Every once in a while you need to solve this unique problem. This problem that you usually only have to solve once or twice. So you start developing, but quickly wonder what the best solution is. You can write your own solution, but it pays off to at least search through PHP.net a bit to see if there is not already a solution for it in PHP.

This is the kind of article I love: it integrates software development, economics, cognitive bias, risk assessment, and security planning. Read the whole thing for links. More imagination leads to more movie-plot threats — which contributes to overall fear and overestimation of the risks. And that doesn't help keep us safe at all. Recently, I read [...]

Regarding the topic “optimizing page-loading-times” too many people still set the focus only on the server-side, ignoring the fact that most of the loading time is spent getting all the components of the page(CSS, JavaScript, images, ads). The yahoo performance-team proved this very well. Also, pages (like tilllate.com) more often make heavy use of JavaScript with the [...]

Perhaps one of the most frustrating aspects of using PHP with websites, is getting variables into CSS. Having variables stored in an ini file, config file or even a database can make the updating of the look and feel of a site simple, however, CSS files, by default, do not parse PHP. Of course, the web server could be told to parse CSS as PHP in the same way it does for html. AddType application/x-httpd-php .css With the addition of the above line in httpd.conf or in a .htaccess, the web server will now parse PHP code that is within the CSS files. This is one solution, but a better method may be at hand.

The previously announced product from Zend: Zend Server, that was in public beta for the last couple months has been fully released! This includes both the full paid subscription Zend Server, as well as the free Zend Server CE.

As we all know by now, we're living in times of crisis. A recession is hitting us, and it's hitting us hard. Even here in The Netherlands, where at first it seemed we'd be avoiding the biggest hit, we're now getting reports that the recession is the biggest since WWII. The crisis seems to be hitting bigtime in many places. So how does it affect open source and PHP?

A great and accessible presentation on Linked Data (the core technology behind Semantic Web, together with RDF) and DBpedia at the TED conference by the founder of the World Wide Web:

Zend yesterday released a beta of it’s release candidate for both Zend Server and Zend Server CE (Community Edition). Zend Server is not available for the Mac, but Zend Server CE is, so I decided to give it a try. There are many good things in this product. Among them, is the ability to easily activate [...]

A lot of people try to scrape content from html - the first approach always seem to be regular expressions, which are incapable of parsing html - which I proved earlier, already. So, how to do it properly with PHP?

My last post was for all users, technical and non. This post is for the techies who know me, and are switching. Some are coming from Windows, some from Linux, some are designers who need to do some local development. So, I’ll try to keep this post as simple as possible, and perhaps [...]

If you need to follow redirects within your php code using Curl and the open_basedir is set you came into some trouble. If you disable this directive all your directories with a 777 permission are not safe (if one or more website on the same server has some security issues). If you don’t have additional [...]

I've been really busy lately hence it being quiet here. My TODO list has quite a few topics I want to write about, I just need to find the time. So what have I been up to? Mainly Jobeet, work and Spore ;)

I’m in the planning stages of a Javascript magazine, similar to the GroovyMag publication I’ve already got out.  Before jumping in too deep, I’m looking to gauge interest in the idea.  Are you interested in a monthly Javascript magazine?  If so, click the link above and sign up.  Or, just leave a comment below.  :) [...]

There are dozens of PHP frameworks around now, some attracting more attention than others. I am no expert on these frameworks and have not used a single one extensively so I wouldn’t dream of recommending one over the other, nor do I want to enter the debate about what is or is not a framework [...]

W3C released mobileOK checker, which is intended to help developers created clean websites suited for mobile devices and help them reach mobile community, supporting strategy that the Web should be accessible on a variety of heterogeneous clients. Among other things, mobileOK validator seems to analyze: (X)html markup validity DTD's mobile-friendliness Structure of the page (e.g. weight in KBs) Scripting (which should be degradable) Inclusions (frames, pop-ups, applets, and objects are discouraged) CSS stylesheets (absolute units, floats and absolute positioning are discouraged) Character encodings (UTF-8 is recommended) HTTP headers (caching is encouraged) Links This blog seems to be 78% mobileOK already :)

The Zend Framework has now attracted a small community of developers and more and more new comers are attracted to it. The Zend Documentation is plentiful, yet vague. Without any real guidance or specific examples to get a site up and running. This example site hopes to introduce the newcomers to Zend Framework in a friendly way, by providing a simple modular site layout and can have the newcomer up and running in minutes, rather than the long hard yard of sifting through docs which might as well be hieroglyphics to the those new to the framework. This is release 0.0.1 of the example site, with new additions in the planning and user feedback and requests welcomed.

q1. why the hell someone would do that? a1. if you bought some interesting domain like i do (heh heh) http://blog.ofhas.in and want your existing blog to be available there as well, without spending hours to move data and to give it same look-n-feel - here’s your time-saving wizard. and beside that, i also dont want [...]

An interesting presentiation at Google Tech Talks about different interfaces to query semantic data. Casual users were presented with 4 increasingly formal systems: keyword search, natural language search, controlled language search, and a graphical interface to build query patterns. Interestingly enough, the users liked natural language best, although keyword queries gave more accurate results.

Zend Framework 1.7.0 has been released and is now available from the Zend Framework download site

I've been working more with Java than PHP recently, using a Java port of the DIY Framework. So effectively it is a portable framework now, at least to some extent — it is a matter of language syntax and model layer to move a Web applicaton between Java and PHP.Not that this is going to be extensively used killer feature. But I think it is a positive outcome of our Web framework design: it has to be based on HTTP and REST principles and concepts. Since they are uniform for all Web applications, such a framework makes them portable.We think it is essential to incorporate HTTP at the heart of the design, and in the DIY Framework an URI-adressed Resource is an actual class. It is also for the same reason we don't like or use third-party frameworks, since instead of HTTP, they are built on concepts taken out of the blue. Symfony structures an application as modules and actions and throws a mess of routing on top. Who said that a Web application must have structure like that? Apache Struts uses some abstract notion of action and tons of configuration. ASP.NET goes even further and pretends it is used to build event-driven Windows applications and not Web applications of request/response nature.

Users hate your cache Users don’t like caching! They want to see the changes immediately. Otherwise they get confused and write you bug tickets or flame mails. But if you do not use caching the user comes and make your CPU’s burning. If your site is down you not only get mails from your users, but [...]

google maps is one of the very best mapping services available these days. using their api you can embed interactive maps of different types in your web pages. and there are many plugins to make your life easier to embed such maps in your web pages and applications. to embed interactive google map, you need [...]

It just felt soo long since I had last hacked on anything xmlrpc-related, and some part of me was looking for an itch to scratch. Luckily today a request for help via email set me on a hunt for blog posts / forum posts / mailing list messages where complete newbies ask questions about the phpxmlrpc [...]

For university I have been asked to summarize the current state of the Semantic Web. Existing and emerging technologies. There was a quite tight limitation on the amount of content, but it resulted in a good overview on this topic with a slight focus on computer science.