After our first two posts on MySQL storage engines and general MySQL tips, our senior sysadmin Nathan March closes the week out with some discussion of Percona Server.

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Continuing on from yesterday’s post on MySQL storage engines, GT’s lead sysadmin Nathan March gives some MySQL tips, to be followed by some Percona-specific insights tomorrow.

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Our senior sysadmin, Nathan March, has been compiling some notes on MySQL and InnoDB for internal use, but we thought they might be of some use and interest to a broader audience. We’ve split Nathan’s insights up into three posts which we’ll be posting daily. First up, Nathan talks about the distinctions between MyISAM and InnoDB, two of MySQL’s storage engines:

I initially started writing this for sysadmins but thought it might be of use to programmers on the whole to help give some insight into MySQL’s storage engine, how they work and why they do certain things. Hopefully this will help demystify things a little on how InnoDB and replication work internally.

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Search Engine Optimization is on everyone’s lips in the IT world today, as more and more companies are looking for ways to increase their search engine rankings. While GT isn’t an SEO shop, we try to ensure that the sites and pages we build are created using sound SEO principles. If you’re looking at optimizing your own site, here are a few basic tips and resources to help get you started.

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Speed is a critical element in a user’s experience of any website, and Google has suggested that load times may become a factor in page ranking. With this in mind, GT is excited to introduce a free tool for measuring the speed of your site.

GTmetrix subjects individual URLs to a range of tests developed by Google and Yahoo!, and presents the results in a detailed, comprehensive report complete with tips on how to improve your performance.

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