Maguma Workbench 2.1

Maguma Workbench version 2.1 is now available!

Version 2.1.0 represents the latest in the Workbench series offered by Maguma GmbH. This PHP IDE gives the user features like: debugging support via Xdebug, modular plugin architecture for easy extensibility, remote file handling and editing through both FTP and SFTP.

New features added to this enhanced release include PHP5 support, improved remote file support, localized support for the languages english and german (additional languages will be added in future versions), as well as overall increases in stability and compatibility.

With the user community’s active participation through promptly reporting any problems occurring, we have been able to aggressively remove roadblocks to the efficient development of PHP applications with Workbench. This version also includes several long awaited features requested by our users.

Current members can login to download this latest version here.

If you are not a member you can register here to allow you to try out Maguma Workbench for 30 days free of charge.

If you would like to know all the changes included in version 2.1 you may view the changelog here.

What good is Accessibility

I have always been a HUGE fan of web development for accessibility (not with this site, unfortunately). If I can help just a handful of people read my site, or allow search engines a better chance of finding my content…I’ll do it!

Recently, one of the best articles on the “other” benefits of Accessibility has appeared on sitepoint.

Be sure to check out Part 1: Increased Usability and Part 2: Better Search Ranking. This is required reading! 😉

October Meeting

This month we discussed the future of the KC PUG. Don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere…just about to get a whole lot better.

I’m going to be addressing MANY of the issues we have been having with the website, etc. I’m also going to be adding Content again!!! You like content, right? 😉 Check back soon for more info!!

And if you havn’t already, please cast your opinion to our poll. Click or Comment….it’s your choice!

THE place to be!

At the meeting today Dan helped me insure that the search engine bots would find all the pages of my company’s web site. There’s nothing strange about that other than it didn’t involve PHP at all. What a wonderful resource for those of us that don’t know what we are doing!

Forum Login Repaired

If you haven’t been using the forums because the log in stuff wasn’t really working right, please give it another try. I still don’t like that you have to have separate logins, but at least you can actually log in now (without using the private message hackery). 😉 Enjoy!!

September 2004 Meeting

It was a great meeting today. So many people showed up–I was very happy to have prepared something. You can download my presentation on Getting Started with PHP5. Please, send on any comments or questions.
If you are interested, I used OpenOffice.org’s Impress to create the presentation. It has a very handy Export to Shockwave Flash function, which was used to produce the .swf linked above.

July 2004 Meeting – PHP5 has arrived

July was a blast! Thank you to everyone who dropped by. We had a great mix of first-timers and return members. Of course, we discussed some of the new features of PHP 5 as well as how to start using it. All detailed in this month’s PUG.
[i]
EDITED: 20040107 – Cleaned up the markup to be more xoopish. And added \ marks to the configure example. They simply tell the shell that all of that is really the same command (or line). Note, all of this works with the now current 5.0.3…just so ya know.[/i]
If you are looking for the definitive source of changes in PHP5, look no further than [url=http://www.php.net/manual/en/migration5.php]The Migration Guide[/url]. In the [url=http://www.php.net/manual/en/]php documentation[/url], you will find a host of new features sprinkled throughout…but who has time to read all of those pages!

Fear not, their [url=http://www.php.net/manual/en/migration5.php]Migrating from PHP4 to PHP5[/url] document will certainly make for a great evening read. This helpful document will tour you through all the new features and (known) backwards incompatibilities in this amazing release.

After talking about the exciting new object model for a little while, we discussed to ways to install PHP on your own machine.

The first, using a Windows Installer called [url=http://www.wampserver.com/en/index.php[/url]WAMP5[/url]. If you are using windows and just want an easy to install setup of PHP5, mysql, mysqladmin and apache…look no further. It installs in no time, and seems to do the trick quite nicely. They even have a PHP4 add-on now, so that you can switch between 4 and 5 with ease.

Next, we walked through installing PHP5 as a CGI on an existing PHP4 enabled server. This allows me to continue my day job in PHP4, yet gives me a way to start playing with 5. If you are looking to do something similar in windows, you might check out the this [url=http://www.circle.ch/blog/p1387.html]weblog entry[/url] on circle.ch.

My process was very similar. Now again, this is in linux, and I like to keep the software that I compile seperate from the software that is installed by my Linux distribution. So, your pathnames may vary. 😉

First, I pulled down the tar ball (php-5.0.0.tar.bz2) from php.net. Then, I went to my build directory and un-tarred it.

[code]$ tar -xvjf ~/php-5.0.0.tar.bz2[/code]

Then, I used the configure command to tell the PHP source a little bit about what I want built in, and where I would like it to go.

[i]You can find more information on [url=http://www.php.net/manual/en/configure.php]php configure options[/url] on php.net.[/i]

[code]$ cd php-5.0.0
$ ./configure \
–enable-force-cgi-redirect \
–prefix=/opt/php5.0.0-cgi \
–with-zlib \
–with-libxml-dir=/usr/ \
–with-xsl=/usr/ \
–disable-pear \
–with-gd \
–enable-gd-native-ttf \
–with-freetype-dir=/usr/lib \
–with-jpeg-dir=/usr/lib \
–with-png-dir=/usr/lib \
–with-zlib-dir=/usr/lib \
–with-gettext \
–with-curl \
–with-pspell \
–with-mysql=/usr/lib/mysql/ \
–enable-debug \
–with-pear=/opt/php5.0.0-cgi/php-lib/ \
–with-config-file-path=/apache/conf/ \
–with-config-file=/apache/conf/php-5-cgi.ini[/code]
[code]$ make
// a minute 14 seconds later…
$ make install[/code]

PHP then installs itself…no sweat. You can even run your new php on the command line. If you used the example above, you would run start it like so:

[code]$ /opt/php-5.0.0-cgi/bin/php[/code]

All that is left is to add a new vitual host to your apache.conf

[code]

ServerAdmin [email protected]
ServerName php5-demo
DocumentRoot “/u01/httpd_data/site/php5-demo/htdocs”

Options None
AllowOverride all
Order allow,deny
Allow from all

ErrorLog /u01/httpd_data/logs/php5-demo/error_log
CustomLog /u01/httpd_data/logs/php5-demo/access_log combined
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ “/opt/php5.0.0-cgi/bin/”
Action php5-script /cgi-bin/php
RemoveType .php
AddHandler php5-script .php .html


[/code]
Last but not least, you will need to add an entry for your fake server to your /etc/hosts file.

[code]127.0.0.1 localhost tachyon www php5-demo[/code]
Now, just restart your apache and you should be in business.

Put a little index.php (with a [b][/b] or something in it) in /u01/httpd_data/site/php5-demo/htdocs and open your browser to http://php5-demo. You should be greeted by the PHP 5 information!

phpMyAdmin 2.5.7 vulnerable to remote attacks

many of us use phpMyAdmin to help us manage our MySQL databases. If left open to public access, phpMyAdmin is open to a remote attack allowing the attacker to run arbitrary php code.

The best way to protect yourself is to simply password protect phpMyAdmin. On apache, this can usually be done with a .htaccess and .htpasswd file. Hit google for more information on password protecting parts of your website.


The official white paper on the bug is located here:


http://www.packetstormsecurity.org/0407-exploits/phpMyAdmin257.txt

PHP 5 at the PUG

So, I’m going to try and put together a talk on PHP 5 for this weekend. Please add a comment on anything you would like to see covered and we will either get it in this month or in future talks.

To get you started, I’m looking to give a general overview and hopefully a small demo of installing PHP 5…including alongside of PHP 4!

See you at the PUG!!