http://www.phpidiots.com/ Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:06:55 -0600 MyBB http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7307 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:46:36 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7307

Why would I want to do a manual install when my web host has this Fantastico thingy that will install Joomla for me? Good question. [...] If you are building websites for a living, and or plan on using Joomla a lot, then you really need to start doing your own installs. [...] If you are an experienced parachute jumper, you would pack your own chute right? This is no different.


Screenshots are included to help make the process easier as they walk you through setting up the basics like language settings and database information. They also touch on the FTP setting (off for security) and removing the admin user's information to help make things a bit more secure. It's not a comprehensive list of the things you'd need to do to get it 100% configured for just what you need, but it's a start.


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:40:12 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14157]]>

Why would I want to do a manual install when my web host has this Fantastico thingy that will install Joomla for me? Good question. [...] If you are building websites for a living, and or plan on using Joomla a lot, then you really need to start doing your own installs. [...] If you are an experienced parachute jumper, you would pack your own chute right? This is no different.


Screenshots are included to help make the process easier as they walk you through setting up the basics like language settings and database information. They also touch on the FTP setting (off for security) and removing the admin user's information to help make things a bit more secure. It's not a comprehensive list of the things you'd need to do to get it 100% configured for just what you need, but it's a start.


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:40:12 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14157]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7306 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:14:54 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7306

When it comes to open source projects endorsing PHP 5.3 as their one and only PHP platform, I encourage caution. When it comes to open source projects that use PHP, there are three main issues that I believe should be considered before making the leap to PHP 5.3 (or any new release of any new software).


He sees three considerations projects and companies should consider before making the upgrade on their servers - the amount of control you have over the environment, deciding if the upgrade is worth possible backwards compatibility breaks and how much support you want to still provide for the pre-5.3 version(s).


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:50:56 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14155]]>

When it comes to open source projects endorsing PHP 5.3 as their one and only PHP platform, I encourage caution. When it comes to open source projects that use PHP, there are three main issues that I believe should be considered before making the leap to PHP 5.3 (or any new release of any new software).


He sees three considerations projects and companies should consider before making the upgrade on their servers - the amount of control you have over the environment, deciding if the upgrade is worth possible backwards compatibility breaks and how much support you want to still provide for the pre-5.3 version(s).


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:50:56 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14155]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7305 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:14:53 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7305

The common practice is to hash the user password and store the hash string of the password in the database. When the user tries to log in and supplies his password, it is used to generate a hash string to be compared to the one stored in the database. [...] This approach may be secure in the 70s of the last century, but barely any more.


Computing has evolved enough to where hashed can be matched, sometimes in less than two or three minutes. Their answer to the problem? Generate a random salt each time you create the hash with a constant being used as a base. A code snippet calling a user-defined function and the sha1 function are included.


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:11:01 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14156]]>

The common practice is to hash the user password and store the hash string of the password in the database. When the user tries to log in and supplies his password, it is used to generate a hash string to be compared to the one stored in the database. [...] This approach may be secure in the 70s of the last century, but barely any more.


Computing has evolved enough to where hashed can be matched, sometimes in less than two or three minutes. Their answer to the problem? Generate a random salt each time you create the hash with a constant being used as a base. A code snippet calling a user-defined function and the sha1 function are included.


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:11:01 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14156]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7304 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:36:46 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7304

Neural networks are a relatively new technology that aims to reverse engineer the functionality of the brain within a mathematics model. This may sound daunting and complex but the underlying concepts are very simple and Neural Mesh does the hard work for you. In a Web environment NNs (neural networks) are considered too slow and complex to warrant effort on what might even be a trivial task. To solve this, Neural Mesh has been heavily optimized. It uses caching to speed up running and training of networks.


He explains what a neural network is on a base level and talks about it's ability to learn from the training its given (supervised or unsupervised). He also talks about how the networks can be useful and how to use the framework (found here) to create a simple network.


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:41:13 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14154]]>

Neural networks are a relatively new technology that aims to reverse engineer the functionality of the brain within a mathematics model. This may sound daunting and complex but the underlying concepts are very simple and Neural Mesh does the hard work for you. In a Web environment NNs (neural networks) are considered too slow and complex to warrant effort on what might even be a trivial task. To solve this, Neural Mesh has been heavily optimized. It uses caching to speed up running and training of networks.


He explains what a neural network is on a base level and talks about it's ability to learn from the training its given (supervised or unsupervised). He also talks about how the networks can be useful and how to use the framework (found here) to create a simple network.


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:41:13 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14154]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7302 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:00:34 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7302

Much more important than performance is the fact that both static methods and singletons suffer from major drawbacks. When it comes to deciding between the two, you might forgo the benchmark comparison and choose the third-party candidate: dependency injection.


