Ryan Malesevich's Blog: WP Plugins: Database Backup
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On his blog today, Ryan Malesevich brings us yet another spotlight on a useful WordPress plugin. This time, it's a look at a tool that could save your entire site if used - the WordPress Database Backup plugin.   Wordpress ships with a couple plugins installed like Akismet which is a great help. I'm not sure what the Hello Dolly one is and am afraid to try it because it sounds lame. But it also comes with a Wordpress Database Backup. I've been using this for a while and thought I would share it with you.   He shows the installation and use of the plugin, including screenshots of what the various bits of functionality look like. Making backups is always a good thing, and making it this easy is even better.
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Jim Plush has posted an offifical release announcement about his latest contribution to the PHP community - a debugging tool combining PHP (through the myBIC framework) and the Firefox FireBug extension.   I put together a couple pieces of technology to give the PHP community a debugger/profiler that should make life easier in the "web2.0" world. Are you tired of echo'ing print statements in your ajax calls? Writing to log files? Firing up big ol debuggers just to see what the value of some array is? Well look no further than the new MyBic PHP Debugger.   The tool is a smaller part of his larger MyBIC framework and can do things like writing log files, echo information back out to the screen, and communicate information back out to the Firefox user. There is a standalone version of FireBug that will be posted for those that don't want to have to install an entire framework to use it.   Keep an eye out (here and on his blog) for the links to the release when it's posted. In the meantime, you can check out a screencast [mov] of the package in action or just the screenshots in the blog entry.
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Matthew O'Phinney had the chance to present the Zend Framework during a meeting he attended of his local PHP user group (BostonPHP) as a part of a series their doing.   Horde was also represented as part of the evening's fare. It was the first time I've attended a UG, so I got the double whammy of that and being a presenter. Oh, make it a triple whammy -- Boston is a 3+ hour drive from the Burlington, VT area I now call home.   He mentions a talk that Chuck Hagenbuch (of the Horde project) gave on the current state of the project and a bit about his presentation (including some portions that pointed out problems with the Zend_Db component). You can check out this and the rest of the contents of his presentation here [pdf] and here [mp3 podcast].
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:Job Posting: WorldNetJobs.com Seeks Expert PHP Developer (Multiple Locations - FL/MD/NY)Stefan Reuter's Blog: Profiling PHP ApplicationsRich Zygler's Blog: People work with WS-* web services in PHP? Why?PHPBuilder.com: Securing Data Sent Via GET RequestsKore Nordmann's Blog: Comparision of PHP image librariesJim Wynia's Blog:  WebDAV, PHP and YouPadraic Brady's Blog: Namespaces (or Yet Another Pointless Opinion Piece)Christopher Jones' Blog: PHP 5.2.5 RPMs with OCI8 and PDO_OCI are availableZend Developer Zone: PHP Abstract Podcast Episode 29: PHP Women Podcast (Recorded Live)Evert Pot's Blog: PHP WebDAV Integration Library
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Padraic Brady has put together a very comprehensive post on his blog today about using the Zend_Feed component of the Zend Framework to help with the aggregation of content from other sites (like RSS and Atom feeds).   In this entry I explore Zend_Feed from the perspective of someone aggregating RSS and Atom feeds with a view to building a database of uniquely identified content for later presentation in a "Planet" style application. [...] In fact all we create here is a simple command line script to aggregate content frequently (e.g. just set up cron to run it every hour or so) into a database for later presentation.   He guides you through each step of the way:   Setting Up Database And Models The Aggregator Script Foundation Using Zend_Feed to get common data for RSS/Atom entries Putting It All Together   There's plenty of code (and SQL to insert) in the post and he explains each point well, helping to make the development process smoother. There's even a summary section to toss in a few extra bits of information just in case you missed them along the way.
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On Alexander Netkachev's blog today, there's a walk-through of a light and easy method for getting PHP and Apache up and running. It makes use of the Installer Technical Preview utility to make live simpler.    I created the installer, which primary goal is to provide the developer with command-line tools for basic Apache/PHP/MySQL management tasks.    This a preview version of AMP installer and configurator. Although, it is very far from being a real time-proven and tested installation method, with your help and effort we can make it better.    There's a link for the download and a brief How-To on using the package to get things up and running quickly. There's also two things on the To-Do list for upcoming versions - installers for various other databases and support for automatic installation of modern PHP applications (like WordPress, phpbb, etc).
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John Mertic has a quick note on his blog about the latest release candidate for the Windows PHP installer (PHP5.2.0RC3) and some issues they've been having.    Rebuilt the installer for 5.2.0RC3. Edin was having problems building it so I'm going to do it and upload it; hopefully we can resolve the issue.   It's also noted that if you see issues with using the installer, try removing the previous PHP installation before running it again.
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Ryan Malesevich is back today with a look at another handy WordPress plugin - Adsense Beautifier.   I'm here to let you guys in on a little secret. From what I hear, if you're using Google Adsense, if you add images next to the ads it helps through with your click through rate. And a better click through rate means higher revenues. Now, I've never done it but I hear it works out pretty well. So how exactly would you go about doing that? You could do it manually, but where is the fun in that?   He talks about what the plugin does - generate the Adsense code for you, without having to go back to Google each time. It supports most of the syles that Google offers currently, but a few are left out. It also helps arrange the ads to make it easier to place them on the page.   Installation is easy, and complete details on the plugin can be found on the project homepage.
