Bin-Blog » PHP

Plugin Week 2: WordPress Plugin – Weather Man

Binny V A — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:58:54 +0000

After the success of Plugin Week, I have decided to do it once again. So, without further ado, Welcome to Plugin Week 2. If you don’t know what a plugin week is, its a week when I publish one plugin per day – for an entire week.

There is one big difference between Plugin Week 1 and Plugin Week 2. In Plugin Week 1, only wordpress plugins where release(they are Eventr, Autofields, Pollin, Surveys, Quartz and Quizzin). This time around, I will not restrict myself to WordPress plugins – I’m going for other software too – expect Drupal plugins, jQuery plugins and more.

I’ll start off with a very simple plugin…

Weather Man WordPress Plugin

Weather Man shows the weather as a widget in the sidebar. You can add the widget using the Widget page under Appearance. Or you can add it in a post using the [weather-man] shortcode anywhere in the post. It uses Yahoo’s Weather API.

Download Plugin

Demo of Weather Man WordPress Plugin

Installation

Download the zipped file.
Extract and upload the contents of the folder to /wp-contents/plugins/ folder
Go to the Plugin management page of WordPress admin section and enable the ‘Weather Man’ plugin
Go to the Widget configuration(under Appearance) and add the Weather Man Widget into any sidebar.
Alternatively, you can add the [weather-man] tag in any post and the Weather Man Widget will show up there.

Screenshots

Feedback

If you have any suggestions or notice any problems with the plugin, post it in the Weather Man Plugin forum.

About Me and Plugin Week

If you are new to this blog(I hope to get many new visitors due to the Plugin Week), I’m Binny. I’m a freelance web developer on the LAMP platform. I specialize in PHP and JavaScript. More about me on my personal site. Plugin Week 2 is an initiative to force myself to a small deadline to write code. It worked great during Plugin Week 1 – so I’m doing it again. Also, I get a lot of visitors during the Plugin Week – that can’t be bad.

If you want to get news about the upcoming plugin releases(remember, 1 per day), please subscribe to this site.

If you like the concept of the Plugin Week or if you found it helpful, consider writing a post about Plugin Week on your blog. If you write a post, please let me know – and I’ll list your post on the last day of the plugin week(it will have a ‘Thank You for your Support’ section).

Next plugin will be released tomorrow.

A Tweet This Button for Each Post in WordPress – Without a Plugin

Binny V A — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:20:44 +0000

TweetThis is a WordPress Plugin that ‘adds a Twitter link to every post and page, so your readers can share your blog entries on their Twitter accounts with ease.’ And in the tradition of my WordPress Plugin Killer Series, this post will show you how to do it without a plugin.

The Code

You can add twitter button to your post by editing the single.php file in your theme. Go to the place in the file where you want the button to show up – then add this code at that location…

Tweet This

This is a super simple way of doing it – with a little more code, you can use a URL shortner to ’shortify’ your permalink. Otherwise it might overflow the 140 char limit.

Twitter

By the way, if you are on twitter, add me – I’m @binnyva

Show Related Post in WordPress Without a Plugin

Binny V A — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:00:29 +0000

Related posts is a very popular feature. My default wordpress installation often includes a plugin that has this functionality. There are quite a few plugins that lets you have this feature…

The Code

WordPress has been supporting tags in its new released – so the related posts feature can be implemented without the help of any plugins. All we have to do is find the other posts with some same tags as the current post. Just open the single.php file in your theme and add this bit of code where you want the related posts to show up…

ID);
if ($tags) {
	$tag_ids = array();
	foreach($tags as $individual_tag) $tag_ids[] = $individual_tag->term_id;

	$args=array(
		'tag__in' => $tag_ids,
		'post__not_in' => array($post->ID),
		'showposts'=>5, // Number of related posts that will be shown.
		'caller_get_posts'=>1
	);
	$my_query = new wp_query($args);
	if( $my_query->have_posts() ) {
		echo 'Related Posts';
		while ($my_query->have_posts()) {
			$my_query->the_post();
		?>
			
