PHP, Development, Open Source, IT

A bit more freedom

2005-12-31T08:44:00.000+02:00

I need CATEGORIES !!!

I've decided after contradicting myself numerous times that I will move my blog back to one of my own webspaces, (see this post).

I am still busy moving everything over and getting everything in place, I'll be using WordPress for the new BLOG, but I guess I'll be over in about 2 weeks' time.

the new location will be at blog.justpulse.com

Happy Holidays

2005-12-27T15:38:00.000+02:00

HI guys, a bit late but

HAPPY BELATED CHRISTMAS AND BEST WISHES FOR THE NEW YEAR !!

dbHistoric

2005-12-22T15:05:00.000+02:00

Hi guys

A while back I created an Open Source project called dbHistoric which intends to be a monitoring and statistics tool for database.

I will capture the status of database systems at certain times of the days(given intervals) and then one can draw reports on them.

Currently I'm looking for guys that can help me with the design and implementation of some documentation and requirements.

I am also very busy lately so all hands are welcome.

The technologies that I've decided on are Java(for backend engine) and PHP/gdLibrary for reporting, but I"m open to suggestions.

Please have a look at my project on SourceForge.net .

Traffic Officer in Mpumalanga

2005-12-15T09:02:00.000+02:00

Hi guys, something totally off-topic.

Took this photo near Pilgrims Rest in Mpumalanga(i think) in South Africa.

Just so cool ... hehe

AJAX magic

2005-12-14T11:49:00.000+02:00

I cannot wait to write a full blown article concerning AJAX methodologies.

The last week I've been intensely developing in AJAX, it is the best thing for internet since ... mmm

I cannot believe this technology has always been sitting there, and no-one using it.

New Blog added

2005-12-13T10:41:00.000+02:00

I've added a new links sections on the right hand side, for all links to other blogs.

My first link is to Piku's PHP Blog, this blog contains the newest news in the PHP realm and also some nifty code snippets, be sure to check our this site.

Templating engines

2005-12-08T20:04:00.000+02:00

Today I started on a private project with one of my friends, where we are looking at creating a fitness and healthstyle website, and this time around I wanted to design a very robust, hack-safe website which will keep you going for a few years.

I've evaluated some of the FREE templating system available under the gnu licenses and found two in particular very interesting, namely:

1. patTemplate
2. Smarty

SO of course I did and went some reading about the different systems, and found an excellent tutorial/blog-entry that Havard Lindset wrote about patTemplate on DevArticles.com .

At the end of the day I selected Smarty, why I really don't know, maybe because I got it to work the fastest and am now running a multi-theme, multi-language web interface with this engine.

Now just waiting for our first advertisers ... mmm

Other interesting reads:

Zend and Templates

Template Engines

Amazing offering at Excellent price

2005-12-05T21:45:00.000+02:00

Well, as you all know, I'm reselling web hosting, well, the company I'm reselling for have upgraded their packages to offer you event more that usual.

They now offer you 15 Gig of disk space and 300 Gig of Transfers which is more than enough for any normal-large sized website with a average of 100 visitors per day.

They have 24/7 support and have been in the industry quite some time, I think they have about 24/25 servers that are just shared hostings, so they know their stuff!

All this for a very reasonable $5 per month, and they have really excellent support, just check the average response time I've received:

So if you are interested look at Pulse Hostings website.

I'm not trying to start selling stuff here, but this really is an excellent offering.

Commenting of code

2005-12-05T01:12:00.000+02:00

I was just wondering about commenting of code lately, how do you guys comment your code.

When I started to program everybody always told me to comment almost every little step, like

// open file
fhandle = fopen() ;

// read line-per-line of the file until eof
while(!feof(fhandle)) {
}

Anyways, lately I’ve become lazy and just programmed as the thoughts came to me, but then my manager visited my desk one day and notified me to start commenting my code thoroughly.

Since then I respected my “elders” and started coding by first writing all the steps as comments

// open file
// if file not exist do this, otherwise continue
// read line
// analyze line
// if junk do nothing, if not junk handle with care

and then filling in all the “code”

// open file
fopen()
// if file not exist do this, otherwise continue
if(!fread)
// read line
freadln
// analyze line
// if junk do nothing, if not junk handle with care
if(read == junk) blablabla

Blog/Link Exchange

2005-12-02T12:32:00.000+02:00

Hi guys,

I'm looking for guys that have blogs relating to IT/Open Source/Computers/Programming/Developing to exchange links with, iow my link on your page and your link on my page...

Just place your comments here, with your details and I'll get back to you, don't worry, I first have to moderate the comments before their published.

Hope there are other guys just as passionate about me about IT !!

ICASA getting involved

2005-12-02T06:38:00.000+02:00

Yesterday was one of the more important days for the broadband community in South Africa.

