Hi, I’m Liz Quilty, you may remember me from such places as TWiT.tv and Rimuhosting.

If you came here because you saw me on the recent FLOSS weekly , great to see you! generally i interact over on Google+ mostly, and sometimes twitter.

On the 22nd of April, I (Liz) was lucky enough to be able to speak on scaling WordPress and servers at the New Zealand WordCamp.

The people there were great, and i ended up meeting and talking to many fascinating people about all sorts of code, servers, set ups among other things.
I was a little nervous that i only had 30 minutes to fit in a lot of information, and i had to dumb it down a fair bit for those with less technical knowledge to make it understandable.

I did manage to fit the talk in with no problems at all, it only took 45 mins, plus question time! Nobody seemed to notice the missing 15 minutes from their clocks luckily, and everyone appeared to understand and have great questions about how it worked.

Because scaling is really specific, the hardest part i came up against was really trying to describe something, and explain something, in a way that was non-specific. Anyone who knows servers, knows that there is no one solution to suit everyone. How ever there are a few common areas you can usually look into.

For WordPress one of the bet things you can do is deactivate and DELETE any unused plugins or themes. Get a developer to check them, a broken one can take down your entire server easily! Not deleting them leaves a potential security hole should that plugin be discontinued, those files are still accessible via the web remember!

A few things identified were setting up things like a Cache (or Cache Plugin), enabling the wordpress object cache in wp-config, and moving as many things offsite as possible.
By moving things offsite, i mean things like video content, photos, music etc.
Why spend hours of your time setting up a shockwave/html5 video player, converters, and using disk space to play video when you can just use youtube? This is what they do for a living, they have extensive programmers who specialize in this, so it stands to reason they are very good at it, and it will save you a lot of money and time.

The same method works for Photography, Music, or any other large files if you can do it. It will save you a lot of pain and money later on down the track.

Another key thing for scaling a single server larger is setting up HyperDB, then having 2 separate databases on other servers. This offloads database offsite, but without the difficulty of having to setup MySQL replication.

If you are using WordPress and want to know more, check here for your nearest WordCamp http://central.wordcamp.org/

Anyone who knows me, knows that i’m most definitely NOT a feminist , i’m usually the first person to say some feminists go over the top. However, when i see it blatantly, i usually will call it, and not tolerate it.

One thing that does make my blood boil, is people who cross over female pornography or near naked pictures, with Tech. These things are NOT related. Females in Tech do not generally just rip off their clothes and pose with half a can of paint on their face.

Sure, some females in technology do this, but most do not. I also play ukulele, im not seeing anyone posting ukuleles on their I.T. blogs or feeds? Just because somebody may model or do other things as well as I.T., does not make it related to I.T.

The worst part about this crappy idealism in I.T., is that men somehow start expecting that females in I.T. ARE these sorts of people. It’s embarrassing and awkward when a guy hears you work in I.T. and asks for a picture.

So yesterday, i was a bit ‘WTF’ when i saw a picture of a near naked women go past in my google+ stream. Now, I have nothing against pornography, nor near naked females, models, or anything of the sort at all. I just have a problem when its posted by what is supposedly a Technology related page. In this case, it was  TechWebCast

I took a breath and carefully worded a question and my objection to the image in question, only to be laughed at and have it trivialized by the guy that runs it Brad Chasenore . After i commented a second time, to explain that it was seriously objectionable, he removed the post.

Original Post:  

I was rather annoyed at the treatment, but did not want to make a huge deal of it at the time, so i private messaged him asking why it was posted in the first place. I am always a believer in educating people rather than screaming at them, i figured perhaps he just did not realize how important this is to people?

In that conversation i felt that, again, he did not seem to really care, and seemed to try and imply somebody else posted it, but did not reply when i asked who. I went to his profile and found he had posted several other similar images of the same and another women at the same time from his own profile.

