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
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Travis Swicegood
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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…
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WordPress Development Blog
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WordPress Wins CMS Award
17 Nov 2009 | 7:48 pmI was very excited last week to learn that WordPress has been awarded the Overall Best Open Source CMS Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. This is a landmark for us, as it is the first time we’ve won this award, and it marks a shift in the public perception of WordPress, from blog software to full-featured CMS. No small contest, the Open Source CMS Awards received over 12,000 nominations and more than 23,000 votes across five categories. As Hiro Nakamura said when he first bent time and space to land in Times Square: “Yatta!” In addition to winning in the Overall Best… -
Core Contributors at WordCamp NYC
17 Nov 2009 | 5:14 amWordCamp NYC was last weekend, and it was crazy awesome to have so many WordPress users and developers together in one place (final numbers to come, but looks like over 700). One of my favorite moments was right at the end, when someone suggested getting a picture of the core contributors (I’d asked them all to stand so people could applaud them when we were doing the closing remarks). Some of them were camera shy and kept out of the happysnap, but here’s a handful of the people who make WordPress what it is. From left: Matt Martz (sivel), Jeremy Clarke, Shane Froebel (^BuGs^),… -
WordPress 2.8.6 Security Release
12 Nov 2009 | 11:17 am2.8.6 fixes two security problems that can be exploited by registered, logged in users who have posting privileges. If you have untrusted authors on your blog, upgrading to 2.8.6 is recommended. The first problem is an XSS vulnerability in Press This discovered by Benjamin Flesch. The second problem, discovered by Dawid Golunski, is an issue with sanitizing uploaded file names that can be exploited in certain Apache configurations. Thanks to Benjamin and Dawid for finding and reporting these. Get WordPress 2.8.6. -
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…
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Joomla Announcements
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Demo Site Request for Proposals
18 Nov 2009 | 2:04 pmRecently, Open Source Matters received an unsolicited proposal for the management of http://demo.joomla.org. After consideration and consultation with the Community Oversight Committee, the OSM board the Community Oversight Committee determined that, in the interest of fairness, others should also be invited to submit proposals. Open Source Matters is requesting proposals for the management of the Joomla! demo site (http://demo.joomla.org). The existing Joomla! demo site has been highly successful, with an average of 25,000 registrations monthly. OSM reasonably expects the number of… -
Joomla! Major Events
13 Nov 2009 | 9:56 pmThe Joomla! Project plans to have major multi-day conferences beginning as early as November 2010. Community members in a city or region who would like to consider hosting a major conference are encouraged to submit expressions of interest followed by formal proposals. The Request For Proposals gives instructions for putting together a proposal. The events team will work with interested groups to prepare proposals. Up to four events will be planned in a 12 month period starting in November of 2010. There will be a maximum of one event per quarter and one per continent. The events will last 3… -
Joomla! Developer Conference
13 Nov 2009 | 2:38 pmThe first ever Joomla! event specifically for third party developers will be in New York City on December 5 and 6.Focused on the transition to Joomla! 1.6, the Joomla! Developer conference will feature all four development coordinators (Louis Landry, Sam Moffatt, Ian MacLennan, Mark Dexter), master Joomla! developer Andrew Eddie, Hannes Papenberg from the 1.6 release team and MooTools team member Aaron Newton. Joomla! 1.6 is currently at alpha 2 status, so this is the time for extension and custom developers to begin working with its new features such as Access Control Lists, JForm, nested… -
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.