Telkom, the monopoly in South Africa providing communication services will soon be grabbed by the neck for taking advantage of it's position as the only provider in the company and will soon have to adhere to the regulations set forth by ICASA(The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa).

Yesterday the first ADSL Draft Regulations was drawn up which encompasses the following:

14-day Installation period IF in a ADSL enabled area

No resets of Ip address every 24 hours

Once off connectivity charge

No monthly ADSL line rental just normal monthly telephone line rental

Maximum upload speed of 384 kbps

A cap of 10GB instead of the current 3

Local bandwidth shall not be included in the cap, which at the moment is

No port prioritization

It looks like things will start moving now, but like all things to do with government, I reckon we will only see the effect of this in a about a year or so.

Check ICASA's site for the official government gazette publication.
MyADSL post and discussion.

PHP Web Hosting ( Part 3 : The (c)Shop List

2005-11-27T22:58:00.000+02:00

Here is the "shopping"-list that will/have been evaluated

WebOnline.biz
AceNet-inc.com
DesignMedia.co.za
Obsidion.co.za
Osirion.co.za
PulseHostings.com (obviously the best option ;-)
Hosting.com
NetFirms.com
Hetzner.com
MWeb.co.za
Imaginet.co.za

I will formulate the report later on the results...

Long time no ...

2005-11-06T22:45:00.000+02:00

Well, I've been quite busy the last couple of weeks, been working on quite a number of new technologies like AJAX and learned myself some basic templating methods.

Here is a link to a cool South African Forum Techies.co.za.

I will soon update the Web Hosting survey, have received all replies just have to format it into a "official" document.

PHP Web Hosting ( Part 2: Setting up the Criteria)

2005-10-11T10:51:00.000+02:00

Actually the first step before contacting the hosting companies and visiting their sites, is to set up a list of Criteria whereby we are going to test their services, the standard criteria is:

I've decided to send out 2 emails, 1 with an initial question about packages and asking the provider to give me a suggestion, and the second set of emails I am going to send out will contain a list of questions about the hosting.

Initial Email

Goodday,

I am currently looking into changing hosting companies for my personal/community website, and was wondering if you would be able to be of assistance.

Currently my website is relatively small, I get about 100 visitors a month, which results in about a traffic count of about 130MB a month. My website runs on PHP and MySQL.I also use about 10 mailboxes for personal use and some I will give to friends and family.

Could you please advise me on which package to take, or if you could provide me with a customized solution.

Kind Regards

Peter Matthews
peter@justpulse.com

Second Email (After receiving feedback from 1st)

Hi there,

Thank for the response to my email, I just want to ask the following questions about your services:

1. Support, how fast is your support reply time.. How many people do you have available to provide support?
2. What happens if I exceed my disk space or traffic allowed ?
3. What redundency services do you provide if the site goes down ?
4. What speeds can I expect from my Website.
5. What backups do you provide on your servers and how easy is it to restore a backup.
6. What happens if I want to leave ?

I am relatively new to web hosting and any extra information would be appreciated.

Greetings

Peter Matthews
peter@justpulse.com

PHP Web Hosting ( Part 1: Starting to Shop )

2005-10-10T19:15:00.000+02:00

In the PHP arena, one of the problems before hosting your site, or a clients' site is HOSTING.

When starting one's search, you have to look into the elements that is important for your website to function, like the disk space required, traffic that is expected over a six month period(to estimate a average monthly traffic number), and most importantly, what features and extensions of PHP is available on the server your about to host with.

When doing a Google search you will start to realize that you have a ocean of options when looking for a "Reliable web host", but as always with any web product, some are of real poor quality.

I'm currently a reseller and selling webhosting under the domain PulseHostings.com, which is a Reliable and Affordable web host for the users which want to host their own website or webgallery, and can also scale over to bigger sites with more corporate options.

In the next few weeks I will set up a set of set of questions that I will mail to a set of 20 different web hosts and evaluate them on their Support and their package offers.

I'm going to include my own webhosting into this list. ;-)

If any of you guys have any hosts you want me to evaluate please let me know, so I can add them to the list.
(The hosting companies should be International-hosting and offer Shared Hosting)

Feature Driven Development

2005-10-09T16:43:00.000+02:00

Development Methodologies !!

Commercial Web development has been around for more than 10 years. As an industry, this one's still fairly young when you consider others that have been around for centuries. But relative youth as an industry is no excuse for not doing better.

quoted from Jeff Deluca (FDD Creator)

Feature Driven Development is a new development methodology used mainly for projects like web application which needs a set feature-set and functions.

Briefly, FDD consists of 5 clearly defined processes that can be captured in 5 pages. The core of FDD is the concept of a feature which is a clearly defined Client-valued piece of functionality. The processes that make up FDD are structured around defining every element of a project as a feature, then designing and building each feature in an iterative manner.

