After reading an article some time ago entitled “40 Tips for optimizing your php Code” (and some others that are suspiciously similar), I decided to redo it, but properly this time with more accurate tips, providing references and citations for each and every one. The result is this list of over 50 PHP optimisation tips… Update: The list is more like 50+ PHP tips and tricks these days. Enjoy!

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If you work on software in any capacity, at least skim this list. I encourage you to click through for greater detail on anything you're not familiar with, or that piques your interest.

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So, two different posts crossed my transom recently, that I felt I had to respond to. First, and most egregiously, there’s The Daily WTF’s Programming Sucks! Or At Least, It Ought To. Then there is this blog post on Why Functional Programming Doesn’t Catch On. I am of the opinion, having covered much of the computer industry one way or another, that there are no non-trivial, uninteresting problems. The reason is just this- any problem that is boring, trivial, and/or mechanical should be done by the computer. I mean, come on, people! We’re programmers. If anyone anywhere should be able to harness the power of computers to make our work easier, it should be us programmers- the ones harnessing the power of computers to make everyone else’s work easier! If programming sucks, it’s because we’re being incredible stupid. Five lines of code duplicated over and over again, just to set some UI properties? Dear gods, people. Hasn’t any heard of subroutines? Abstraction? How about straight up code generation, or maybe implementing a DSL? OK, maybe if you’re only replicating those five lines a couple of times it’s not worth the bother. But if you’re replicating (with minor variations) those same lines of code over and over again, it’s probably worth it to step back and consider how to abstract things.

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Reality sank in last week when we were looking at performance graphs in google webmaster tools that over time our page times have crept up to nearly 5 seconds a page as the content on our site had grown to over 62,000 stores an 250,000 coupons. It dawned on us that the rate at which google had been taking pages from our website decreased and our traffic had been relatively stable as this process happened…

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With my experience in the email marketing industry I have come to find that so often newsletter marketing campaigns fail to succeed because they are not correctly targeted. Targeted Email marketing is a relatively cheap direct marketing channel. Because email marketing is so cost-effective, email marketers tend to get just a little too trigger-happy. It's no surprise that sending masses of bulk email campaigns will result in nobody really opening your emails, particularly irrelevant one's.

Email marketing campaigns need to be highly targeted in order to be successful. Not only do irrelevant emails (wrong audience) waste time and money, it also lowers your 'open rate'. Additionally, it does more damage than just that. You're more likely to get unsubscribes, and also more likely to irritate people with emails that they find to be irrelevant. This does much to your brand reputation; and I don't mean that in a good way.

Targeted email marketing takes additional factors into account like age, interests, gender etc. and breaks this down so as to send newsletters to clients who specifically like IPods for example. With targeted email marketing, your click-through rate and open-rate will definitely increase, while unsubscribes will decrease. At the same time, your brand image and reputation shall me maintained, while you save valuable time and money.

There are more factors to consider if you're wondering why your email newsletter subscribers have not opened your email newsletters or clicked-through. Here are just a few:

- Personalization is missing. You need to address email recipients by their name and your 'From' name needs to be that of your company.

- You have not segmented your email subscribers correctly or your information is out-of-date.

- You have not cleaned out your list recently enough; this results in money wasted on inactive email addresses or people that never open you emails.

- Time of send. You need to do research on the best times to send; for example: it's never a good idea to send bulk marketing emails on a weekend. Also, you need to consider time zones.

- Frequency of send. Overloading subscribers with emails does so much more harm than good; your emails will never be opened if you send too many. On the same note; sending too infrequently can result in your subscribers forgetting who you are or why they signed up.

- Purchasing patterns. If you track purchases it is much easier to target future emails to get additional sales.

If the above factors are taken into account, then your targeted email marketing is bound to succeed.