		';
	}
}
?>

This code finds the other post with any one of the tag that the current post has. If you want to show the posts with any one of the categories that the current post has, use this code instead…

ID);
if ($categories) {
	$category_ids = array();
	foreach($categories as $individual_category) $category_ids[] = $individual_category->term_id;

	$args=array(
		'category__in' => $category_ids,
		'post__not_in' => array($post->ID),
		'showposts'=>5, // Number of related posts that will be shown.
		'caller_get_posts'=>1
	);
	// Rest is the same as the previous code

WordPress Plugin Killer Series

For those who came in late, this post is part of the WordPress Plugin Killer Series. This series will show you how to duplicate the functionality of the a few wordpress plugins without having to install it using custom code in the wordpress theme. The previous posts in this series are…

More Resources

Adding Social Bookmarking Button in WordPress – Without Plugins

Binny V A — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 17:48:19 +0000

Many blogs have links to add the current post to various social bookmarking site like Digg, Reddit, Delicious, etc. This blog don’t have it – but my LinDesk blog does. This effect is achieved using wordpress plugins like…

For those who are new, this is part three of the Plugin Killer series. This series will show you how to duplicate the functionality of the a few wordpress plugins without having to install it using custom code in the wordpress theme. The earlier posts in this series are…

The Code

You can add social bookmarking button to your post by editing the single.php file in your theme. Go to the place in the file where you want the buttons to show up – then add this code at that location…

del.icio.us
 | Digg it
 | reddit
 | StumbleUpon

Of course, you don’t have to do it like that – a better way of doing it is by putting the links in a li/ul list and then styling it. The point is, you don’t need a plugin to do this.

Different Implementations

Another thing I would recommend is get the images – in the above code, I just used text links. If you get the favicons of the sites you’re linking to, it will look a lot nicer. Example (go to the end of the post). You can use bigger images as well – example. Or use some kind of effect – example(here the icons are a bit transparent by default – but when you hover over them, it shows up clearly – its completely opaque).

Here only the four big ones are given. You can find code for more social bookmarking sites elsewhere.

Show Popular Posts in WordPress – without a plugin

Binny V A — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 18:27:20 +0000

A list of the popular posts of the blog is a standard feature in many blogs. There are quite a few plugins that offer this feature…

Now, lets see how to do it without using a plugin. In case you are new to this blog, I am currently working on the Plugin Killer Series – a series of post in which I explain how to duplicate the functionality provided by some wordpress plugins – without having to install the plugin.

These plugins work by adding a view counter for each post – whenever a user visits a page, it will increment the count for that page by one. Unfortunately, WordPress does not provide this feature. But there is another indicator for the popularity of a post – its comment count.

The Code

Getting Comment Count – SQL

So the first step is to get the list of post with the most comments. To get that, we can use the following SQL statement…

SELECT id,post_title FROM wp_posts ORDER BY comment_count DESC LIMIT 0,10

Listing The Data – PHP/SQL

This query will return just 10 posts. If you want more(or less) post, just change the number after LIMIT accordingly. The PHP code for executing the query and getting its result is…

$popular_posts = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT id,post_title FROM {$wpdb->prefix}posts ORDER BY comment_count DESC LIMIT 0,10");
foreach($popular_posts as $post) {
	// Do something with the $post variable
}

Final Output as Links in a List – HTML/PHP/SQL

Next step is to get the URL of each post. The recommended way of doing this is by using the ‘get_permalink‘ function. Another thing we have to do is to map the result as an HTML list…

Popular Posts

get_results("SELECT id,post_title FROM {$wpdb->prefix}posts ORDER BY comment_count DESC LIMIT 0,10");
foreach($popular_posts as $post) {
	print "".$post->post_title."\n";
}
?>

Note: The HTML part of the code may need to be changed – depending on your theme.

