Liquid Frog
FAQ's
Server Info
ANSWERS
  1. What is server info
    Server info is a free script that will show your visitors (or you) the last time the server was rebooted and the current load on your server.

    You can configure the script to show days, hours, minutes and seconds since the last reboot. You can also configure the script to show only days or turn off the output altogether so it only shows server load.
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  2. What are the requirements for Server Info
    Server Info only requires that PHP is installed on your web server.
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  3. How do I set up Server Info
    Installing this server info script is very easy.

    (1) Unzip the distribution file to your local PC - note the directory structure, you will need to re-create this on your server later.

    (2) Using Notepad or something similar, find the file called config.php and edit the file to best suit your needs. Once done, save the file (see notes below on removing the link to Liquid Frog or using an administration panel instead of manually editing the config.php file).

      (3) Upload the showserverinfo directory and files inside to the root of your web server making sure the directory structure remains intact.

    (4) Chmod the showserverinfo directory to 777.

    (5) Include the file on the page where you want the stats to appear by using the lines:

    <?php
    include('http://www.yoursite.com/showserverinfo/serverinfo.php');
    ?>

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  4. What does the server load indicate
    The load on the server is measured by the script and presented in terms of a percentage. It is an indication of a number of things at that current moment in time.

    What the server load figure portrays is a picture of the health of your server. It takes into account many issues and presents it to you as an overall value. Generally the lower the figure the better.

    Some of the things that this figure indicates could be influenced by the numbers of people currently visiting your site, how full your server log files are and how quickly the server can deal with the requests your visitors are making via the scripts and other processing on your web pages.

    Every time you add another script to a webpage, the processing time for that page increases and the demands on the server also increase. This does not mean that your site will come to a grinding halt (you would have to add many scripts for that to happen) but it does mean that should a large number of people all visit the same page at the same time, the load on your server could increase dramatically.

    If your site does a lot of processing (for instance a Nuke based site or CMS site) you will notice that your server load will be fairly high and, as a consequence, your page load time will also be high compared to a standard HTML page.

    There is also another consideration to take into account and that is if your site is running on a shared server. In this scenario it is possible that, even though your site might be written in nothing but HTML and is very fast, other sites on the server may not be so well written and could slow the server down which, in turn, could have a knock on effect on your site.

    There is also the server hardware to consider. A server that has limited memory and hard disk space, or that has a poor connection to the net, will usually show a high server load value for obvious reasons.

    Using this script will not tell you where the problems are but it will tell you that there is a problem. Probably its' most useful feature is to allow you to gauge over a period of time what is 'normal' for your server and therefore alert you when something is abnormal.
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  5. What server load figure should I expect as normal
    This is an impossible question to answer because it depends on so many things. As a general rule of thumb though, if you are seeing server load values that are under 4 - 5% you probably have nothing to worry about providing your pages load quickly.

    Above that value and it is probably an indication of a problem somewhere. A good check is if you have more than one site, run the script on both/all sites and compare load figures. If the sites share the same server and load values are high for all sites, try setting up a sub domain on that server and adding a single index page plus the script. If the load value is high on this site then there is likely to be a problem with server. If the load value is low then it is probably your sites and you may need to look at streamlining them.
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  6. I get a Not found error message
    If you get a "Not Found The requested URL was not found on this server" message or something similar then you have probably misnamed the directory the script needs to live in. Check that you have named the directory "showserverinfo"
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  7. I get an open_basedir restriction in effect error message
    If you receive this error message (or something similar that talks about open_basedir restrictions in effect):

    Warning: main() [function.main]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/usr/lib/php4/php/language/lang-.php) is not within the allowed path(s): (/home/http/vhost/yourdomain.com/httpdocs)

    Then your hosts have set some restrictions on your server. Most hosts will be happy to turn off this restriction to allow the script to run. Contact your hosts, inform them of the error message you are receiving and request that they remove open basedir restrictions.
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  8. I keep getting error messages
    Regardless of the error message you are getting (except those already covered in these FAQ's) it is entirely possible that these messages are being generated because you have not set the permissions correctly on the showserverinfo directory.

    FTP to your site and check that you have set the showserverinfo directory to 777.
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  9. I'm not comfortable with setting permisisons to 777
    If you really don't want to set permisisons on the showserverinfo directory to 777 because you are concerned about the security of your server, you can try setting them to 755 instead to see if that works.

    Whether this will work depends entirley on how your server has been set up. A server that has been correctly set up should allow you to set permissions to 755 with no problems and still let the script run.
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  10. How can I remove the link to Liquid Frog from the script
    This is a free script, as such it generates no income for us. In addition, we have to bear the costs associated with download of the script in terms of bandwidth and ongoing development and all our free scripts are very popular with our site visitors meaning a lot of bandwidth!

    We use the link included with the script to generate traffic to this site in the hope that people will purchase one of our paid for scripts or some of our software. Whilst we would love to give away our scripts and not have a link, economic realities dictate otherwise. We give you the script for free - you return that by sending us traffic, we consider this a fair exchange.

    If the link spoils the look of your site or you really don't want the link, you can pay a small fee to have it removed. We charge just $7.99 for removal of the link and you can find instructions on how to do this in the Readme.htm file that comes with the script.
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  11. Can I suggest a way to improve this script
    Yes of course. We actively encourage users of our software and scripts to suggest improvements so that they can be developed still further. To make a suggestion please use the contact form on the site and send your comments to feedback.
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  12. My question wasn't answered in these Faq's. What now
    Even though we do not provide support for our free scripts, if you have a problem that doesn't appear in these Faq's, you may email support.

    Please include as much detail as possible about the problem and try to indicate under what circumstances the problem occurs. Please also tell us as much about your server as you can such as the version of PHP and MySQL it is running etc.

    We want to provide as much help as possible to end users via these Faq's and, if your problem is not already listed you could also help others as well as yourself by requesting support.

    Any replies we make to your problem will be mailed directly to you and included in these Faq's for others.
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