Design Reviver » php

Collection of WordPress Snippets and Hacks

speckyboy — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 09:01:44 +0000

If you are a WordPress developer there is no doubt you will have your own personal collection of code snippets, hacks or even short-codes that you can call upon in time of need. They are those little lifesavers that can solve complex problems with only a few lines code… they truly are indispensable no matter which host monster you use. In this design news round-up we have highlighted some recent articles and posts that will freshen-up your WordPress toolbox.

WordPress Snippets

The idea behind WordPress Snippets is simple; to provide small snippets of code, helping you to create a magic WordPress Theme. The original documentation of WordPress is excellent, but not as straight forward as you may want. Straight forward is the lead word for WP Snippets. No talk, just Snippets.
WordPress Snippets

10 useful new WordPress hacks

This WP hack list, from CatsWhoCode, has a whole of lot fresh new snippets to help with WordPress dev. Want to remove comments autolinks? Or, are you looking for a hack that will display a Twitter style “time ago” date? If so, you will find the answers in this post.
10 useful new WordPress hacks

10 Useful WordPress Search Code Snippets

In this post will find 10 really useful code snippets that will help improve your WordPress Search functionality.
10 Useful WordPress Search Code Snippets

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboyand speckyboy@twitter).

10 Tips for Writing Better PHP Code

Joel Reyes — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 10:45:25 +0000

There are hundreds of ways to writing out code with hundreds of methods to achieve certain functionality. However, out of these many ways of writing code to get to the final product, there are many habits that are not great to the programmer or to the functionality of what you are trying to achieve. Furthermore, we discuss 10 tips for improving and writing better PHP code.

Development Style

Tabbing, double-spacing, all on one line; we all have our style of writing out code and there really is not a right or wrong way of laying your code out. However, many developers tend to fail at keeping their development style fluent throughout a project. I myself have been caught a few times adapting to new styles within one project.

Furthermore, it is best to keep your code laid out using one development style rather than several to keep your code easily readable and organized. If your development style sometimes evolves to something different, it is best to not use your new development style on a project that uses a different style, but rather implement your new development style on new projects you may start. This keeps all of your projects fluent and organized.

Good Variable and Function Naming

Many developers do not really care about proper variable and or function naming. However, good function and variable naming is key to have more organized code, which categorizes under better-written code as it becomes clearer to understand and comprehend.

Naming variables and functions properly is rather something easy to do and should be based on what the variable value is and what the function achieves. This not only provides easy to understand names, but it also helps you and other developers understand what each function or variable performs and holds by just reading the short name.

Commenting Your Code

Commenting your code is a major step to organized and readable code and actually compliments most of what you can do to organize your code, as it is a key aspect in organization and usability. When writing comments to describe certain actions, functions, or code, it is best to keep the comments strict and to the point without describing what everything is.

For example, if you have a code snippet that is quite obvious in terms of its functionality, it is best to either leave a few words about it or not to comment it at all, as too many comments can be obnoxious.

Do Most of the Work

Copying and pasting code is something we tend to do most of the time, from one project to another, or from code, we may find useful on the net that has been done for us. However, copying and pasting code can sometimes hurt you in the end as you may not be familiar with your project or code as much as you had hoped you were or as much as you need to be. Furthermore, copying and pasting a few snippets is fine, but you should do most of the work to freshen your memory.

Look Around

Sometimes we might be doing something new and do not know what the best route is to take in terms of speed and performance, thus, looking around at other code from people who created something similar to what you are creating is sometimes a great idea to do to obtain a general idea on how to approach it better. This does not necessarily mean copy and paste the code, but rather just get a general idea of how it works.

Understand the Language’s Limitations

We sometimes try to achieve many things the language was not designed for or is not capable of doing by creating workarounds. This is not a great idea, as your created workaround may not work sufficiently or effectively. Therefore, it is best to understand the language’s limitations, and to work within them.

Receive Structural Feedback

We sometimes think that we are the only ones, who know how to properly develop, but we are not and in fact, there is always someone out there better than us. My point is, it is always good to receive a second opinion on your code in terms of structure, as some feedback can be critical to enhance the performance of your script.

