Archive for the ‘From the Blog’ Category

We Are Not a Web Host

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

Many people ask us whether or not we can host their website for them, and to this, we have to give an emphatic NO.

We decided long ago that there are many other suitable hosts already in existence, and that it is not our intention to compete with those fine folk. We simply don’t have the sheer volume of clients it would take to offer anything similar to the excellent deals currently being offered by Pair.com, rackspace, or nameyourfavoritehost.here.

Dragonfly Networks will help you *find* the right place for your website to be hosted. We will help you develop your web presence until it is polished and snazzy and attention-grabbing. We will work with you and your host to make sure it is secure, accessible, and easy to administer.

But we will *not* host your site. It is not what we do.

Thanks,

- Mark

Posted in From the Blog, FrontPage, What We Do | 41 Comments »

Web Server Upgrade

Friday, July 16th, 2010

I’ve upgraded our web server to OpenBSD 4.7. It’s running well now that I got some of the major cruft out of the way.

I was also able to tune the Apache web server a bit and fix some ongoing problems in that arena, such as some segmentation faults that turned out to be related to having PHP PDO extensions installed for Habari, which I was using on another site hosted on our same server.

Since we are no longer using Habari, I was able to uninstall the PDO modules and thankfully the segmentation faults went away.

Special thanks to Nick Christensen this week for being a major team player despite the fact that he’s moving and I didn’t do anything to deserve special treatment.

Also, has anyone else been to the University of Reddit?

Looks pretty cool, hope it survives long enough to attract some attention.

Myself, I’d just like a class in “What to do with your new Bench Power Supply 101″, or maybe even “Stop Procrastinating & Teach Yourself Java in 24 Coffee-Soaked Hours”.

Posted in From the Blog, OpenBSD | Comments Off

Busy as a Bee

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

We’ve been really busy around the studio lately, working on our servers and getting some other website projects rolling, so updates have been a little slow perhaps.

But don’t think we’ve forgotten about you all. We’ve got plenty of exciting new articles about design, WordPress, OpenBSD, and virtual economies in the works, and it won’t be long before Nick and I start posting a little more regularly.

I’d like to thank our loyal customers for helping us stay afloat through these turbulent economic times. The most rewarding aspect of our work is knowing that we’re building strong relationships with our clients and helping their own businesses grow and succeed, even when times are tough.

- Mark Beihoffer

Posted in From the Blog, FrontPage | Comments Off

Songwriter Jack Merlot Pays It Forward

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

I’m thrilled to announce that our good friend Jack Merlot has a complete album available on his website for your enjoyment, starting today, July 1st, 2009.

We built Jack’s website for him on a shoestring, and even opened up a miniature iTunes storefront for him so people could buy his albums for $5.00. (Quite the bargain, if you have heard the music, I’m sure you’d agree.)

Although the site was a success from the beginning, Jack had some reservations about selling his music online.

“it just felt… too commercial, and bandwidth is getting so cheap these days – why not just release my albums online? If people enjoy the music, that’s more important to me than five bucks.”

And, after thinking about it for a while, we have to say, we agree. So we took down the storefront after trying it out for a few months, and upgraded the monthly bandwidth cap on our fiber-optic superconducting laser-powered phase-shifter pedalboard, and we haven’t looked back.

So, head on over to the Jack Merlot website and get yourself a copy, on the house!

- Mark & Nick

(& Jack)

Posted in From the Blog | Comments Off

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

We’re a little different from most website developers because we’re not always trying to sell you on the hot new buzzwords, like Search Engine Optimization.

Since our sites are architected from the ground up to be search engine friendly, you don’t have to pay more to get your site listed on Google or the other search engines.

Each of our sites is hand-crafted with advanced search technologies built-in, to make sure that visitors can easily find what they’re looking for.

Of course, if you want to pay us more to make your site more “SEO”, we’re not going to say no, but keep in mind that when you hire Dragonfly Networks to architect your website, the latest and greatest S.E.O. technology is already included.

Posted in From the Blog | Comments Off

Exploring Catalyst

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

Just as the title says, I’m using Catalyst to build a miniature version of Reddit on my laptop.

It’s a very simple link manager so far, where users can submit links and descriptions, and then the links can be voted up and down by others visiting the site, enabling the links to change position on the chart frequently and ensuring that the front page always has fresh content.

Mine actually doesn’t have a pager built into it yet, so it’s still in it’s infancy, but I’m still having a blast with it and learning quite a bit about DBIx::Class (DBIC), HTML::FormFu, and the Authentication and Authorization plugins for Catalyst.

Although sometimes I’ve struggled with the project when I’ve needed to do even slightly more complex SQL queries (the syntax for doing table joins and ‘order_by’ statements is completely different when you’re using DBIC), I’m getting the hang of it finally and it looks like I might have a working, possibly even public, application by the end of the month.

I’m thinking of using it to power one or more of my domains that are currently sitting idle: I’ll most likely test it out on TCLegal.net first, seeing as that’s the main conceptual piece behind the mini-Reddit, but I’ll also probably be trying to figure out how to integrate it with WordPress, Plagger, or one of my other favorite pet projects, under some other domain names.

Wish me luck!

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Posted in Catalyst, From the Blog, FrontPage, perl | Comments Off