Tag: PHP

Open Source Technology to boost Justdial’s growth

Justdial, India’s leading local search engine or in lay man’s term online local business directory partnered with open source technology about 4 years back and it has been a fruitful association. It has grown exponentially and caters to over 57 million unique users across 240 cities in India. Helping reach this success was the -open hand’!

Open source technology helped Justdial to scale-up in a seamless manner. We were able to establish best practices from various fields and add value to our search process. This approach allowed us to get more information and give refined results to our end-users.

Justdial opted for a Web-based server system based on open architecture in 2007. It moved towards open source technology when it planned on launching a client facing website that provided more that the tradition telephonic service.

With the move to the Web, there would be heavy performance pressure on search algorithms as it expected as many queries on the website as via the telephone route. Justdial knew the conventional client server architecture would collapse and thus opted for open and distributed architecture.

On the software side, Justdial adopted the CLAMP stack, which was a combination of C and the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) was chosen to power its servers, Ubuntu on the desktop front, MySQL, Postgres and MongoDB for database management and WebHuddle for Web conferencing and video conferencing.

Ever since Just Dial started using RHEL PLATFORM and CLAMP stack its operations have scaled three times. It has grown from 5 servers to ore than 200 servers and expects to reach 350 by end of the year. In 2007 it was present in just 7 cities; however when it switched to open source it saw the opportunity to grow to 240 cities on a single national number – 69999999.

Justdial’s IT team of about 40 people on the infrastructure side (Linux, servers) and another 90 people on the development side (database management, core C programming, user interface, backend page scripting) and the support from Red Hat helped maintain its infrastructure effortlessly.

The open source architecture seamlessly ran mission critical applications like search logic, and also helped improve the performance of its search logic by adding C components. Justdial also adopted Sphinx, a standalone search engine and its easy integration in LAMP stack gave its search logic a boost.

Open source lowered the IT cost burden for Just Dial. Annually it has saved at least Rs. 80-90 million. The open source solutions also simplified management and reduced systems maintenance costs. The open source architecture provided greater flexibility, which would in turn lead to improvements in customer satisfaction. In fact the efficiency and technology used for the website earned it, the prestigious Red Hat Innovation Award in the -Carved out Costs’ category. With such achievement to their mutual credit, Just Dial will remain an open source devotee and follower.

About the Author

With a bit of luck and a lot of hard-work, Justdial was launched in 1994. Today it is a leading local search engine, registering an average monthly growth of 40%. Currently the company offers its services in 250 cities and operates directly from 12 city offices.

Linux is best O/S for VPS because it is complete desktop operating system for Professional support. Its user friendly interface provides freedom to user for customize software in any way. It is easily available without any cost and also there is no any extra fee required for its enterprise edition.
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Linux is complete desktop operating system for Professional support. Its user friendly interface provides freedom to user for customize software in any way. It is easily available without any cost and also there is no any extra fee required for its enterprise edition. Today No. of users choose Linux as O/S for their VPS because it provides accessibility, good environment and free softwares for make Powerful VPS.
Linux is based on principal of open source software development so it is available in local language and despite any disabilities. Open source basically encourage users to use any software without any fee so Linux is best option for reducing cost of any server. Its more than 1000 pieces of software and different desktop applications like word processing, spreadsheet application , internet access application ,web server software , email software , programming languages & tools for lots of games make it most popular and favorite O/S.
For unmanaged VPS, Many Hosting companies offer Linux and windows as an operating system so it is must require knowing that why Linux is more beneficial as compare to windows?
Advantages of Linux Operating System for VPS
Linux is a very secure operating system. A major benefit of Linux is that its very strong support of tools and applications those helpfully for manage VPS. There are many configured version of Linux, those containing tuned kernel (base elements for running a virtualized environment) so it supports a number of virtualization platforms like OpenVZ. This Optimized platform has smaller footprint and it gives better performance as compared to other O/S. It provides free and regularly updates with in every six months, it is very best for VPS to achieving more & advance features. Configuring a LAMP server, apache tomcat and other software in Linux VPS is an easy-to-do task because of its big supporting community, user can find solution for almost every problem in the Linux forums or directly from Linux vendor.
How it is different from other O/S?
Linux is a desktop operating system. Its user friendly architecture, application and reputation for stable installation and reliability make it different from others O/S. The main Six month updating circle is very important feature for VPS server performance and thats kept server up to date with new software innovation.
Linux offers a task based installation process, which allows user to set up different programming languages like PHP, Perl, Java, Ruby and Python, together with Apache and LAMP within minutes as compared to widows and other O/S.
At Present there are many Linux versions available like ubuntu, CentOS, Debain and fedora. Those are effectively very useful for increasing efficiency of VPS.
Many VPS server providers deceive to user about choosing the Linux O/S. they shows that the command of Linux is more difficult, but its not right fact because there are vast amounts of books, PDF, PPT, documentations and videos available on internet for Linux.
There are many records that show as compared to other, Linux VPS is more beneficial and cheap VPS for users.