Testing Your Code Often

Part of making your scripts closer to bug free is to test your work often and as you go along. The problem with many developers is that they think what they develop should work fine the first time and decide not to test certain aspects of their script as they go along, and in the end, they end up with several bugs and many they may not catch immediately. With that said, it is in your best interest to test many aspects of your code or script for bugs as you go along in development, this is proven to reduce bugs in the long run.

Built-ins over Building Your Own

We sometimes tend to recreate a built-in function just to have it. The problem with unnecessary recreation of built-ins is that the performance is affected. Moreover, using built-ins when applicable is a better idea and not only does it increase performance, it also keeps your scripts clean from unneeded code.

Don’t Split Everything into Files

Splitting your code into several files is actually part of keeping your scripts or projects organized instead of having everything all in one file. However, many projects I have seen tend to split everything into many files, sometimes separating individual functions into individual files.

This overkill and not only affects the way your code is laid out but it also affects performance. For example, instead of splitting individual functions into individual files, create a functions file and store all of them there, or group them into files. This still keeps your project organized and it keeps things reasonable.

Remember, doing something beneficial is great, but overdoing it or not doing it at all causes a negative effect, thus, use your judgment, and use techniques and methods reasonably.

Using PHP Show Different Content to Visitors From a Specific Country

speckyboy — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 13:31:19 +0000

Our topic for today’s Design Reviver Answers news round-up is a question that was recently asked on PHP. And to be more specific the question was How Do I Show Different Content to Visitors From a Specific Country Using PHP?

Do you have an alternative solution, maybe a fresher technique? You can leave your comment below, or you can leave a your answer on the original question on Answers here

How Do I Show Different Content to Visitors From a Specific Country Using PHP?

This question was originally asked by a Devone, and you will find the best answer below:

The Best Answer came from an Unregistered User:

The Next Answer came from a Pablo G:

Unanswered Answers

That is now five weeks without any unanswered questions!!!

Thanks to everyone who asked a question, but most importantly thanks to everyone that took the time and effort to offer helpful and useful answers.

Round-Up of Fresh jQuery Tutorials

speckyboy — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 09:58:14 +0000

There really is no limit to what can be achieved with jQuery. And when it is in the right hands those limits are challenged all the time, constantly pushing back its seemingly endless boundaries by developing fresh and creative techniques. In this design news round-up we have collected our favorite recent jQuery tutorials.

A Tutorial Of PHP Frameworks

John Urban — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 09:00:35 +0000

First of all, we believe you should know what a PHP framework is before we move forward to a full tutorial of PHP frameworks. PHP is the most common scripting language in the world and there are many reasons for this. It is flexible and easy to use. There are times when coding in PHP or any other language can get a bit repetitive and droning. This is where a PHP framework comes in and this starts out a tutorial of PHP frameworks.

PHP frameworks help with the promotion of rapid application development. In turns, this helps save time and it also helps build applications that are more stable. Did we mention that it also reduces the quantity of recurring coding for those developers? This is one of the main reasons why so many developers enjoy using it. It is also good for beginners! In fact, it helps them build apps that are more stable by guaranteeing accurate database interaction and coding. Instead of wasting your time writing a code that is repetitive, you will now have more time to create the web application.

So, why exactly should you use a PHP framework? That is the question that many individuals are looking for answers to. There are a number of different reasons as to why developers should use PHP frameworks. The number one reason is for speeding up the process of their development. Reusing the code when similar projects come along will save them from putting in extra time and effort. The framework allows the individual to use pre-built modules for performing those repetitive coding tasks. This way, the developer will be able to put more of their time towards developing the application instead of building a foundation with every project that they work on. Another pretty big reason as to why developers use frameworks is because of the stability. Simplicity is one of PHP’s biggest assets and for that reason, there are many individuals that prefer using the scripting language. However, this exact same thing can be one of its biggest downfalls. For those beginners, it is perfect, because it is easy to use, you can write bad code without even realizing that you did so.

With PHP, the application could still work, but you may have opened a big security hole in the coding without even realizing it. This could put you more at risk of attacks. It is important that you remember just how forgiving the language of PHP can be. It is always important to look at those lose ends of your coding and tie them up. Yes, even if your application is working perfectly on the outside. When it comes to PHP frameworks and the availability, it is pretty much widespread. You have many different frameworks that you will be able to pick out of. If you like and you have a creative touch, you will even be able to create your own.

