Under the hood of every successful website there is invariably a database or more likely a whole cluster of them. It is quite literally the driving force in website architecture, and probably the most important component in managing and delivering content efficiently to the pages of your website. So whether your website is a Mini or a Hummer its time to talk DB’s.
BUT (and its a big but), the learning curve can be steep particularly for the first time database user - there’s nothing quite as mind boggling as the complexities of Database topology. And there is no getting away from them – if you want your website to perform well and be able to manage content yourself, it obviously makes sense to have some rudimentary understanding of what is going on in the background.
But where to start? If you have a Mac you may have already come across Filemaker – a user friendly but quite powerful WYSIWYG relational Database, while the unfortunate Windows sufferer has to be content with MS Access – although once you have a rudimentary understanding of how Access is supposed to work you can certainly see its appeal as a file based ‘lite’ application.
As a website backend DB, MS Access is also relatively easy to implement and integrate. Updates and backups can be carried out by dragging and dropping the mdb file on to your hosted web space via FTP (obviously in a secure folder off the web). It can even be administered using the local copy of Access on your machine. In fact I have deployed a number of eCommerce sites using Access and they have worked surprisingly well, as long as the website does not get too popular (no more than a few concurrent users at a time please!).
Unfortunately however that’s where the plaudits end. As the size of the database increases, as it invariably will do, Access performance starts to degrade significantly . So life on the web can be short lived for our little desktop application. There are many other reasons, including the limitations on concurrent users, security issues, etc why MS Access is not a good idea, more of which are listed here.
Certainly for non Windows web database requirements Access doesn’t get a look in. On Unix based servers, MySQL has proved without doubt the most popular and now the most widespread:
It’s Open Source (free-ly available, financially speaking)
it’s proven reliability has resulted in widespread implementation.
it’s scalability (don’t underestimate this one - it is running YouTube after all)
its ongoing support and development structure
Many hosting companies, even those running Windows based servers, don’t encourage or are reluctant to support use of Access, and generally advocate using MSSQL as a windows based alternative – which makes lots of sense as again MS Access can still act as the local ’front end’ for the web database admin tasks (a unique moment of Microsoft joined up thinking).
So which is best?
Horses for courses here I reckon – arguably the choice can be narrowed to a few main contenders -of the Open Source applications MySQL and PostgreSQL are the first choice for Linux servers; while MSSQL might be the obvious way to go if your website is on a Windows server. However the level of online support and documentation may be the reason why increasing numbers are opting for MySQL even on Windows servers.(also see ‘and finally’ below )
Migrating to MySQL
On one occasion I was told that one of my Access DB websites was being removed immediately from the shared server because it was causing performance problems for all other sites on the server (MS Access was identified as the culprit) – which prompted me to migrate fairly quickly to MySQL. however this turned out in practice not to be so quick -it certainly wasn’t a straight swap. Again OS tools came to the rescue to make the process easier, although there were one or two coughs and splutters before the website DB ‘engine’ came back to life
Eureka moment
Having a ‘free’ and scalable database architecture just makes sense - from the new web venture through to the monolithic sites like YouTube.
The lack of a front end WYSIWYG can be a bit daunting for the novice though, and tackling MySQL through a command prompt may not make for Rapid Application Deployment, particularly if you are not familiar with SQL syntax – is the lack of it MySQL ‘s achilles heel? Not at all, there are shed loads of excellent web based Open Source and proprietary interface tools for MySQL such as MySQLAdmin, MySQLyog, Heidi etc etc which will do the job effectively. In any case for most of the day to day website requirements much of the transactional activity will be hidden behind a well designed admin ‘backend’ .
And finally…
…there is some good news for Die hard Access users also – you can now use it for the front end admin for your MySQL database through So I was surprised recently to find out that the MySQL guys have launched
I mentioned in an earlier article about Google incorporating Hot topics and Hot search ‘feeds’ in its main search pages. I Googled Jeff Bridges just as he was being interviewed by Jonathan Ross and I noticed Google was feeding in real time data to the search page asynchronously(without me refreshing the page). While this method in itself is not in itself ground breaking, the fact that Google is paying more and more attention to what is happening in the Social Media networks came as a bit of asurprise. It will be interesting to see how this develops in the coming weeks and months -if this becomes more of a feature in the listings we will need to think seriously about the format of content, and as mentioned in previous posts, increasingly moving our focus to Social Media channels like Twitter, Facebook etc.
No content – BUT high listing
The second surprise in My Googling this week came right out of the blue, and it was one I should have perhaps been aware of. The scenario : when you can actually do a search for a key word/phrase and you’re ousted in the position listings by a site that not only does not have the key word or phrase on their page, they don’t even have their site indexed by Google. Please feel free to contradict me at this point because (in the words of V. Meldrew) I didn’t really believe it either. There was no actual site page content in the Google listings excerpt either.
The person that actually came across this was scratching his head over this one as well. Could Adword keywords perhaps be affecting the natural rankings perhaps?
If you haven’t already guessed the answer by now here it is – backlinks or inbound links, external links or whatever other terms are used to describe a link to your site coming from an external site’s page.
More surprisingly perhaps was the ‘potency’ of the anchor text, i.e., the textual key word/phrase being used in the link itself. Further investigation revealed that the external links pointing to the site numbered in their thousands.
