PHP

I came across WeBuilder about a year ago I started looking into various code editors. I was using Dreamweaver at the time. While Dreamweaver is a good product, I always felt that there was probably a product out there that was better and more time efficient. I was mainly looking for a PHP Editor and was willing to use Dreamweaver for HTML and CSS, but a combined editor would have been ideal.

Displaying random images on a home page can add real impact. It ensures that your home page is always fresh, because when a visitor returns to the home page, a new image will appear.

Here are a few examples of random images in action. When you visit the home page on these sites, keep clicking refresh and you will see that the main image changes.

Utilising a pre-built, off the shield, content management system VS building your own is a never ending debate in web development circles. It seems that most people are strongly in favor of one or the other.

On August 18th, 2007, a "geek Olympics", called Full Code Press was held between a team from Australia and a team from New Zealand. The contest was simple enough: build a fully operation website and content management system. Oh, and they had 24 hours to do it!

I have been on the hunt for a better PHP editor or IDE (Integrated Development Environment). phpDesigner made my short list and has received positive reviews elsewhere. I have tested it out, and here is what I think of it:

phpDesigner is one of the most popular PHP IDE's on the market. At 39 Euros it is an absolute steal compared with the more expensive IDE's, like Zend Studio ($299). It is packed with features that should speed up your development time.

Ok, so there are plenty of sites for PHP geeks. But this is the daddy geek site! It is a directory full of really useful PHP websites. It is great for finding open source class libraries, tutorials, articles, tools and the like.

PHP Directory

I have finally had enough of coding PHP in Dreamweaver and am on the hunt for a dedicated PHP editor or IDE (Intergrated Development Environment) to use instead. Dreamweaver is great for HTML and CSS, but does quite cut it for PHP. My objective is to improve productivity.

The PHP development team have announced that PHP 4 will not be supported from the end of 2007. That means that there will be no more releases of PHP 4 from then on. Critical security fixes will be made on a case by case basis up to August 8th 2008.

If you are still using PHP 4, then it is time to start migrating to PHP 5. PHP 5 is three years old and is very stable and runs faster than PHP 4. Once you understand PHP 5, it is generally an easier version to code with due to its object orientated approach.

Many web developers ignore the threat of SQL Injection, or are oblivious to it. It is one of the most serious security threats and can result in a corrupted, amended, viewing of sensitive information or even a deleted database. Thankfully, it is fairly easy to protect websites from SQL injection attacks.

Learning PHP and MySQL can be a daunting task, especially if you do not have any programming experience. You are probably confused about all these arrays, functions, objects and classes.

Luckily the internet is full of some great tutorials and reference guides to help you along the way.