I recently signed up for Heroku and created a landing page. I want to know if users are waiting only reasonable amounts of time for the page to load when they click on one of my ads. Blitz.io seems like overkill. What might be the simplest alternative?
The simplest way to track this stuff is probably the New Relic Heroku addon. Just provision it, turn it on, and it'll generate response time graphs for you. They have a free plan as well.
I'm not at all affiliated with New Relic -- just been using it happily for a while.
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I have been trying to make multiplayer applications on a website for a while. I wanted to start with a basic chat system. I made one but it is really slow. On the HTML page it send the message through AJAX to a PHP application which saves it to a text file. Then back on the HTML file, it is constantly checking the text file every 3 seconds. This is very slow and unreliable. So i looked up better ways of doing this. I found Node.js and used it along with Socket.io and express to create a faster chat application. But it only works on local host and i have no idea how to implement it on a website. So I kept looking and discovered WebSockets. Which are so confusing and seem to have very little support. I am confused how websites out there have applications that can be real time with so few options. How is this done? Am i missing a way of doing this? If you can help me that would be great.
Socket.io is using websockets under the hood already. Using raw websockets isn't necessary for your chat app.
You're on the right track using socket.io and node.js server-side.
Building a multi-player game in the browser will be a very difficult task for a beginner. But that's why it's good to learn! I suggest using a library for graphics (a quick google gave me this: http://www.pixijs.com/ ).
The over all architecture should be something like:
Users go to your server and receive a web page (.html) which contains the javascript and a canvas they need to play the game. This is the "client-side" because it's all running on each users' web browser on their computer.
The web page runs the javascript which talks to the node.js server using socket.io. This is the "server-side". The job of the server is to coordinate player data (who is who, where are they in the game, who's doing what etc) and keep track of the game state. Basically, this is where the game actually is, kind of like having the Monopoly board on the server, while the client-side is really just responsible for showing the board to the players (drawing it on the HTML5 canvas) and sending player input to the server.
Tutorials:
USE GOOGLE. Try just literally searching for "javascript game tutorial". Try every tutorial that comes up. If something is taking a while to get up and running then ditch it and move to another one.
Do simple little things at first 'till you start to grok what the overall process is like. For example: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Games/Workflows/2D_Breakout_game_pure_JavaScript
Remember playing ultra-simple games like Pong? Try writing games like this first. Your chat system is a great start, by the way, because it covers the basics of how to get a server up and running, how to get a page, how to send data around.
As for getting something up and running on a server where others can connect to it... Check this out: have your buddies come to your house and bring their laptops, start your node.js chat server, tell them what your IP address is, and have them go to "http://YOURIPADDRESS:8000" in their browser-- they'll connect to your node.js server!
Getting it running on a hosting provider is a little more involved and probably not worth the trouble at this stage. You'll learn more about this later just by keeping on the way you're going.
Socket.IO does not only work on localhost. You will need to get a server to run your application on. I highly recommend not worrying about this piece of the puzzle just yet, as it is somewhat complicated if you are brand new at this. Come back to this part when you are ready.
As for the game development, I recommend using Phaser. It has everything you need to get started and great documentation.
http://phaser.io
The answer to this no doubt lies in answering exactly what I need. The thing is... I don't really know.
The criteria for my choice will be price. Whatever is cheapest, unless both are so closely similar and the every so slightly more expensive one is a much better service.
I'm creating an iOS application, and have a Rails backend JSON API that serves my app.
I have a Post/Comment style app. I don't store any images, just text throughout various tables, etc. I shouldn't need much data with no images, and the fact that I will be purging old data (old posts / comments that are no longer relevant are just deleted).
I need a scheduler, likely daily, but guaranteed no more frequent (hourly etc not needed). So I need to run cron tasks daily.
My application does have a user sign-in. Sign-up and you can post and comment, otherwise you can only view. Does that mean I'm going to need an SSL endpoint, or is that not necessary?
Other than that I'm just serving GETting/POSTing data. I don't need anything else that I can think of. As a beginner, am I possibly overlooking anything?
Which service should I go with given the above. This is my first iOS app, and Rails backend (first time working with either), and first time deploying anything to either service, so I'm looking for some advice in this area.
Thanks!
Short googling gave me these:
HEROKU VS. AMAZON WEB SERVICES
Ruby hosting in the cloud – Elastic Beanstalk vs Heroku vs EngineYard
It's been 2 days and I think i might have to kill myself.
My website for some reason suddenly started taking way way wayyyy to long to load.
I have cloudflare enable on my domain to cache content so my site can load faster, I've tried turning it off, but my site is still taking forever to load.
I've used pingdom(http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/dFvagb/http://streamaton.com/) and according to the results it shows that the domain itself is taking to much time to load(whut?).
I've tried visiting other section of my site like my admin panel and the site loads up pretty fast.
I have no idea how to pin point the root of this problem.
it depends a bit on the circumstances:
Could the case be that you have much higher load than usually?
If not, did you perform any code changes that might be responsible for that change?
it could also be the case that the server your website is on is under unusual high load or in some weird half-dead state. Sending a mail to your ISP asking them to check your server might be a good idea in any case.
We're currently evaluating Heroku to replace the initial workflow of renting a VPS for a small Web App (since we're working on NodeJS, cPanel hosting plans aren't enough, ergo, VPS).
The confusion lies in Heroku's actual usage as even though it's clear it's used as a platform as a service, there is no Disk (HDD/SSD) limit described.
Web App requirement includes file upload capabilities (profile picture, etc) so I'm not sure Heroku is what we need. Can I get a clear explanation on this?
Not a Heroku expert, but...
You could always use one of the various add-ins that offer database support for storing your images until that no longer works
As the usage of your site scales out, you'd probably want to place static content into a CDN.
I wouldn't consider placing files into Heroku that weren't related to running code and honestly I don't even know if you can.
(I originally just wanted to comment, but need a higher rep :/)
I'm looking into creating a website that sits on top of another site. I wish for this site to be a sort of driver/auto-mater of the original site. The original site is slow and you need to input the same data repetitively (and lots of it - which is infuriating)
What would be the best way of doing this.
I have started using watir-webdriver in ruby, and it seems to work well! Would I be able to host this? I know it launches an explorer (fire-fox in my case) and my worry is not being able to host the application?
I don't want to place all my eggs into this one basket and find out later there's a stumbling block to getting it done!
The short answer
I think there are better tools for web scraping than web testing tools (watir and others), and your end result might require a lot more work than you imagine.
The long answer
This sounds like a case of the façade pattern in which your application would act as the new frontend and the old/existing site as the backend for the improved experience of the service.
Some things to think about before jumping into programming:
If the old site requires users to register, would your users be willing to re-register to your site so that you could log them in into the old site programmatically?
How frequently is the same data required to be inputted and how would you prevent it?
The existing site may have expectations on the request headers which might cause you extra headache and require quite some work to circumvent.
Are you allowed to use the existing site's user interface material or do you need to start from scratch?
How often is the existing site changed and how would it affect your application?
In summary, there are lots of factors and issues to take into account depending on how the existing site is implemented and who are your visioned users. Suggesting a best way to do it would require a lot more knowledge of both the existing site and how you'd want to improve it.
I haven't used watir-webdriver myself but if it is like Selenium and starts a new browser instance any time you run it, then hosting it would most likely not work as you'd expect. There are better tools for what you are thinking of doing, i.e. web scraping, and you may want to take a look at the following, for example:
https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories/Web_Content_Scrapers
https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories/http_clients