Wow! Has it already been nearly a week since ZendCon wrapped up?! Time is flying right now, and with IPC and the holidays right around the corner, I don't see it getting any less hectic. ZendCon was fun. This was my first time attending/presenting this particular conference. It had a distinctly different feel too it than the conferences put on by Marco and company. ZC felt more corporate than tek does, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. We tend to forget that if it weren't for the business interests at play none of us would have jobs. I made it to only a handful of talks, but everything…
PHP
-
Travis Swicegood
-
Recap of ZendCon 09
29 Oct 2009 | 1:02 pm -
Lawrence Programmers Hack Nights
18 Oct 2009 | 9:29 pmSo I've been kicking around the idea of starting a hacking night/weekend type thing. I think it'd be a blast to take one evening or afternoon a month or maybe even ever week, commit to a particular project and get a bunch of people in the same room and hack on it. We do a lot of yacking at LPDN, this would be an opportunity to do a lot of coding. Ya know, less bitching, more fixing. There's a couple of possible formats. I'm curious to get some feedback. What do you think would be more fun? First, we pitch around a few ideas over at Lawrence Programmers, come up with some new library or… -
John Deere and iPhones
18 Oct 2009 | 7:56 pmOn Twitter the other day, I said: I think I might be the first person in history to use John Deer and the iPhone together in the same sentence to illustrate a point. Yeah, I know, there's a typo there; but I fixed it in the title, that counts for something, right? Anyhow, I thought it would do to explain what I meant. I read How you know a phone is rubbish the other day talking about the difference between iPhone ads and everything else. The gist: iPhone ads show you an iPhone, Pre, Blackberry, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum, show you what your life will be like if you purchase their phone. -
My Productivity Hack: 4 hour work day and GTD
10 Oct 2009 | 9:48 amProductivity has been one of my biggest challenges. Well, let me rephrase. Consistently producing extremely productive days has been one of my biggest challenges. I'm an overachiever and since that came naturally, I've never had to be scientific about getting things done. Until lately, at least. Photo by rintakumpu The last few years, I've noticed its become harder and harder stay on track. Twitter, IRC, Digg, Email, IM, Facebook, etc., etc., ad infinitum, are always competing for my attention, and when they're all a keystroke away, it becomes too easy to check it "just this once"... again. -
My run in with American Airlines at Code Works SFO -> LAX
24 Sep 2009 | 12:59 pmMe: "I see why he left. Go inside the next time you check in." So much for friendly skies. #americanairlines Jeffery Carouth: What did you do? Started to respond on Facebook, but ran into their limit, so I'm responding on my blog... Went to take my boarding pass that he was handing to me, then snapped that back at me. Let me back up with the context. I was standing in line at the curbside checkin with everyone else from CodeWorks '09. The guy who's line I'm standing in takes a bag back to the conveyor, then disappears through another door. I'm standing around looking dumbfounded while the…
-
WordPress Development Blog
-
Bug Hunt in Progress!
6 Nov 2009 | 4:50 pmJust in case anyone forgot, the first of the November bug hunts for version 2.9 is now in progress, and will last another day. If you’ve got a dev environment set up, please consider pitching in to run some tests and help get us closer to the 2.9 milestone release. -
Upcoming WordCamps
5 Nov 2009 | 6:42 pmThere are six WordCamps coming up before the end of the year, and since I like to make sure people know about it when there’s a WordCamp near them, here’s the list, with some personal commentary thrown in. If you just want the list without my asides, check out the full schedule at WordCamp.org. WordCamp Phoenix is first up, on November 13. I’d planned on attending this one myself before they changed the date (it was originally scheduled for the 7th), but will sadly have to miss it as it conflicts with WordCamp NYC. If you, like me, can’t make it to Phoenix, be sure to… -
Upcoming Bug Hunts!
31 Oct 2009 | 2:28 pmAs we near completion of the 2.9 milestone, it’s that time of dev cycle again, when we ask all you community developers who’ve been putting off contributing to core to dust off your dev environments and help us get closer to being release-ready. How? Bug hunts! Yes, that time-honored tradition (in the time of WordPress, anyway) of everyone pitching in to test patches and report the results, working on solutions to major bugs, and helping to clear out Trac has come around again, and we’re scheduling not one, but two bug hunts over the next couple of weeks to ensure that… -
Plugin Compatibility Beta
28 Oct 2009 | 5:11 amThe number one reason people give us for not upgrading to the latest version of WordPress is fear that their plugins won’t be compatible. As part of our continuing efforts to make WordPress core, plugin, and theme upgrades as painless as possible, Michael Adams developed and launched a beta of a new “Compatibility” feature in the plugin directory, powered by your votes. When viewing a plugin in the directory, select a WordPress version and a plugin version from the drop-downs. If there has been feedback about this WordPress / plugin version combination, we’ll show you… -
WordPress 2.8.5: Hardening Release
20 Oct 2009 | 4:30 pmAs you know over the past couple of months we have been working on the new features for WordPress 2.9. We have also been working on trying to make WordPress as secure as possible and during this process we have identified a number of security hardening changes that we thought were worth back-porting to the 2.8 branch so as to get these improvements out there and make all your sites as secure as possible. The headline changes in this release are: A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen. Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was…
-
Joomla Announcements
-
Joomla 1.5.15 Released
3 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmThe Joomla Project announces the immediate availability of Joomla 1.5.15 [Wojmamni ama mamni]. It has been three months since Joomla 1.5.14 was released on July 30, 2009. The Development Working Group's goal is to continue to provide regular, frequent updates to the Joomla community. Download Click here to download Joomla 1.5.15 (Full package) » Click here to find an update package. » Instructions New installation and technical requirements Upgrade from an existing Joomla 1.5 version Migration from Joomla! 1.0.x Want to test drive Joomla? Try the online demo or the Joomla JumpBox. -
Vote for Joomla!
