Bin-Blog » Web Development

Drupal Plugin: Page Ad

Binny V A — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:00:21 +0000

This is my first Drupal plugin – so I’m not sure how much mistakes I have made in creating this. Page Ad module allows the admin to add advertisement specific to a page. It will create a textarea in the edit/create page of content. Whatever HTML you type into it will be shown in a block anywhere on the client side display of that page.

Download Page Ad

Note: This module is for Drupal 5. I have not tested it in Drupal 6.

Note 2: I will not provide support for this plugin. If you run into any trouble, you are on your own.

Installation

Download and extract the module
Upload the module to sites/all/modules folder of Drupal.
Enable the module from the admin side
Edit the node.tpl.php template file and insert the code where you want the block to show up.
Edit the template.php file and add the code 'page_ad' => t('Page Specific Ad') in the returning array for the regions function.
Go to the block configuration page and set the ‘Page Specific Ad’ block with the ‘Page Specific Ad’ region.

This is a plugin that I created to learn a bit about Drupal. I did this quite a while ago. It may have a lot of error – because I’m not an expert in Drupal. I don’t use it much.

Screenshot

This is how the admin side will look…

Plugin Week 2

This plugin is part of the Plugin Week 2 series. Plugin Week is a week when I publish a new plugin each day for an entire week. I have already one this one time – so this is Plugin Week 2. The plugins released so far…

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

Naked Day – Disabling CSS for the Day

Binny V A — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:30:17 +0000

Keeping with tradition, this site will be baring all on 9th April 2009. If you haven’t heard about Naked day, this should be enlightening…

Where did my Design go?

The idea behind this event is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good ‘ol play on words. It’s time to show off your .

How to participate

Fill out the naked day signup form, then your website will be included in the official list within the next hour.

Then on April 9th, simply remove all CSS from your website, stripping it entirely of its design.

I have been doing this for a few years now…

I know its kinda pointless – since I use a third party wordpress theme – but I still support the movement.

Avoid Duplicate Content – Use Canonical URL in WordPress

Binny V A — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:28:53 +0000

The new talk of the SEO world is ‘Canonical URL‘. What is canonical URL? This is the definition given in Google’s Webmaster Central Blog…

a format that allows you to publicly specify your preferred version of a URL. If your site has identical or vastly similar content that’s accessible through multiple URLs, this format provides you with more control over the URL returned in search results. It also helps to make sure that properties such as link popularity are consolidated to your preferred version.

Emphasis mine

It is very easy to specify the canonical URL of a page – all you have to do is add this line in the head section…

The purpose of this tag is to prevent the problem of duplicate content.

The best thing about this tag is that all three major search engines(Google, Yahoo and MS Live) support this initiative.

WordPress

If you are on wordpress, this tag can be integrated into your theme easily. There is a plugin to do the job for you – but you don’t need a plugin to do something as simple as this.

header.php

Go to the theme folder in wordpress(wp-content/themes/) and open the file header.php in your favorite editor. Now find the line…

and add the following code before that line…

Now, it should look something like this…

That’s it – you are done! Save the file and upload it to your server.

This fix will add the canonical URL tag to all the posts and pages of your blog. If you want to see a blog that have implemented this fix, take a look at the source of this page.

Interactive SQL Tutorial

Binny V A — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:00:44 +0000

I have completed a tutorial that I have been working on for a long time. Its the Interactive SQL(Structured Query Language) Tutorial – it teaches you the basics of SQL. SQL, for those of you who are unaware of it, is the language used to access and manipulate data within a database. It is very simple and very powerful.

Interactive SQL Query Box

The cool thing about the tutorial is that it is interactive – each vistor can have a personal sandboxed database in which they can run any query they want. I call it the interactive query box. You can test almost all the SQL statements in this box without worrying about data loss – all the data is stored temporarily in this system. But you will have to install an extension called Google Gears in your browser.

Google Gears

Google Gears is an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline. You can install it in Firefox and Internet Explorer. If you want to try out SQL queries as it is presented in the tutorial, you need this extension.

You can view the tutorial without this extension, but you will be missing out the coolest feature of the tutorial.

Simple Tutorial

I have tried to make the tutorial as simple as possible. If you have learned about RDBMS, you know there are stuff like Normal Forms and Cardinality and other brain numbing definitions. I have removed all but the most essential definitions in my tutorial – it makes it easier to understand.

