February 7th, 2008
I have been noticing lately that it seems like sometimes when I click on the flashcard sets, the server takes a long time to respond and sometimes gives a timeout error. I am currently hosting this site with the GoDaddy! economy hosting package which allows 250 GB of transfer bandwidth per month. Since I am only using about 5 GB per week, I thought everything should be working, so I called GoDaddy! technical support to ask what the problem could be.
Apparently the problem is with the flash wrapper (soundmanager2.swf) file that I am using to play the audio files. Since this file is fairly large and since it is accessed each time a flashcard set is selected, this file was getting too many simultaneous connections and slowing down the server. For now, my solution was to make multiple copies of this file. Every time a flashcard set is selected, it will now randomly access one of five copies of the flash wrapper. Hopefully, this will improve performance and reduce the time spent waiting for a set to load.
Posted in the webapp, traffic | No Comments »
January 21st, 2008
It has been almost a month since I updated anything on this site, and that is because I have been working on restructuring the database and rewriting the flashcard builder interface. And Christmas. I have some really neat plans for interface upgrades in the future, but it will probably take me about 3 months to implement them.
In the meantime, my friend Sara visited me this weekend, and she is from Germany, so please enjoy learning some German words with my new language sets. THANK YOU SARA! I still have more recordings to process, so more German sets are to come. I also have some number sets up in Spanish and Arabic, thanks to Ray and Komal.
I have been watching the traffic of this site, and I have noticed that I am starting to build a small base of users who return again and again. It is so encouraging to know that a few other people out in cyberspace are using my flashcards! I wanted to launch this blog to try to connect with regular users, to let you know what updates are in the works and to get your feedback and experiences with the flashcards. I may also write some technical posts on how to design web applications with PHP, mySQL, and Javascript. This blog uses WordPress with the Tm Clear n 1 1.0 theme, with very little modification, just my menu bar at the top. Please leave me a comment if you have time.
The other thing that is encouraging is using the flashcards with my younger daughter, Liane. She will turn 2 in February, and she has been playing with the flashcards since about 18 months. Her favorites are the animals and the household words, but maps and presidents and famous paintings all take their turns, too. Whenever she sees me on the computer, she runs up and demands flashcards!
Posted in the content, the little girl (2/06), the webapp, traffic | No Comments »