4 Oct 2009 | 3:33 pmJoomla! is a finalist in the "Hall of Fame" and "Best Open Source PHP CMS" Awards sponsored by Packt Publishing. We'd encourage all Joomla! fans to vote for Joomla for both awards. With the exciting news about the implementation of Access Control Lists (ACL) in Joomla 1.6 and the incredible growth of all parts of the Joomla Project, now is a time to celebrate the great successes of this community. Over 1000 sites in the Site Showcase, 3500 extensions in the JED, 150 Resources in the JRD and almost 13 million downloads, what a great set of accomplishments by everyone in the Joomla community. -
Nominate Joomla!
10 Aug 2009 | 6:17 amThe 4th Annual Open Source CMS Awards sponsored by Packt Publishing is open for nominations Joomla is eligible for Best PHP Open Source CMS and you can also nominate project contributors such as Open Source MVPs. The nominations are open until September 11. Voting among the top five nominees will begin on September 18. Joomla, along with Drupal, is already a nominee in the new Hall of Fame category. This category will have sub-category awards for Best Extensions and Themes. These will be nominated by the CMS's representatives. Watch the community blogs for more information. This has been a… -
Joomla 1.5.14 Released
29 Jul 2009 | 5:00 pmThe Joomla Project announces the immediate availability of Joomla 1.5.14 [Wojmamni ama naiki]. This release contains fixes for two material bugs that were introduced in version 1.5.13 and one low level security issue. Instead of waiting for a normal 6 to 8-week release cycle, this release is being made available to users now. It has been eight days since Joomla 1.5.13 was released on July 22, 2009. The Development Working Group's goal is to continue to provide regular, frequent updates to the Joomla community. Download Click here to download Joomla 1.5.14 (Full package) » Click here to find… -
Joomla 1.5.13 Security Release Now Available
22 Jul 2009 | 9:46 amThe Joomla Project announces the immediate availability of Joomla 1.5.13 [Wojmamni ama baji]. This is a security release and users are strongly encouraged to upgrade immediately. This release contains 26 bug fixes, one high-level security fix and one moderate-level security fix. It has been 3 weeks since Joomla 1.5.12 was released on July 1, 2009. The Development Working Group's goal is to continue to provide regular, frequent updates to the Joomla community. Download Click here to download Joomla 1.5.13 (Full package) » Click here to find an update package. » Instructions New installation…
-
drupal.org
-
France 24 migrates to Drupal 6, codebase to be open-sourced
5 Nov 2009 | 5:26 amFrance 24 is a public 24/7 international news channel broadcast in three languages: French, English and Arabic. Its mission is to cover international current events from a French perspective and to convey French values throughout the world. The channel provides keys to understanding complex events through in-depth analysis. France 24 also puts culture at the forefront of its programming. France24 is part of the AEF (the "Audiovisuel Extérieur de la France" or French foreign media), along with RFI (a radio station) and TV5 (a TV station). Launched in December, 2006, the website was originally… -
Drupal 7 code freeze: status update and next steps
30 Oct 2009 | 12:35 pmIt was a close race to the finish -- or rather the beginning -- of the Drupal 7 code freeze process a couple of weeks ago. Now that we're in the middle of the code freeze, I wanted to update everyone on the current status of the freeze, and provide some guidance about where we go from here. First and foremost, I know that both Angie (my Drupal 7 co-maintainer) and I want to express how excited we are about how everyone really pulled together as a team at the end, and who, by working together, got a lot of great stuff in before the deadline for the "code slush" passed. Of the exceptions we had… -
Do It With Drupal 2009
26 Oct 2009 | 9:08 amLullabot is pleased to announce the second annual Do It With Drupal Seminar. This 3-day event is focused on the configuration, architecture, and processes behind building successful Drupal websites and communities. The event is geared at attendees with a wide range of Drupal experience. For new site-builders and decision-makers, DIWD will offer a great introduction to Drupal and the Drupal community. For more experienced Drupalers, DIWD will offer a great chance to pick up tips and tricks straight from the module developers themselves and a chance to connect and socialize with other Drupal… -
GoTwitr - Twitter Automation Site Built with Drupal
22 Oct 2009 | 7:54 amWhether it's for pleasure or business, or both, Twitter automation is a must for anyone who wants to use Twitter effectively. GoTwitr is a new site whose primary goal is to make it easy for people to grow and manage their Twitter communities. It’s also a tool to help new Twitter users get started quickly and easily. GoTwitr’s unique invitation model makes it extremely easy for any Twitter user to get his friends and family connected to Twitter. GoTwitr uses a unique new concept to deliver quality followers, and promote you to other twitter users that share common interests and passions. -
New Book! Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization
20 Oct 2009 | 5:20 pmDrupal 6 Search Engine Optimization is a new Drupal book authored by Ben Finklea and published by Packt Publishing. It’s a practical, step-by-step guide that takes the mystery out of Drupal search engine optimization (SEO) by showing you the tricks of today's top marketing pros to achieve top ranking in the search engines. Packt Publishing is generously offering a 15% discount to any Drupal.org readers. To purchase Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization with this discount, visit www.packtpub.com/drupal-6-search-engine-optimization-seo/book and provide the code DrupalSEO15 (case sensitive) at…
-
php|architect News
-
The php|architect Podcast Episode #5: Skyrockets in Flight
Coming to you from the beautiful, sunny, hot and apparently very noisy American Airlines Training Centre in Dallas, TX, this week's episode features Marco Tabini, Elizabeth Naramore, Josh Holmes from Microsoft, Cal Evans and somebody's GSM tk… tk… tk… cell phone. -
Andrei Zmievski Comes to CodeWorks
CodeWorks 09 has successfully kicked off, and we'd like to announce that Andrei Zmievski will be joining us in the latter part of the tour! Andrei brings his vast PHP expertise to the CW schedule, and is an important addition to our lineup. Andrei will be at the Atlanta, Miami, Washington and NYC locations. We're glad to have you aboard, Andrei! -
php|architect Podcast Episode 3: Microphones in Bloom
Another Monday—and another episode of our beloved podcast (ok, the podcast comes out every other Monday, but that's going to change soon). In this installment: training your employees, contributing to open-source projects on a (smart) employer's dime, and writing as a means to improve your coding abilities. -
The php|architect Podcast Episode #2: Is This Too Loud?
