Taras Mankovski » Taras

Monitoring MaxCDN with Pingdom

Taras — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:57:23 +0000

I’ve been noticing that the stylesheet on Fashionista Talk doesn’t always load correctly. The site ends up looking like a mess and I get a text from my sister notifying me of the fact.I used Firebug to look at the problem and I found that static content is not being loaded from the CDN. The site ends up looking like this.

The static content on this site is being served by MaxCDN. I would like to see how consistent this behavior is, so I setup Pingdom to check the status of style.css every minute.

I’m curious what the outcome is going to be.

Update 1: CloudFlare, MaxCDN & WordPress with W3C Total Cache are not a perfect mix.

I got a prompt email from Justin at netdna.com. In the email, he said “We will have to move your zone to a new cluster in order for MaxCDN and Cloudflare to work together. When we move you to the new cluster you will not be able to Purge all files, just one by one.”

Purging files one by one sounds like a lot of work. CloudFlare offers a CDN service. The quickest solution to my current problem is to disable MaxCDN while looking for a more permanent solution.

Update 2: Disabled MaxCDN

I disabled MaxCDN and left it to CloudFlare to take care of the CDN functionality. I’m still using MaxCDN for 3 other websites. I updated the Pingdom check to check one of my other sites that’s using the MaxCDN. It will continue to accumulate information on the subject.

Releasing Axure WordPress Admin Library

Taras — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:54:14 +0000

This is library of Axure widgets that I use to create prototypes of WordPress plugins. You can see an example of a prototype that I created with this library in my WordPress Social Plugin Demo Video.

You can get download links and additional information on the Axure WordPress Library page.

WordPress Social Plugin turns WordPress into a social network

Taras — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:29:27 +0000

This is a presentation that I created to showcase the possibility of using WordPress as a social network. I created this video to stimulate conversation with several people. I wouldn’t take this video too seriously.

Specifications for Reuters Investor Relations Functionality

Taras — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:18:15 +0000

During one of the projects that I delivered, the agency that hired my team wanted to integrate the Reuters Investor Relations microsite into the new WordPress site that we were creating.

We didn’t have any specifications. The agency did not discuss the details of the functionality that was being developed. We were just told was that the agency promised to “copy the Investor Relations functionality.”

My natural inclination is to turn ambiguity into clarity before moving forward, so I wrote these specifications and provided them to the agency to have the client sign off. I’m not sure if the client actually singed off on them, but the agency did, which means that my deliverable was now clear.

Abstract

Replicate functionality that’s provided by Reuters Investor Microsites.

Deliverables

Ability to manage static pages

Ability to manage static pages will be provided by WordPress’ standard Page administration functionality.

Ability to add Stock Widgets to pages

These widgets allow the visitor to get information about the stock. They are a combination of forms and results of form submissions. Administrator can add these widgets to pages using the Carrington Build.

Name	Description	Screenshot	API
Stock Quotes	Provides stock quotes for a specific stock.		Reuters Stock Quotes API
Stock Chart	Provides ability to generate Stock Chart for a specific stock		Reuters Charts API
Historical Price Lookup	Provides information about the stock on a particular day		Reuters Historial Lookup API
Investment Calculator	Allows to calculate stock performance based on investment amount or number of owned shares.

Investor Relations documents

Manage documents via WordPress Admin

Administration of Investor Relations documents will be managed via WordPress’ Post administration interface. Investor Relations documents will be organized into categories.

There are 2 types of Investor Relations documents:

Text documents can be found in Press Releases on an Investor Relations site. These documents will be WordPress Posts with document text as Post body.
PDF documents can be found in Financial Reports, Conference Calls, Regulatory Filings, Distributions and Presentations on the old Investor Relations site. These documents will be WordPress Posts with a PDF file attachment.

Display documents in 2 predefined formats

This functionality will provide Carrington Build modules that the admin can add to a page to display categories according to predefined templates that replicate Reuters Investor Relations views.

Yearly Archive Module

Replicates a view on the Investor Relations site.

Browse by year
Search in this category
Link to RSS feed of this category

Yearly Summary Module

Replicates a view on the Investor Relations site.

List articles grouped by year
Link to PDF download of the document

Email alerts for document categories

The purpose of this functionality is to replicate the Email Alerts from the ReutersInvestor Relations section. This new Email Alerts functionality will use Mailchimp to send out notifications. Notifications will be sent out when a post is published in an alerts category.

Allow Visitors to subscribe to alerts

Subscription Process

Visitor subscribes to newsletters for the 1st time

Visitor subscribes to the newsletters after the first time

Visitor comes to a page with newsletter subscription form and sees email address field
Visitor enters email address and clicks submit
Site verifies that submitted is a valid email address
Site returns a list of newsletters that the visitor can subscribe to
Visitor selects which newsletters the visitor wants to subscribe to by selecting Yes/No radio options
Visitor clicks submit
Site sends information to the Mailchimp which subscribes users to the newsletters

Same as for the 1st time
Same as for the 1st time
Same as for the 1st time
Shows list of available newsletters including with previous options selected
Visitor selects which newsletters the visitor wants to subscribe to by selecting Yes/No radio options
Visitor clicks submit
Site sends information to Mailchimp which subscribes user to the newsletters

Allow Administrators to manage alerts

Administrators will be able to add alerts options by matching a category and Mailchimp lists via the WordPress Admin.

This interface will look like the following mockup:

Allow Administrators to add subscription module to pages

Administrators will be able to add Alerts subscription form to a page via a Carrington Buildmodule. The frontend of the module will replicate the functionality of the Reuters Investor Relations site.

Settings Page

Allows site administrator to specify the following settings

Reuters customer id that will be used to access the API

Restarting my blog

Taras — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 01:33:19 +0000

Writing this post is probably equivalent of screaming into a long empty pipe, but here it goes anyways.

I’m restarting my blog with the intention to share all of the work that I’ve been doing for the last 4 years and share my ideas with others who might care about them.

I’ve been operating in stealth mode for the last 4 years. I’m done with that.

I’m going to be like this guy, the infamous Unstealthiest Ninja.

I love this guy.

Wikipedia keeps deleting “Monthday”

Taras — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:30:16 +0000

I tried to make monthday a real thing today by creating a page for it on Wikipedia.com. I failed. Wikipedia would not accept my attempt at contributing to the english language, for the betterment of the all english speaking people.

So I ask for you help to make “Monthday” a real thing. Please go to wikipedia and attempt to create a page for it at Monthday page on wikipedia.

For those who do not know what monthday is:

Monday is a day that feels like a month. It’s monthday when, you’re not sure if something that happened today did infact happen today or yesterday.