Even after removing the confusing definitions, I have apologized about the rest…

Sorry if you find the definitions here a bit too much. Trust me – you are much better off here than if you are learning SQL from a database book. They are going to lay definitions on you till your eyes bleed. I have seen brave men die from too much exposure to definitions.

Its Funny

I have learned a lot of languages and programming techniques by reading books and sites – and one thing I have noticed is that most of the material is unbelievably dry. Its extremely hard to keep your eyes open when you read them. That is why head first books are so popular – they made learning fun.

Its been a policy of mine to inject humor into such tutorials – if you have read any of my earlier tutorials, you would know that…

Also, I am a humor blogger – so this stuff comes easily to me.

What I am trying to say is that the new SQL tutorial follows the same pattern – there is a lot of humor in it. So people can read it easily – without resorting to caffeine shots.

I Want Your Help…

Now that the writing part is over, I am proof-reading it. I have corrected a fair amount of stupid mistakes so far – but I am sure that there are many still left. I was hoping that a few of you would head over to my SQL Tutorial and go through it. If you notice any mistakes, just put it in the comment field at the end of each page. Once I fix an error, I’ll remove the comment – that way, when I launch the tutorial, people will think that there were no errors in my tutorial. Devious, isn’t it?

Mastering phpMyAdmin: A Review

Binny V A — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:12:20 +0000

Some time ago, I was approached by the publisher of the book to write a review of their book ‘Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management by Marc Delisle[Affiliate link]‘. This got a bit delayed because of the plugin week. But I managed to finish the book today – so here is the review. Bottom line – most people are using phpMyAdmin for only the most basic operations(editing data, import, export, etc.). If you are one of them, you don’t need the book – you already know all you need to know about phpMyAdmin. But other(like me) use it for advanced purposes – to manage MySQL, create database/tables, run queries, etc. I would recommend you get this book. It covers everything from basic usage(which is a bit boring and should be skipped over) to advanced stuff(like designer view, configuration options, triggers, innoDB relation options etc.)

Its an interesting book – I found it easily readable if you skip over the basic stuff. If you think you already know what a section is talking about, skip over to the next section – that way, you will not be bored. Because it covers the basics in a fairly comprehensive way(think two screenshots per page(!), most of the things in the book you might already know. But there will be some interesting new tips as well. Some tips I found out by reading the book….

In the phpMyAdmin forms(like say, table creation form or row editing form), you can use the Ctrl+Arrow key combination to move the focus around.
If you create a Query bookmark with the same name as a table, that query will be used when you hit the ‘Browse’ tab.
If you are using a blob to store images within the database, there is a way to show the image(Browser Transformations, Chapter 16) in the browse view.
And more…

These are the chapters you should definitely read – some great tips can be found there…

Chapter 11: Relational System
Chapter 14: Bookmarks
Chapter 16: MIME-Based Transformations
Chapter 18: MySQL 5 Features

