Yearly Archives: 2005

June 16th, 2005

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We had a nice little chat this month. We talked about some job offers that have come in, kcpug’s future, simple content management systems, the need for css and much more. A wrap up and some followup info, all in this month’s pug newsletter.

Job Prospects

JCCC is Hiring! I’ve recently accepted a position at my place of employment, and my old job is needing to be filled. We’re looking for a web application developer with lots of experience, a great attitude, and who is not afraid to do non-developer things. Check out the [url=http://web.jccc.net/hr/jobs/CurrentOpenings.htm]Jobs and Opportunities[/url] of http://jccc.edu for more information.
There were others, but I don’t want to announce them here, unless you want to. You know who you are. 😉

Doug is looking for content management

Doug asked a question like “My clients need a CMS to edit simple websites, but they shouldn’t need to know any html, or anything.”

Helen suggested looking into DreamWeaver templates, as mostly his issue is providing a safty-net from his client’s own…creativity. We all agreed that this would be a good solution for many clients.

The lite section opensourcecms.com was also suggested as a place to look. After the meeting, I found cmsimple and sapid as possible candidates. Sapid looks really, really cool…and appears to be just downright perfect for this. Very clicky/sqishy…although the opensourcecms install is a little horked. Once you are logged in, just append ?mode=edit to the url of any page you want to switch into edit more. The edit button in the toolbar seems to be broken…but again, I’m sure it would work in your own install.

Helen is looking for a single page, easy update solution

The best I could think of was using something like [url=http://www.dynarch.com/projects/htmlarea/]HTMLArea[/url], and let it post to a password-protected php script that would get the html and save the file.

So, say your user’s only saw mypage.php:
mypage.php
[code]

This is my page

include(‘uploaded_page.inc’);

[/code]

Then, write up a simple php script…let’s call it uploader.php. It could draw a form using an html area. It should probably load the uploaded_page.inc file and put it in the html area.
On form submit, write the html-area into uploaded_page.inc.

This should naturally be password protected. You would also want to be careful not to let it write to any other page on your site, etc. But it should be fairly straightforward.

CSS: Any good info?

The topic of CSS came up as well. I’m a huge fan of it, and went on my pre-programmed rant of why it is a good thing. If you are interested, you may want to check on this handful of links:

  • [url=http://www.tanfa.co.uk/css/layouts/flexi-floats-3col.asp]A great 3 column, stretchy layout[/url]
  • [url=http://www.tanfa.co.uk/]tanfa in general is a great css reference.[/url]
  • [url=http://www.alistapart.com/]A list apart[/url]
  • Specificly, their [url=http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slashdot/]re-writing slashdot[/url] article

    • Anything Else?

    I’m sure I have missed a ton of things. Feel free to add anything I missed, or any additional information as a comment.

    See you all next month!!

    It’s your birthday, PHP!

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    [url=http://zak.greant.com/]Zak Greant[/url] reminds us that [url=http://zak.greant.com/archives/2005/06/a_decade_of_php.html]PHP is 10 years old[/url] today.

    [url=http://groups.google.ch/groups?selm=3r7pgp%24aa1%40ionews.io.org&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain]Happy Birthday PHP![/url] My how you have grown.

    Get Involved! Help out a great guy, and get loads of exp. points!

    Posted on by
    [url=http://www.brotherjonathan.org/][img align=right]http://www.kcpug.org/site/uploads/img4231cd1232be1.gif[/img][/url]
    [b]Help Jared finish this remarkable ERP/MRP system! [/b]
    Are you looking for a nice Open Source, PHP/MySQL Project to contribute to? How about something nice and impressive to add to your resume? Look no farther than BrotherJonathan. Nearly complete, this project just needs a little TLC to take it to it’s 1.0 release! And you can help!

    Visit [url=http://www.brotherjonathan.org/]brotherjonathan.org[/url] for more information, screenshots, demos and downloads!

    Welcome Selia; our youngest little PUG!