In this episode, host Marco and guests Cal Evans, Elizabeth Naramore, Keith Casey, Sean Coates and Beth Tucker Long discover that Skype notifications do not turn themselves off. Oh, and they talk about PHP a bit. -
Announcing the August 2009 issue of php|architect
This month's issue will focus on non-relational Databases—learn this interesting alternative and distinct advantage of databases such as SimpleDB and CouchDB . We have articles on Regex, the Doctrine ORM, the architecture of Adminer, and much more.
-
php|architect News
-
The php|architect Podcast Episode #5: Skyrockets in Flight
Coming to you from the beautiful, sunny, hot and apparently very noisy American Airlines Training Centre in Dallas, TX, this week's episode features Marco Tabini, Elizabeth Naramore, Josh Holmes from Microsoft, Cal Evans and somebody's GSM tk… tk… tk… cell phone. -
Andrei Zmievski Comes to CodeWorks
CodeWorks 09 has successfully kicked off, and we'd like to announce that Andrei Zmievski will be joining us in the latter part of the tour! Andrei brings his vast PHP expertise to the CW schedule, and is an important addition to our lineup. Andrei will be at the Atlanta, Miami, Washington and NYC locations. We're glad to have you aboard, Andrei! -
php|architect Podcast Episode 3: Microphones in Bloom
Another Monday—and another episode of our beloved podcast (ok, the podcast comes out every other Monday, but that's going to change soon). In this installment: training your employees, contributing to open-source projects on a (smart) employer's dime, and writing as a means to improve your coding abilities. -
The php|architect Podcast Episode #2: Is This Too Loud?
In this episode, host Marco and guests Cal Evans, Elizabeth Naramore, Keith Casey, Sean Coates and Beth Tucker Long discover that Skype notifications do not turn themselves off. Oh, and they talk about PHP a bit. -
Announcing the August 2009 issue of php|architect
This month's issue will focus on non-relational Databases—learn this interesting alternative and distinct advantage of databases such as SimpleDB and CouchDB . We have articles on Regex, the Doctrine ORM, the architecture of Adminer, and much more.
-
Planet PHP
-
Alternative Term Weighting - Ian Barber
6 Nov 2009 | 1:50 pmThe term weighting and ranking function is at the core of any information retrieval system. The vector space model with the cosine similarity is maybe the best known and most widely used, but there are plenty of alternatives. We're looking at two here, the BM25 function based around a probabilistic model, and a function based around language modeling. Just to get something to work with we'll we'll build a quick index on some strings which will stand in for our documents - for a real world usage this structure would be too simple, but it provides the bits the ranking functions need. We build a… -
Facebook, MySpace, and crossdomain.xml - Chris Shiflett
6 Nov 2009 | 8:29 amThanks to the recent recurrence of a vulnerability I wrote about a few years ago and a gentle prod from Simon, I decided it would be good to write about the dangers of cross-domain Ajax with Flash again. If you read about this story on TechCrunch, note that the "write up explaining all the details" is about an unrelated vulnerability. I'll try to briefly explain the problem and then show how it relates to Facebook and MySpace. For more background information, please refer to these prior posts: Cross-Domain Ajax Insecurity, which discusses why true cross-domain Ajax is a bad idea, despite many… -
The Joel Test Redux: web2project - Keith Casey
6 Nov 2009 | 8:05 amIn the last few months or so, it appears the PHP Community has finally found the Joel Test. Lorna Jane spoke about it last month at PHPNW 09 and this week Brandon Savage adapted it for web development. While I'd love to point out the fact that I've been writing about the Joel Test for years and even have the "Joel On Software" book on the required reading list for Blue Parabola staff... but I digress... While all the rules are important in some way, there's one we've taken to heart recently within web2project: Can you make a shippable version of your software in one step? Previously, to… -
Updated Optimizing PHP Article - John Lim (PHP Everywhere - By John Lim)
5 Nov 2009 | 11:52 pmI have just updated my popular Optimizing PHP article with additional information on caching. I discuss memcache and squid. I also updated the PHP Accelerators and changed the tone of some parts of the article. I quote: Perhaps the most significant change to PHP performance I have experienced since I first wrote this article is my use of Squid, a web accelerator that is able to take over the management of all static http files from Apache. You may be surprised to find that the overhead of using Apache to serve both dynamic PHP and static images, javascript, css, html is extremely high. From… -
Why Every Developer Should Write Their Own Framework - Brandon Savage
5 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pmLots of people have the itch to write their own frameworks. They think that they can do better than Zend, Cake, Symfony, or application-level frameworks like Drupal. They’re convinced that those designers and developers made fatal flaws, and they can improve upon them. They’re just itching to give it a shot. So for those of you wanting to write your own frameworks, feel free. But don’t even think about putting it in production until you’ve read this blog post. Lots of times new developers are shot down from writing their own frameworks by bosses or community members who insist that…
-
PHP.net news & announcements
-
PHP UK Conference 2010 Call For Papers
30 Oct 2009 | 6:19 amThe main focus of the PHP UK conference is obviously the talks that are given, and so we hope to attract the best PHP speakers from around the world. We are looking for talks relating to any non-basic aspect of the PHP programming language, be it mainstream, advanced, niche or non-technical. Speakers will be invited to the pre-conference dinner, likely to be on Thursday February 25th 2010 and the post-conference social dinner after the event. The deadline for this call for papers is the end of Saturday 31st October 2009. -
