Comments on: Woo, as in I made a website, woo. http://notsoevil.net/2010/04/woo-as-in-i-made-a-website-woo/ I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be. Fri, 30 Apr 2010 09:34:37 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 By: pwnguin http://notsoevil.net/2010/04/woo-as-in-i-made-a-website-woo/comment-page-1/#comment-66 pwnguin Sat, 03 Apr 2010 18:32:13 +0000 http://john.notsoevil.net/?p=65#comment-66 On 2): Granted, I don't know your schema, but it could reduce joins / queries by using natural keys. I wouldn't be so quick to assume the bulk of your load will be search. If 1 percent of searches result in an RSS subscription, you'll quickly find that the automated polling of feed readers will outpace searches in network traffic. Perhaps you can define an analytics goal to see how many searches convert to a subscription. Maybe 1 percent is absurdly high or absurdly low. On 3): My feed reader supports hierarchic subscriptions via a folders mechanism. I can make a folder and place the artists I care about within it, or delete them should I stop caring. Finally, you should look into an Amazon referral program. I guess Amazon has dozens of ways to handle referrals, so you might already be doing so. If not, think of it as a way to cover the cost of hosting and SSL certs ;) Their referral rate is like 4 percent of completed sales, which ain't shabby. Back to forcing Apache to trust our shitty LDAP server. On 2):
Granted, I don’t know your schema, but it could reduce joins / queries by using natural keys.

I wouldn’t be so quick to assume the bulk of your load will be search. If 1 percent of searches result in an RSS subscription, you’ll quickly find that the automated polling of feed readers will outpace searches in network traffic. Perhaps you can define an analytics goal to see how many searches convert to a subscription. Maybe 1 percent is absurdly high or absurdly low.

On 3):
My feed reader supports hierarchic subscriptions via a folders mechanism. I can make a folder and place the artists I care about within it, or delete them should I stop caring.

Finally, you should look into an Amazon referral program. I guess Amazon has dozens of ways to handle referrals, so you might already be doing so. If not, think of it as a way to cover the cost of hosting and SSL certs ;) Their referral rate is like 4 percent of completed sales, which ain’t shabby.

Back to forcing Apache to trust our shitty LDAP server.

]]> By: john http://notsoevil.net/2010/04/woo-as-in-i-made-a-website-woo/comment-page-1/#comment-65 john Sat, 03 Apr 2010 14:52:57 +0000 http://john.notsoevil.net/?p=65#comment-65 I think this could easily be extended to do movies and books, just have to tell amazon to search for different things. Anyhow to respond to your points: 1) This does need to be changed, I simply hadn't thought too much about it yet. SSL would be nice, though I'm not sure it's absolutely needed. 2) I've been wanting to do this, though it probably won't reduce load since I believe most users will use the search either way 3) While currently there is no direct advertising, I could see it being in place later if the site gains a sizable audience. However, being able to create lists is important since I want one RSS feed with all the artists I care about and not individual feeds for each artist. I also don't think RSS privacy is a problem, so that is not something I concerned about at this moment. I could see per artist rss feeds being useful, so I may add that in the future as well. Thanks for the suggestions! I think this could easily be extended to do movies and books, just have to tell amazon to search for different things. Anyhow to respond to your points:

1) This does need to be changed, I simply hadn’t thought too much about it yet. SSL would be nice, though I’m not sure it’s absolutely needed.
2) I’ve been wanting to do this, though it probably won’t reduce load since I believe most users will use the search either way
3) While currently there is no direct advertising, I could see it being in place later if the site gains a sizable audience. However, being able to create lists is important since I want one RSS feed with all the artists I care about and not individual feeds for each artist. I also don’t think RSS privacy is a problem, so that is not something I concerned about at this moment. I could see per artist rss feeds being useful, so I may add that in the future as well.

Thanks for the suggestions!

]]> By: pwnguin http://notsoevil.net/2010/04/woo-as-in-i-made-a-website-woo/comment-page-1/#comment-64 pwnguin Sat, 03 Apr 2010 04:05:32 +0000 http://john.notsoevil.net/?p=65#comment-64 Neat project; I'd been wondering how to best go about that myself, but with more of a TV/anime angle. A few thoughts: * Probably you want the admin interface on a less obvious url? And secured by SSL? * Why not use slugs for URLs instead of numbers (ie /artist/stone-temple-pilots/)? It's not like you handle multiple artists under a given query gracefully. That'll reduce load. * If the purpose isn't to sell direct advertising to users, why not just generate RSS feeds per artist? No more email, no more passwords, and less server side processing to merge collections. This would also solve the user RSS privacy problem. Neat project; I’d been wondering how to best go about that myself, but with more of a TV/anime angle.

A few thoughts:
* Probably you want the admin interface on a less obvious url? And secured by SSL?
* Why not use slugs for URLs instead of numbers (ie /artist/stone-temple-pilots/)? It’s not like you handle multiple artists under a given query gracefully. That’ll reduce load.
* If the purpose isn’t to sell direct advertising to users, why not just generate RSS feeds per artist? No more email, no more passwords, and less server side processing to merge collections. This would also solve the user RSS privacy problem.

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