Now two interesting implications follow:
A site content doesn’t even have to be actually indexed to be ranked highly in the natural listings, furthermore:
A site can have its robots text file configured to ‘no index, no follow’ – in other words specifically telling the search engines NOT to list the site, and yet it still appears in searches, (albeit minus any content)
Mmm…. is there something discrete in the Google algorithm that enables sites to be ranked regardless of page content? Is it configured in such a way to place to simply ignore content and carry on regardless and use the backlink anchor text instead? The example in my next post should hopefully go some way to restoring my confidence in natural listings.
Am I stating the obvious?.. in the meantime feel free to add your pearls of wisdom
If businesses haven’t yet woken up to the potential of SN they certainly need to. To quote Bill Gates, its the way we are all communicating with each other these days…
We can all think of 1001 reasons why we could well do without the extra hassle of yet another foray into the mysteries of online marketing.
But if all you do is take a moment to read some of the stats below, then maybe it might be convince you its time to ask your kids for a few tips on where to start.
Facebook Example…
So lets have a look at some stats first of all. If we take a look at one of the fastest growing SN sites Facebook and have a look at their stats for a moment:
they claim to have 350 million active users.
Each user has on average has 130 friends and is a member of 12 groups.
700,000 local businesses have active pages on Facebook.
Facebook’s average of 55 mins for each user visit
The trivia argument often levelled at SN sites now starts looking a bit weak in business terms. If you have have ever taken the time to look at the stats for your own site to see how long visitors are staying on pages, compare this to Facebook’s average of 55 mins for each user visit and you begin to see the potential.
Sharing Vs Selling
The one thing that is radically different is in the way users interact with content. Perhaps our own carefully crafted websites were built on the assumption that we should simply present information as a ‘one off’ without necesarily elliciting users responses (after all, it took us long enough to write the content in the first place). But if we want to really engage potential consumers we have to allow them opportunities to express their thoughts, opinions etc., in a way a static page of text on a website cannot hope to do. In so doing we are gathering valuable market research and feedback; our web pages are also ‘enriched’ by the extra (free) generated page content, which is all good news when MR Google pays our site a visit .
Content for free?
Businesses are certainly getting the message and eager to tap into the huge potential. Facebook are actually keen for businesses to leverage content within own sites if we want to do this via their integration tools like Facebook connect . facebook also does all the hard work by actively prompting and encouraging members to join groups and add friends with similar interests. And not forgetting all this generates all important extra content + backlinks to our site – and its free! . (cf. Huffington Post -a news aggregator website which actually thrives on ‘pulling’ the majority of its content from other sites)
The youtube example:
Youtube stats? Oh just watch the clip!
Suffice it to say that user numbers are now in billions and still growing (14.5 at the last estimate.) You tube also enables us to test out the market very quickly and efficiently – whether you want to publish your own movie, slideshow or even embed the content on your own site, Youtube has to be dream come true in terms of free advertising – the tools are all there free to use for you to make it happen i.e., creating engaging user content easily without having the overhead costs. (e.g.,check out Capri Sun’s channel on Youtube )
Summary thoughts about Youtube:
… is available universally and is free
…frequently outperforms conventional media channels
…provides feedback via viewer stats and comments
… offers (free)embedding/agreggating of content
rapid and easy publishing and editing for more flexible marketing strategy
huge viral marketing possibilities
A word of caution
Yep -there’s no such thing as a free lunch. We can’t just think of SN sites as free advertising. They do have to be engaging (c.f. Facebook page visit time of 55 mins) so be prepared to offer something that is of real interest and benefits to the user – don’t just think of this as one way traffic. Put yourself in the place of somone who is SN savvy – they will very see through any sales ploys (however subliminal) to market your product.
Summary:
Remember any good viral marketing has to be user- driven also so:
Be prepared to share information, even offer free services or benefits(go on – dangle the odd carrot!) give feedback and encourage comments about products/services.
Get up to speed – draw on your staff expertise and knowledge of blogging twittering etc discuss which are the best SN sites for your business and how they could be best utilised
Get involved/become members of other related groups(e.g. follow in Twitter)
Don’t be afraid to fail – review and discuss your strategy as you would any other marketing campaign
Don’t forget to switch on your Stats (Google analytics preferably) to monitor popularity of product/service/topic interest
Perhaps next time you are reviewing your marketing strategy perhaps Social Networking will move high up your ‘must do’ marketing agenda.
Under the hood of every successful website there is invariably a database or more likely a whole cluster of them. It is quite literally the driving force in website architecture, and probably the most important component in managing and delivering content efficiently to the pages of your website. So whether your website is a Mini or a Hummer its time to talk DB’s.
I mentioned in an earlier article about Google incorporating Hot topics and Hot search ‘feeds’ in its main search pages. I Googled Jeff Bridges just as he was being interviewed by Jonathan Ross and I noticed Google was feeding in real time data to the search page asynchronously(without me refreshing the page). While this method in itself is not in itself ground breaking, the fact that Google is paying more and more attention to what is happening in the Social Media networks came as a bit of asurprise. It will be interesting to see how this develops in the coming weeks and months -if this becomes more of a feature in the listings we will need to think seriously about the format of content, and as mentioned in previous posts, increasingly moving our focus to Social Media channels like Twitter, Facebook etc.