International PHP Conference
21 Oct 2009 | 11:15 amWith its mixture of topics the International PHP Conference provides an ideal resource for all professionals and their successful daily routine within the whole PHP spectrum. Insights into current Web 2.0 technologies, Security, Best Practices for tools and components, Enterprise know-how, databases, architectures and more are presented at the International PHP Conference 2009. More than 30 Experts explain current trends and demonstrate how to make the most of your code and your business. They will answer your questions not only in the 40+ sessions and panel discussions but also during… -
PHP World Kongress
1 Oct 2009 | 12:19 pmOn 24th and 25th of November you should not miss the lectures of the top speakers of the PHP Industry on Professional Software Development with PHP at Munich Conference Center. 10 international speakers offer you more than 20 hours of knowledge transfer in the topics "Development", "Tools & Technologies", "PHP 5 Certification", "TYPO3 Certification", "Search Engine Optimization" and "Design Patterns with PHP" on two days. On November 24th, Pierre Joye from the PHP core team under Windows opens the congress with his keynote… -
Call for speaker ConFoo 2010
29 Sep 2009 | 10:20 amPHP Quebec, Montreal-Python, Ruby Montreal, W3Qc, and OWASP Montreal are organizing the first edition of the ConFoo.ca conference for Web technologies, which will be held in Montreal on March 10th through 12th, at the prestigious Hilton Bonaventure Hotel. We are looking for the best international speakers willing to share their experience and skills with programmers, managers and marketers. The conference is divided into two parts: A technical part, encompassing different aspects of Web development: PHP, Python, Ruby, security, CMSs and frameworks, databases, systems administration, Web… -
PHP Barcelona Conference 2009
28 Sep 2009 | 12:27 pmThe PHP Barcelona User Group is proud to announce that the PHP Barcelona Conference 2009 is here, and it is arriving bigger than ever! Two days, three parallel tracks of talks and workshops, and some of the biggest names and companies in the industry covering the hottest subjects to date. Come to Barcelona (Citilab) to see Rasmus Lerdorf, Fabien Potencier, Derick Rethans, Sebastian Bergmann and many more open the hood and expose the secrets of PHP and PHP related technologies that make the Internet what it is today, and that power what the Internet will be tomorrow. Discover the newest…
-
PHPBuilder.com New Articles
-
PHP Development: Getting Started
It's been a few years since I echo'd my first HELLO WORLD script. PHP has developed and evolved and ... -
A Look Into Web Services
When I first started working on the web and developing websites, the Web Service was a new concept t ... -
PHP Filters: An Important Security Feature
You may have noticed that I have mentioned in one of my previous articles that PHP's biggest weaknes ... -
Aptana Studio Professional 1.5, a Complete Developer's Toolbox
I'd read some articles and news items about Aptana Studio Pro, and after reading that it was not onl ... -
Session Security
Sessions are a very complicated part of PHP, and it is no surprise that the smarter website attacks ...
-
Latest PHP Classes blog posts
-
Get early access to the new site features
29 Oct 2009 | 6:23 amGet early access to the new site features By Manuel Lemos The PHPClasses site is launching a new initiative to let every user know in advance about new features that are being implemented. This article explains how you can keep up with latest features and even influence their implementation. -
Improved site search for every user
21 Oct 2009 | 2:21 amImproved site search for every user By Manuel Lemos The site search pages have been improved, so every site user can benefit of a better way to search the site content. The internal search engine, that until now was only available to premium subscribers, has been made available to all users. Among other benefits, the search results will appear split in different tabs according to the section of the site that they belong, thus making it easier to find the kind of content you are looking for. This article explains which are all the benefits that every user will have access from now on. -
Submit your site redesign proposal for the contest
13 Oct 2009 | 8:47 pmSubmit your site redesign proposal for the contest By Manuel Lemos The PHPClasses site is accepting new site redesign proposals now. In this phase, candidates may create design themes using a visual editor. Then they can submit the design theme proposal when they are done. This article gives more detail of how the visual editor and the proposal system work. -
New approach to generate PDF using PHP with Zend Framework
8 Oct 2009 | 1:36 amNew approach to generate PDF using PHP with Zend Framework By Jonathan Maron LiveDocx is a Zend Framework package that implements a new approach to generate PDF documents in PHP. It combines structured data passed by a PHP script with a template created in a word processor. It is the same concept as mail merge. The resulting document can be saved as a PDF, as well in other formats such as DOCX, DOC or RTF file. -
Microsoft promotes the careers of PHP professionals
30 Sep 2009 | 3:43 amMicrosoft promotes the careers of PHP professionals By Manuel Lemos Microsoft is launching a new initiative to promote the careers of PHP professionals. This article presents an interview with a Microsoft manager to explain in more details what is this initiative and how the PHP professionals may take advantage of it.
-
blog.phpdeveloper.org
-
The Myth of “Good Code”
31 Oct 2009 | 9:19 pmThere’s an interesting dichotomy in software development – anyone wh has spent any amount of time in the field knows it all too well. There comes a point in every project where you have to make a choice – good code or fast code. Sure, you’ll get those “sweet spot” projects that’ll let you work on the “good code” side of things for as long as you’ll need (maybe a personal project?) but more often than not, you’re going to fall on the “fast code” side of the line. It’s sad, really it is. Every good developer… -
Having Companies Involved in PHP (why not?)