Although, many of the developers out there choose to pick from one of the frameworks that are well-known because of the popularity, their forums and big support teams. The forums will allow you to chat with other developers that use the same kind of framework that you do. When it comes to your projects, you should first look at them and examine them in order to make sure you should be using a framework. There are a number of different questions that you should ask yourself. Below, we are going to go over some of those questions: 1.Is it going to save you or anyone else who uses it, effort and time? 2. Is it going to improve stability? Did you answer yes to one of these questions? If you did, then PHP framework may be the right choice for you.

For beginners and experienced individuals alike, framework can speed up the entire build process and help eliminate chances of bad coding. Many look at it as being a tool for those weak programmers that do not understand how to go about writing excellent, clean code. This may be true or it may not be, but the fact to it all is that PHP frameworks is a great tool that is useful to many successful people. It can help tighten up your coding and save time. When you are working on a project that has deadlines that are pretty tight, using this will be a huge benefit to you. Imagine being able to speed up the coding process. Therefore, if you are in a time crunch, PHP will be very useful to you and there is no denying this. If you are working on projects that have a large amount of repetitive coding, this will make the job less tedious.

A Selection of Code Snippets from Design Reviver Answers

speckyboy — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:55:19 +0000

Everyday Design Reviver Answers is offering solutions via useful snippets of code, helpful resources and general tips for all your web design issues. And as such we would like to share with you our favorite code snippets from this last week.

It has been yet another good week, thanks for your support!

“Have you asked a question yet?“

How Can I Display More Than One Twitter Feed On My WordPress Blog?

We do this by accessing the persons Twitter account RSS feed, then fetching it and embedding it on your site.

Replace the example RSS’s with the ones you’d like.

get_item_quantity(3); $rss_items = $rss->get_items(0, $maxitems); ?>
No items. '; else // Loop through each feed item and display each item as a hyperlink. Foreach ( $rss_items as $item ) : ?> get_title(); ?>

I Have Multiple Authors On My Site, How Can I Display Their Info?

If you want to display their info at the bottom or beginning of the post, then use this and place it in the corresponding area of your WordPress files. (i.e. Single.PHP or Comments.PHP)

Edit the author box as necessary.

How Can I Display Someone Else’s FeedBurner Post On My Site?

You can add the following jQuery code anywhere you want on the site (i.e. Sidebar, footer, etc.) Just remember to replace and specify which feed you’ll be recalling.

$(document).ready(function(){ $.ajax({ type: "GET", url: "http://feeds.feedburner.com/examplefeed", success: Function(data){ $("#date").text($(data).find("item:first>pubDate:first").text()); $("#title").html("link:first").text()+"'>"+$(data). find("item:first>title:first").text()+""); $("#description").html($(data). find("item:first>description:first").text()); }

What Can I Use To Place A Shadow Behind My Images And Outlines?

If you’re refering to having your images and boxes with a drtop shadow, then you need the Box Shadow CSS feature to work for you. Here’s what you need to place in your CSS:

.shadow { box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #f2f2f2; -moz-box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #f2f2f2; -webkit-box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #f2f2f2; }

What’s The Easiest Way To Redirect A Specific Page On My Site?

If you want to redirect users to another site once they enter a specific area on your site then you just have to use some of this Javascript code in the page to be redirected from:

Replace the www.google.com with the URL address you wish to redirect to.

Unanswered Questions

There are always some questions that seem to get through the net, can you help us answer them?

Thanks again, firstly to everyone who asked a question, but most importantly thanks to everyone that took the time to offer always helpful and useful answers.

5 Interactive and Creative Uses for PHP

Joel Reyes — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:36:37 +0000

PHP is a powerful and widely recognized scripting language that enables you to build interactive applications and websites. If you’re new to using PHP, then you’ll most likely benefit from know how you can use it to make your website or applications more interactive and aesthetically pleasing.

With PHP you’re rarely limited to functionality and restrictions, if you can code it, you can build it. Below we’ll touch base on 5 Interactive and Creative Uses for PHP web and desktop oriented.

Graphical User Interface

There are instances were web developers make the switch from only knowing how to create apps for the web, to building desktop applications. And they use PHP as a transitional vehicle since many are already familiar with the programming language.