He mentions the "dark side" of both static methods and singletons and how dependency injection can help rid your code of both. Instead of focusing just on the benchmark numbers, DI helps you keep your code more well-structured and "smarter" by scoping things to where they need to be and making them easier to test.


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:08:09 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14152]]>

Much more important than performance is the fact that both static methods and singletons suffer from major drawbacks. When it comes to deciding between the two, you might forgo the benchmark comparison and choose the third-party candidate: dependency injection.


He mentions the "dark side" of both static methods and singletons and how dependency injection can help rid your code of both. Instead of focusing just on the benchmark numbers, DI helps you keep your code more well-structured and "smarter" by scoping things to where they need to be and making them easier to test.


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:08:09 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14152]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7303 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:00:34 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7303

This week's DZone Refcard is about Getting Started with the Zend Framework. The card introduces you to the basics of the Zend Framework and sets you on the path to creating your first project. I met the author, Jason Gilmore, to find out more about the topic.


They talk about some of what the framework currently has to offer developers, what kind of involvement he's had with it, who it supports as far as advanced PHP features and what's to come in version 2.0. The Zend Framework RefCard mentioned can be viewed or downloaded here - a six-page quick reference for some of the more common Zend Framework tasks.


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:38:11 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14151]]>

This week's DZone Refcard is about Getting Started with the Zend Framework. The card introduces you to the basics of the Zend Framework and sets you on the path to creating your first project. I met the author, Jason Gilmore, to find out more about the topic.


They talk about some of what the framework currently has to offer developers, what kind of involvement he's had with it, who it supports as far as advanced PHP features and what's to come in version 2.0. The Zend Framework RefCard mentioned can be viewed or downloaded here - a six-page quick reference for some of the more common Zend Framework tasks.


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:38:11 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14151]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7301 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:00:30 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7301

Programmatically generating graphs and charts using SVG requires a deep understanding of the SVG specification and the various SVG primitives, as well as a fair amount of time for research, experimentation and debugging. Or, in other words, that's your entire weekend shot! Fortunately, help is at hand. There are a number of open-source PHP libraries that support SVG chart generation, and using them can significantly reduce the amount of work involved in adding this feature to a Web application.


He shows how to create simple images like bar, line and pie charts as well as adding in other things like a legend, custom titles and a sample where the user can define the sizes of a pie chart via some form input fields. Screenshots are included for all code examples to give you a better idea of the end result.


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:27:54 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14153]]>

Programmatically generating graphs and charts using SVG requires a deep understanding of the SVG specification and the various SVG primitives, as well as a fair amount of time for research, experimentation and debugging. Or, in other words, that's your entire weekend shot! Fortunately, help is at hand. There are a number of open-source PHP libraries that support SVG chart generation, and using them can significantly reduce the amount of work involved in adding this feature to a Web application.


He shows how to create simple images like bar, line and pie charts as well as adding in other things like a legend, custom titles and a sample where the user can define the sizes of a pie chart via some form input fields. Screenshots are included for all code examples to give you a better idea of the end result.


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:27:54 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14153]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7299 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:13:33 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7299 WinCache 1.1.0
timezonedb 2010.5


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:02:51 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14150]]> WinCache 1.1.0
timezonedb 2010.5


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:02:51 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14150]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7300 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:13:33 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7300 WinCache 1.1.0
timezonedb 2010.5


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:02:51 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14150]]> WinCache 1.1.0
timezonedb 2010.5


Posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:02:51 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14150]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7298 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:39:28 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7298

In this post I want to show you some of the neat things that can be done with the PHP-Erlang Bridge extension: A Key Value Store. Erlang comes packed with a Key Value store in the form of the ETS module. This is database is pretty fast and efficient for storing the Erlang terms in memory.


He tried a proof of concept to see how well the system would respond and was able to push over 150k items into the storage in one second. Sample code and instructions on getting the bridge working are included in the post.


Posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:37:51 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14149]]>

In this post I want to show you some of the neat things that can be done with the PHP-Erlang Bridge extension: A Key Value Store. Erlang comes packed with a Key Value store in the form of the ETS module. This is database is pretty fast and efficient for storing the Erlang terms in memory.


He tried a proof of concept to see how well the system would respond and was able to push over 150k items into the storage in one second. Sample code and instructions on getting the bridge working are included in the post.


Posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:37:51 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14149]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7297 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:01:54 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7297

2010 is the year of the document database. While momentum has been steadily building over the last seven years or so, there are now a wide variety of stable document databases -- from cloud-based ones from Amazon and Google, to a wide variety of Open Source tools, most notably CouchDB and MongoDB. So what is MongoDB? Here are five things every PHP developer should know about it.


He points out a few things - that MongoDB is a stand-alone server, that it's schemaless, you won't need to learn another query language to use it and that PHP and MongoDB play very well together (thanks to the Mongo PECL package already released).


Posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:44:43 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14147]]>

2010 is the year of the document database. While momentum has been steadily building over the last seven years or so, there are now a wide variety of stable document databases -- from cloud-based ones from Amazon and Google, to a wide variety of Open Source tools, most notably CouchDB and MongoDB. So what is MongoDB? Here are five things every PHP developer should know about it.


He points out a few things - that MongoDB is a stand-alone server, that it's schemaless, you won't need to learn another query language to use it and that PHP and MongoDB play very well together (thanks to the Mongo PECL package already released).


Posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:44:43 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14147]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7296 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:01:50 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7296

Alright bloggers, web surfers and simple web enthusiasts, we've got some fascinating news for you all. Yes, Internet community can't stop buzzing about the forthcoming release of the new version of #1 blogging software '" WordPress 3.0. [...] The official release is scheduled for May 2010 but now we have opportunity to mark the major advantages that this release will bring.


They list a few of the major enhancements that'll happen in the new release including:


a built-in multi-user option
custom post types
a new default design/theme
and changes related to security concerns


You can find out more about this upcoming release from this post to the man WordPress blog.


Posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:19:19 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14148]]>

Alright bloggers, web surfers and simple web enthusiasts, we've got some fascinating news for you all. Yes, Internet community can't stop buzzing about the forthcoming release of the new version of #1 blogging software '" WordPress 3.0. [...] The official release is scheduled for May 2010 but now we have opportunity to mark the major advantages that this release will bring.


They list a few of the major enhancements that'll happen in the new release including:


a built-in multi-user option
custom post types
a new default design/theme
and changes related to security concerns


You can find out more about this upcoming release from this post to the man WordPress blog.


Posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:19:19 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14148]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7295 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:30:42 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7295

Admittedly, I'm interested in some of these projects [tagged with PHP] purely out of curiosity, but some of them actually look useful. I won't claim that these are the best of the PHP projects on Codeplex (hence the question mark in the title), but here are some that piqued my interest and that I plan to check out.

The projects in his list are include PHP LINQ classes, Virtual Earth integration and the Zend Framework DB adapter for Microsoft SQL Native Client.

Posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:51:54 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14145]]>

Admittedly, I'm interested in some of these projects [tagged with PHP] purely out of curiosity, but some of them actually look useful. I won't claim that these are the best of the PHP projects on Codeplex (hence the question mark in the title), but here are some that piqued my interest and that I plan to check out.

The projects in his list are include PHP LINQ classes, Virtual Earth integration and the Zend Framework DB adapter for Microsoft SQL Native Client.

Posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:51:54 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14145]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7294 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:30:41 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7294

When talking about building a scalable application there is a big concept out there that many PHP developers are not overly familiar with. That concept is queuing. It is becoming much more prevalent in PHP-land but the concept of a queue is still relatively unused among PHP developers. [...] Queuing a job is actually very easy to do. A job is run by calling a URL where that job resides. The Job Queue daemon will receive the request from your application and will then call the URL that you specified in the API call. Once you call that URL your application can continue going on its merry way to finish serving up the request.


He includes some code snippets showing how to create the request - in this case a simple call that will just email when the job is preformed. There's more than one way to do it and he includes a more well structured/less scripty way to do things in an abstract class.


Posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:11:58 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14146]]>

When talking about building a scalable application there is a big concept out there that many PHP developers are not overly familiar with. That concept is queuing. It is becoming much more prevalent in PHP-land but the concept of a queue is still relatively unused among PHP developers. [...] Queuing a job is actually very easy to do. A job is run by calling a URL where that job resides. The Job Queue daemon will receive the request from your application and will then call the URL that you specified in the API call. Once you call that URL your application can continue going on its merry way to finish serving up the request.


He includes some code snippets showing how to create the request - in this case a simple call that will just email when the job is preformed. There's more than one way to do it and he includes a more well structured/less scripty way to do things in an abstract class.


Posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:11:58 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14146]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7293 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:55:52 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7293

This year I had the privilege of speaking at this event [...] my talk was entitled "Best Practices in Web Service Design" although perhaps "Things I Wish Web Service Creators Would Consider Before Writing Unclear and Unstable Useless And Frustrating Services" would have been a better title.


This year's PHP London Conference was held on Friday, February 26th in London and had talks on regular expressions, mobile application development, cloud computing and database optimization. Check out the Joind.in page for the event to see comments left by those that attended.


Posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:26:45 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14144]]>

This year I had the privilege of speaking at this event [...] my talk was entitled "Best Practices in Web Service Design" although perhaps "Things I Wish Web Service Creators Would Consider Before Writing Unclear and Unstable Useless And Frustrating Services" would have been a better title.


This year's PHP London Conference was held on Friday, February 26th in London and had talks on regular expressions, mobile application development, cloud computing and database optimization. Check out the Joind.in page for the event to see comments left by those that attended.


Posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:26:45 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14144]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7292 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:42:39 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7292 HTML_Template_IT 1.3.0a3
Crypt_GPG 1.1.0
Services_Twitter 0.5.1
Mail 1.2.0
Payment_PagamentoCerto 0.2.3
PHP_ParserGenerator 0.1.6


Posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:09:45 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14143]]> HTML_Template_IT 1.3.0a3
Crypt_GPG 1.1.0
Services_Twitter 0.5.1
Mail 1.2.0
Payment_PagamentoCerto 0.2.3
PHP_ParserGenerator 0.1.6


Posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:09:45 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14143]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7291 Sat, 06 Mar 2010 07:31:46 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7291 Job Posting: Mediware Blood Center Technologies Seeks PHP Software Developer (Jacksonville, FL)


Posted on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 07:05:11 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14142]]> Job Posting: Mediware Blood Center Technologies Seeks PHP Software Developer (Jacksonville, FL)


Posted on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 07:05:11 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14142]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7289 Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:38:10 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7289

Andrew attempted to give the most complete answer but the truth is the answer is lost in the dim and distant past. There is nothing you can do about it. On every install a superadmin user is created with username "admin" and userid "62".


Since this is a common "feature" of the older Joomla installs, it could potentially be used in a sort of attack on the site. Fortunately, as of the Joomla 1.6 release, the installation allows you to select a username of your own (while still suggesting "admin") with a new change to the user's ID - 42 instead of 61.


Posted on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:05:13 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14141]]>

Andrew attempted to give the most complete answer but the truth is the answer is lost in the dim and distant past. There is nothing you can do about it. On every install a superadmin user is created with username "admin" and userid "62".


Since this is a common "feature" of the older Joomla installs, it could potentially be used in a sort of attack on the site. Fortunately, as of the Joomla 1.6 release, the installation allows you to select a username of your own (while still suggesting "admin") with a new change to the user's ID - 42 instead of 61.


Posted on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:05:13 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14141]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7290 Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:38:10 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7290

How to prevent SQL injection in PHP scripts is probably a topic that doesn't need anything more written about it. [...] However, it is important to have fresh information for new Web developers and I don't necessarily agree with some of the most common suggestions for preventing SQL injection. [...] So, this will be yet another post about preventing SQL injection, but I will offer my 2 cents about what I think is the right way to prevent it.


He explains SQL injections for those that are unsure on the concept with a basic form example and what he thinks is a better way to prevent it than just trying to escape the SQL - bound parameters. These allow you to both filter and protect your application from any would-be attacks that might come your way. He is, of course, using SQL Server so the parameter binding is included in the database functionality. Other databases might have to use something like PDO to accomplish the same kind of thing.


Posted on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:47:43 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14140]]>

How to prevent SQL injection in PHP scripts is probably a topic that doesn't need anything more written about it. [...] However, it is important to have fresh information for new Web developers and I don't necessarily agree with some of the most common suggestions for preventing SQL injection. [...] So, this will be yet another post about preventing SQL injection, but I will offer my 2 cents about what I think is the right way to prevent it.


He explains SQL injections for those that are unsure on the concept with a basic form example and what he thinks is a better way to prevent it than just trying to escape the SQL - bound parameters. These allow you to both filter and protect your application from any would-be attacks that might come your way. He is, of course, using SQL Server so the parameter binding is included in the database functionality. Other databases might have to use something like PDO to accomplish the same kind of thing.


Posted on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:47:43 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14140]]> http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7288 Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:54:28 -0600 http://www.phpidiots.com/showthread.php?tid=7288

Now that we have WINCACHE 1.1 Beta released which has got implementation for both user and session cache, one can easily take advantage of WINCACHE user cache and increase performance of Joomla. In this post I am going to tell you steps to use WINCACHE user cache with Joomla.


There's a class you'll need to copy and paste to create a new Joomla caching component, but after that it's as easy as having the WinCache tool installed and changing your configuration options to use the new wincache connector class for the CMS's caching.


Here's a direct link to grab this latest version of WinCache since it only works with version 1.1.0 and higher - WinCache.zip.


Posted on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:27:14 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14138]]>

Now that we have WINCACHE 1.1 Beta released which has got implementation for both user and session cache, one can easily take advantage of WINCACHE user cache and increase performance of Joomla. In this post I am going to tell you steps to use WINCACHE user cache with Joomla.


There's a class you'll need to copy and paste to create a new Joomla caching component, but after that it's as easy as having the WinCache tool installed and changing your configuration options to use the new wincache connector class for the CMS's caching.


Here's a direct link to grab this latest version of WinCache since it only works with version 1.1.0 and higher - WinCache.zip.


Posted on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:27:14 -0600 at http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/14138]]>