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drupal.org
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Whitehouse.gov re-launches on Drupal and engages the Drupal community at DC users meeting
18 Nov 2009 | 2:23 pmEarlier this month, the Executive Office of the President of the United States of America relaunched their website, Whitehouse.gov, using Drupal. This week three members of the White House new media team presented at the Washington, DC Drupal users group. New media director Macon Phillips, deputy director of technology David Cole, and creative director Nik Lo Bue talked about their use of Drupal. In this video, Macon Phillips addresses how they want to create opportunities for citizens to participate in their government. David Cole talks about why they wanted to change their technology… -
Case Study: Concern Fast
17 Nov 2009 | 8:18 amEach year, thousands of people around Ireland join Concern Worldwide in the Concern Fast. During the Fast, people give up food for 24 hours and raise as much money as they can for some of the world’s poorest people. One aspect of this years campaign is an online element, where registered fasters can get their own online profile page. Through this, they are able to take sponsorships and return any money that they have raised offline directly through the site. Kirkdesigns built the Concern Fast website with Drupal 6, CiviCRM, a rather large handful of community contributed modules and of… -
Drupal wins Hall of Fame Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards
12 Nov 2009 | 6:22 amDrupal has won the Hall of Fame Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. Drupal previously won the 2007 and 2008 Best Overall Open Source CMS Award. As a result of the previous wins, Drupal graduated to the Hall of Fame along with Joomla. It is a great honor for the Drupal community to be the first winner of the Open Source CMS Hall of Fame Award. The Drupal community has worked hard to improve Drupal by adding internationalization, enhancing security, facilitating customization, increasing extensibility, and easing the user experience. This award is a great complement to winning the 2009… -
Drupal wins best open source PHP CMS for second year in a row
10 Nov 2009 | 9:43 amDrupal has won best open source PHP Content Management System for the second year in a row in the Packt Publishing 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. Drupal won by popular vote and a critical selection by a panel of judges. This award reflects the strong support of the Drupal community and our focus on quality which leads to critical acclaim and rapid adoption for large, high quality projects. Drupal won best overall open source CMS in 2007 and 2008. From the award announcement, We are pleased to announce that Drupal has won the Best Open Source PHP CMS Category in the 2009 Open Source CMS Award. -
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…
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php|architect News
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php|architect is Looking for a Few Good Bloggers!
We want to make php|a the best destination for every PHP and web developer. You want to create the best content on PHP and all the technologies that revolve around it. Together, we can do great things—join us! -
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.
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php|architect News
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php|architect is Looking for a Few Good Bloggers!
We want to make php|a the best destination for every PHP and web developer. You want to create the best content on PHP and all the technologies that revolve around it. Together, we can do great things—join us! -
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.
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Planet PHP
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Recommend me a CMS - Lukas Smith
21 Nov 2009 | 2:36 amIn my last blog post I have explained a bit more complaints about pretty much all CMS that I have seen in the PHP space to date. Now I wonder is there any CMS I should be checking out? Note I am not so interested in a CMS that is still in its infancy, I am looking for a CMS that can have a fighting chance to compete against Drupal, ezPublish and friends in a feature checklist comparison. Actually I always wonder why Midgard gets to little attention. It seems to be based on the concept of a content repository which in itself sounds promising. -
The Value of Self-Serving Code - Elizabeth Naramore
20 Nov 2009 | 9:36 pmIt's Friday night. I'm writing code. Not good code, mind you. Crappy code. Completely self-serving code that serves only one purpose: to solve a problem I alone have. No one else will see this code. No one else will use this mini-app. I'm writing it for myself and myself alone.I did not test this code.I did not use a framework.I mixed PHP and html in one file. I'm sure there are numerous XSS and other wonderful security vulnerabilities present.My code is not indented properly.My code is procedural, poorly documented and hard to follow.It is not scalable.Hell, it probably won't even load in… -
DevZone updated to Zend Framework v1.9.5 - Zend Developer Zone
20 Nov 2009 | 9:28 amI just this morning pushed a new version of Zend DevZone, and the biggest change was a move to Zend Framework version 1.9.5 – Why is this important? Because it was previously running v1.0.1 ( gasp ), and I wanted to tell the story of the work it took to upgrade. -
Developer’s SugarCRM book coming to a bookstore near you. - John Mertic
20 Nov 2009 | 8:27 amA -
Conference Biography Help - Lorna Mitchell
20 Nov 2009 | 3:15 amI've been updating my conference details recently, in order to submit my talks for php|tek in Chicago (the call for papers closes on Monday - get your submissions in!). One thing which I struggled with is my biography, I used to have a paragraph which sort of said "Lorna is a PHP Developer and involved with PHPWomen", and I used that same entry for every conference for a year or more. However, just like speaker photos, biographies do date. I've taken on more responsibilities at work and I've been doing more things in the community as well so it was time for a refresh. I'm quite happy with my…
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PHP.net news & announcements
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PHP 5.3.1 Released!
