Web Development Story

I have been on the hunt for a new host for a while now and, after many recommendations, decided to give Linode a go. Linode is a cloud based VPS provider. You get root SSH access and set everything up for yourself, with the exception of the Linux distribution, which can be installed with one click.

On my current project, we create a branch at the beginning of each sprint and maintain a clean trunk. All code from the sprint is committed to the sprint branch. At the end of the sprint, we merge the sprint branch into trunk (assuming it passes QA). This is pretty much the same setup as feature branches. Here are a few notes and snippets for this type of setup.

A client is using the Drupal node title module and, as part of an SEO review, I want to see how many duplicate meta titles there are.

I recently had a problem where PHP was timing out at 60 seconds when running a Drupal site using XAMPP on Windows (yeah I know, Windows and XAMPP sucks). I tried changing my php.ini file to 240 seconds, but it made no difference, it would still time out at 60 seconds. Here are the steps I made to fix this issue.

There are times when you pay want to force links to open in a new window. It could be to open terms and conditions, adverts or external links. Please note that some believe that you should never force a link to open in a new window as that decision should be left to the user. I will not debate this here, but rather explain how to do it should the need arise.

You can not make a table row click-able using HTML alone. By click-able, I mean nesting an entire row inside an anchor tag

I have just discovered a conflict between Skype and WampServer that I thought I would share. They both use port 80 which causes the conflict. If you run Skype before running Wamp, then Apache will not run. If you go to a site on localhost, you will probably get a blank screen.

The MySQL Server has gone away error can happen when trying to restore a database. There are a few possible causes for this and one of the most likely is that the database is very big in size and the packet size in MySQL is not big enough.

If you are running WampServer on your local machine, it can be a bit tricky to restore a MySQL database. You need to do it from the Windows command line (DOS prompt), rather then the MySQL console command line. The actual MySQL restore command is slightly different to normal and you need to make sure you are in the right directory first.

Copying an entire directory in FreeBSD (a Unix based operating system similar to Linux) is very easy.

The following example is to copy a directory on a web server. Firstly, you must create the destination directory.

It is often the case that a column such as the ID column on a table will auto increment. This simply means that the next insert into the table will have an ID that is one more then the previous one and therefore all ID's will be unique.

The mere mention of the word backup makes many website owners panic. "Backup! Um, yeah well I meant to do backups, but I never get around to it". Trust me, when a database fails you need a recent backup. And databases do fail!

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.

I have always been a fan of the BBC website. It is extremely effective at organising and presenting vast quantities of information. When I visited the BBC homepage last week, I thought I must have mis-typed the URL. It was not the usual BBC website that I know and love.

One of the worlds biggest open source projects is being bought by one of the worlds biggest and richest software companies. Sun Microsystems is handing over $1 billion dollars to buy the worlds most popular open source database, MySQL.

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.

A friend sent me this site and I was so impressed that I felt compelled to blog about it. So that is my first point about this site, it is great link bait!

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.

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.