Add this code to the sidebar.php file in your theme – and you are done!

WordPress Plugin Killer: The Series

Binny V A — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 18:15:35 +0000

My last post about using a bit of custom PHP code in the wordpress template instead of installing a plugin inspired a new way of thinking for me. How many of the wordpress plugins currently in use are actually necessary? Couldn’t we avoid a few plugins by using a bit of custom code?

So I decided to do a series on how to duplicate the functionality of some plugins using PHP code within the WordPress theme/template itself. That way, you can eliminate the plugin – and still get the features offered by the plugin.

The Advantages

The advantages of avoiding unnecessary plugins…

Less overhead/More Optimized Method: If you have installed a plugin, the plugin files must be read and loaded into the memory on every page load. This overhead can be avoided by using putting the code into the template file which is already in the include list.
Don’t have to worry about plugin updates: Granted, current WordPress version make it very easy to update plugins. But still, if you embed the code, then there is no need to update the code every month or so.
Much more customizable than the plugin: You can write the code to get the exact functionality you want. You cannot get that with a plugin.
You learn more about WordPress: This is perhaps the most important effect – you learn more about wordpress template tags, about PHP, about wordpress internals and lot more.

The Disadvantages

Not as easy as using a plugin: For those who work with WordPress and PHP code all the time, like myself, editing the code may be easier than finding, installing and configuring a new plugin. But for most normal people, using the plugin is a much easier option.
Have to be familiar with coding, PHP, FTP, etc.: To do custom coding, you have to be familiar with technologies like PHP, HTML, FTP uploading etc. If you are not familiar with these, you will have to put in a bit of time to learn it.
Changing the theme involves a lot of work.: You will have to port all the changes you made in your old theme to the new theme whenever you decide to move to the a theme. The more you customize a theme, the more time you have to spent when moving to a new theme.

Plugin Killer Series

With this in mind, I have decided to create a series that shows how to ‘kill’ some unnecessary wordpress plugins. You will be able to get the same functionality by using the custom code in your template files.

The first post in this series is already done – it is the ‘Avoid Duplicate Content – Use Canonical URL in WordPress‘ where I showed how to create the same functionality as the Canonical plugin.

More to follow. If you are interested in these posts, make sure you have subscribed to Bin-Blog Feed – if you have not done so already.

WordPress Plugin Week

Binny V A — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 18:24:05 +0000

As my subscribers already know, the week before last was Plugin Week – that’s when I publish one WordPress plugin per day for one week. And I managed to pull it off too – there is a list of all the plugins released on that week…

Eventr Wordpress Plugin: Eventr plugin lets you use your blog as an event management tool. You can create an event – the plugin will let people sign up for the event – it can also show a list of all the attendees. Once the event is done, you can deactivate the event and no more signups will be allowed.
Autofields WordPress Plugin: AutoFields Plugin will auto fill the Excerpt and add an Image custom field based on the data you entered into the contents editor. This plugin will set the first paragraph of the content as the excerpt and take the first image(if there are any) and set it as the ‘Image’ custom field(needed for some themes – like Mimbo – my theme). When you hit the publish button, it will check to make sure that excerpt and Image custom fields are filled. If not, it will ask you to confirm before publishing the post.
Pollin WordPress Plugin: Pollin wordpress plugin will let you add polls to your blog. It can be shown to your visitors who will be able to vote in the poll. You can add the poll in a post by including the HTML comment <!– POLLIN 1 –> in the post. Here 1 is the ID of the poll to be shown.
Surveys WordPress Plugin: The Surveys WordPress plugin lets you add surveys to your blog. You can let the visitors take surveys and see the result from the admin side. The user who take the survey can enter their details at the end of the survey – or leave it as an anonymous result.
Quartz WordPress Plugin: Quartz Plugin lets you show random quotes/tips/links/pictures/something else to visitors. These quotes can be added from the admin side. You can add these one by one – or you can bulk import the stuff from a text file.
Quizzin WordPress Plugin: Quizzin WordPress Plugin lets you add quizzes to your blog. This plugin is designed to be as easy to use as possible. Quizzes, questions and answers can be added from the admin side. This will appear in your post if you add a small HTML comment in your post.