This should give you an idea of what to expect…

Preface
Chapter 1: Introducing phpMyAdmin
- PHP and MySQL: The Leading Open-Source Duo
- What is phpMyAdmin?
- History
- Awards
- phpMyAdmin Features Summary
- Summary
Chapter 2: Installing phpMyAdmin
- System Requirements
- Downloading the Files
- Installation
- First Connection Configuration
- Multi-Server Configuration
- Advanced Authentication
- Security
- Upgrading phpMyAdmin
- Summary
Chapter 3: Interface Overview
- Panels and Windows
- Language Selection
- Themes
- Left Panel
- Right Panel
- Query Window
- Site-Specific Header and Footer
- MySQL Documentation Links
- Summary
Chapter 4: First Steps
- Database Creation
- Creating Our First Table
- Manual Data Insertion
- Browse Mode
- Creating an Additional Table
- Summary
Chapter 5: Changing Data
- Edit Mode
- Multi-Row Editing
- Editing the Next Row
- Deleting Data
- Deleting Tables
- Deleting Databases
- Summary
Chapter 6: Changing Table Structures
- Adding a Field
- Editing Field Attributes
- TEXT
- BLOB (Binary Large Object) Fields
- ENUM and SET
- DATE, DATETIME, and TIMESTAMP
- Bit
- Index Management
- Summary
Chapter 7: Exporting Structure and Data
- Dumps, Backups, and Exports
- Database Exports
- Table Exports
- Selective Exports
- Multi-Database Exports
- Saving the Export File on the Server
- Memory Limits
- Summary
Chapter 8: Importing Structure and Data
- Limits for the Transfer
- Importing SQL Files
- Importing CSV Files
- Web Server Upload Directories
- Summary
Chapter 9: Searching Data
- Single-Table Searches
- Complete Database Search
- Summary
Chapter 10: Table and Database Operations
- Table Maintenance
- Changing Table Attributes
- Renaming, Moving, and Copying Tables
- Multi-Table Operations
- Database Operations
- Summary
Chapter 11: The Relational System
- Relational MySQL?
- Linked-Tables Infrastructure
- Defining Relations with the Relation View
- Defining Relations with the Designer
- Benefits of the Defined Relations
- Column-Commenting
- Summary
Chapter 12: Entering SQL Commands
- The SQL Query Box
- The Query Window
- Multi-Statement Queries
- Pretty Printing (Syntax-Highlighting)
- The SQL Validator
- Summary
Chapter 13: The Multi-Table Query Generator
- Choosing Tables
- Column Criteria
- Automatic Joins
- Executing the Query
- Summary
Chapter 14: Bookmarks
- Creating a Bookmark after a Successful Query
- Storing a Bookmark before Sending a Query
- Multi-Query Bookmarks
- Recalling from the Bookmarks List
- Public Bookmarks
- The Default Initial Query for a Table
- Bookmark Parameters
- Executing Bookmarks by Browsing the pma_bookmark Table
- Summary
Chapter 15: System Documentation
- The Database Print View
- The Selective Database Print View
- The Table Print View
- The Data Dictionary
- Relational Schema in PDF
- Summary
Chapter 16: MIME-Based Transformations
- The MIME Column’s Settings
- Requirements for Image Generation
- Examples of Transformations
- Summary
Chapter 17: Character Sets and Collations
- Language Files and UTF-8
- Versions of MySQL Prior to 4.1.x
- MySQL 4.1.x and Later
- Kanji Support
- Summary
Chapter 18: MySQL 5.0 Features
- Observations on the History of MySQL 5.
- Views
- Routines: Stored Procedures and Functions
- Triggers
- Information_schema
- Profiling
- Summary
Chapter 19: MySQL Server Administration
- Entering the Server View
- Database Information
- Server Operations
- Summary
Chapter 20: Troubleshooting and Support
- System Requirements
- Base Configuration
- Solving Common Errors
- Seeking Support
- Contributing to the Project
- Future phpMyAdmin Versions
- Summary
- Index
A final advice before leaving – buy the dead tree edition if possible. The ebook(PDF) has DRM which makes it very hard to read. You have to enter the password every single time you open the file. Its really annoying after a while.

My Other phpMyAdmin Posts
- Installing phpMyAdmin 2.8
- phpMyAdmin Tips and Tricks – Database Backup and Restore
- Installing and Configuring phpMyAdmin
- Managing Databases with MySQL Clients – phpMyAdmin
Related Links
- Sample Chapter: Table and Database Operations
- Mastering phpMyAdmin Book Details
- review: Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management
- Book review: “Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management” by Marc Delisle

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.

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.

Installing LAMP(Apache Web Server/PHP/MySQL) in Debian/Ubuntu

Binny V A — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:10:07 +0000

Installing the LAMP environment on a Linux system is easy if you are comfortable with using the native package management software. If you on a Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS system, that will be yum – and for Debian/Ubuntu systems, that will be apt. This tutorial shows you how to install Apache 2, PHP 5 and MySQL 5 in Debian using apt.

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]

Installing Apache 2

Use this command to install Apache 2.

apt-get install apache2

Make sure you specify ‘apache2′ – or else, apache 1.3 will be installed.

Install PHP 5

Now, install the PHP 5 packages…

apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5 php5-cli php5-common php5-cgi

No go to the folder /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ and edit the file in that directory(usually 000-default). Find the line that says
RedirectMatch ^/$ /apache2-default/
and remove it.

Now your document root is /var/www/ – place all your HTML documents and scripts in this folder. If you want to make some other configuration changes, edit the configuration files at /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

I also had to make the following changes…

Changed the owner of /var/log/apache2 to www-data – I used the command chown www-data:www-data apache2
Created an empty file at /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

This was to fix a few errors I saw on my system – you may not have to do it.

Install MySQL

This is the command to install MySQL server, its client and PHP’s MySQL libraries…

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

Finally, Install the other packages you need as well

apt-get install php5-sqlite php5-gd ...