Creating a GUI made for your desktop requires extensive knowledge of PHP and various extensions. Once you’re able to really master the language by coding for desktops, designing for the web using PHP will be much easier.

Here are a few PHP extensions to get you started:

PHP GTK – This is an open source extension with a nice toolkit.
ZZEE PHP GUI – This solution allows you to convert your PHP scripts into functional Windows applications.

Building Facebook Apps

You can utilize PHP to integrate Facebook with a website. Before you begin developing Facebook applications with PHP you must first become acquainted with Facebook’s Developer Guide. It’ll help you get a much better feel of what you need to get started, and it also goes in-depth on the Facebook PHP client library subject.

It also provides detailed instructions on how to install and utilize the files included within the library. This is definitely a great resource to check out, especially if you have or plan on having clients that may want you to build a Facebook application for them.

Creating Mailing Lists

With PHP you can write your very own script allowing you to send e-mail newsletters to your clients and anyone else you’d like. You can also use a ready-made script. PHP mailing lists are generally used as a way to keep your anyone you’d like up-to-date with whatever information you need them to know.

The most important feature is mass mailing. This PHP online documentation explains PHP mailing functions in-depth. You can also download all-ready made scripts such as this one for your website.

Online Communities

A good way to promote and create self-awareness for your business, product, or service is to make your customers and users feel as though a supportive community has their back. You can create a forum, or a small social network that will allow your customers to interact and find out more about your products.

Many times a users is looking for a quick and effective median to receive quality support, creating an online community can reassure the user that choosing your service was/is the best choice. It will also help you receive feedback so that you’re able to improve the quality of your service.

There are various scripts available for building your online community, however, the most popular choice would be a PHP Framework such as Codeigntor or CakePHP. You can also use a variety of PHP tools that are efficient in their own ways, here are a few: php BB, vBulletin, and Pun BB.

Developing an E-Commerce

Implementing an E-commerce solution is one of the most sought-out uses for PHP. No matter the level of business or type of client base you may be pulling, having an E-Commerce solution at your fingertips is a powerful way to grow your business.

Of course, most of the effective solutions you’ve come across utilize PHP for its accuracy and stability. Whether you’re building from scratch or you’re adding new features to an existing one, PHP is the logical choice.

Building your own shopping cart application means you’ll be doing a lot of coding, especially if your creating one entirely from scratch. One of the best ways to successfully accomplish this is to use a framework (as mentioned above) such as CodeIgniter or CakePHP. CakePHP has a bakery section that contain a large selection of extensions and features for E-Commerce developers. You can integrate various payment solutions as well.

Fresh PHP Resources and Tutorials

speckyboy — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:00:52 +0000

PHP is the most popular server side scripting language. It is reasonably easy to learn and use, compared to others anyway, and with it being very popular, it is backed up by a huge community of developers always willing to offer new techniques and tutorials. In todays news we have collected the best recent PHP resources.

40+ CodeIgniter Framework Tutorials for Kick-Ass PHP Application

CodeIgniter is an Application Development Framework – a toolkit – for people who build web sites using PHP. Here is the list of 40+ Excellent And Useful CodeIgniter Application Development Framework Tutorials & Resources that includes some useful tutorials and a few great resources that has been developed for programmer and designers.

40+ CodeIgniter Framework Tutorials for Kick-Ass PHP Application

25 New & Useful PHP Techniques & Tutorials

Finding new and useful PHP techniques can be difficult, in this great resource they have collected 25 tips, tricks, tutorials and of course, techniques.

25 New & Useful PHP Techniques & Tutorials

10 great Alternatives to phpMyAdmin

Most people in the web development world are under the impression that phpMyAdmin is the only MySQL client out there for websites. There are others, many more. The author of this post has listed and describes in detail 10great Alternatives to phpMyAdmin.

10 great Alternatives to phpMyAdmin

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

10 Tools for Quick & Effective Code Development

Joel Reyes — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:00:10 +0000

Developing websites and recognizing the level of technical proficiency behind the effort isn’t an easy task now-a-days. Especially with the conceptualization of multiple WYSIWYG tools that although allow you to save time they also manage to take most of the hard coding behind the process. Coding a site by hand with the use of tools that simplify the coding process can be rewarding, as you enhance your skills and further your knowledge base.