What I Learned

I am helpless without my frameworks

After I releasing a beta version of my plugin, I got some feedback about those. To my great surprise, I found that I was making a lot of novice PHP mistakes – stuff like…

not using escaping/validating user input
not using stripslashes
and more…

Needless to say, it was very embarrassing. In all my other applications, my framework takes care of it automatically. When I am developing outside my framework, I feel like a fish out of water. Now I am slowly adapting to coding without the framework. But it will take more time to get fully used to it.

I still have a lot to learn about WordPress plugin development

I only found out about the deltaSql() function after the plugin week. This is a very useful function if you create a distributable web app(like Nexty). Only problem is that its GPL code – I am not sure if I can use it in my BSD application. Anyway, I found that function when I was trying to release an update to one of the plugins – after the plugin week. There is a lot of stuff I still have to learn about WP plugin development.

Putting strict deadline to write code is not(always) a good thing.

As I said earlier I made a lot of blunders when creating the plugins. One of the main reason was I was too used to my framework. The other reason was the deadline. It forced me to write some code that was not all that great. But then again, the deadline had its advantages too – I would not have written the plugins had I not been forced to do that due to the plugin week. In conclusion, you get quantity – but not quality with deadlines.

Learn a bit of Marketing – even if you are a programmer

I used to scoff at articles like ‘The One Thing Every Software Engineer Should Know [How to market]‘ – but now I understand the rational behind that.

Don’t release plugins just before a new WordPress version is going to be made

I am sure the next wordpress(2.7) will break a few of my plugins. In hindsight, I should have waited until that release was over before doing the plugin week. Because I did the plugin week before the release of WordPress 2.7, I’ll have to do a Plugin Fix Week later – a week when I fix all my plugins for WordPress 2.7 compactability

WordPress suppresses errors by default.

Something to keep in mind if you are developing a plugin – SQL errors are suppressed by default. I sent a lot of time trying to figure out the cause of an error before realizing it was an error in the SQL query. You can turn on SQL errors using the code $wpdb->show_errors();.

Thanks for all your support…

Quite a few people supported my effort by linking to me. This is my way of saying ‘Thank You’…

If I have missed anyone, please add a comment with the link to the post where you talked about plugin week and I’ll add you to the list.

Installing lighttpd Web Server in Linux with PHP and MySQL

Binny V A — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:48:21 +0000

After two articles on installing Apache, lets take a look at installing and configuring lighttpd web server on a linux system. lighttpd (pronounced “lighty”) is a web server designed to be secure, fast, standards-compliant and flexible while having a low memory footprint.

Before installation, a few points to remember. These instruction are not for a production environment – this is for a development environment. To install the software, you need root access. You can get that using this command…

su -
[Enter root password]

or by prefixing ‘sudo‘ before each command.

Installing the Server

First install lighttpd and PHP – use your distro’s package management(yum, apt-get) system to do this.

Install lighttpd

You can use this command in Red Hat based systems(Fedora, Cent OS, etc.) to install lighttpd. Debian/Ubuntu systems might the same package name – could someone post the package name of lighttpd in the comments?

yum install lighttpd lighttpd-fastcgi

Install PHP

If you don’t have PHP, you can install it using the command…

yum install php php-cli php-common

In Debian/Ubuntu systems, the command is…

apt-get install php5-cli php5-common php5-cgi

You can make sure you have php-cgi(needed for working with lighttpd) by running this command…

php-cgi -v

Installing MySQL

If MySQL is not yet installed, use this command to install it…

yum install mysql-server php-mysql mysql mysql-libs

Debian/Ubuntu Command…

apt-get install mysql-client mysql-common mysql-server php5-mysql

Configuring lighttpd

lighttpd configuration is done by editing the text file ‘/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf’.

