology

Virtualisation technology usually isn’t a big deal, because for the less system-admin-minded people, they all look the same. If you’re keen to finding out the differences, have a read at this post. We much prefer to use Xen over Virtuozzo.

Slicehost

Xen.

VPS.net

Xen.

Media Temple

Virtuozzo.

Automated Backups

Backup is a crucial part of the server architecture. We therefore prefer a service provider that offers automated backups. This way we will have at least two offsite backups, one provided by the VPS and one by ourselves.

Slicehost

Slicehost offers automated backups at a premium cost compared to VPS.net. A 2GB slice costs $30/m, and that’s the most you can get. If you have a slice larger than 2GB, there is no backup service offered.

A maximum of three snapshot slots are offered, you can either have automated ones (daily and weekly) or manual ones.

VPS.net

VPS.net offers a more affordable backup solution, it only costs $5/m, for VPSes of any size.

You get three automated snapshots (daily, weekly and monthly) and one manual snapshot.

Media Temple

Media Temple does not offer any backup solutions.

Control Panel

Control panels help increase our productivity, so we do prefer to use them provided they don’t use up too much system resources.

Plesk is very similar to CPanel in terms of system resource usage, so even though it is powerful, we don’t really like it. ISPmanager on the other hand, claims to only use 10MB of system memory. I like it a lot, so I decided to use it on Slicehost. Be aware that it does have some glitches, I have found a minor issue when using with a remote database server.

Slicehost

No control panels are offered.

VPS.net

Free ISPmanager PRO.

Media Temple

Plesk, for Nitro servers.

System Images

One clear advantage of using a VPS over a dedicated server, is the ability to quickly deploy and redeploy server operating systems.

Slicehost

Offers a wide range of operating systems, in both x86 and x64.

VPS.net

Offers a wide range of operating systems, in both x86 and x64.

Media Temple

Offers 32-bit CentOS 5 by default. I was truly shocked at this decision. The Nitro server has 8GB of RAM, you’d think that they would know people will most likely want to use more than 4GB of RAM for their MySQL server. ‘Switching to 64-bit is available upon request’, according to their FAQ page, but why? Why don’t they make 64-bit the default?

VPS Controls

Same as the operating system, a VPS usually comes with handy tools to start/stop/reboot the server.

Slicehost

Soft reboot / hard reboot / image rebuild.

VPS.net

Graceful shutdown / force power off / graceful reboot. The rebuild feature is estimated to be available in September. I still find it weird that this feature is not built-in in the first place.

Media Temple

Reboot / reinstall (revert to default setup).

DNS Management

All three providers offer DNS management.

Slicehost

To put simply, Slicehost offers an awful awful interface for DNS management. We have a bunch of domains we need to migrate over, and I find it extremely irritating to click back and forth between pages. Terrible, terrible user experience.

VPS.net

VPS.net’s DNS management interface is a delight to use!

Media Temple

Media Temple’s DNS management interface is also very nice!

Billing

Is usage calculated daily or monthly?

Slicehost

Monthly billing with usage calculated daily.

VPS.net

Monthly billing with usage calculated daily.

Media Temple

Monthly billing with usage calculated monthly.

Account

Are we allowed to have multiple logins (i.e. one person can handle the billing, another can handle the VPS management)?

Slicehost

Yes.

VPS.net

No.

Media Temple

Yes.

Extra Features

Let’s see what extra features they have. :)

Slicehost

Web-based console for troubleshooting, simple stats (CPU %, CPU time, Disk read/write, Network in/out), slice cloning, rescue mode, root password reset.

VPS.net

Web-based console for troubleshooting, CPU usage charts, bandwidth charts, scheduled upgrades (temporary resource burst), additional IP addresses, dotDefender WebApp Firewall, Cannybill, one-time managed service.

Media Temple

Bandwidth report (just a simple list), root password change, installation of developer tools (gcc, make, etc).

—

Overall VPS.net has more features and is well priced, I am so far very impressed. Some of the areas they could improve are:

• Image rebuild
• Multiple logins under the same account
• Root password reset

Let’s hope competition drives better products. :)

*Disclaimer* I am not affiliated with any of the providers mentioned in this post.

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