Below we have hand picked 10 Tools for Quick & Effective Code Development that will help you further sharpen your coding skills while being efficient at the same time.

BBEdit

BBEdit is a state-of-the-art HTML and text editor for the Mac operating systems. Especially designed for web developers and code slingers this app calls for top of the line editing, searching, and manipulation of text.

XHTML/CSS Markup Generator

This is a simple effective tool specifically created for XHTML/CSS code addicts who are fed up with having to slice their work from the very beginning. The overall goal of this application is to efficiently speed up your work by producing XHTML markup along side with a CSS frame through the use of a shortened syntax that allows you to immediately begin styling your elements.

Clean AJAX

Clean AJAX focuses on the simplicity and speed of development, by conducting a search and destroy for AJAX issues. Clean will drastically improve your AJAX applications by utilizing a simple way to customize message’s behavior and apply your on logic to them, by providing multiple request handle, the engine is able to handle requests simultaneously and more.

CFUnit

This app is a unit testing framework for ColdFusion (CFML), modeled after the popular JUnit framework. This is an Open Source project hosted on SourceForge and is freely available. By building units you readily invest into the stability of your code.You will eventually save you and your fellow developers an extensive amount of time and resource usage.

Clean CSS

Clean CSS helps you clean up your CSS and optimize it. Benefits of optimizing your CSS code include: faster loading pages and lower traffic costs. In the end both you and your visitors benefit from an optimization.

Apanta

An open source editor that will edit HTML, CSS, create AJAX apps, do Ruby On Rails, and more. Apanta’s editing for Ajax is state-of-the-art providing savvy JavaScript code completion and debugging, HTML/CSS/JavaScript code editing, and a fully integrated debugger with cloud deployment options.

Test Everything

This nifty web app provides a wide variety of tools that check every aspect of your site, such as images, HTML, CSS, web proxies, SEO, and more including code validators.

Eclipse.org

Eclipse is an open source development platform for Java based applications, as well as other languages. The tools and frameworks provided by Eclipse.org are primarily focused on building JEE, web services and web applications.

Moo Tools

MooTools is an effective Object-Oriented JavaScript framework designed for the intermediate to advanced JavaScript developer. With this tool you’re able to write powerful, flexible, and cross-browser code with its prestige, well organized, and interactive API.

Catalyst Framework

Catalyst has a built-in simple HTTP server, and is an MVC framework that runs on FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris or Windows. Allows for heavy Perl development. This framework promotes the re-use of existing Perl modules that already handle common web application concerns pretty well.

PHP Security: Guidelines to Lock Down Your Website

Joel Reyes — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:00:15 +0000

Security has always been a concern of web developers. No site is safe from hacking attempts. Developers need to take precautions when building their applications so that they don’t become the victim of a hacking attempt. There are a number of things PHP programmers can do to prevent these kinds of attacks.

What Is XSS?

XSS stands for Cross Server Scripting, and is the most common technique for hacking into a website. Most of the tips we will be talking about today will be things designed to prevent XSS attacks on your server. XSS is when someone injects code into your website, and gets it to execute. This can be used for a variety of malicious purposes.

Here is an example of a simple XSS attack I was able to perform on my site. I noticed that my user name was contained inside a tag on my profile page. I changed my user name to this:

This caused an alert fired away every time someone opened my profile page. It would not have been difficult for me to import an external JavaScript file, or write one that did something more malicious.

List of common XSS exploits

Sanitizing Input

Most XSS attacks come from manipulating the input of a site. Input comes in two forms: Forms and GET variables. You need to take care to properly sanitize these inputs before doing anything else with them. Here are a few things you can do to make sure the input you receive is safe:

Use PHP’s addslashes Function

This is a very simple thing you can do that can help prevent attacks. Simply run all of your input through the addslashes method in PHP. The slashes help escape characters that could otherwise be dangerous.

Use the strip_tags Function

strip_tags() is another handy PHP function that can help sanitize input. You also have the option of allowing certain tags, so if you have a page where users should be allowed to use some HTML (for example, a blog post) you can still allow them to use some tags. However, be wary of allowing particularly dangerous tags, such as