Enable some lighttpd modules by removing the comment character(#) from the beginning of the line. I have enabled the following modules…

server.modules              = (
                                "mod_rewrite",
                                "mod_redirect",
                                "mod_access",
                                "mod_fastcgi",
                                "mod_accesslog" )

Configure lighttpd’s document root – if you already have Apache, I would recommend using the same document root as Apache(applicable for development servers only).

server.document-root        = "/var/www/"

I find it helpful to enable folder listing in my server.

## virtual directory listings
dir-listing.activate       = "enable"

Turn On FastCGI PHP Support

Now, make sure lighttpd works with PHP – first get the path of php-cgi using the command..

$ whereis php-cgi
php-cgi: /usr/bin/php-cgi #Might be different on your system.

Then add the path to the configuration file of lighttpd…

#### fastcgi module
## read fastcgi.txt for more info
## for PHP don't forget to set cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1 in the php.ini
fastcgi.server             = ( ".php" =>
                               ( "localhost" =>
                                 (
                                   "socket" => "/tmp/php.socket",
                                   "bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi"
                                 )
                               )
                            )

Make sure you uncomment the above lines by removing the ‘#’ characters.

After you are done, save the file. Time to try out the server.

Starting the lighttpd Server

First stop Apache if it is running…

/etc/init.d/httpd stop

Now start lighttpd using the command

/etc/init.d/lighttpd start

Go to your document root(/var/www) and create a php files called ‘info.php’ and put this code inside it…

Info();

Now fire up a browser and go to localhost – you should see a file listing page with a ‘info.php’ in the list. Click on that link – if you see a PHP information page, your web server is setup correctly.

To make sure MySQL-PHP connection is working, install phpMyAdmin – or write a database connection script – whatever is easier for you.

Remote Database Backup WordPress Plugin

Binny V A — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:43:10 +0000

I have released my second WordPress Plugin – Remote Database Backup. Its is based on the WordPress Database Backup plugin. If you are a regular wordpress user, you might be better off using WordPress Database Backup plugin instead of my version. But if you, like me, have a local server on your system and has a copy of your site on the local server as well as the online server, you will find great use for my plugin.

My plugin is designed to make it possible to remotely create and download wordpress database backup in form of SQL dumps. You can then use these dumps to sync the local version of your site with the online version.

Backuping your WordPress Database

Install Remote Database Backup Plugin in WordPress
Login to WordPress site
Go to the Backup Page(Manage > DB Backup)
Create a backup
Download the backup file to your system

Sync With Local Server

And if you have a local version of your site, you can sync it with the online site using the backup file. Just follow these steps…

Extract the backup file(its in the tar.gz format)
Import it into your mysql database.
Make some changes to the database(like set the home url) so that wordpress works locally

Automation Script

You can do all these steps manually – or you can use the automation script I have cooked up. You need PHP installed in your system for this to work(I assume you already have PHP if you have a local version of wordpress).

To use the script, first install the plugin. Then download the script and rename it to ‘backup.php’(the extension must be ‘php’ instead of ‘txt’. Now open it in your favorite editor and change the variables to match your site. You can run it by opening a terminal/command prompt and navigating to that folder and executing the command ‘php backup.php’. This will automatically make a backup and sync it with your local database.

Need Feedback

Let me know how it works for you if you are installing the plugin – its the first release – so I need some feedback.

Compile and Install a LAMP(Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) Server from Source

Binny V A — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:00:07 +0000

In the last post, I described the method to install a LAMP server using apt in debian. But in some occasions, we need the latest build of the software – then we have to install it from source.

Before installation, a few points to remember. These instruction are not for a production environment – this is for a development environment. Some of the commands(the make install commands) need root access. You can get that using this command su - and entering the root password at the prompt.