28 Oct 2009 | 4:53 amAfter this year’s ZendCon, there’s a question that’s been sitting in the back of my mind, bugging me to come up with a good answer – what role should companies take in the developer community ecosystem? The problem with the question is simple, though, because no two user group situations are the same. I’ve heard things from both ends of the spectrum on this one. Some groups prefer to keep the companies away from their groups and rely on the support of those that make it up (much like a lot of the general PHP community) and there’s others that swing far to… -
Outside the Bubble
16 Oct 2009 | 12:33 pmSo, given some of the comments from my previous post on conferences (and what they are/aren’t) I felt like I’d lost a bit of my “conference roots”. I’ve been to enough of them that my perception is, almost definitely, skewed in favor of the group of folks like me – the ones that seem to be making a career out of attending as many conferences as possible. We all know each other and we all have our own little bubble we float around in at most conferences. There’s comfort there, but there’s also one large problem – the bubble isn’t big… -
It’s not a conference…
15 Oct 2009 | 7:24 pmAs I sit here and prepare my liver for the onslaught coming next week (ZendCon, of course), I can’t help but think about those folks that’ll be attending the conference. I’ve been trying to think back to the first time I went to a PHP conference (php|tropics represent) and how I felt walking about with the people I’d only knew by name from books, blogs and articles I’d read. I was actually sitting there learning from *the* Wez Furlong and was there with *the* Andrei Zmievski learning about PHP and it was amazing and thought provoking and I felt like I could write… -
Complacent Developers Suck
2 Oct 2009 | 8:32 pmWe’ve all been there – we’ve reached the top of our current skills. We’ve met every expectation and conqured every issue in front of us. We are masters of our domain and no problem seems too difficult. This is the worst position you can be in. No really, trust me on this one. As soon as you become complacent in your practices, you’re doing something wrong. One of the key things that separates great developers from good developers is their capacity to learn. Good developers will learn how to do something and know it well. They’ll be content in their…
-
Chris Shiflett
-
Facebook, MySpace, and crossdomain.xml
6 Nov 2009 | 8:29 amThanks to the recent recurrence of a vulnerability I wrote about a few years ago and a gentle prod from Simon, I decided it would be good to write about the dangers of cross-domain Ajax with Flash again. If you read about this story on TechCrunch, note that the "write up explaining all the details" is about an unrelated vulnerability. I'll try to briefly explain the problem and then show how it relates to Facebook and MySpace. For more background information, please refer to these prior posts: Cross-Domain Ajax Insecurity, which discusses why true cross-domain Ajax is a bad idea, despite many… -
Git on Snow Leopard
2 Nov 2009 | 5:31 amI've had a GitHub account for months, but I've yet to use it. After I mentionined on Twitter that I might start using it, the response was very positive. People really love Git and GitHub both. Unsurprisingly, my Mac didn't already have git. (It's not part of the developer tools either.) GitHub has a nice help page on installing it, including one specifically on compiling from source. I chose the latter. GitHub's help page on compiling from source is thorough enough to make it seem complicated. To show just how simple it is, here's exactly what I did: curl -O… -
Learning HTML and CSS
26 Oct 2009 | 1:58 pmI've been a web developer for a decade and a half. I've learned a lot along the way, and I'm comfortable with a lot of web-related technologies. But, I'm not very good at HTML and CSS, and I've decided it's time to do something about that. I'm learning HTML and CSS. When I ran my first marathon, I read a book called the Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer. One of the first few chapters explains that you should choose a marathon and tell everyone you know you're running it. This helps motivate you, because you feel as if you've made a promise. You're on the hook. I'm putting myself on the hook. Now… -
CodeWorks and Beer (Table)
18 Oct 2009 | 7:11 pmBy all accounts, CodeWorks — a touring conference produced by the same people who publish php|architect Magazine — was a big success. Although I was exhausted from all the travel by the time we made it to NY, I'm really glad I took the time to participate. Judging by the nice comments left on Twitter and Joind.in, everyone really liked my talks. Comments like "this was my favorite talk of the day" and "by far the most entertaining presentation" are especially uplifting. I put a lot of effort into my talks, and I really appreciate when people take the time… -
CodeWorks Tour
28 Sep 2009 | 8:21 amI'm on my way to CodeWorks, a touring conference currently underway that visits a total of seven cities across the US. I'm joining up with the conference in Atlanta to speak at the following stops: Atlanta Miami Washington New York I'll be giving two talks. The first is my current favorite, Security-Centered Design: Security is more than filtering input and escaping output (FIEO). It's more than cross-site scripting (XSS) and cross-site request forgeries (CSRF). Security isn't even always black and white. In order to create a more secure user experience, we need to understand how people…
-
Paul M. Jones
-
Structured Procrastination
5 Nov 2009 | 5:00 amAll procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how [...] -
When only the glib win, we all lose
5 Nov 2009 | 5:00 amMemorize this: “I have some concerns, but I need a little time before I can really articulate them.” If you're a manager, or anyone who leads meetings and discussions, please PLEASE have respect for that phrase. It's unlikely (but possible, sure) that someone will abuse this, since “buying time” in the context of a work decision [...] -
The Secret to Raising Smart Kids
4 Nov 2009 | 5:00 amOur society worships talent, and many people assume that possessing superior intelligence or ability—along with confidence in that ability—is a recipe for success. In fact, however, more than 30 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings. The [...] -
Intelligent Design: An Islamic Designer?
3 Nov 2009 | 2:11 pmCreationism is growing in the Muslim world, from Turkey to Pakistan to Indonesia, international academics said last month as they gathered here to discuss the topic. But, they said, young-Earth creationists, who believe God created the universe, Earth and life just a few thousand years ago, are rare, if not nonexistent. One reason is that although the [...] -
Libertarians and Obama
3 Nov 2009 | 5:00 amObama has thus far turned out to be very liberal (statist would be a better adjective–bailouts of large corporations, political interference with bankruptcy law on behalf of special interests, going back on pledges to rein in earmarks, and so forth, can hardly be deemed “liberal” either philosophically or in their redistributive consequences) on economic policy, [...]
-
Helgi Þormar Þorbjörnsson
-
ZendCon, the aftermath.
28 Oct 2009 | 4:08 pmNow that ZendCon 2009 is over and I’m back home safely, albeit tired, in London after a whole week of giving presentations and meeting old friends and making new, I have an itch to reflect a little bit on the trip, reminisce if you like. First I would like to mention the talks I gave at ZendCon and make my slides available, as I have been asked quite a few times so far to publish them but have no yet had much time to deal with it. If anyone wants the originals they can contact me directly and I will be more than happy to oblige The first talk I gave was about frontend caching and how… -
ZendCon 2009
15 Oct 2009 | 4:03 pmI just wanted to give everyone heads up on the fact that in a few days I will be flying over to San Jose to give 2 talks at ZendCon 2009. I will be presenting Frontend Caching – The “new” frontier, which is all about how to squeeze the most performance out of your frontend and I will also give PEAR2 & Pyrus, the look ahead where I will talk about where PEAR2 stands currently and how the new PEAR installer is progressing (e.g. Pyrus) and how it will revolutionize your life. Both of those talks I have given before on couple of occasions, where they have gotten good… -
Where have I been? Well here's where!