At this point i was still a little peeved off, but i can live with that, i was going to let things lie, i had mentioned something in passing to a friend Randi who also is female in Tech that i was a bit miffed . At this point in time, i was happy to let things lie, block him and forget about it all, accepting that he’s just a another idiot who does not get it. I had hoped for an apology, but had accepted that was not going to happen.

Private Conversation:

Randi made a small post about it which said

“So after all the controversy about geekli.st, they got a ton of signups. I guess +Brad Chasenore is trying to do the same thing with +Techwebcast … but in a far less interesting way. Learn some unique marketing techniques, buddy.”

At this point , he +1′d that, reshared it, and asked what that meant and what it was about, Several people commented asking about it. Randi mentioned to me this had happened, so i checked it out. I posted a link to a screenshot i had taken, because people were asking what it was about.

This was when Brad pitched in and must have decided to go all out and say ‘If you dont like what i post dont look’.

Brads Post  

For me, that was the tipping point. It’s one thing to make a mistake, its another to be deliberately offensive and sexist, especially when you represent a Tech Podcast and have a larger Technical audience than average.

So i post this, in the hope that others will see the stupidity that most women in technology area have to deal with , and would prefer not too.

Another related post by Brad  

And he shared my post (and deleted it)

For a long time i have been into cycling, hence the nickname velofille (bike girl). Couple of years ago i had major surgery which took me off my bike for a few months, and soon afterwards whilst trying to regain my fitness i injured my knees.
Finally couple years later im able to get back on the bike again, i have not actually been doing cycling for some time.
The nickname velofille was fine, except that nobody could recall it, or pronounce it, so i have decided just go go with my name. This means twitter handle has changed, as has a lot of other things (even my blog domain!).

I have no plans to give up cycling, just doing it for different reasons now. It’s going to be more a Social thing than hard core racing so much. I may even do more mountain biking, i have found i enjoyed that a fair bit

I was reading an article at http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/6151606/Secret-Santas-stun-shoppers-with-layby-payoffs which reminded me of an incident in my life that made me appreciate peoples generosity.

Many moons ago, i was young and stupid. I had my first child at 18, i married an unemployed bum at 20 and had another 3 children. We lived in a poor area, with a lot of similar minded people, and lived on government handouts, most of which were spent on rent, food, and smokes.
More often than once we begged neighbours or food banks for food, and once we even resorted to slaughtering our pet chicken because we were so hungry.

Eventually i realized i wanted more in life, started to train on courses, and try and get jobs. Hindered by a bum husband who never wanted to work, never wanted to look after the children, and in fact do anything other than rack up more debt on loans.
Eventually i realized i needed to leave husband, and so did. I moved into a better area, and started sorting out my life, in the mean time i was still broke, and had a lot of debts to pay. It was two days before Xmas, i had nothing for the children, i had some expired food in my cupboard i planned to eat for xmas, when i heard a knock at the door.

It was a Repo guy, came to take the TV. I was upset, gutted, and to top it all off, that was one of the payments i was not behind on (there was a mixup). I packed the kids into strollers, and bikes to get out, and walked 4km to a mall. I just needed to walk it off, cool down, and get out of the house.

As i got near the mall. i found a single $1 coin, I went into the mall, and went to the lottery shop, bought a $1 ticket. I scratched it off, and it was nothing at all. I think at this point i had accepted things, so just walked out dejected. As i left, the women in the shop at the counter came up to me and asked me if i was ok, at which point i just explained things had been a bit rough (without going into detail).
Another lady overheard and came up and said “hey, are you looking for some gifts for your children for xmas? We have way to many toys and i was just going to throw them out”

This amazingly wonderful women, turned up on Xmas eve at my house, with a HUGE carload of amazing toys, several grocery bags of food, then left as if it was nothing. I’m still not sure even now how much that meant to me. From then onwards i just move onwards and upwards, got a job, got re-married to a wonderful guy, and life has never been better. But i never forget that women, and i always make a point to try and make somebodys xmas better.

Please, if you see somebody who is in need this season, it does not hurt to give them your cast offs, or a few dollars, some food, or similar.