19 Nov 2009 | 9:41 amThe PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.3.1. This release focuses on improving the stability of the PHP 5.3.x branch with over 100 bug fixes, some of which are security related. All users of PHP are encouraged to upgrade to this release. Security Enhancements and Fixes in PHP 5.3.1: Added "max_file_uploads" INI directive, which can be set to limit the number of file uploads per-request to 20 by default, to prevent possible DOS via temporary file exhaustion. Added missing sanity checks around exif processing. Fixed a safe_mode bypass in… -
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…
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PHPBuilder.com New Articles
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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 ...
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Latest PHP Classes blog posts
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PHP in Arabic
15 Nov 2009 | 9:12 pmPHP in Arabic By Manuel Lemos The use of Arabic in Web sites has been growing in a significant way in the latest years. This is an idiom that requires special care due to the nature of its writing. This article presents an interview with Khaled Al-Shamaa, the leader of Ar-PHP, a project that aims to simplify the lives of developers that want to build Arabic sites using PHP. -
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.
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blog.phpdeveloper.org
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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…
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Chris Shiflett
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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…
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Paul M. Jones
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What should we do instead of the Obama health reform bill?
17 Nov 2009 | 5:33 am… 4. Make an all-out attempt to limit deaths by hospital infection and the simple failure of doctors to wash their hands and perform other medically obvious procedures. 5. Make an all-out attempt, working with state and local governments (recall, since the Feds are picking up the Medicaid tab they have temporary leverage here), to ease the [...] -
Trying Terrorists
17 Nov 2009 | 5:12 amWhen appellate courts decide questions of law, they set precedents for future cases. If they make allowances for the exigencies of the war on terror in order to uphold convictions of [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] and his associates, it could end up diminishing the rights of ordinary criminal defendants. That’s why the smart civil-libertarian position [...] -
Health Care Protest Rally
13 Nov 2009 | 9:20 pmDid you know that the health-care bill now before the Senate would take care of you only after you get sick? This is an indefensible outrage. It is your right as an American not to get sick at all! (Emphasis in original.) Via Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine. -
Experimental Economics in EVE
12 Nov 2009 | 7:20 pmThis is via my brother, Ben Jones, who is a molecular biologist by training and a PHP programmer in practice. When large external events like these happen they of course impact relative prices within EVE but the robustness of the market quickly allows prices to reflect these changes or shocks to the market. This might [...] -
The Future of Zend Framework is Solar
11 Nov 2009 | 8:38 pmI have said it before and I'll say it again now: If you want to see the future of Zend Framework, look at the Solar Framework for PHP 5. Read to see what ZF 2.0 has planned, that Solar does right now.
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Helgi Þormar Þorbjörnsson
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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…
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@TheKeyboard
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Cleaning Up The Dev Environment
20 Nov 2009 | 7:15 pmOnce I got a production push out of the way at work, I set about recreating my PHP development environment. Currently I was running PHP 5.3.0 with Apache2 and Postgresql 8.4, all installed via MacPorts. Why the time for a change? Two reasons. The first one is my desire to constantly tinker and tweak my environment. The second reason was to test out some things for future work projects. Those who follow the blog know that I had successfully convinced The Powers That Be at work to use Zend Framework to build out future PHP projects. I also decided that it would be good to examine if Zend Server… -
The Programming Environment of the Future
19 Nov 2009 | 5:12 pmWhile working away I was listening (okay, and peeking once in a while) at the live stream from the announcement from Google about Chrome OS, an operating system they’ve been working on. From what I can tell, it’s going to be some stripped-down version of Linux with a window manager that runs one thing: the Chrome browser. Now, while I think a netbook is great for someone like my mom, or my daughter, I cannot imagine myself doing any sort of serious programming work on one. Or can I? So, first of all it looks like is a non-starter. That means I would likely have to use something… -
Using Django As An Admin Area for a PHP Project, Part 1
