Monthly Archives: September 2010
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Syndication
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September 22, 2010
Introduction to Drupal Caching and Performance Optimization
By New SignatureBecause Drupal is a Content Management System, most of its data lives in a database and not in actual physical files like non CMS systems do. Under heavy load this type of system can become slow because doing reads and rendering pages from a database is slower than doing reads and rendering pages from files.
This is where caching comes in. From Wikipedia, cache “is a component that improves performance by transparently storing data such that future requests for that data can be served faster. The data that is stored within a cache might be values that have been computed earlier or duplicates of original values that are stored elsewhere. If requested data is contained in the cache (cache hit), this request can be served by simply reading the cache, which is comparably faster. Otherwise (cache miss), the data has to be recomputed or fetched from its original storage location, which is comparably slower. Hence, the more requests can be served from the cache the better the overall system performance is.” (more…)
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September 16, 2010
New Signature Designed Websites Win Top Honors at the Web Marketing Association 2010 Web Awards!
By New Signature
We are proud to announce that three websites–designed and produced by New Signature–have won Web Marketing Association 2010 Web Awards! We are thrilled by this honor and recognition in the diverse categories of Activism, News and Restaurant. We also greatly appreciate our clients, who gave us the opportunity to apply strategic thinking, distinctive design, and emerging technologies to create these innovative websites.Expert judges spent hundreds of hours pouring over the entries and reviewing them on seven different criteria: Design, Innovation, Content, Technology, Interactivity, Copywriting, and Ease of Use. All of New Signature’s honored websites not only exceeded overall WebAward average scores, but also the corresponding “Industry” average scores. The winning clients and websites are listed below, included are comments submitted by the judges reviewing our entries.
Working America’s “I Am Not Your ATM!” Website
Outstanding Website – Advocacy
“Overall, the site’s design and layout is pleasing, contemporary and well done.”The Century Foundation’s “Inside IRAN” Website
Standard of Excellence – News
“Great UX. Site loads fast. It looks like a news site, but one more on the cutting edge than stodgy. Easy to navigate buckets of content. Front-and-center email subscribe and RSS links. A site that does what’s intended and does it well.”Bar Pilar‘s Website
Standard of Excellence – Restaurant
“I like the artwork and layout very much. The Menu is clear and I really understand the offerings.” -
September 15, 2010
Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 9 Beta
By New Signature
On September 15, Microsoft released the beta copy of the latest version of its web browser, Internet Explorer 9. Microsoft is touting this as a major improvement in the Internet experience for users of its current browsers.“With a simple user interface that masks new technical muscle and all-around fast performance, the new browser is designed to take a backseat and bring forward the full beauty of the websites and applications people care about”, says Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Internet Explorer. “The Web is about sites, and your browser should be, too…IE9 puts you and your site at the center of the browser experience.”
Some of the highlights of Internet Explorer 9 include: (more…)
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September 2, 2010
A Real Life Lesson in the Importance of Testing IT Systems
By New SignatureSome of you may have read the Washington Post article “Crash of Va. computer network has implications for tech world, state politics” by Rosalind S. Helderman and Anita Kumar published on Thursday, September 2, 2010. The quick summary is that a redundant data storage unit failed in a warehouse outside of Richmond last week, wreaking havoc in the computer networks of a number of Virginia agencies for more than seven days. Now, sometimes even if you do everything right, technology just fails. This is a sad reality and the disaster in VA may simply be a case of very bad luck.
Having said that, I suspect the disaster in VA more likely is an example of an all too common problem in IT: the lack of testing systems after installation and more importantly the lack of regular testing of systems to validate proper function.
I am going to hypothesize that the redundant storage system was installed and everyone just assumed it would work because they bought an expensive system and that no one ever bothered to test the failover process. You can see this attitude in the quotes in the Washington Post article, “This is surprising — it’s a selling point for them (EMC) when they talk to a major organization, that this stuff never goes down,” said Bill Kreher. This attitude to trust that a system is going to work and not take the time to test is a common problem in any field (see the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster), but it happens a lot in information technology especially.
The all too often made assumption is that you don’t need to test a product because the vendor says it will work, and because it is hard and complicated to test. So in-house IT teams and IT consultants take the easy way out and don’t go perform the initial or ongoing quality assurance that they should. Then when a real world event occurs and lo and behold the system doesn’t work and now the organization is in real trouble.
At New Signature we live by the mantra that you should regularly test information technology systems to validate that they are fully operational and perform as expected. This is one of the reasons we institute a quarterly maintenance process for our clients. Part of this maintenance process is to perform real world tests of key critical components with careful planning and during scheduled downtime (e.g., unplug the UPS and make sure it works, take one of the servers offline and make sure the redundancy kicks in, do something unexpected to the system and see how it responds, etc.). Without this regular quality assurance organizations more easily find themselves in the very bad place that the state of Virginia has been in over the past week.
If you have an IT system that hasn’t been tested or hasn’t been tested lately, please contact us at New Signature. We can help you develop a plan and execute to ensure that your information technology systems are being regularly tested and that important maintenance is being performed.