I have been quite lazy from time to time on social networks. Just being there was enough for me.

But is it really?

No one connects  with you just like that. You have to be commited to make something fo a tool. As an example. Just beacuse you install Word on your computer you wont get tons of documents. You still have to write them ...      

So i decided some time ago to make somthing out of my profile. Make it more interesting to people. People should want to connect with me when reading it.

Here are some small ways on how to get more out of your LinkedIn profile:

1. Connections
If you connect with more people on LinkedIn you spread your message better. Even if its a person that wont buy your product or sell you something at the moment. The person will se your updates a
nd posts. This can lead to business in the future.

2. Groups
You can get alot of connection in participating in groups. Groups that targets your business area. It can generate leads, give you new information and it also says some on what kind of person yo
u are and what you work with. (My own profile for example is mostly about systems administration and offshoring industry)

3. Search engines
LinkedIn scores quite high on search engines. By keeping a good and updated profile with information on what you are doing will do good in promoting you and your company as a product.    

4. Cross post content
All your articles and updates you write should be cross posted across several networks. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more. That way your content is exposed to a broader audience and will make some points on all the search engines.

5. Building a good profile and what it can do for you.
Your profile on LinkedIn is almost like your CV. It tells your visitors who you are and what you have accomplished workwise. It show your publications, your work history and recomendations from
others.

In this way a good profile demonstrates knowledge and professionalism in a whole new way. It could generate more business for you by exposing you to wider audience. In the end it will make people more eager to connect with you and contact you for your services.

Final words.
I know forums because it comes with my work some. But i have never really USED them i just have an account and log in from time to time.

But now when i update them on a regular basis and really tend to them. It gives me new customers and a wider network. Securing a vital business for my company. It pays of in the end.

The test results was quite interesting. My clients Varnish+nginx+php-fpm cluster was actually faster than googles service in 3 out of four tests.

The grid with the results below says it all.

This is just one of the installations I have done. Results vary depending on what type of content you store. My clients content is a mix of static and frequently updated content.

A perfect example on a properly optimized website.

Scaling up some and running Varnish on the main site for the midgard project website show just how much better you can make a website perform.

The data ...

siege -b on http://www.midgard-project.org/documentation/

Without Varnish:

Transactions:                     817 hits
Availability:                 100.00 %
Elapsed time:                   9.69 secs
Data transferred:               3.75 MB
Response time:                  0.18 secs
Transaction rate:              84.31 trans/sec
Throughput:                     0.39 MB/sec
Concurrency:                   14.81
Successful transactions:         817
Failed transactions:               0
Longest transaction:            1.36
Shortest transaction:           0.01

With Varnish:

Transactions:                    2951 hits
Availability:                 100.00 %
Elapsed time:                  10.69 secs
Data transferred:              58.38 MB
Response time:                  0.05 secs
Transaction rate:             276.05 trans/sec
Throughput:                     5.46 MB/sec
Concurrency:                   13.50
Successful transactions:        2951
Failed transactions:               0
Longest transaction:            0.43
Shortest transaction:           0.00

I guess that says it all. I will try to add some more logic to Varnish so that it doesnt cache logged in users.  After that we can launch it  :)

I have done this on websites running Tomcat, Wordpress, Drupal on both large installations and smaller ones. And decided to put a sample on how it affects Midcom/Midgard.

I did some preliminary tests on how it would work on this blog using one of my testservers for Varnish. Some small and simple rules made the website almost 3 times as fast. And this Varnish installation is not that optimized.

One of the things todo is to cache images .. we do that in vcl_fetch in the vcl code.

 if (req.url ~ "\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|pdf|txt|tar|wav|bmp|rtf|flv|swf|html|htm)$") {
    if (beresp.status == 200) {
      remove beresp.http.Cache-Control;
      remove beresp.http.Set-Cookie;
      remove beresp.http.expires;
      set beresp.http.magicmarker = "1";
      set beresp.http.Cache-Control = "max-age=604800";
      set beresp.ttl = 1d;
      set beresp.cacheable = true;
    }
  }

Im using an unconfigured Siege on /blog for about 20 seconds.

Before Varnish:

Lifting the server siege...      done.
Transactions:		          53 hits
Availability:		      100.00 %
Elapsed time:		       20.28 secs
Data transferred:	        1.53 MB
Response time:		        4.43 secs
Transaction rate:	        2.61 trans/sec
Throughput:		        0.08 MB/sec
Concurrency:		       11.58
Successful transactions:          53
Failed transactions:	           0
Longest transaction:	       12.66
Shortest transaction:	        0.72

After Varnish:

Lifting the server siege...      done.
Transactions:		         170 hits
Availability:		      100.00 %
Elapsed time:		       20.11 secs
Data transferred:	        4.88 MB
Response time:		        1.21 secs
Transaction rate:	        8.45 trans/sec
Throughput:		        0.24 MB/sec
Concurrency:		       10.19
Successful transactions:         170
Failed transactions:	           0
Longest transaction:	        5.58
Shortest transaction:	        0.52

After some though i added flattr to my blog. Just to se how it would work.

Seems like a nice servcie to support and use instead of the other out there. If someone likes anything i write i can get a small revenue from it. And i can support other stuff that people makes or does on the net with a minimal effort.

Inluding it on my blog was pretty straight forward. I added the small javascript in my header snippet so it is in the <head></head> on every page.

And where i wanted a button to appear on the page i simly added

<a class="FlattrButton" style="display:none;"
 title="&(view['title']:h);"
 rev="flattr;uid:&(myuid);;category:text;button:compact"
 href="&(permalink);">
 &(view['abstract']:h); 
</a>

Everything is fetched from the post and added to the button. A small todo is to get the tags added to the rev line aswell. But thats a small problem.

If i get the time (or if someone else in the Midgard community gets the time), it would be nice with a small midcom module to do this and get it included in the framework.