18 Nov 2009 | 6:22 pmMy work project needed an admin area for doing things like changing the key for a league, or changing the email address for someone's account. You know, typical admin stuff. In the past I had been *gasp* editing SQL by hand via pgAdmin (and my favourite trick of creating an SSH tunnel to the server the database is on). Well, I'd had enough of that. I also wanted to set things up so when my boss wanted changes done, I could tell him "go do it yourself using this neato-keen admin interface I whipped together". So I got to work creating a Django project, installed the django-admin application… -
What’s In Chris’ Brain Today
17 Nov 2009 | 5:51 pmShe Who Must Be Obeyed asked me what I wanted for Christmas, so I'm going to ask for a copy of "Code Generation In Action" along with some other programming books. Make your suggestions in the comments if you please (and feel free to buy me a copy of that Code Generation book just like the awesome Walker Hamilton did when he bought me a copy of Martin Fowler's Refactoring book. It's on my Amazon Wish List She asked me to get her a cat because she thinks our remaining cat is lonely and misses his roommate of 8 years. I agree. Speaking of refactoring, I used the following refactoring patterns… -
Rambling on the future of PHP
16 Nov 2009 | 1:43 pmTerry Chay, although he disagrees with me on a whole bunch of different levels, is a smart guy. Despite all the profanity. And the troll baiting. Go watch this talk he gave at the SF PHP meetup. I struggle with some of the concepts he talks about here. I've been working with PHP for so long and wondering "is that all there is to web programming?". PHP is still one of the best solutions out there for building web applications. The haters can suck it, because it's true. Terry has this awesome quote (I'm probably paraphrasing).: "The straightest point between two lines on the web is PHP.". There…
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Derick Rethans
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Xdebug and tracing memory usage
13 Nov 2009 | 3:59 amRecently people started to ask me how to use Xdebug to figure out which parts of applications use a lot of memory. Traditionally this was part of Xdebug's profiling functionality. Unfortunately the cachegrind format didn't fit this so well, and because it returned incorrect data I removed this functionality from the profiler. However, there is other functionality in Xdebug that does provide the correct data: the function traces. Function traces log every include, function call and method call to a file. If the xdebug.trace_format setting is set to "1" then the trace file is an easy-to-parse… -
Unix Epoch and PHP's calendar system
12 Nov 2009 | 4:32 amI just saw a commit flying past as a response to PHP bug #50155. While right now it is proper to define the Unix Epoch at "1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC", UTC wasn't actually defined until 1972. So it would be more correct to define the Unix Epoch as "the number of seconds elapsed since midnight proleptic Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) of January 1, 1970, not counting leap seconds." (from Wikipedia). What the bit "not counting leap seconds" means, I've already explained before in Leap Seconds and What To Do With Them. Similarly, PHP's internal calendar is the ISO 8601 calendar. This is a… -
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…
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Evil, as in Dr.
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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…
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Sean Coates: PHP, Web (+Beer)
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Drupal Frustration Redux
Earlier this week, I wrote a piece on why I'm no longer willing to tolerate Drupal. It got a lot of traffic (for my blog), and a lot of comments. Most of those comments were "classic apologetics" as one person put it, and upon reading them, I realized that I may not have done the best job of making my point (which boils down to: Drupal takes more effort to maintain than I'm willing to spend). If you missed it, I replied to most of the complaints.Of all of the comments, though, one really stood out, and rang truer than anything else I've read on this topic:I think the problem isn't so much… -
Why I Won't Recommend SilverStripe
In my search for a replacement for Drupal, I started playing with SilverStripe over the weekend.The site looks pretty good, the demo—while minimal (which is totally fine by me)—seems to work decently. It made my "to test" list.The bottom line:FWIW, SilverStripe made my "do not recommend" list today. )-:coatesA bunch of people replied asking "why?" This is my response to those people. My intent is not to bash SilverStripe, but to explain how it fell short of my wants and needs, quickly.First stop: the code.SilverStripe is built on a framework called Sapphire, which is developed by the same… -
A Messy Breakup with Drupal (Least Worst, Part 1)
A little over two years ago, when I got involved with the MontreAlers (note: yes, site broken... read on), the homebrewing club in Montreal, I was quickly nominated to be the sucker who would help take their aging and mostly-neglected web site, and make it somehow useful.At the time, the choice was simple: custom code or Drupal. Because custom code takes quite a bit of the most valuable commodity in life—time—and because I had (and continue to have) very limited spare time, I chose Drupal.I hacked together a custom theme (based on one of the prepackaged templates), spent a few hours… -