Testing the System

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

info();

Start the Servers

First, turn on the MySQL database server…

/etc/init.d/mysql start

Then, start the Apache Web Server…

/etc/init.d/apache2 start

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.

10 Principals of PHP Development

Binny V A — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:04:53 +0000

Are you a PHP developer? Go read the article ‘10 Principles of the PHP Masters‘. Do you want to learn PHP? Go read it.

With PHP’s widespread adoption,it’s almost too easy to find a script or snippet to do exactly what you need. Unfortunately, there’s no filter as to what is a “good practice” and what’s, well… not so good when writing a PHP script. We need trustworthy sources, who have proven they have a solid grasp on the best practices of PHP.

Use PHP Only When You Need it

Rasmus Lerdorf

PHP was designed for Web Development – and its very good at it. Just because you can use it to create desktop apps don’t mean that you have to.

Use Many Tables With PHP and MYSQL for Scalability

Matt Mullenweg

This advice comes from a rather controversial database design choice he made when creating WordPress MU. It created separate tables for each blog rather than the usual method.

Never, ever trust your users

Dave Child

Validate everything that comes from the user. Yeah, I know its boring – but it must be done.

Invest in PHP Caching

Ben Balbo

Caching is very important if you have a busy site.

Speed up PHP Development with an IDE, Templates and Snippets

Chad Kieffer

I find it a bit hard to support this. Yeah IDEs speed up development – a small bit. About Snippets – use them if you trust the source.

But if you really want to speed up development,

Use a framework(coming up later)
Invest in code generation.

Make Better Use of PHP’s Filter Functions

Joey Sochacki

This is actually new to me – but I am going to try this out.

Filtering data. We all have to do it. Most, if not all of us, despise doing it. However, unbeknown to most are PHP’s filter_* functions, that allow us to do all sorts of filtering and validation. Using PHP’s filter_* functions, we can validate and sanitize data types, URLs, e-mail addresses, IP addresses, strip bad characters, and more, all with relative ease.

Use a PHP Framework

Josh Sharp

This is one thing that really speed up development. Also, the programmers that have to maintain your programs will thank you for it.

Don’t use a PHP Framework

Rasmus Lerdorf

The basic argument is that Frameworks slow things down. Keep that in mind when your choosing a framework.

Use Batch Processing

Jack D. Herrington

This refers to the tasks that can processed in the background – Herrington recommends using batch processing and cron here. As most of you are aware, PHP don’t have threads – and it don’t matter to me. You don’t use threads when serving a web page. But in cases like these, threads come in handy.

My advice? Use Python or some other language that has threads to do do the job for you – you don’t have to do everything in PHP.

Turn on Error Reporting Immediately

David Cummings

This is very important when developing the app – error reporting lets you find future bugs. Make sure they are on.

And just as important is the fact that you should turn them off in the production system – you don’t want your users seeing your error messages.

Nexty.org Launched

Binny V A — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:59:33 +0000

Nexty is an easy to use To Do list manager created using GTD principles. The core idea behind this software is simplicity. I wanted to make a GTD tool that is the most easy to use. So far, I have released this two times – first when Nexty was created – and then when it was available as a online service. Now, I am giving Nexty its own domain.

Features

Some features that make nexty special…

Easy to Use: Using Nexty is very simple – you can start using it without any trouble
FREE!: Its ‘gratis’ – you don’t have to pay to use it.
Open Source: Its ‘libera’. Since Nexty is published under the BSD License, you can download and modify the code to fit your need.
Calendar: See all your tasks, reminders and due dates in one centralized location.
Next Actions: Focus on one single task at a time using this feature.
Search: For Projects, Tasks and Reminders that you have created.
And the Usual Stuff…: Nexty has everything you would expect in a GTD system – Projects, Contexts, Reminders – you know – the works.

Free Software

If you are using Nexty as a locally installed application, there is no need to worry – the source is available for download – and its still in the BSD license. That will not change.

But if you are looking for a free online GTD tool, try Nexty.

Support

Further development details and announcements of Nexty will appear on its own development blog.

If you need any support for using Nexty, post a query on the Nexty Support Forum.

You can also post your suggestions there as well.

Publicity

I am trying to get some publicity for Nexty and its launch – if anyone has any suggestions about this, your comments are welcome.

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Nexty.org Launched

Features

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Publicity