I'm surprised there is no mention of database engines within this article. Presumably, only InnoDB is being discussed here since MyISAM does not support transactions at all.
Yup, looks like InnoDB. I find MyISAM locking to work just fine out-of-the-box.
Also, adding proper indexes is one of the basic database tasks to do if you want any reasonable performance. I'm often adjusting tables' structure outside of 3rd normal form, just to be able to use good indexes for the expected use cases.