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…
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Ben Ramsey
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POST vs. PUT
9 Nov 2009 | 8:07 amThis morning, Matthew writes about building RESTful services with the Zend Framework. I have a lot of thoughts on his post, and I might blog more about it later, but right now, I want to focus on David’s comment: I think the next thing you should cover is how to retrieve put parameters and maybe even attempt to start a discussion on the different school of thoughts about POST vs PUT (Especially in the PHP world). I know I’m even guilty of mentioning different schools of thought on POST vs. PUT in my talks, but the truth is that REST doesn’t specify what to use for what… -
Building Titanium with PHP
5 Oct 2009 | 12:48 pmSeveral months ago, I started the process of embedding PHP into the Titanium platform. After several sprints of work, the Appcelerator team was finally ready to merge my work into their master branch, and Martin Robinson worked to bring the implementation to maturity. The current release of Titanium Developer does not yet have the PHP support built in to the bundled SDK, and I’m not sure when it will be released, so I thought I’d share how to get a development version built with PHP support so you can start playing with it and even help the Appcelerator team by catching bugs in… -
CodeWorks Days 11 & 12 (Washington)
3 Oct 2009 | 2:51 pmDeparting Miami, I gazed upon the Atlantic Ocean as we cut through the clouds, making our way farther from the shore, and the thought occurred to me that this tour—these two weeks—has taken me from sea to shining sea across this great country. What a fitting thought to have as this next leg of the tour took us to Washington, DC. I have traveled the country and have engaged the PHP community face-to-face all across it. It has been a great experience and an excellent opportunity to connect with the PHP community at all ends of the United States. Perhaps a tour to other parts of the… -
CodeWorks Days 9 & 10 (Miami)
3 Oct 2009 | 12:49 pmMiami CodeWorks, so far, was the smallest conference but I still think some important connections were made, especially with regard to user group contacts. At the Microsoft happy hour on the second day of the conference in Miami, I was able to meet Brendon Van Heyzen, who is interested in starting up a PHP user group in Boca Raton. It seems that the Miami PHP user group has quietened down and gone silent, and he’s interested in starting up a group for the Boca Raton PHP community. We had a great discussion, and I offered him some points of advice on how to start a group, and this… -
CodeWorks Days 7 & 8 (Atlanta)
1 Oct 2009 | 8:48 amAtlanta was the mid-point stop on the CodeWorks tour, and since it’s my home, I decided to use it as an opportunity to spend time with my family before heading off on the second half of the tour. As such, there was very little hallway track activity for me, but I did get a chance to make it to a few events. I’m told that Atlanta has had the largest CodeWorks crowd yet. I took a quick look around at each of the rooms, and I believe it. Each presentation was well-attended, and I’m proud to say that the Atlanta PHP user group was well-represented this year; I saw lots of…
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Lot 49: Greg Beaver's blog
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How to put the FAIL in open source
17 Nov 2009 | 6:44 amThere has been a bit of buzz about the new PHP standards working group (self-named) that has started work on a real cross-framework standard for the naming of classes and namespaces in PHP. The idea is a wonderful one, and at first things looked like they were nothing but good. A group of framework developers met at php|tek, whipped up a quick draft, and after returning home, started a new mailing list, http://news.php.net/php.standards to discuss finalizing the draft discussed at php|tek. At this point, signs of trouble began to crop up, and the good intentions began to result in…
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Sugar Developer Blog
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Module Builder Tour
20 Nov 2009 | 7:55 amHello everyone! This is the beginning in hopefully a long series of videos that will explore the various APIs in SugarCRM. John Mertic, a dev on SugarCRM’s core engineering team, walks us through creating a module and also the talks about how to begin to extend the functionality of the modules. I hope you enjoy! Module Builder Tour from SugarCRMCasts on Vimeo. If you have any comments or questions, please let me know. -
Activity & Rating in SugarForge Search Results
17 Nov 2009 | 3:04 pmIt took me longer than I wanted it too, but I got Activity and Ratings into the Search Results. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I haven’t added “SORT” to either column yet. It’s a bit tricky, but I can do it. I figured though that I should post these changes though to see how you like them. Let me know what you think! -
Any questions about Module Builder?
