Work started on Tomcat version 7 in Jan 2009, and almost 2 years to the day, the stable release of Tomcat 7 has been announced.
2020Media is proud to announce it’s support for the new Tomcat version on both Java Premium and Java Dedicated hosting packages. The packages offer some of the most powerful and most-asked for features of any hosting services in the world – complete control over Tomcat via SSH. Live logs, Dedicated MySQL servers, and of course, our unsurpassed knowledge and expertise in Tomcat web hosting.
Tomcat 7 Features
Exciting new features in our Tomcat 7 Hosting plans include:
Servlet 3.0, JSP 2.2 and EL 2.2 specification support
Hugely improved memory leak prevention and detection
Simplified embedding. Utilizing a new API, developers only need a few lines of code to get Tomcat running within their applications.
Improved assistance in stability, performance, and application cleanup
Logging: Tomcat 7 includes two improvements to its logging system: a single line log formatter to make log files easier to read and an asynchronous file handler.
Servlet 3.0’s asynchronous support has been fully implemented in Tomcat 7.
Upgrading
Opinion amongst Tomcat experts is that there are no significant obstacle to upgrading applications (as opposed to re-writing applications). See http://tomcat.apache.org/migration.html for help when you start this process and also see Mark Thomas’s blog for some additional info.
We’ve heard that after upgrade applications are at least as stable and even just a touch faster.
Start Using Tomcat 7 Today
Setup a Tomcat 7 hosting account with 2020Media and you could be enjoying the benefits of the latest release today. Or Contact Us to find out more about what we offer.
With the release of Joomla 1.6 just announced the question on everyone’s lips was: “Should I upgrade?”. After some discussion the group decided that at this point, an upgrade should not be done to an existing site. Only if a new site was being built should Joomla 1.6 be used.
Joomla 1.5 will be fully supported for at least 1 year, so there is time for the new release to settle in, and perhaps easy upgrade tools will be developed.
Some of the developers at the meeting also said they’d not be using Joomla 1.6 just yet as it was likely to contain some bugs and they’d wait for Joomla 1.6.4 (or thereabouts) to be released.
The discussion on Joomla 1.6 moved on to Molajo, which is a package of Joomla components plus some coding changes over the standard Joomla. Molajo was set up fairly recently by some of the people who have had a lot of involvment in Joomla. It remains to be seen whether it will develop into a true fork of Joomla, or if the features tried out and testing in Molajo will make their way back to the core. Check out Nooku framework too.
The main presentation described how to get started with creating a new Joomla template. Melvyn Phillips showed how to use an off-the-shelf CSS framework to quickly put together a grid based site. Given the complexity of Joomla, creating a new template may seem offputting to many. Melvyn showed us how to create a basic 3 column template from scratch in just 5 minutes.
2020Media was recently asked to take over hosting of a legacy Joomla 1.0 website and we completed the migration successfully this week. The customers website had been broken because their host upgraded their server to a new version of PHP without telling them. At 2020Media we never do this.
For any enquiries about Joomla 1.5, 1.6 or even 1.0, please contact us.
What will the year 2011 bring in the hosting and domain name world? Here are some predictions for the next 12 months.
Joomla 1.6 will be released. Version 1.5 of the free content mangement system was released in 2006 and it looks like finally a new release is imminent.
Tomcat 7 will come out of beta. Tomcat 7 promises Servlet 3.0, JSP 2.2 and EL 2.2 implementation, plus a focus on improved security.
A large number of new domain name extensions will get the go ahead at ICANN, although .xxx may not.
Drupal 7 will be the most popular release of this already very successful content management system.
Junk e-mail (SPAM) will continue to blight the Inboxs of email users. WebSense reports 8 of 10 messages are Spam. Messaging between individuals via non-email methods such as Facebook will rise. Users will turn to service providers for server-side mailbox filtering.
New internet infrastructure advances such as DNSSEC and IPv6 will go onto business managers “must-have” list when procuring new services.
These are just a few of the changes we’ll probably see in the coming year. Virtualisation and Cloud computing will continue to influence every aspect of computing and the number of people using the internet consciously and unconsciously will continue to rise. 2011 could see the number of internet connected devices (“the Internet of things”) exceed the world population for the first time [1],[2].
This week has seen continued drama surrounding the website WikiLeaks and it’s head Julian Assange. Behind the scenes, a cyber war is being fought by opponents and defenders of the site.
Various providers of services to WikiLeaks, including hosting companies, dns providers, payment gateways and others have withdrawn service over the last 2 weeks. This action prompted a furious backlash against their websites by angry supporters of WikiLeaks.
Most providers who withdrew services cited breaches of their terms and conditions in one way or another – some technical, some not. Paypal said “…our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. We’ve notified the account holder of this action.” Others were subject to denial of service attacks. Few, if any, have stated their action was as a response to US governement pressure.
