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New STM Technical Guides - What Do You Want To See? (9)

01-11-2013 05:20 PM #1 caurmen (Administrator)
New STM Technical Guides - What Do You Want To See?

Hey, everyone!

Ever struggle with technical stuff? You're not alone. Whether it's Photoshop filters, landing page code or server optimisation, tech problems are the elephant in the affiliate marketing room.

And starting today, Stack That Money's going to deal with that damn elephant.

As you may have noticed from my snazzy new red username, I've joined the STM moderator team, specifically to focus on tech. I've been writing tutorials and learning material on tricky technical issues for more than 15 years - including one of the best-reviewed "For Dummies" books, work with O'Reilly, and more.

Starting next week, I'll be adding guides to everything technical about affiliate marketing, in the same (hopefully) easy-to-read style as my guide to using Mr Green's POF updater tool.

But the question is - what guides would you like to see first?

What technical issues are you finding difficult right now? What's stressing you out, pissing you off, and eating your hours? What would you REALLY like to understand better - or just plain understand?

We can do beginner, intermediate, or expert. We can do specific or general. We can look at anything from Javascript to building a server.

Let me know - and a guide may well soon appear.

01-11-2013 05:36 PM #2 maynzie (Moderator)

You the man Caurmen!!

01-11-2013 09:25 PM #3 caurmen (Administrator)

Thanks, dude!

And thanks for all the answers already, everyone. It's awesome to have such an active community on here.

BTW, I will also be actively on the lookout for STMers with technical problems, so if you're posting about a tech issue here, I'll do my best to leap in and help you. Feel free to PM me if you've started a thread and I haven't responded!

01-11-2013 09:45 PM #4 _007_ (Member)

Voted for server optimization ... You can get a lot of info anywhere about something like coding / photoshop / tracking etc etc but for sure you can't get info out there on server optimization specially for AM.

Ahmed

01-11-2013 11:57 PM #5 zeno (Administrator)

Quote Originally Posted by _007_ View Post
Voted for server optimization ... You can get a lot of info anywhere about something like coding / photoshop / tracking etc etc but for sure you can't get info out there on server optimization specially for AM.
Same here, coding stuff is generally easy to find info on. General server optimisation is not so easy. I haven't really addressed optimisations to make redirects as fast as possible e.g. increasing PHP processing speed since my tracking scripts sometimes do quite a bit, getting geoip lookups as fast as possible, reducing DNS/connect times especially if outside the US and that kinda shiz, etc.

On a side note, yesterday I embarked on a project. Started out not knowing anything about Redis or Ruby but I managed to set up things on my server so that I am constantly posting information to CopperEgg (great server monitoring tool), so now I have a timeline of redirected clicks/conversions/revenue. Goal being to see how click volume effects server stats (e.g. response time of tracking domain, cpu usage, disk IO, etc) and whether there are any consequences on conversions/revenue. Stoked.

01-12-2013 12:43 AM #6 polarbacon (Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by zeno View Post
Same here, coding stuff is generally easy to find info on. General server optimisation is not so easy. I haven't really addressed optimisations to make redirects as fast as possible e.g. increasing PHP processing speed since my tracking scripts sometimes do quite a bit, getting geoip lookups as fast as possible, reducing DNS/connect times especially if outside the US and that kinda shiz, etc.

On a side note, yesterday I embarked on a project. Started out not knowing anything about Redis or Ruby but I managed to set up things on my server so that I am constantly posting information to CopperEgg (great server monitoring tool), so now I have a timeline of redirected clicks/conversions/revenue. Goal being to see how click volume effects server stats (e.g. response time of tracking domain, cpu usage, disk IO, etc) and whether there are any consequences on conversions/revenue. Stoked.
you might want to look at New relic....can even tell you bottlenecks in your code or sql querrys.....its not cheap but its very awesome highly recommend if you run hi volume/spend

01-12-2013 12:56 AM #7 sandyone (Member)

I am starting to have difficulty urinating.

Can any of the older guys here tell me what to expect next?

Thank you.

PS I really don't want a Video series on this, maybe just a white paper.

01-12-2013 02:34 AM #8 zeno (Administrator)

Quote Originally Posted by polarbacon View Post
you might want to look at New relic....can even tell you bottlenecks in your code or sql querrys.....its not cheap but its very awesome highly recommend if you run hi volume/spend
Yeh I was using the New Relic trial, but it didn't appeal to me as much as CopperEgg. New Relic and CopperEgg both seem to have similar stats/reporting for server monitoring (though with CopperEgg you have to install Ruby gems to get MySQL/apache/Redis monitoring), but NewRelic has some pretty intense app monitoring which was a bit beyond what I wanted. That and New Relic was more expensive if you wanted everything + more than 7 days data retention. They both have trials so it's definitely wise to try them both if you have neither and get a feel for what your server is doing.

01-12-2013 12:15 PM #9 caurmen (Administrator)

Right, looks like a clear trend's emerging!

It also looks like I'm going to need to do another poll to figure out the level I should be pitching tutorials at - we've got a wide range of expertise levels here on STM, so not all tutorials will appeal to everyone!

I shall do my best to ensure there's something for all affiliates, from the "How do I use MySQL?" to the "My custom Redis/Nginx/Cassandra stack's 52ms slower than it should be!".

As a side note - very interested to hear how your CopperEgg / Redis experiment goes, Zeno! I've been eyeing Redis as a useful technology for some time now, but haven't had the downtime to check it out yet - I take it you found it fairly self-explanatory.

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