17 Nov 2009 | 11:36 amHey everyone, I’m going to be doing an interview with John Mertic tomorrow. He’s the author of The Definitive Guide to SugarCRM and has recently spoke at a few different conferences, including the DC PHP Conference. We’re going to be talking about Module Build and a bit of the API. The interview is going to be recorded and posted, hopefully by the end of the week. We had technical difficulties earlier, so hopefully no more, and we’ll have a cool video to post soon. Post your comments and questions about module builder here and I’ll ask him! -
Sugar 5.5 Release Candidate 4
12 Nov 2009 | 2:20 pmDownload the Sugar 5.5 RC 4 Install Sugar 5.5 RC 4, or upgrade a copy of your existing system to Sugar CE 5.5 RC 4. Upgrade files from the Sugar 5.5 Release Candidate 4 to Sugar 5.5 GA will be provided as soon as the GA is available. The Sugar Community Edition, Sugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise editions are available to preview online. Preview Sugar 5.5 RC 4 Online We highly recommend that you test the upgrade to 5.5 RC 4 from an earlier instance on a non-production system at this time to make sure that the upgrade will perform smoothly. If your Sugar database size exceeds 1GB, we… -
Help Get Rid of Stale Projects
10 Nov 2009 | 9:28 amThere’s a lot of discussion on the topic of Open Source collaboration of SugarCRM and on SugarForge. There’s a lot that you and I want to see happen and we’re each in a place to affect it. I think the right way to go about it, is to make several, minor, agile changes until the end result is what we really want. Of course, this doesn’t play well with my need for instant gratification to have large sweeping changes. Alas, I will set that aside and do what I can. Ok, let’s start with SugarForge… the signal to noise ratio is pretty poor, meaning –…
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Zend Developer Zone (DevZone) - Advancing the art of PHP
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DevZone updated to Zend Framework v1.9.5
20 Nov 2009 | 9:28 amI just this morning pushed a new version of Zend DevZone, and the biggest change was a move to Zend Framework version 1.9.5 – Why is this important? Because it was previously running v1.0.1 ( gasp ), and I wanted to tell the story of the work it took to upgrade. -
Call for Papers: IPC Spring 2010
18 Nov 2009 | 7:18 amThe 2010 Spring Edition of the International PHP Conference ( IPC ) has opened up it’s call for papers -
Live Webcast tomorrow on Google Wave, QuickBase & Zend Framework
17 Nov 2009 | 11:30 amJon Lebensold, founder of Zendcasts.com, is hosting a live webinar tomorrow (11/18) on how to build a Google Wave Gadget, using Quickbase and Zend Framework. Sign up now to attend! -
Indexing Web Content with PHP and SWISH-E
17 Nov 2009 | 11:15 amIn a previous article, I'd demonstrated how to build a simple email search system in PHP using two indexing tools, Sphinx and the Zend Framework's Lucene implementation. Now, while these are undoubtedly two of the most popular tools available, open source is all about choice...and so, it should come as no surprise that there exist a number of alternatives, many of them equaling Sphinx and Zend_Lucene in sophistication and speed. This article deals with one such alternative, SWISH-E aka the Simple Web Indexing System for Humans - Enhanced. As the name suggests, SWISH-E is particularly good at… -
Create RESTful Server Application Using The Zend Framework
17 Nov 2009 | 10:17 amThe Zend Framework 1.9 release added a new feature - Zend_Rest_Controller. Zend_Rest_Controller and Zend_Rest_Route classes go hand in hand. In the previous versions of the Zend Framework, we have had the Zend_Rest_Server component. We still have. Since Zend_Rest_Server provides an RPC like component violating the REST architectural constraint, it is likely to be deprecated in the future versions of the Zend Framework. Learn how to create RESTful applications using the Zend Framework
