SpiffySigs

[Toshiba]

Hey Guys, some of you might know me... I used to run the website runescapedatabase.net (it was a signature website)

 

Well I went back to the drawing board and developed a new way of creating sigs... why pick from a gallery when you can upload your own? Pick your colors, locations, everything?

 

 

This is the result...

 

The website is running:

 

PHP 5.3.0 scripts

MooTools Javascript Framework 1.2.4

mySQL 5

 

Custom framework. Built in 5 days.

 

The site will be more user-friendly and needs to be so any suggestions?

[Dbzruler72]

The design is fine, but the implementation of it is shaky, most notably on the homepage. When users first visit your site, their eyes are drawn to the most appealing part of the page. In this case, it's the car. When I pulled up your site, I saw the dotted box and immediately thought of Photoshop. To prevent confusion, include an explanation of the site's purpose. Make it obvious. Then get into the details of simplicity and functionality in signatures.

 

Also, fix your markup. The doctype is XHTML 1.0 transitional, but it won't validate. I recommend you switch to HTML 4.01.

 

Good work for five days.

[Toshiba]

The design is fine, but the implementation of it is shaky, most notably on the homepage. When users first visit your site, their eyes are drawn to the most appealing part of the page. In this case, it's the car. When I pulled up your site, I saw the dotted box and immediately thought of Photoshop. To prevent confusion, include an explanation of the site's purpose. Make it obvious. Then get into the details of simplicity and functionality in signatures.

 

Also, fix your markup. The doctype is XHTML 1.0 transitional, but it won't validate. I recommend you switch to HTML 4.01.

 

Good work for five days.

 

Yea, I couldn't agree with you more. I'm a programmer not a designer, I do have a re-design scheduled for it. But for now, that was my solution. I'll probably change it today. My main concentration was the actual functionality of signature creation.

[Toshiba]

Happy Day! index.php is XHTML transitional.

[MageUK]

I'm actually more interested in how the backend works. :P

 

How do you get your stats?

 

How long are you caching them for?

 

How long do you cache the images for?

 

How are you compressing the images to ensure minimal bandwidth utilisation?

 

For the last one, I'm guessing not very much, given that your signature is larger (108,968 bytes) than our forum rules allow. ;)

 

If you don't use correct caching/compression you'll find that either - users don't see your signatures updating even though they've updated (because their browser has cached them), or massive bandwidth usage (or both).

[Toshiba]

I'm actually more interested in how the backend works. :P

 

How do you get your stats?

 

How long are you caching them for?

 

How long do you cache the images for?

 

How are you compressing the images to ensure minimal bandwidth utilisation?

 

For the last one, I'm guessing not very much, given that your signature is larger (108,968 bytes) than our forum rules allow. ;)

 

If you don't use correct caching/compression you'll find that either - users don't see your signatures updating even though they've updated (because their browser has cached them), or massive bandwidth usage (or both).

 

1. Stats are retrieved via php cURL and the runescape hiscores "lite" version. There is mySQL table setup containing all of the skills and their respective runescape Skill ID. Lining these too up it runs a loop through all of thats and sets them up properly.

 

2. The stats are cached in the signatures database entry.

 

3. The images shouldn't be cached at all because of an .htaccess file restricting browsers from caching any file with a .png extension.

 

4. No, images are not compressed (that may be a good option to have for users though). Bandwith is not gonna be an issue once I switch the server to my companies network (AT&T Fiber optic running 50mbps up and down)

 

Also, it will be a dedicated server. No other apache services will be running on it. Also, mySQL databases will be split between the processes cores, depending on whether I have a quad of duel core processor. This is done with mySQL master and slave settings. Apache already splits processes up.

 

The reason mySQL will have separate processes running is because currently mySQL cannot split up onto different cores. (someday... :( )

[MageUK]

I'm actually more interested in how the backend works. :P

 

How do you get your stats?

 

How long are you caching them for?

 

How long do you cache the images for?

 

How are you compressing the images to ensure minimal bandwidth utilisation?

 

For the last one, I'm guessing not very much, given that your signature is larger (108,968 bytes) than our forum rules allow. ;)

 

If you don't use correct caching/compression you'll find that either - users don't see your signatures updating even though they've updated (because their browser has cached them), or massive bandwidth usage (or both).

 

1. Stats are retrieved via php cURL and the runescape hiscores "lite" version. There is mySQL table setup containing all of the skills and their respective runescape Skill ID. Lining these too up it runs a loop through all of thats and sets them up properly.

 

2. The stats are cached in the signatures database entry.

 

3. The images shouldn't be cached at all because of an .htaccess file restricting browsers from caching any file with a .png extension.

 

4. No, images are not compressed (that may be a good option to have for users though). Bandwith is not gonna be an issue once I switch the server to my companies network (AT&T Fiber optic running 50mbps up and down)

 

Also, it will be a dedicated server. No other apache services will be running on it. Also, mySQL databases will be split between the processes cores, depending on whether I have a quad of duel core processor. This is done with mySQL master and slave settings. Apache already splits processes up.

 

The reason mySQL will have separate processes running is because currently mySQL cannot split up onto different cores. (someday... :( )

 

By bandwidth I didn't mean the current in use bandwidth, I meant the monthly quota you're racking up.

 

Why are you not caching images? It seems silly to *NOT* be caching images if you're caching stats. Why would you cache stats (presumably for an amount fo time, say X hours), and have the signatures regenerate on every load when they need only regenerate every X hours too? Why not pull the time the stats were gathered from the database, and set your images to be cached until the original time they were retrieved plus the cache length? That's a much more efficient use of resources.

 

Put it this way - the Tip.It web server is already serving millions of requests, and the stat signatures I wrote run successfully on the same server, because of smart caching of data and images, and we have thousands of active signatures.

 

The note about your signature being over 100kb was a subtle hint to change/compress it before it gets noticed by a moderator. ;)

[Toshiba]

1. Turning off SIG image caching was a lazy fix I will admit, your suggestion is very good though and noted.

2. The stats are cached for stat level trends, not for an image regeneration every request the server gets hit with. The would be incredibly heavy and stupid.