Outsourcing is one of the new methods of division of labour that emerged, as we well know, already during the primitive-communal system. Commonly a company resorts to outsourcing when it is necessary to perform certain work, which has low priority or which is not their specialty. In the field of IT outsourcing has become especially high demand. Quite often companies outsource such IT-services as development of the company’s IT strategy, introduction of information systems, creation and maintaining of network and IT infrastructure, as well as many other types of services. In this article we will discuss peculiarities of software development outsourcing, its advantages and disadvantages.
Outsourcing the full cycle of software development
A typical scenario of outsourcing the full cycle of software development for a company, which is specialize in other areas in application development, is as follows. A company, which has a task to automate their business processes or provide informational support, finds out that commercial off-the-shelf products available on the market cannot satisfy some of their needs. It goes without saying that there are vertical markets and subject domains, for which there are no typical solutions yet. In this case, such a company traditionally orders development, introduction and technical support of a personalized product, specializing in software development in the respective field.
As a rule, such project in any case expensive than introduction of a ready business application; but, if no relative business application is available in the market, then the only choice to outsourcing software development would be a still more expensive decision on creation of an own software development department or delegating this function to the company’s IT department. It should be noticed that in the 90’s such administrative solutions were taken in many Russian and Ukraine companies and many of them had later to deal with unfavorable consequences of such “garage-made” development, arising from the lack of proper development processes and software life cycle management, such as lackof proper project documentation, impossibility to modernize the application in case of changes in the business processes, inconsistency of the used technologies. Nowadays many of these companies have realized inexpediency of employing own programmers and have become clients of specialized software development and software testing companies.

Hosting an event has become much easier with the advancement of technology. When you are going to organize an event it is important that you keep an accurate record of certain things like how many people are going to attend the event, what arrangements are there to be made and so on.

Even a few years back, hosting an event was a daunting task. But with the advent of Internet you can do the jobs in minutes. Online software can help you to do all the work without any hassle. Besides saving labor it also saves your time and money. But make sure to choose the right software so that all your purposes are served properly.

Consider the following aspects while selecting the online event software so that all your requirements are fulfilled properly.

Should Allow Printing All Sign Ups:

Before you select the software make sure it supports online registration that means the probable attendees should be able to sign up online. Moreover the software should allow printing all the sign ups so that you can bring them to the event. This is especially important if you allow people to register for the event at the spot. Having the print outs will help you to avoid confusions as to who has signed up before and who are the new comers.

Should Allow Emailing Attendees:

When people sign up for the event confirmation emails should be sent to them automatically. Moreover the emails should contain your brand name and event information in detail. If you choose the wrong software, these works will not get done efficiently.

Should Accept Different Payment Options:

As far as online payment is concerned PayPal is undoubtedly the most popular option. But your software should accept multiple forms of payment. Most of the events are chargeable. That is why it is crucial to select software that will not hinder the transactions. All the credit cards of major brands should be accepted.

Keep these points in mind while selecting online event software and you will end up selecting the best software.

This is a guest post by Davis Stephenson who covers news on latest events and seminars in the city. He has done good research on online event software solutions. As per his recommendation, you can visit this website www.planetreg.com for complete online meeting registration facilities.

Analytical essay is a type of essay that should be started by looking for a topic to analyze. In this type of customized essays, you should try to bring out something which seems difficult to understand. But it should be something in which you care about or in which you have a passion for. Keep in mind that you cannot successful analyze something to the understanding of another if you are not well versed with the topic. Determine your reason for analyzing. You must let your reader know of not only what you want to analyze, but why you want to analyze it.

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In order to choose the best web design for your contractor business, it is necessary to consider a few factors. These days it is imperative that you establish an online presence for your business. In fact just as a brick and mortar store in the real world, your website serves as a store for your business in the virtual world. As part of the service industry you need to project your range of services to the world so that people know what to expect from your business. Therefore your website holds the key to the success of your business online.

It is necessary to determine the kind of contractors web design that would perfectly suit your business. It is necessary to have a professional website in the first place that would help you to maximize your profits. It is necessary to have a user friendly website that is interactive in nature so that it generates adequate interest amongst customers. The website needs to be submitted to all the major search engines like Yahoo, Google and MSN in order to increase its accessibility.

Creating the website will not suffice and you need to maintain it in order to keep it optimized. Most of the web design companies offer website maintenance service as a part of the standard hosting service and therefore there is no need to pay any additional charges.

Create a website that illustrates the theme of your business. You need to incorporate details that carefully lay down the services offered by your business. Based on these pointers you should be able to create the best web design for contractors business.

In order to create a successful online venture, it is necessary that you monitor what your competitors are up to. You can then have an idea about the kind of website design that your business should have.

A good, skilled web site developer can be an effective tool for the growth of your business. It makes your business exist on the internet. This can be done if you hire a professional web site developer to make your website look appealing and effective.

Steps to select an efficient web site developer

• Always make a research work on website development to make you acquainted with the fundamental language.
• Always decide on the work you would like your web site developer to do.
• Decide whether you require a web site designer or a developer.
• Compare the probable candidates and what are they skilled in.
• Search the web and check out the sites that grabs your attention.
• Ask your developer about any recent project of theirs.
• Ask proposals from each probable candidate.
• Select your developer to develop your web site.

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