Setting up custom short domains in Bit.ly

What is a URL shortener? A URL shortener is a service which takes a long URL and creates a much shorter URL which then forwards you to the original URL when loaded. For example, the URL http://bit.ly/18lZ8Ns, if clicked on, will redirect your browser to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheetah instead. Short URLs and the services that offer their creation have grown …

Scaling Anthrocon’s Website to Handle 1,400 Simultaneous Connections

The Challenge When hotel reservations open, that is the single busiest time of the year for Anthrocon’s webserver. In fact, it even caused us performance problems last year. That was not so good. So this year, I decided to try something different. Instead of leaving the regular website up and running, which involves using Drupal, I …