MySQL

MySQL is part of the LAMP setup most often used by Silicon Dales for clients’ WordPress installs. That’s why you’ll find a bunch of tutorials, case studies and extension reviews mentioning MySQL on this page.

For those who want to know:

MySQL is an open-source relational database management system. Its name is a combination of “My”, the name of co-founder Michael Widenius’s daughter, and “SQL”, the abbreviation for Structured Query Language. (Wikipedia)

If you would like help with a MySQL setup, contact Silicon Dales.

How Do You Pronounce “MySQL”?

We sometimes talk on the telephone with various technology companies, and their representatives, and there’s still confusion over the pronunciation of MySQL. After 12 years since this blog post was written, the “two camps” still exist. Which are you in? Leave a comment, at the bottom of this post! Two camps, both alike in dignity …

How to Find & Replace in MySQL

Sometimes, we need to find and replace certain strings or pieces of data in MySQL on the fly, for example if we’ve changed a Top Level domain (TLD) and want to update a bunch of links all in one go. For those times, the following command can be issued: The code from the Gist above …

Convert WordPress MySQL Database Tables from MyISAM to InnoDB for Better Scale

Scaling WordPress websites to stupidly big levels is something that makes us very, very happy. Over the past 10 years, I’ve overseen some fairly significant web applications, powered by WordPress, which pushed the envelope in terms of what the CMS can do. One instance saw us taking 5,000+ XML (NewsML + other types) files pushed …

WordPress Extensions

We often install the Open source (free, and developed by a community of programmers, rather than one, paid, team) Content Management System (CMS), WordPress. WordPress was originally a blogging platform developed by Matt Mullenweg, but, in its short history, the software, which runs on (also Open source) PHP and MySQL, has developed into far more …

Why Is My Website Slow?

This is a question we are asked by people on a regular basis: “Why is my website slow?” The answer provided here, since 2012, is generally speaking in a WordPress context – because we are WP specialists – but a lot of the rules will apply to really any website, particularly one which runs on …

Minimum Requirements for WooCommerce

Below are the minimum requirements for WooCommerce and (by extension) WordPress. Some are taken from WooCommerce, some from WordPress, and also, some, we are adding as recommendations. It should be apparent, below, which is which! Before getting started, if you’re here to assess a WooCommerce host, then you may be interested to check out our …

Complete WooCommerce Speed Optimization Guide

As accredited WooCommerce Expert developers, Silicon Dales offers a full WooCommerce optimization service to medium and larger Woo stores, but what do we actually do? Well, not everything in our toolbox is filed under “easy fix” but there’s a whole host of great ways you can get started on the road to a faster online store, by following the steps in this guide.

Installing XCache on Amazon EC2

We’ve been benchmarking Amazon EC2 server instances for some highly complicated PHP applications over the past week. During this time, we’ve discovered that XCache is perhaps the best opcode caching product for our purposes. If anyone would like a walkthrough for installing XCache on an Amazon EC2 instance, simply leave a comment below and we …

WooCommerce Hosting – Best Hosts for your Store

Clients often ask for our recommendation when buying web hosting for WordPress and particularly WooCommerce websites. Here, WooExpert Robin Scott gives guidance on choosing the right home for your WP site. The below will be updated in future as recommendations are updated. Best Hosts for WooCommerce Here’s a list in order of my personal preference …

How to Safely Update Linux in AWS EC2 Micro Instance – Using Yum

Often, when logging into via SSH to an Amazon EC2 instance, you are told that there are several updates (usually including security updates) waiting to be updated on your system. The panel on Amazon Linux even goes so far as to explain how one might go about updating to this version. HOWEVER, as this may …