30 Jul 2009 | 3:59 amJust wanted to give people heads up that I made a new blog post at my companies blog about what I’ve been up to, for the most part, personally and professionally, the last 3 months or so: http://blog.echolibre.com/2009/07/conferences-conferences-conferences/ Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Conference, dpc, epicenter, iceland, oscon, phptek, Travel, zendcon -
Changing Jobs
22 Feb 2009 | 5:43 pmAs the title suggests, I will be changing jobs very soon. I have decided to leave Ibuildings UK and my last day will be Friday the 13th of March, scary isn’t it ? I have accepted a job at echolibre, a company based in Ireland, where I will be heading up R&D, among other things, in addition of taking up part ownership, where I will be working along side great people like David Coallier and Eamon Leonard. If you are looking for a great company to take care of all your PHP needs, then contact us to get further information </shamelessplug> I look forward to this opportunity and am… -
PEAR installer / channel and other articles
12 Dec 2008 | 3:56 amI sometimes get people coming to me and asking “How do I take my X code base and package it up PEAR style” or “So I have packaged up my awesome library, I want to have my own PEAR channel, how do I do that ?” so in the end I decided I’d just write articles on the subject If you look for the Nov and Dec issues of PHP Architect then you’ll see said articles in all it’s glory! I know people already have access to the Nov mag via PDF and I’ve gotten good feedback on it thus far, I’m happy. I also published a little piece in the PHP Advent…
-
@TheKeyboard
-
Next-Gen Work Projects
5 Nov 2009 | 6:02 pmWe are contemplating the next generation of our XML feed processing applicatioin and discussing what technologies we want to use. Personally, I was pushing for Twisted because of it’s support for concurrency and, well, it’s Python. The main dev on the project (it is currently a Perl application) likes Java, as does our sysadmin (who also updated some existing infrastructure to use Java). At one time I thought that we could replace some existing Ruby code in our system with some Jython code, but like many things I have not been able to free up the time to work on it. Since we… -
Don’t Get Too Cute With Your Refactoring
4 Nov 2009 | 5:51 pmFor those who follow me on Twitter, I’m pretty sure it was obvious I was having a very rough day today. I’m in the process of making some pretty invasive changes to an application and work, and I approached it with much trepidation because of an extreme lack of tests. I managed to get part one of these changes done, and refactored some stuff to get away from constantly passing parameters around like messages. Instead I decided to place these values inside class variables. Chortling to myself at how much better it was than passing the same values around all the time, I wrote some… -
Why I Love Stack Overflow
3 Nov 2009 | 6:16 pmOne of the sites I find myself visiting more and more often is Stack Overflow. The idea is so simple: create a web site where people can ask questions and then allow other users to answer them. Stack Overflow has spawned some other sites (most notably Server Fault, which helps sysadmins answer tougher questions) but I find it’s origins much more interesting. If I remember correctly, Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky started up Stackoverflow to provide a freely-available alternative to Experts Exchange. I have lost track of the number of times I was searching for an answer on the web, only to… -
November Blogging Challenge – Day 1
2 Nov 2009 | 7:05 amFor the month of November I am going to be trying out an experiment. I’m going to post Monday to Friday all November long. The posts might be small. They might be verbose. They might cover topics you had no idea I was interested in. But be ready. My friend Kevin is the one who introduced me to the world of vim and his ability to get paid to build things using my new favourite language fills me with envy. He has also gone on (at length) to me in IM about why I should also be investigating GNU screen to use as part of my toolkit. See, I have this annoying habit of opening up multiple… -
RIP – Quenton 08/21/98 to 10/28/09
28 Oct 2009 | 9:22 amI had to say goodbye today to an old and dear friend. This morning at 6:45AM my wife went downstairs to give our two cats their morning treats. We could not find our oldest cat Quenton. My wife went into the basement to see if he was down there and found him laying in the litter box, unable to get up and walk. We had no idea what was wrong, but I got dressed as quick as I could, called the 24 hour animal hospital to get directions and took him there. A blood clot had led to Quenton having a stroke. He had likely been in pain for several hours before we discovered him. He did not complain at…
-
Derick Rethans
-
Good bye eZ Systems
27 Oct 2009 | 3:36 amDuring the past 6 years I've been working as a developer for eZ Systems — first as a developer on eZ Publish and later as project lead for eZ Components. Working on a project like eZ Components as lead was challenging and interesting and taught me many things. eZ Systems as a company is changing a lot, and now the time has come for me to move on and find something new and exciting to do. I've recently moved to London to explore life from a different point of view, and that will now also include a search for a new challenge professionally. I will still be with eZ Systems for awhile longer to… -
CodeWorks and ZendCon
18 Oct 2009 | 9:46 pmCodeWorks was a blast, I recorded a few talks that I will be publishing through Vimeo. As teaser I have a recording of Scott MacVicar's PECL picks talk. I also have recordings of Brian Moon's Memcached talk, Chris Shiflett's Security-Centered Design talk and Sharon Levy's Web-Based Retrieval Demystified talk. With all the other random video material I am creating a compilation as well, but that will have to wait a bit more. At the moment I am on my way to San Jose where I will speak on Xdebug and PHP's DateTime support. Xdebug 2.1 is now feature complete, and I will be working on getting all… -
Autumn Plans
14 Sep 2009 | 5:26 amI've been missing-in-action on my own blog for some time. Moving to London does that to you. Anyway, I've not been idle in the meanwhile at all, and been working on some cool side-projects. First of all I've been adding some features to Xdebug. Xdebug is now slow reaching beta-status for the 2.1 release. New feature will include proper PHP 5.3 support, variable tracing, "scream" support and other minor features. Besides Xdebug I've also been hacking on PHP-GTK applications for my phone. The major new thing that I have now is a PHP-GTK twitter client that works like I want it... and I even use… -
Good bye Norway, Hello London
20 Jun 2009 | 5:32 pmToday, at the longest day of the year at the summer solstice, I am making a bit change to my life. If you're following me on twitter you probably already know what I'm up to. For everybody else, I am going to say good bye to Skien in Norway, and move to London (the one in England, and not the one in Ontario). Norway has been my home for the past five years, and I've had a great time exploring the nature as well as working at our office in Skien. Skien is a nice place, but ... not the most interesting of cities in the world. From today I will be living in London to see what life will bring me… -
Debugging with multiple users
11 Jun 2009 | 1:47 amAs author of Xdebug, people ask me often the question how to handle the case in teams when there is one development server and multiple developers working on the same project on that server. Xdebug only allows you to specify one IP address to connect to (through xdebug.remote_host) while doing remote debugging. It does not automatically connect back to the IP address that runs the browser the request the PHP scripts because of security reasons. You don't want everybody on the Internet to be able to run a debugging session against your code for example. There is no problem if all developers…
-
Evil, as in Dr.
