Is it expensive (for bandwidth) too run, say, 30+ rss feeds? I want to let users add RSS feeds so other users can see them too, but I have no idea how much that'll cost me.
It very much depends on how often the feeds are actually read, if you provide any caching mechanisms and so on... Its very hard to put a number on it with the information you are providing.
Just to get you started, I'd do an estimation, such as:
Bandwidth usage per hour = Avg. size per feed entry × Items per Feed ×
Total number of feeds on site × Calls per hour
Yes, it is very expensive. I suggest you don't do that.
Related
I was reading the documentation at:
http://woocommerce.github.io/woocommerce-rest-api-docs/
I am trying to figure out the limits for the API for the following methods
$woocommerce->get products/tags
$woocommerce->get products/categories
$woocommerce->get products/categories
$woocommerce->post products/tags
$woocommerce->post products/batch
For these methods I want to know how many items I can get or save at once. (Batch save for example I want to save 50 at a time; or for getting products I want to get 50 at a time (per page))
Also I am trying to figure out best practices to use less resources on both consumer of the API and receiver of API. Right now in development I have them both on the same machine and the fan really gets going on my laptop
The majority of work is done in products/batch. I am sending almost 4k items in batches of 50.
I know a service that uses WooCommerce says that their API calls are rate-limited by IP to 86400 calls per day (one per second on average).
That is their service so implies you can go same or higher for WooCommerce
Source: https://github.com/Paymium/api-documentation#rate-limiting
Considering doing some relatively large scale event tracking on my website.
I estimate this would create up to 6 million new events per month in Google Analytics.
My questions are, would all of this extra data that I'm now hanging onto:
a) Slow down GA UI performance
and
b) Increase the amount of data sampling
Notes:
I have noticed that GA seems to be taking longer to retrieve results for longer timelines for my website lately, but I don't know if it has to do with the increased amount of event tracking I've been doing lately or not – it may be that GA is fighting for resources as it matures and as more and more people collect more and more data...
Finally, one might guess that adding events may only slow down reporting on events, but this isn't necessarily so is it?
Drewdavid,
The amount of data being loaded will influence the speed of GA performance, but nothing really dramatic I would say. I am running a website/app with 15+ million events per month and even though all the reporting is automated via API, every now and then we need to find something specific and use the regular GA UI.
More than speed I would be worried about sampling. That's the reason we automated the reporting in the first place as there are some ways how you can eliminate it (with some limitations. See this post for instance that describes using Analytics Canvas, one my of favorite tools (am not affiliated in any way :-).
Also, let me ask what would be the purpose of your events? Think twice if you would actually use them later on...
Slow down GA UI performance
Standard Reports are precompiled and will display as usual. Reports that are generated ad hoc (because you apply filters, segments etc.) will take a little longer, but not so much that it hurts.
Increase the amount of data sampling
If by "sampling" you mean throwing away raw data, Google does not do that (I actually have that in writing from a Google representative). However the reports might not be able to resolve all data points (e.g. you get Top 10 Keywords and everything else is lumped under "other").
However those events will count towards you data limit which is ten million interaction hits (pageviews, events, transactions, any single product in a transaction, user timings and possibly others). Google will not drop data or close your account without warning (again, I have that in writing from a Google Sales Manager) but they reserve to right to either force you to collect less interaction hits or to close your account some time after they issued a warning (actually they will ask you to upgrade to Premium first, but chances are you don't want to spend that much money).
Google is pretty lenient when it comes to violations of the data limit but other peoples leniency is not a good basis for a reliable service, so you want to make sure that you stay withing the limits.
Is there a proper way, equation or technique in general to say, "My web application needs to support N number of total users which via this equation/technique/rockHardExperience tells me that I need to support X number of concurrent page requests"?
From my research and/or gut feeling it seems like it would be something like:
totalLoadCapabilityRequired = (totalUsersN x .10 ) * .5
where .10 is for roughly 10% on at any given time
and the whole thing multiplied by 50% to suggest a 50% chance of those total users online executing a request at roughly the same time
any insights would help me in making sure I implement support in my application that is on par for the demand. I expect a lot of users but don't want to over anticipate too early. I know for starters that the org I am programming for will have 45,000 users that they want to use my system, with an anticipation on success for many more.
Here's a couple of things to think about:
What's the time span in which you expect the bulk of your visits? If it's an office application within the same physical company your capacity planning should be based on an 8 hour period. If most visits will come from the same continent you can plan for a 12 hour period instead, etc. Base your visitor spread on that.
Which pages do you anticipate will be the most popular and how heavy are those pages (i.e. how many pages can you load in one second)? Get an understanding of parts that would benefit from caching to squeeze out more performance.
Don't plan based on peak load; design your app to scale and start small.
Design your app in a way that you can take run snapshots at every 500th request; you can use tools like xhprof to create files that you can run through cachegrind tools to analyze the performance as it runs.
