Facebook Set To Unveil “Hyper PHP”
February 2, 2010
A PHP project that's been underway for about two years is finally going to bear fruit for Facebook. Reports indicate that the company is set to announce the creation of "Hyper PHP" (or HPHP) today, and that Facebook will see speed improvements of around 80 percent as a result.
This trick relates to Web development, and more specifically, bridging the gap between interpreted languages and compiled languages. Hyper PHP is supposed to combine their strengths and more or less escape their weaknesses.
Mike Melanson explained, "PHP is normally an interpreted language, which means that every time a user accesses a PHP page, the server needs to take the code and interpret it to produce the final product. A compiler, however, makes this process much quicker, as the code is interpreted before the user ever asks for the page. The problem here is that any time that page needs to be changed, the code needs to be recompiled."
Hyper PHP should represent a major turning point, then. What's more, it doesn't look like Facebook will be the only beneficiary. The social network is due to make Hyper PHP available on an open source basis, so all sorts of sites may get speed boosts in the end.
We'll update this post with more information when it becomes available.
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> Facebook Page Owners Getting More Stats
> Facebook Gets Into Customized Data Centers
> Facebook Becomes Sponsor Of Apache Software Foundation
Facebook Set To Unveil “Hyper PHP”
February 2, 2010
A PHP project that's been underway for about two years is finally going to bear fruit for Facebook. Reports indicate that the company is set to announce the creation of "Hyper PHP" (or HPHP) today, and that Facebook will see speed improvements of around 80 percent as a result.
This trick relates to Web development, and more specifically, bridging the gap between interpreted languages and compiled languages. Hyper PHP is supposed to combine their strengths and more or less escape their weaknesses.
Mike Melanson explained, "PHP is normally an interpreted language, which means that every time a user accesses a PHP page, the server needs to take the code and interpret it to produce the final product. A compiler, however, makes this process much quicker, as the code is interpreted before the user ever asks for the page. The problem here is that any time that page needs to be changed, the code needs to be recompiled."
Hyper PHP should represent a major turning point, then. What's more, it doesn't look like Facebook will be the only beneficiary. The social network is due to make Hyper PHP available on an open source basis, so all sorts of sites may get speed boosts in the end.
We'll update this post with more information when it becomes available.
UPDATE: The official announcement and explanation are now available.
Have You Read This?
> Facebook Page Owners Getting More Stats
> Facebook Gets Into Customized Data Centers
> Facebook Becomes Sponsor Of Apache Software Foundation
Ensuring Your Site is Indexed in Google’s Mobile Search
November 24, 2009
In this day and age, you pretty much can't ignore mobile users. The rate at which consumers are accessing the web via mobile devices is growing rapidly, largely thanks to the increasing popularity and production of smartphones.
Just having a mobile site isn't even enough. Sure, it's a great start, but you have to start thinking about a mobile site just as you would a regular site. Can people find it? Just because you have a good ranking in Google does not mean that your mobile site has a good ranking in Google's mobile search engine, or is even indexed at all.
Google recently shared a few important tips for making sure your mobile site is being indexed in Google's Mobile Search.
1. Create a mobile sitemap and submit it to Google so Google knows it exists. This can be done using Google Webmaster Tools, just like with a regular sitemap.
2. To make sure Googlebot-Mobile can access your site, allow any User-agent to access it.
"You should also be aware that Google may change its User-agent information at any time without notice, so it is not recommended that you check if the User-agent exactly matches 'Googlebot-Mobile' (which is the string used at present)," says Jun Mukai, a software engineer on Google's mobile search team. "Instead, check whether the User-agent header contains the string 'Googlebot-Mobile'. You can also use DNS Lookups to verify Googlebot."
3. Check that your mobile-friendly URLs' DTD (Doc Type Definition) declaration is in an appropriate mobile format such as XHTML Mobile or Compact HTML.
If you run both a regular site and a mobile version of it, there is a possibility that the wrong version will show up in the wrong search results. There are ways you can prevent this.
"When a mobile user or crawler (like Googlebot-Mobile) accesses the desktop version of a URL, you can redirect them to the corresponding mobile version of the same page," explains Mukai. "Google notices the relationship between the two versions of the URL and displays the standard version for searches from desktops and the mobile version for mobile searches."
If you do use a redirect, you should make sure content on the corresponding URL matches as closely as possible, because Google finds sites that abuse the practice in order to try and boost their rankings. Google says this should be avoided at all costs, so you can probably expect to be penalized for such an action.
Another way you can make sure a user is pointed to the right version of your site is simply to provide a link. In fact, that is what Google itself does. If you access the mobile version of Google, you will find a link to the desktop version.
Another way still, is to switch content based on the User-agent, so mobile users automatically see the mobile version and desktop users see the desktop version, even though both are accessing the same URL.
Google warns, however, that if you use this method, there is a chance that if you fail to configure your site correctly, it could be mistaken for cloaking, which you can be penalized for.
"To remain within our guidelines, you should serve the same content to Googlebot as a typical desktop user would see, and the same content to Googlebot-Mobile as you would to the browser on a typical mobile device," says Mukai. "It's fine if the contents for Googlebot are different from the one for Googlebot-Mobile."
Have you taken the necessary steps to ensure you are being indexed in Google's mobile search engine? Have you been left out due to cloaking-related confusion? Discuss here.
Have You Read This?
> Google Launches Custom Search For Smartphones