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On his blog today, Mike Lively has posted about the work h's done to create a database extension for the popular unit testing software for PHP, PHPUnit.   For those that may not have read any of my previous postings on the subject the goal of this software is to extend the functionality of PHPUnit to allow using seed data to put a given database into a known state prior to executing each test. It also provides an easy mechanism to compare database contents with an expected dataset.   Mike has just completed the initial feature set for his project - more or less a port of DBUnit over to PHP. The post includes not only details about this initial release but also code that demonstrates its use. In his example, it's used to validate that a bank account has been created properly by comparng database information before and after the insert.
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On the Zend Developer Zone, there's a new tutorial looking at one of the unsung heroes of the web development world - one that, when you need it, it does what it does well - SQLite.   Is a full-blown database server even necessary for most PHP applications? What about a data-driven website like a blog or a simple family photo album or message board? In these and may other cases, the small, simple, and extremely powerful SQLite may be all you need. Let's take SQLite out for a test drive and see how it performs, find some of the quirks you might run in to, and how to get the most use out of it.   They talk about SQLite being a "staple" in PHP for a while now and how PDO plays so well with it. They move on to the code quickly, giving a simple example of how to create a database, and table, and inserting content into the latter.    Other more advanced features are discussed - data types, speed of queries, using transactions, and cleaning up the code to really make it fly. They even talk about "user defined aggregate functions", a method to make running a set of data through the same processes over and over a snap.
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MySQL developers turn to an unlikely source for database tool: Microsoft. Also: SGI visualizes Linux, and the return of Java veteran Kim Polese.
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On his blog, Stoyan Stefanov takes a look at using on of the most popular pieces of PHP forum software out there - phpBB - and optimizing the front-end.   During this short workshop there will be no changes to the phpBB code, we'll create a new template instead, so that in case something bad happens, your board will continue to work normally. As an example, I'll use the bgcanada.com/phpBB2, the board I volunteer to administrate.   The tutorial is broken up into sections:   The plan New subdomains Creating a new template Moving CSS to an external file, merging Copying files to the new subdomains Serving gzipped content Turning ETags off Expires header Sysadmin summary   It looks like a lot of steps, but each section is relatively short and written well so as not to have more information than needed. In the end you'll have a simple template that uses Yahoo's 14 optimization rules to make things work that much faster.
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:Padraic Brady's Blog: Complex Views w/Zend Framework - The Final Chapter: ZFE & Zend_Layout in Core!php|architect: Stuff your stockings: single issues 30% offDeveloperTutorials.com: How to Install PHP 5 on LinuxStoyan Stefanov's Blog: Fancy FormattingSymbianOne.com: Your S60 Web server gets a boostAndreas Gohr's Blog: MySimple.php - A lightweight PHPMyAdmin substituteNessa's Blog: Working with Permissions in PHPSymfony Blog: Symfony 1.0.10 is OutMatthew Turland's Blog: Web Scraping Article PublishedJan Lehnardt's Blog: REST Controller for PHP Applications
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:PHP-Coding-Practices.com: How I Turned A Slow Array Sort Into A Quick One Using Quicksort AlgorithmZend Developer Zone: PHP Abstract Podcast Episode 4: Planning ProgrammingWeb Development Blog: Save bandwidth with PHProxy and ip2nationJob Posting: Assembleron Ltd Seeks PHP 5/MySQL/Ajax Developers (Reading, UK)PÃ¡draic Brady's Blog: Complex Views with the Zend Framework - Part 6: Setting The TerminologyThe Bakery: Four New Articles - Load Balancing, Request Info, UUID Behavior & Upload ThumbnailsCommunity News: PEAR Installer version 1.6.0 releasedChristopher Kunz's Blog: Building PHP with cURL and libmysqlclient5DevShed: Working with Prepared Queries with PDO Objects in PHP 5Secunia.com: rPath update for gd, php, php-mysql, and php-pgsql
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Evolt.org has a new tutorial posted today concerning something that I still get a lot of questions about - creating a PHP Login System with Admin Features.
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A press release has been published from Senza Limiti about their acquisition of the PHPScripts.se's Ajax-enabled DataGrid component and intentions to release it under both an Open Source license and a commercial license (like MySQL has done).   The PHP Grid is an Ajax-based table component that shows database information in a good looking, easy to use way. All user actions are performed in real time, on the client side, giving instant feedback and providing a desktop-like user experience. Among its features are Excel support and an automated print function that presents the table in a printable format. It also allows instant editing of database rows.   You can get the complete details on the component from these pages on Senza Limiti's website.
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Christian Wenz, back from the php/db|works conference and at a break following the conference, has posted some of his thoughts about this years conference over on his blog.   My schedule was crammed right after php|works 2006, so I could not find an earlier possibility to blog. Anyway, the extended entry contains my short report on php|arch's second conference this year.   He talks about some sightseeing before-hand, Tutorial Day, XML Security demos, Unicode in PHP6, a "slight problem" concerning his laptop, and his role on the Zend PHP5 Certification Panel. Check out the full entry for all of the details and "expect a separate blog entry later" on his experience on the panel.