Installing MySQL 5

Download MySQL source tarballs from MySQL.com. Make sure that you have downloaded the latest releases. At the time of writing this, MySQL 5.0 was the latest. Open a terminal and login as the root user. Extract the source to some folder(say ‘/usr/src/mysql’).

$ mkdir /usr/src/mysql
$ cp mysql-VERSION.tar.gz /usr/src/mysql
$ cd /usr/src/mysql
$ gunzip < mysql-VERSION.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
$ cd mysql-VERSION

For added security we will create a new user called ‘mysql’ and use this user while running MySQL.

$ groupadd mysql
$ useradd -g mysql mysql

Now we will compile and install MySQL – this will take some time.

$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql [add the necessary extra options here]
$ make
$ make install

After installing, we have to configure MySQL.

$ cp support-files/my-medium.cnf /etc/my.cnf
$ cd /usr/local/mysql
$ bin/mysql_install_db --user=mysql
$ chown -R root  .
$ chown -R mysql lib
$ chgrp -R mysql .

Start MySQL

$ bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &

If all goes well, you will be able to connect to the mysql server using some clients like phpMyAdmin or MySQL Frontend. For testing we will use the command line client provided with MySQL. In terminal type…

$ mysql

Now you should see mysql command shell – something like this…

Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 1 to server version: 5.0.21-log

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql<

Here you can run SQL command and see the returned results. Try some out…

SHOW DATABASES;

That’s it – we have installed MySQL. You can start the server using the command

cd /usr/local/mysql ; bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &

If anything went wrong, cry for sometime and then consult the documentation.

Installing Apache 2

Same as in MySQL, download the source from Apache.org. Extract to /usr/src/httpd.

$ mkdir /usr/src/httpd
$ cp httpd-VERSION.tar.gz /usr/src/httpd
$ cd /usr/src/httpd
$ gunzip < httpd-VERSION.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
$ cd httpd-VERSION

Compile and Install…

$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache2 [add extra options here]
$ make
$ make install

The configure command I used is given below – you can change it if you feel like it.

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache2 --enable-mime-magic --enable-expires \
--enable-headers --enable-ssl --enable-http --enable-info --enable-dir \
--enable-rewrite --enable-so

We will hold off configuration of Apache until after the PHP installation.

Installing PHP 5

You know the drill – download PHP 5, extract to /usr/src/php5.

$ mkdir /usr/src/php5
$ cp php-VERSION.tar.gz /usr/src/php5
$ cd /usr/src/php5
$ gunzip < php-VERSION.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
$ cd php-VERSION

Building PHP is a little more complicated than the other two. PHP have a lot of options, and must be customized according to your needs. You can see all the available configurations by running the command ./configure --help. If you require more information about this, take a look at PHP documentation on configure.

My requirements may not match yours – some you have to make your own decisions here. I am providing the most basic configuration for the build…

./configure \
--prefix=/usr/local/php5 \
--with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs \
--with-mysql=shared,/usr/local/mysql [add your options here]

You can add all your configuration to this line. The –with-apxs2 lines tells the installer where to find Apache2 executables and the –with-mysql configuration is the location of the mysql libraries. These two lines are a must.

This is the actual command I used…

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/php5 --with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs \
--with-mysql=shared,/usr/local/mysql --with-zlib --with-gettext --with-gdbm --with-sqlite

Now to install the language…

$ ./configure \
$ --prefix=/usr/local/php5 \
$ --with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs \
$ --with-mysql=shared,/usr/local/mysql [add your options here]
$ make
$ make install

Now copy the php.ini file to the necessary location…

cp php.ini-dist /usr/local/php5/lib

Wonderful! Now we have everything we need – we just have to configure it.

