Adding another VPS to be always up and running
From the beginning, my websites are hosted on a single server. At the start they were hosted on a shared hosting plan but last year I switched to a Virtual Private Server (VPS) so I can have full control over my server and configuration. I decided to do this because I always want to have full control over what I do and because I had multiple problems with the shared hosting (lost of data multiple times). At HostDepartment they are not very professionnal and there servers are slow, they put too many websites and databases on there server. With the VPS I get full control and great performance for about 25$/month, and that is awesome (VPSLand).
Even if now I have my VPS I'm not 100% secure in terms of data loss; the fact is that my VPS got corrupted 2 times and each times all my websites were down 10 days (translated in a loss in traffic and revenue), so recently I decided to buy another VPS to be able to switch from one to another when I detect a problem. Everything is identical between the 2 VPS. To switch from one to another I simply have to change to DNS entries (done by a couple of clicks) to point to the other VPS.
The only thing different between the 2 VPS is the fact that I only backup the data (DB and some specific files and folders) from the first VPS. The other is not backed up because it is only temporary (the time I take to repair the first VPS).
With this solution I will avoid the 10 day down; I can be up and running within 2 hours. Yeah it costs 50$/month instead of 25$/month but overall it covers the oney I lose when the websites are down.
Be paid to post on my forums
I recently wrote a page on my blog for people that want to make money with me. I own the website iSeduction.net and all it's sub-domains; in fact, I created all of them. I have add a forum section like you see on many websites.
Because I don't have the time to create posts, I need help to start populating it. One day it will attract enough people to auto-populate by itself, but presently I'm at the beginning so... I need help.
You can read the article right here : http://blog.webmastersam.net/page/Be-paid-to-post-on-forums.aspx.
I offer you the chance to make 200$ in a couple of days by simply posting on my forums. It's 10 cents per post, but if you write more than 1000 posts it shifts to 20 cents per post. You have the time you want, you can create how many account you want and I pay only via PayPal. You must contact me before starting to post.
Forums : New functionality in iSeduction.net
I recently added a new feature in iSeduction.net : forums. Forums are a good way to exchange with people around the world on many subjects. Everyone can post on forums.
There is a lot of forums on the web and there was no way I don't add one in my dating site. I don't have as many posts as Plenty Of Fish have but there is a start for everything. Everything needed to post on my forums is a free profile (created here).
The forums can be found at http://forums.iseduction.net.
Web technology used in iSeduction.net : ASP.Net 2.0
The technology behind iSeduction.net is ASP.Net 2.0 all the way.
Since I'm a .Net programmer, there was no way I would have picked PHP or ASP for this project. .Net is a complete programming language, not only a scripting language like classic ASP or PHP.
Because I worked for years with the .Net technology I saw many differents ways to create web applications. I personnaly prefer the 3-tier model (explaned here) because it is widely used and easy to implement.
The languages used are 90% C# and 10% VB. Some programmers will say "Why use VB ??". The reason is on the jobs I had they were often using VB.Net so I decided to add some VB. I use this only on the aspx pages. All the modules on the business layer and data access layer are written in C#. There is about 60 modules.
Database used in iSeduction.net; from SQL Server to MySQL
The RDBMS (Relational DataBase Management System) used throughout the website is MySQL.
At first I designed the website to use SQL Server 2000 and it lasted a year. In the first version I was using a lot of stored procedures (about 200). Because I was continously adding new features on the site, I was always creating scripts to update the stored procedures to handle the new tables and new fields. Every time I was running my scripts on the production server I got errors. Every I was trying to backup the production database on my local computer I got errors. Ok I was on a shared hosting so that didn't helped. I rapidly found this very anoying so I starting to think about what I could do to solve all the problems I was having. Allthough I was a big fan of SQL Server (for using it a lot on different jobs) I started to read on MySQL. I was thinking about the day I have to switch to my own server and pay for the license... SQL Server being very expensive, MySQL was a good option.
After reading a lot on MySQL I decided to convert my SQL Server database to MySQL. I started by grabbing a copy of my production database localy and convert data from one database to another with MySQL tools. It took me a while to convert everything because some types (like blobs) gave me some difficulties. After that I started to rewrite all my stored procedures from one SQL language to another. At this time there were more than 200 procedures so It took me a while to convert every thing. After all was succesfuly converted to MySQL, I decided to create a backup of the local database to restore it on the production server. I found that the version on the production server was not accepting stored procedures... bad surprise ! I then thought about the right thing to do and I decided to extract the stored procedures from the database and put them in text files. I then rewrited my data access layer to read the procedure in the text file named like the procedure. I then realized that we canno't have procedural code (like IF, WHILE, etc) when executing a command with the text of the procedure so I had to rewrite every logic from my stored procedures to my C# code.
After all that I was ready to change my database system so I practiced a lot with production copies localy. Because of the blobs (used mostly for encrypted passwords) it took me a while to find the perfect way to convert them so after I've founded the way, I created DTS packages in SQL Server. After the process worked a couple of times I stoped the website, copied my production database localy and executed the DTS package. I them restored the new database in production and... voilà ! Everything was working fine. It was more difficult than I thought but I succeeded.