The five processes of the FDD methodology are:
1. Develop and Overall model
This is an initial project-wide activity with domain and development members under the guidance of an experienced object modeller in the role of Chief Architect.

2. Build features list
This is an initial project-wide activity to identify all the features required to support the project requirements.

3. Planning
Initial project-wide activity to produce the development plan.

4. Design by Feature
Involves a per-feature activity to produce the feature design package. This process is broken down into three steps: walkthrough, design and inspection.

5. Build by Feature
Involves a per-feature activity to produce a completed client-valued function (feature).

I suggest if you want a more in depth look into this methodology that you have a look at FDDs website here.

Creating a PHP BPM solution (Open Source)

2005-10-06T22:52:00.000+02:00

One of the things that I'm looking for is a open source PHP/Java(IDE) application which can handle BPM(intelligent workflow) and numerous other features.

Currently most BPM products out there run on Java etc., and I'm sure that it would be a great advantage to get such a solution up and running.

I have already started working on a very dynamic workflow model, although it currently just handles workflow and no process and business intelligence and everything must still be manually included into the database.

If one could create a PHP-based application server, that reads everything from a database system that would also be a nice feature.

If anybody is interested in such a project, please do not hesitate to contact me.

I will post more about these ideas later...

Now I'm certified

2005-10-04T22:40:00.000+02:00

Well, great news !!!

I've passed the PHP Certification Exam, so now I'm a Zend Certified Engineer.

If you want to know more about this certification you can click here .

GUI Development using PHP-GTK

2005-10-04T22:12:00.000+02:00

Have you ever heard of PHP-GTK !!!

Have you ever heard of using a server scripting language to create a whole GUI interface !!

Then today will be the first time you hear about a server scripting language being used for writing quite impressive GUI applications, and at lighting fast speeds at that using the GTK+ library extensions also used by the free and open source project GIMP.

The last week I started playing around, after initializing all the components as it should be(about 10 minutes), it took me about an hour and I had a nice application running.

PHP-GTK is worth a look !!

PHP in the Job Market

2005-10-03T20:04:00.000+02:00

One of the major issues these days concerning PHP developers is that PHP developers average salary are still MUCH lower that VB.net and ASP programmers, the reason mainly being that numerous already existing systems run Microsoft based websites, and that companies are not yet clued up on the ablilities of PHP developers.

Another very important question is, is there any potential for any growth in the PHP arena, and my meaning after my research and experience in the industry, is a definite YES !!!!

Lately the adaptability of PHP has grown at a phenomenal rate, seeing that the first "real" official accreditation from Zend is now available( PHP Certification ).
This is just one of the many factors that plays a role to more and more implementations of PHP in the web server and enterprise market.

According to Brent Marinaccio from HotLinuxJobs.com over the last 12 - 18 months the vacancies for PHP developers bombed like never before. He states that this is to the adaptibity of Enterprises using php in the application space.

You can all do yourself a favour and also listen to a webcast hosted by Zend relating to PHP in the Job Market here or get the transcript here.

Visual Programming and PHP

2005-10-02T20:43:00.000+02:00

Tonight I've stumbled upon a really neat project which I think could have much success if managed correctly.

Basically the mission of this application is to enable Faster RAD than before by using PHP and Javascript, I think any PHP developer must take a look at this project hosted on SourceForge.

PfP ( PHP Form Painter )
PfP Studio is a visual programming system for rapid application development (RAD) of Web based forms using PHP and Javascript. The frontend runs in a browser. It is intended to complement the skills of the developer rather than masking out the base languages.

The Reason for using...

2005-10-02T20:34:00.000+02:00

The reason why I'm using BLOGGER is that I used to host my blog on a forum somewhere in South Africa, and then lost about 30 posts when they went down. Then I decided to host on my own domain(www.justpulse.com) but as I'm a developer and always testing new technologies etc. I was having trouble keeping everything in tact on the domain, so then I decided to come to blogger and post my stuff here, and here is is part of the whole community, which is a plus.

First post

2005-10-02T20:06:00.000+02:00

Goodday All,

This is my first post in my new blog.

First, introductions:
Hi, my name is Arné... and I'm a PHP fanatic from South Africa, having about 2 years in PHP programming working with most of the standard extensions that is supplied with PHP like :

LDAP
Sockets
IMAP
SMTP
and many more

I also do have experience in other languages such as Java,Delphi, VB and C++, but this loosely typed language(PHP) just got me hanging on to it.
I've recently acquired my ZCE certification from Zend, so that means that I hopefully will ge a pay raise soon ;-)...

Anyways, I will use this blog to post all my comments about happening around PHP and some open source projects.

So hope you guys enjoy the stuff that will come here in due time.