As quickly as providers have halted services, website mirrors and new domain names have sprung up around the world. Meanwhile supporters of the site have set up retaliatory attacks on providers who withdrew services. Mastercard and Visa have both seen outages on their website in the last few days. One such group , Operation Payback, even advocates a mass faxing campaign to tie up communications at companies such as Amazon, MasterCard, Moneybookers, PayPal, Visa and Tableau Software.
For web hosts, it’s time to take a good look at the terms and conditions of service. French host OVH is all over the news this week because of its decision to request a judicial review of its responsibility associated with removing WikiLeaks from its servers, and to continue hosting the site until that review is complete. A survey by WHIR of hosters makes interesting reading – hosts were split 50/50 on whether they would host WikiLeaks at all.
This part of our performance tips series looks at Joomla based websites and what you can do to get the fastest possible loading times.
So why are loading times important? Recent research by Forrester Research on behalf of Akamai has identified two seconds as the new threshold for acceptable web page response times. With so much choice available on the internet, users just won’t put up with a slow loading page. They’ll hit the back button and go elsewhere. You’ve not only lost a visitor but your brand has been damaged.
Measure, Adjust and Test
Obviously there are complicated and expensive tools available that will test your site from many different locations and produce detailed reports, but free tools like YSlow and Firebug will show you load time reports in your browser. In this article we’ll be looking at Page Speed, a recently released extension for Firefox by Google.
Establish a base line speed for a number of pages on your site – try to pick a variety of styles including the home page, and any other popular landing pages. Make a note of the page loading times of some of your competitors websites, so you can benchmark yourself.
If you’re not happy with the results, now it’s time to start making changes!
Joomla Tweaks
1 – Enable Cache
Cache Settings
Enable Joomla’s core content cache. From the Administrator login, go to Global Configuration->Cache and Enable. The standard option is File. Depending on your host’s server configuration there may be other options here. The built in Joomla system caches objects. Objects are things such as function calls, modules, content articles, etc. This speeds up the generation for all pages and all visitors. Where it will not help (much) is for pages that require a lot of dynamic content to be generated every time they are loaded.
2 – Enable Gzip Compression
Enable Compression
With this option enabled, the server compresses the page content created by Joomla before sending it to the browser in real-time. The browser then decompresses the content and displays it. The option is enabled in Global Configuration -> Server -> GZIP Page Compression. It’s important to note that not all servers support gzip compression – ask your host, or in Joomla look in Help -> System info. Most web sites gzip their HTML documents, but as a typical web page will have many non-HTML components such as images, CSS and Javascript. It’s therefore worthwhile to compress any text response including XML and JSON. Image and PDF files should not be gzipped because they are already compressed. More tips on compressing CSS and Javascript can be found here.
3 – Choose your template carefully
There are thousands of templates made for Joomla, and a lot of them look stunning, but many have some severe performance penalties. The problem is that some templates can use upwards of 70 separate images to display the page. Each image requires a separate HTTP request from the browser to the server and has to be downloaded. When testing, try your site under the default Joomla template and you’ll be amazed at the difference. Once you’ve chosen or designed your template, use the Page Speed extension to see if any images used by the template can be optimised further.
4 – Check your Extensions
The Joomla extensions directory contains components that can do just about anything and it’s fair to say most Joomla sites will use a couple at least. However it’s also a fact that some extensions are very inefficient and can slow your site dramatically. Fortunately you simply test if a component is causing problems by temporarily unpublishing it from your site and retesting in Firebug with Page Speed. If you do find a problem, you might be able to find another component that does the same thing.
5 – Optimise your Database
Joomla makes a lot of demands on the backend MySQL server. Regular optimization of your database can help keep things running smoothly. To optimize the tables go into phpMyAdmin (database administration tool), select all tables, and click “optimize”. To read more about optimizing the database tables, read this section from MySQL.
6 – Consider upgrading
It may be that your site has now been optimised as well as it can be, and although the page load speeds have improved, you want to take it to the next level. With 2020Media’s virtual server and dedicated server hosting plans, there is a smooth upgrade path. With complete control over the entire server environment, dedicated memory and CPU you can improve your Joomla performance over anything that would ever be possible on a shared hosting account.
Summary
In this article we’ve looked at why the performance of your website is important, how to test load times and be systematic about testing, and finally looked at some important Joomla performance tips. One thing to remember is that trying these tips is reversible – Some can hurt performance, but most of the time they does help. The only way to find out is to try it. If in doubt make a backup of your database before making each change.
Notes
The Joomla!® name is used under a limited license from Open Source Matters in the United States and other countries. 2020Media.com is not affiliated with or endorsed by Open Source Matters or the Joomla! Project.
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