-
Jumpstarting PDO
25 Oct 2009 | 10:35 amLukas is making another attempt at jumpstarting PDO development. I welcome this effort, and will do what I can to help fill in details and make suggestions. Unfortunately, I'm just way too busy with work to be able to commit to more than that. I also wanted to share some of my thoughts on why PDO has been in a holding pattern for a while, so that more people are aware of it and can work to avoid repeating the same mistakes. The first thing to note is that the guts of PDO were hard to develop. The PHP script facing API sounds simple enough, but the underlying libraries for each different… -
EvilDesk now on BitBucket
7 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pmI've opened up the code behind EvilDesk, my Windows Shell replacement, and made it available on BitBucket under the terms of the GPLv2. Enjoy! http://bitbucket.org/wez/evildesk/ -
CouchShare now on BitBucket
7 Jun 2009 | 7:56 pmA few of my friends and associates may have heard me talk about the media server I've been running in my basement; I used to automatically transfer content from my tivo to a hard-disk in my basement so that I had more space for recordings on the tivo. Since most of the recordings that I want to keep are now available via Hulu, I haven't had much call to use it in the last 6 months. So, what is CouchShare? It's a UPnP server that can share content from folder to an XBox 360 on your network. It's written in PHP (and requires a tiny PHP extension to enable multicast support) and is written… -
toshiba hotkeys on solaris
7 Jun 2009 | 6:13 pmUpdate: moved code to http://bitbucket.org/wez/toshutils/ Friday evening I sat down and wrote my first piece of solaris kernel code and an associated user-space application that activates the brightness up/down hotkeys for the LCD on my Toshiba Satellite M30. I implemented a tosh_hci driver that can perform Toshiba Hardware Configuration Interface traps via an ioctl(2). This driver is really simple; the hardest part being the intel assembly needed to perform the trap (technically an inb instruction, not a trap). The userspace code is a really slimmed down version of the code that I previously… -
Dead laptop disk == more linux hacking
7 Jun 2009 | 6:09 pmUpdate2: moved code to http://bitbucket.org/wez/toshkey/overview/ Update acpid now handles the brightness controls, displays the battery status in the ps list and emits power warnings once you're down to 15 minutes of power. I've also added a little non-root acpid client that will allow you to run your own stuff in response to hotkey events. I suffered a dead (nearly; it's on its way out) laptop disk almost a week ago, and have been clawing my way back to normality. As a side effect, I now own a Toshiba Satellite M30, which apparently has slightly more linux friendly hardware than my other…
-
Sean Coates: PHP, Web (+Beer)
-
Twitter's Chronic Anti-Pattern Problem
This morning, via a colleague, John, I stumbled on a service called gdzlla that allows you to use Flickr as an alternative to the other de facto Twitter media posting services (twitpic, yfrog, etc.), from Tweetie on the iPhone. The idea is great, but unfortunately, the implementation is dangerous.Intrigued by an integrated media-posting solution, I started browsing the gdzlla site, and one of the first pages I saw grabbed my attention... in the wrong way.The idea of random web sites asking for credentials is hardly a new concept—especially when it comes to Twitter. Almost a year ago, news… -
Code Works 2009
Tomorrow morning (in a few short hours, but I can never sleep the night before a trip), I will be flying YUL->ATL for the first city of the second leg of Code Works 2009.I'm really looking forward to this adventure, and the first leg sounded like it was a great time.We'll be traveling from Atlanta to Miami to the D.C. area and ending up in New York before I head home to Montreal in 8 days.I'll be speaking on using tokens as a better solution to problems often solved with regex and using Firebug and Selenium to save some sanity.If you can make it out, it's a great chance at a great price to… -
The Problem with AIR
I have a love-hate relationship with Adobe AIR.On the positive side, AIR allows developers who are primarily experienced in web technologies (such as myself) to apply existing skills to the creation of GUI applications with a minimum of additional deployment-specific competence, and to release those apps on several platforms, in parallel.This shallow learning curve has facilitated the creation of GUI apps that would never have otherwise graduated beyond a passing thought by their creators.A good example of this is Spaz, my currently-preferred interface to the Twitter. Ed, its author, and my… -
Seven Things
I was also going to skip over this Seven Things meme. I actually think the idea is a good one—always fun to learn new and often strange things about friends/colleagues—but I lost patience when I opened up my feed reader one morning and Planet PHP was overrun with Seventy Things about ten people I don't know. So, I'm intentionally not tagging this PHP so it doesn't show up in the feed. Call me a grumpy old man if you like. (-:I'm also going to forgo tagging seven others. Nearly everyone I'd tag has already been pressured. You might know that I'm a bit of a beer aficionado, and that I brew… -
Recent Happenings
I've got a bunch of stuff that I haven't found/made time to blog about, so just dropping some quick notes here: I've been invited to speak at PHP Quebec 2009. I've been to this conference a few times (but not for a couple years, now), and I'm really looking forward to getting back into the conference circuit (as a speaker, not an organizer... think of all the free time I'll have! (-; Anyway, I'll be giving a talk entitled "Stupid Browser Tricks" in which I'll talk (at a high level) about Firebug, and Selenium IDE, and possibly a few other things like granular browser security, komodo…
-
Sugar Developer Blog
-
Sugar Community Edition 5.5 Release Candidate 3
3 Nov 2009 | 12:11 pmThe Sugar Community Edition 5.5 Release Candidate 3 is now available to download Download the Sugar CE 5.5 RC 3 Install Sugar CE 5.5 RC 3, or upgrade a copy of your existing system to Sugar CE 5.5 RC 3. Note: We plan on providing upgrade files from the Sugar 5.5 Release Candidate 3 to Sugar 5.5 GA. View the 5.5 RC 2 Release Notes for information about what has changed in 5.5 RC 3. For a full listing of what issues were fixed in Sugar 5.5 RC 3, use the Bug Tracker. If you encounter any issues, please help us by submitting bugs in the Bug Tracker. Please be sure to select… -
5.2.0k & 5.0.0n Patch Released
29 Oct 2009 | 10:17 amHave you noticed that we’re really trying to cut the time between releases? Engineering has been busting their tails, changing up their development methodology a bit – I’ll save more information about that for another post… Regardless, 5.2.0k and 5.0.0n was released last night and you can get it all on SugarForge. Any feedback regarding the patches is welcome here or in the forums. -
RC3 will be the new GA?
