Walking Dolphins Consultancy Inc.

Experiencing very slow page loads?

The problem may not be your host or your ISP.

A common issue that is easy to overlook is the loading time of external resources. If you have images that are src’d from external web sites, the load time of even a single such image can hold your entire page up. If you are using a host that is stingy about drive space, the first thing to do is look for an alternative that provides a better cost-benefit. Lunarpages.com, our preferred supplier provides Basic individual and Basic Business packages that allow for unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth. This allows you to host your images on your own site.

If you have deployed several complicated scripts or a large number of images, they can slow page loads to the point of timing out regardless.

Scripts that create the most problems are typically associated with building content features. Good practice has the output cached so that the scripts do not have to run with every single page load.

Thus one solution that we have found effective is to set up some crontabs to call the slow-loading pages every half hour or so. When the cron loads the page, the continue reading…

Clients exist because they do not know all the ins-and-outs of having a web presence and do not have the personal resources to learn it all.

But too many developers take that advantage and deliver only the minimum required to meet the client’s explicit requests.

Here are three basic services every web or network developer should deliver at little or no extra cost — because they are free and take modest amounts of time to deploy. In-house tech support should have these things done already as a matter of common sense.

1. Configure OpenDNS as the DNS servers for the client’s computer network. This can be done simply by adjusting the DNS server addresses in the primary router to the outside world. It provides an extraordinary degree of free protection against known malicious and criminal web sites. The client should also be given the opportunity to continue reading…

If you have some computer-savvy staff or are a hands-on person interested in putting in a bit of time to do it yourself, it is not as difficult as it once was. With Lunarpages.com you will find you gain access to much more than your basic needs at a genuinely amazing price.

If you are a small business or a farmer, you will not need more than the Lunar Pages Basic which comes at about five bucks a month over five years. If you expect to have more than 100 users connecting at any one time, you should consider a business package. continue reading…

It is important to pay attention to licenses and terms even when the words “GPL,” “Open Source” and/or “Free” are used to describe a work. The GPL License is the standard for free and open source software.

There is GPL and then there is GPL-with-a-catch.

If you are building your own web site, this can matter. For example it is quite common for web site themes to be released under GPL.

It is also quite common to restrict the application of the GPL license to the php or java script coding and to attach different licensing to the css and images that compose the full theme.

In many cases the conditions are very reasonable.  Releasing ccs and images under the Creative Commons License (CCL)  is frequently a matter of an author wanting to receive acknowledgment for his or her work.  The CCL allows authors to specify how they want that acknowledgment to be made. continue reading…

A significant part of our practice is working with people to formulate the right questions. Too often, people in the technology business start with a specific-sounding mandate and proceed to incur expenses for the client/employer as if the answers have all been realized when the correct questions have not even been asked.

The most important step in obtaining or deploying technology is to strip down the imaginative to stark words on a page. What is it that you actually hope to accomplish. Receiving or dealing in jargon and buzz phrases inevitably leads to major excess expenses and sometimes creates a career for someone taking care of the technology that was supposed to do all the magic.

So instead of accepting, even from yourself, an ambigous statement such as “we want CRM,” get down to work and write out what exactly “CRM” means to you. What do expect to be physically happening after it is all installed and operating?

Helping people navigate this essential planning stage by bringing to bear our experience and knowledge from desktop software to million dollar custom process software installations, Walking Dolphins reveals unexpected opportunities as well as unforeseenchallenges.

Real needs can always be discovered through dispassionate questioning.

The barrier is that so often the people who are providing the advice are the same ones who will be selling the product or service so that there is little incentive to deliver less than the maximum possible. It is their job to persuade to buy as much as possible and they will use ambiguous language and implied wisdom to ensure you do buy as much as possible.

And most people, including CEOs, are not well equipped to realize what are the right questions when it comes to technology procurement and deployment. Walking Dolphins provides that strength before the first vendor is invited to coffee.

Have a look at our free guide, Technology Management for Business and particularly the section Know Why You Are Buying.