A simple AJAX loader can take care of a lot of the mishaps that can happen during the client/server communication. Find one you like and stick with it. Take a look at this AJAX load XML file script.

2. GZip Your Data

If you have a lot of data, load times can become a problem. Using compression to reduce the size of the data transferred will reduce download times and increase load times.  Take a look at the PHP GZip Manual Page for GZip usage with PHP.

3. Plan, Plan, and Plan Some More

You’ll save yourself a lot of time by planning ahead. Focus on keeping your functions simple and lightweight.  A good planning phase can take a lot of the headaches out of your development.

4. Pick a Standard Format

Communication to/from the server is essential with all AJAX development. Research the various formats and choose the one that fits your needs. The following are some of the more common formats:
XML
HTML
XHTML
JSON
UED

5. Validate Your Input

AJAX allows us to do real time client side validation against the server.  Having the power of server side validation in real time saves the end user a lot of time and frustration.  Greg Murray wrote a great article on validating form input in real time, definitely worth a read .

6. Server Side Validation - A Must

Client side validation should never be trusted. Once your data hits the server, treat it as if there was no client side validation at all.

7. Keep Sensitive Information on SSL

Just like with standard Web Forms, sensitive information transfered by your AJAX forms should be sent and received through SSL.  If you need help take a look at this article on Securing AJAX.

8. Frameworks

There are a TON of them out there, some good, some bad, and some ugly. They definitely make things easier, but are not always necessary. If your application is simple, keep it lightweight and avoid using a pre-packaged Framework. If you can get away with a small amount of script and still get the job done, go for it!
Here are some of the more popular frameworks (server side and client side):

Javascript

jMaki
Dojo Toolkit
Prototype
Yahoo! UI Library

C++

Wt

.NET

Microsoft AJAX Library

PHP

Sajax
Tigermouse
Xajax

9. Get Version One Out

I can never stress this enough (with any project), get v1 out first! Save all those great ideas that may pop in your head during the development phase for version 2 and beyond. If you didn’t put it in your planning stages, keep it out of your development phase.

Other games which also appear similar to existing products remain on the site, however.

New York-based games developer Cadin Batrack claimed in a blog posting that “the Olympics stole my game”.

Batrack highlighted what he claims are strong similarities between his Snow Day game, and a game on the Olympics website titled Fuwa Fight the Winter Clouds.

Looks like copyright infringement can infiltrate even the oldest of establishments.  The Olympics Website has been hosting ‘pirated’ games in the form of one of their flash games being substantially similar to a game created by Ferry Halim.  Apparently even the code used some of the same variable names.  I assume their web development team won’t be winning any gold medals.

Parallels announced today that it was going to open up its Beta 2 program for its Parallels Server product to the general public. Parallels Server is the first server virtualization platform to come out of Parallels, now famous for their desktop virtualization software on the Mac. The company announced the first round of beta testing only 2 months ago. And I knew back then that it wouldn’t be long until the beta reached the general public.

Looks like it has some great new features too:

• A Full Bare-metal Hypervisor that allows users to run multiple virtual machines directly on the host physical machine’s hardware. The company has been promising a bare-metal platform for some time now, and they are finally about to deliver on that promise.
• An Integrated Toolset that enhances and simplifies the user experience. The toolset includes: Parallels Tools, a set of helpful add-ons that make working with virtual servers easier and more productive: Parallels Transporter, a built-in, wizard driven migration tool that can move the entire contents of a real machine to a virtual machine: and an integrated, single-click backup utility. Tools like this will be important to help further adoption of the platform.
• Virtual Support for 4-way Symmetric Multi-processing (SMP), which lets users assign up to 4 virtual cores to a virtual machine for exceptional performance under heavy workloads. Long ago seems the day when we only had support for a single virtual processor in a virtual machine.
• Experimental Support for Intel VT-d, enabling users to leverage full hardware-acceleration technologies for faster, more stable virtual machines and better resource management. Using VT-d, users can also directly assign hardware resources such as graphics and network cards to virtual machines, giving them native access to that hardware for optimal service levels.

Worth taking a look at. More information and a download link can be found on their Parallels Server product page.

The changes have come as the company finds itself the focus of Internet blogs slamming its service and customers threatening to cancel their accounts.

Customer service is an intricate part of any web hosting business. Keep your customers happy and they will reward you with increased business and referrals.

Here is a great set of questions and answers written by Shelley Lowery. The entire article can be found here: Frequently Asked Web Hosting Question.

It is a great way to get your site (or page) listed in the search engines in a very cost effective way. I signed up for their service this week and I will keep you posted on how things go. I expect some pretty good things from them, as every review I have heard was nothing but positive.

Here are some of the things they claim to do for your site:

Drive more high qualified traffic to your web site by improving your search engine visibility.

Automate the process of monitoring your search engine keyword rankings across more than 300 global and regional organic search engines.

Use the new graphing capabilities to quickly monitor your SEO efforts.

Gain insight into the highest-value keywords, your web site’s link popularity and search engine saturation.

We submit your URLs to the search engines for you.

Improve your position for targeted keywords using built-in expertise which recommends ways to optimize your pages.

Schedule and automate the emailing of your WebPosition reports.

Enhanced Excel-based reporting capabilities allows you to monitor your search engine ranking information over time so you can identify trends and take appropriate action.

Track ranking information for an unlimited number of web sites and keywords - including your competitors!

Increase your ROI with organic search results powered by Networking4Biz SEBOOST PACK!

If anyone else tries them out, let me know how it works out for you.

ProFTPd

To resolve this edit your FTP server’s config file and turn off Ident Lookups.

Open your proftpd.conf (/etc/proftpd.conf - may vary) file in your favorite text editor and look for IdentLookups and replace it with the following:

# Do not perform ident
IdentLookups                    off

If you are a reseller (or run multiple vhosts through ProFTPd) you can set this in each of the virtual hosts config or make it global like so:

<global>

# Do not perform ident
IdentLookups                    off

</global>

IPTables

You can also filter out the requests through iptables using the following:

iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 113 -m state --state NEW -j REJECT
--reject-with tcp-reset

Hope this helps!