Configuring Apache

The Apache can be configured by editing a single text file. This file is usually located in Apache_folder/conf/httpd.conf. In our case this will be /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf . Open this file in you favorite text editor and change the following lines. Please note that some lines may be different in you apache configuration file – so if you can’t find the line when you search with the full line, try to find the line using just the identifier. For example, if you can’t find the text ‘DocumentRoot "/usr/local/apache2/htdocs"‘ in your httpd.conf file, search for the text ‘DocumentRoot‘.

Configuration Options

You may want to change the document root – replace the line

DocumentRoot "/usr/local/apache2/htdocs"

With

DocumentRoot "/var/www/htdocs" # Or whatever folder you want to set as the document root.

Also change the line

I don’t have to tell you that you can use any directory you want – you don’t have to use ‘/var/www/htdocs’ just because I use it. If you are using another directory, make sure that you change both the above given lines to that directory.

If you want to use .htaccess file to configure different folders, find the line

AllowOverride None

inside the ... tag and change it to

AllowOverride All

Since we are using PHP, and want to use index.php as the default page in a directory, we have to set that configuration option. Find the line

DirectoryIndex index.html index.html.var

and replace it with, say,

DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.html.var

This will make sure that the index.php will be called when you try to access a directory. For example, if you try to access, say, http://localhost/ you will get a file listing. But if you put a file named ‘index.php’ in this folder, the server will open this file when someone accesses ‘http://localhost/’. The order of the names are important. If there is a file called ‘index.php’ and a file called ‘index.html’ in the same folder, the first one(in our case index.php) will be opened.

Now we must associate all files with the extension ‘php’ with the PHP scripts handler. For this find the line

AddHandler type-map var

and add the following line below that line – like this

AddHandler type-map var
AddHandler php5-script	php

Below that there is a AddType section. Add the following line to this section.

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php

Start the Server

You can test your installation by starting your server. Open a terminal and run the following command.

/usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start

Go to your document root(/var/www/htdocs) and create a php file called ‘info.php’ and put this code inside it…

info();

Now open a browser and try to access http://localhost/ – you should see a file listing page with a ‘info.php’ in the list. Click on that link – if you see a PHP information page, your web server is setup correctly.

To make sure MySQL-PHP connection is working, install phpMyAdmin – or write a database connection script – whatever is easier for you.

Bin-Blog » PHP

Plugin Week 2: WordPress Plugin – Weather Man

Weather Man WordPress Plugin

Download Plugin

Installation

Screenshots

Feedback

About Me and Plugin Week

A Tweet This Button for Each Post in WordPress – Without a Plugin

The Code

Twitter

Show Related Post in WordPress Without a Plugin

The Code

Related Posts

WordPress Plugin Killer Series

More Resources

Adding Social Bookmarking Button in WordPress – Without Plugins

The Code

Different Implementations

Show Popular Posts in WordPress – without a plugin

The Code

Getting Comment Count – SQL

Listing The Data – PHP/SQL

Final Output as Links in a List – HTML/PHP/SQL

Popular Posts

WordPress Plugin Killer: The Series

The Advantages

The Disadvantages

Plugin Killer Series

WordPress Plugin Week

What I Learned

I am helpless without my frameworks

I still have a lot to learn about WordPress plugin development

Putting strict deadline to write code is not(always) a good thing.

Learn a bit of Marketing – even if you are a programmer

Don’t release plugins just before a new WordPress version is going to be made

WordPress suppresses errors by default.

Thanks for all your support…

Installing lighttpd Web Server in Linux with PHP and MySQL

Installing the Server

Install lighttpd

Install PHP

Installing MySQL

Configuring lighttpd

Turn On FastCGI PHP Support

Starting the lighttpd Server

Related Links

Remote Database Backup WordPress Plugin

Backuping your WordPress Database

Sync With Local Server

Automation Script

Need Feedback

Compile and Install a LAMP(Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) Server from Source

Installing MySQL 5

Installing Apache 2

Installing PHP 5

Configuring Apache

Configuration Options

Start the Server