In short, there's no catch-all formula :) for a ballpark figure your formula will probably be good enough, but take the above points in consideration.
Should I keep all the articles in rss feed or just new ones? There are too many articles on my website and a new one is added in every 10-20 minutes so what would be the best approach in this case. Keep all the entries and just add new ones or add new ones and delete old ones at the same time??? If the second is better how many entries should I keep?
If new articles are added every 10-20 minutes, then after an hour you'll have 3-6, after a day you'll have 72-144, after a week you'll have around 500-1000, and after a month you'll have several thousand entries in your RSS feed. This is quickly going to become a multi-megabyte download, which is crazy unwieldy.
I think most desktop RSS readers can be configured for how often they should check for updates, and for a feed with this kind of traffic, most users would probably set their reader to check once an hour, or maybe even every 15 minutes. Online readers (like Google Reader) don't always have an option for how often to update, but I think they adapt -- they see how often new entries are added, and automatically check more often for a feed they've noticed is high-traffic.
Given that, if you put about a day's worth of entries in your feed -- for example, the most recent 100 -- that would probably be great plenty.
Keep them as long as possible, cos you don't know how regularly your readers grab the RSS.
What if you drop old articles every 30 mins and I only check every 24 hours? I'll miss so many!
i have been approached to build some websites for a few small businesses. They want a basic out of the box database driven website with some standard stuff (users, authentication, a few dynamic pages, etc). i am going to use asp.net mvc for this.
they have asked me how much i charge for this. my question, is that i have no frame of reference here. should i charge for the project a flat fee or a per hour charge. where do i start here to help determine correct pricing for a website project.
Charge an hourly fee that is about 3x the hourly rate you would command in a full-time job. The 3x multiplier basically evens things out for the benefits, etc. that you won't get as a 1099 employee.
Whatever you do, no matter how "Standard" it sounds. Do not charge a flat fee. Under that arrangement they have no incentive to curb feature creep. Even if you agree to a really tight spec up front, it is a recipe for disaster because it forces you to renegotiate every time they want something more. Under an hourly arrangement feature-creep works to your advantage.
Also, don't discount the hourly rate if you are a novice. Just don't bill unproductive hours. It is much easier to ease into billing more hours later than renegotiating the price per hour.
Charge per hour.
-- edit
So attempt to 'quote' it by estimating the number of hours. Make sure your estimate is conservative.
A nice approach is, in your head, consider the 'min', 'max', 'standard' type of time. Then use that to estimate the real time it will take you.
If you know that they know what they want and won't change the specs on you, go for a lump sum. That way you can work quickly.
If they are prone to change their minds and don't know what they want, go for an hourly fee. That way you won't be stuck working on their project for months without additional pay when they can't decide on exactly what they want.
I admit that I don't know much about this issue. However, I would still like to warn about the whole charge-per-hour mentality. While this approach basically protects the developer, it doesn't work well with the business owner:
Charge-per-hour, to the business owner, is a liability, whereas fix-price is just a cost. That's one.
The second thing is, if you are charging per hour, how are you going to justify your "research time"? Are you going to charge that as well? But business owner doesn't like to pay for research time. Or you can stick to your old trick and do something that has been reinvented N times and charge for the amount of time you spend. But that would seem unethical to some.
I have billed both by the hour and by the project. It's been my experience that customers are happier with project based billing instead of hourly billing.
With that in mind, I always pad the project cost by an amount I feel will cover the times when the client decides to change their mind. Further, I keep the project plan pretty simple. For example, I don't write 4 pages on how the login screen will work. Instead, It's a single bullet point: "Login Page". This allows both them and I a little flexibility.
Because I keep things simple AND I allow time for flexibility AND the clients know how much it's going to cost up front, my client's are happier and I can keep better track of my income. Also, I keep in pretty close contact with them. As long as you can keep the relationship good, you'll have a long term client.
Of course, it takes a bit of self discipline in combination with experience to know how long things take to build. Along these lines I never experiment on a client's dime. When I write the proposal, I already know what I'm going to use to get the job done and I've used those tools before. Because of this I can say with confidence that a login page will take a certain amount of time to put together.
Next, don't bite off more than you can chew. If it's a big project, break it up into smaller deliverables with their own pay schedule. That way the client (or you) can decide to walk away at any point. For example, if you think the project will take 3 months, break it up into 3 pieces. Incidentally, this helps with cash flow.
Finally, don't discount your time when getting started. That scares people.
I have a flat rate I charge for sites and outline exactly what they will get and then anything beyond that outline gets charged at an hourly rate. The hard part of this is if your getting into a project where your not sure how long it will take then you might want to break down the various pieces and then add at least 10 hours to that estimate. You don't want to sell yourself short but you also don't want to overcharge the customer. Be sure your clear up front that once the site is delivered then all changes are per hour or based on a maintenance fee structure.
Good luck.