Current website development relies more on open source to handle forms and back end things. Whether it is a e commerce website or a portal, certain level of technical handling is there from server side. Certain redirection, conditional surfing based on ip address of client, privilege approving and database integration all are done by a software bundle named LAMP. LAMP is a short notation of individual software such as Linux (OS), Apache HTTP server, MySQL (DBMS) and of course PHP.

PHP has become one of widely used open source software product for developing hundreds of sites ranging from simple to complex one like WordPress. The P of LAMP may be sometimes replaced by another scripting language such as Perl or Python.

They four individual has got together to give the best performing web applications to PHP developers. Here are the benefits of MySQL and PHP explained further to get the idea why theyve been together to deliver efficient web applications.

Benefits of MySQL:

Very low licensing cost
Low hardware consumption
Execute anything from data houses holding terabytes of data
Ultra-fast loading
Table and Index partitioning
Master/Slave replication with high speed reconfiguration utility
Multi-version Transaction support
Highly robust
Efficient query engine
Secure encryption decryption functions
Open source freedom

Benefits of PHP:

Easy to use
Simplified task handling in heavy traffic sites
Open source
Secure
Low cost
Being open source new functionality have been added consistently
Simple coding style
Highly functional to code simple to shopping cart projects

As LAMP meant to be run on Linux platform, this software bundle is more reliable and performance giving. When you are on Linux platform, you are sure for one thing that is less down time. Benefits of Linux platform add more things to the Benefits of PHP and MySQL.

Hence, we can conclude that a reliable platform (Linux), an easy to manage and highly functional server side scripting language (PHP) and a flexible & low cost DBMS can give the PHP developers the edge of development which helps them in complex website development.

There are a number of web hosting plans available for website owners to choose from today. While this extensive variety makes people feel spoilt for choice, it also makes it tough to choose the right plan to cater to their requirements. Choosing the web hosting plans is not as easy as ABC. Despite the extensive variety and various challenges involved, most of the people prefer the Linux web hosting plan and the PHP web hosting plan. Though Windows hosting plans were considered to be the favourite a few years ago, today the preference is given to Linux and PHP plans. So, what brought about this radical change in the mindset of people?

Over the last few years, technology has improved in leaps and bounds. Along with this, there have also been tremendous changes in the software industry. Unlike a couple of decades ago, today there are various types of software that are can be used on the internet. The development of these software programs became necessary to support the advent of the ecommerce industry. There were a number of website hosting plans that also came into existence during this period, however, only a handful of plans were compatible with the advanced software. Windows is definitely user friendly software, but it is not website friendly. There are a number of limitations and restrictions associated to Windows based web hosting plans. This is why these plans began to take the backseat. The ability of Linux web hosting plans and PHP web hosting plans to support the latest software gave it an upper hand over Windows based plans.

Cost is one of the things that most of the website owners consider while selecting web hosting plans. A few years ago, it was challenging to establish the perfect balance between the cost and the type of hosting plan. This is no longer a concern, thanks to the Linux web hosting plan and the PHP web hosting plan. Though these plans support the latest software, the cost of availing them is just a fraction of opting for the Windows based plans. One of the main reasons for the higher cost of the Windows based hosting plans is the license. Windows is a registered platform and one needs to pay money in order to use it. On the other hand, Linux is an operating system that is built using open source code. This implies that there is no need to buy a license in order to use it, thus resulting is huge cost savings and making the hosting plans highly affordable.

The ease of use and the performance are two other aspects that work in favour of the Linux web hosting plans and PHP web hosting plans. Most people nurture the wrong notion that the Linux interface is not as easy to use as the Windows interface. Though there is a world of difference between the two, Linux is user friendly too. In fact, making changes to your website is easier if you choose the Linux or PHP hosting plans. You can save all the changes online as you work on it and preview the changes. You can also restore the website to its previous state if you are not happy with the changes. This kind of flexibility is absent in Windows based plans which is the reason they got left behind.