28 Oct 2009 | 9:30 amWow, I just realized after writing that title how many obscure references there are and you have to be in the “know”. So let me break it down for you: RC3 == Release Candidate #3 We’ve released SugarCRM 5.5 RC2 in the third week of October and we already have over 300 installations. GA == Generally Available As people test and use the release candidate, they have been submitting bugs and we fix them. In the next week, we’ll likely release “Release Candidate 3″, which will be the most likely candidate for a Generally Available release. So test, test, test. -
GoldMine Conversions Simplified
23 Oct 2009 | 12:56 pmEditors Note: For this post, I decided to reach out to one of our most influential community members, Angel Magaña, to discuss one of his latest and very interesting projects on SugarForge.org. Expect more of these to come. Thank you Angel for taking the time. – Matt Heitzenroder. One of the biggest challenges in deploying a CRM solution relates to the process of populating the system with legacy data. This is a challenge inherit to working with database systems in general, due to differences in structures, design philosophy and database formats, amongst other things. -
SugarCRM CE Release Candidate 2 Available
22 Oct 2009 | 10:17 amExcellent news! SugarCRM Engineering team keeps rolling out the release candidates for 5.5. Please download from the link below or try the free preview and see if the bugs that you’ve submitted have been fixed. We are really trying to get the highest quality release out to you ever. So please, if you find a bug, please report it at http://bugs.sugarcrm.com. More to come!!!! Download the Sugar CE 5.5 RC 2 Install Sugar CE 5.5 RC 2, or upgrade a copy of your existing system to Sugar CE 5.5 RC 2. Note: We plan on providing upgrade files from the Sugar 5.5 Release Candidate 2 to…
-
Zend Developer Zone
-
Brandon Savage's Blog: Why Every Developer Should Write Their Own Framework
6 Nov 2009 | 9:05 amIn his latest post Brandon Savage suggests that every developer should do one thing before they start working with PHP frameworks - write their own. -
ZendCon '09 Slides
5 Nov 2009 | 7:19 amMissed a session at ZendCon and wish you hadn’t? Forget some awesome tip or trick that a speaker talked about and your dog ate your notes? Fret no longer, the ZendCon 2009 slide decks are here. -
ZendCon 2009 is over
2 Nov 2009 | 8:44 amZendCon 2009 is over, it’s time to close things out, remember the fun, and start planning for ZendCon 2010! -
Ibuildings talks about Gmagick, PHP and "the cloud"
2 Nov 2009 | 6:23 amYes, there, I invoked the ‘C’ word so now you are interested. I can hear the question that is racing through your mind at this point. “What could ‘the cloud’ – the latest technical term to be appropriated by marketing departments worldwide and thus rendered useless – have to do with image processing?” -
Symfony Blog: Why will Symfony 2.0 finally use PHP 5.3?
29 Oct 2009 | 1:19 pmOn the Symfony blog today Fabien Potencier answers the question "will Symfony 2.0 finally use PHP 5.3?"
-
PHP -> The Good Parts
-
The Top 100 Functions in Drupal
23 Oct 2009 | 11:05 pmThis is a list of the 100 most common built-in PHP functions, and the 100 most common Drupal functions in the Drupal source code. Language constructs and reserved words are excluded from the count (foreach, for, while, list, isset, etc).Total Built-in Functions Used: 239Total Built-in Function calls in Drupal source code: 1392. RankFunctionOccurrencesPer… -
The Scobelizer Meets YourVersion
7 Oct 2009 | 8:42 pmRobert Scoble interviewed Dan Olsen, the founder of Yourversion in this Building 43 interview. I make a cameo appearance as a PHP hacker. -
Rest and Recursion
22 Jul 2009 | 9:09 pmHere are a couple of PDFs that you might find informative. I submitted the recursion essay to Headfirst Books as a sample of my writing within their format. The REST essay was prepared for my PHP course. You'll have to provide the soundtrack yourself. Imagine that my delivery is a lot like Brad Pitt's in Fight Club...if you want.Recursion and Iteration à la Headfirst Books RESTful Web Services -
OSCON and PHP: The Good Parts
13 Jul 2009 | 12:16 pmAt this year's O'Reilly Open Source Conventions, Chris Shifflet and Sean Coates, will present "PHP: The Good Parts." This blog is not connected in any with with O'Reilly or OSCON. However, we wish them well, and welcome any spillover that wanders to this site.As for our name (PHP: The Good Parts), it is obvioulsy inspired by Douglas Crockford's great book about Javascript's good parts. If you're interested in making sense of Javascript's mysterious inner workings, Javascript: The Good Parts is the go-to book. -
Variable Variables
11 Dec 2008 | 1:35 pmIn PHP parlance a variable variable is a variable that holds a the name of another variable of any data type. In other words, a variable variable is an example of dynamic typing, or duck typing. Dynamic typing and duck typing are two features that get a lot of attention in object oriented languages like Ruby and Python because they're useful for doing magic tricks. Rather than muddy the water be talking of this mysterious thing called magic, I'll call it what it is: dynamic typing.Although dynamic typing is one of PHP's most useful features, beginning PHP programmers can find it confusing.
