We introduced some pretty amazing functionality onto the Onvertigo service and decided that we would change the name to Onvertigo Social Network instead of Onvertigo Bloggers since the majority of our functionality is geared towards more twitter and facebook type things and blogging is just an added component.   The functionality that we are running is through Buddypress and the amazing work being done on it now.   We have officially launched to more members to test this functionality out and it is going great.   

Traffic was considerably larger this month due to some promotions that we did for the WPMU plugin content as well as the new sites we launched for our private network.   This isn’t going to impact the system at all as our cache and acceleration code is running perfectly.

We are still in testing beta mode for offvertigo.com which is our new “youtube” type service.   It is a place for uploading all videos and audio from our members.   We have it working really well, but not in a place to make it public past our beta testers for multiple reasons.

Looking forward to the next few months that will bring along some great changes and more fun for everyone

1. Fine tuned our backup system adding even more redundancy.   We are making more frequent database backups with the backups rsync redundant to another server.   The entire server is on RAID now.    All files and configurations are also backed up on a daily basis to Amazon S3 making our backup solution very tight for everything.
2. We released the first BETA of our Onvertigo Media system which is much like YouTube.   It is based off a software called phpMotion and really is great!    We even have a system in place to get your videos off YouTube over to our system very easy so you don’t have to upload your videos again!   Currently we are doing it on a “closed” basis, but if you are interested, let Trent know.
3. Keeping up with the best functionality of WPMU, we have a complete copy of Onvertigo Bloggers working so we can test out the latest development releases and implement only the best functionality to our live site between releases.
4. We still have a small community but have opened up the signup process to the public with only people that know me being able to answer the signup question.    We also have several filters in place to stop spam signups keeping the site clean.
5. For those of you that want your own domain name, we have a system in place that you can point a domain name to the server and add it to your blog for FREE!     The domain registration is still there, but having a domain name on your blog on our system is 100% free.
6. Added a Global Posts system where all blog posts will be added.   All links are back to the original blog posts and it should help with people finding your blog content and keep everyone is the best position in terms of the search engines.   It is at http://tags.onvertigo.com
7. We have did away with the “upgrades” and “premium” services for now, but still appreciate donations to keep this service 100% free forever.
8. We have added another 20+ “premium wordpress themes” that are not offered to my knowledge on any other blogging system.      They were payed for in an attempt to keep this service more unique.
9. Still in the process of adding a better stats system for individual blogs and will keep working on this

We are very happy with where we are on this system and hope to keep making progress.    Thank you for your interest in Onvertigo Bloggers

The first thing that we did was make yet another move to a dedicated server as after great lengthy reading and discussions, having one server that has more resources is a better way to go than having multiple points of failure for the site with multiple VPS servers.    It is also easier to manage.    That is why we picked a beefy box with multiple cores, processors and more RAM than is required.   We still have a VPS for testing and redundancy with files and databases so that our original strategies still are present.

In terms of our service, we also have looked at a more simple approach and took away all the things that might be nice to have, but were just not popular.   This is turn also increased the speed of everything and we are a lean and mean machine again.     We also introduced the newer WPMU code that has Google Gears to speed up your administration area.

Traffic was great again this month and we introduced a solution to have advertising that is geared towards those that are not logged in and not shown to regular visitors of your site.   It should be a nice solution moving forward that is a great compromise to revenue to keep the service free versus upsetting users and their regular readers.

We have also turned off “user” registration on the service until we can find a better way to slow down the spam and unwanted registrations.    All blog creation is available to existing users so you can keep making new ones!   All new “user” registration will be done by myself manually and you can send requests to me through my contact form.

The social networking features that we plan on releasing will only be released when the “completed” releases of BuddyPress become available as it is too difficult to keep testing features on our production site and I don’t have the time to test them on our VPS.     We want this service simple and bug free.    That is the best way to do anything.

All and all, July looks like another round of getting the service even better and more important, simple.

Thanks for your patience.

Trent Adams

Next we ran xCache on the server and it seemed to be as fast as eAccelerator and in the beginning was also using some additional RAM but it must have been for the first caching.   It eventually released the memory and had a smaller disk write for caching.   With the addition of object cache and wp-super-cache it seems faster using less resources.

That is the one that we are sticking with for now.    I am not sure why eAccelerator wouldn’t release the extra memory, but I was testing out 3 common configurations for VPS servers and nothing helped.   xCache did drop the memory after the caching and seems a better fit for us right now.  More after further testing.

April brought us the newest admin “dashboard” and some fairly large changes to the optimization of both our servers.    We also changed around our ssl administration on our admin area to only secure the data that needs securing.   This increased the speed of the dashboard to a massive degree!   Hope everyone likes the new page loading times!

As always, if you have any questions or concerns you can now send me a message through the “dashboard” as well since May has brought us the first stage of our social features with our new member messaging!

Offloading backups is done onto another service and that is working really well.    Data integrity and backups are the cornerstone of confidence both for myself and the users of this service.   We are always trying to get better.   That is why we have another server with SliceHost that we are using to implement our next strategy with database redundancy.  This will be done with a master/slave database relationship.

Essentially, the master database server still deals with all the entries, comments and other posts that are made on the service or “writes of new data”.     The slave database server just syncs itself with the master so that it always has an up-to-date version of all data.    This allows us to load balance the database between the two servers as requests from the general public viewing sites can be setup to come from either database server.

This is the setup that we are going to implement by using a dedicated “database only” server on Slicehost.   This setup will also allow us to make backups off the slave database server without disrupting anyone on the service as all writes still will go to the master database server.   Summing up, this allows us to backup the data more frequently
Another thing we are considering will be creating a duel master redundancy plan so if the master (all “writes”) database server does go down, the slave server can take over as the master and when the original database server comes back online it adjusts to become the slave.     Little more complicated, but worth it.

The interesting thing to me as the system administrator and the one paying for all of this is that implementing this system will actually make the monthly costs go down!    Instead of having to have 1 large server to have the resources to cover the bottlenecks, it is cheaper to have several smaller servers working on specific tasks.    That is why we will stick with our Media Temple server (which we can downgrade) and use smaller Slicehost servers to more than pick up the slack!

Some might ask if this is a little “overboard” for such a small service that is in “beta” right now and not entirely public.    Believe me, once we release the rest of the service plans we have coming up, it is

We are just finishing up testing the release on another installation and making sure all the functionality will continue to work when the upgrade is launched.   All data will be backed up (another time) right before the upgrade and I will let everyone know in advance before it happens.    It should be fun!

We are also looking at the future release of Buddypress which will be integrated with Onvertigo Bloggers.   It gives our bloggers an interface extremely similar to Facebook with friends, groups, messaging and other great features including a more advanced “profile” page.   There will be loads of control in terms of privacy and integrate nicely with our system.   That is down the road since we can only push out a few changes at a time!

Stay tuned!