    Posted on by
    [code]assignNewPriority($selia);
    $dholmes->setFreeTime(“.01%”);

    echo $dholmes->getStatusMessage();
    echo $rholmes->getStatusMessage();
    echo $selia->getStatusMessage();
    ?>[/code]
    [b]Result[/b]…

    [quote]Dan Holmes is currently very busy helping his wife Becky with their new baby daughter, Selia Avery Holmes. As such, his free time has been reduced to a tenth of one percent of his total time, and may be unable to respond efficiently to additional requests.

    Becky Holmes is doing quite well–thanks for asking.

    Selia Avery Holmes is doing quite well. She has returned to her birthweight of 8 lbs and 6 oz and makes a lot of funny noises throughout the day and night. Additional information will be accessible following the activation of the NaturalLanguage composite extension.[/quote]

    Hungry for Cake

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    I’ve been waiting for something just like this to come along. A [url=http://www.rubyonrails.com/]Rails[/url]-inspired PHP framework: [url=http://sputnik.pl/cake/]Cake[/url].
    Posted in PHP

    Free PHP 5 Book

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    [url=http://www.phptr.com/bookstore/index.asp]Pretince Hall[/url] is [url=http://www.phptr.com/title/013147149X#]giving away[/url] thier ‘[url=http://www.phptr.com/content/images/013147149X/downloads/013147149X_book.pdf]PHP 5 Power Programming[/url]’ book in PDF form for free! The book is written by Andi Gutmans, Stig Sæther Bakken, and Derick Rethans.

    [i]EDITOR: Read more for all the details, including the table of contents.[/i]

    It is 720 pages long, and the table of contents contains:

    Foreword by Zeev Suraski
    Preface: Introduction and Background
    Chapter 1: What Is New in PHP 5?
    Chapter 2: PHP 5 Basic Language
    Chapter 3: PHP 5 OO Language
    Chapter 4: PHP 5 Advanced OOP and Design Patterns
    Chapter 5: How to Write a Web Application with PHP
    Chapter 6: Databases with PHP 5
    Chapter 7: Error Handling
    Chapter 8: XML with PHP 5
    Chapter 9: Mainstream Extensions
    Chapter 10: Using PEAR
    Chapter 11: Important PEAR Packages
    Chapter 12: Building PEAR Components
    Chapter 13: Making the Move
    Chapter 14: Performance
    Chapter 15: An Introduction to Writing PHP Extensions
    Chapter 16: PHP Shell Scripting
    A. PEAR and PECL Package Index
    B. phpDocumentor Format Reference
    C. Zend Studio Quick Start
    Index

    I have not gotten a chance to look through it yet; as soon as I found out I rushed over here to tell everyone. Also if it’s free how could you go wrong.

    ENJOY!
    Al

    2005-April: Form Processing

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    As promised, our April discussion will be on form processing. We’ll discuss different techniques available and hopefully find some solutions to the common problems we all face when using forms in our web applications.

    For now, the [url=http://www.shazpro.com/presentations/kcpug_forms/form_presentation.swf]meeting notes are hosted here[/url].

    A [url=http://www.shazpro.com/presentations/kcpug_forms/multipage_register.php]functional example of a multipage form with source code[/url] is also available.

    JavaScript & PHP on a friendly basis with AutoComplete

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    I recently put together a third example for the SAJAX project (http://www.modernmethod.com/sajax/); this one uses the concept behind Google Suggest, which is to populate an HTML input box with an array coming from the server.

    Very useful if you have lots of input boxes on a page, each which you want to have a different set of autocomplete data.

    The code could be extended to work just like Google Suggest; the hard part was figuring out how to get the array passed back intact. I tested it with >5000 items in the array, and it worked seamlessly.

    The code is at:

    http://www.hatwhite.com/sajax/

    Posted in PHP

    2005-March : A Look at PRADO

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    The presentation for March can be found [url=http://www.kcpug.org/doghouse/2005_mar/prado.swf]here[/url].

    I have lots more code up and running, and looking really slick. I’ll also be showing off some of the more interesting examples they have come up with. So, if you want to see PRADO in action, drop on by the meeting.

    See you there!