Brown PHP

November 2008 Content Needs

Doug — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:09:13 +0000

At the Informative Post, this November we will be looking for many different topics. I am going to continually update this blog post with new topics that we will be looking for this November. Since I’m not sure about the news that will be “buzzing” this month, I’m going to have to keep coming back and updating the site with new topics.

Just to get the ball rolling, here are a few topics that we are going to be looking for in no specific order:

Thanksgiving Content … DUH
Presidential Election Content … again … DUH
Google Chrome
Apple’s IPhone
Fuel/Gas Prices
Spore Video Game
Phillies and the World Series

These topics are just a few that we will be looking for on the Informative Post this month. So if your AP is low, I would suggest writing a few good articles, covering these topics because we will be looking for these without regard to AP rating.

If any other “news” or other topics that pop-up, I’ll comment on this post to let you all know.

UPDATE (11/19/08): CONTENT NEEDED

In effort to increase our search engine rankings and help get the word out, we will be reviewing articles that discuss buying articles and content for websites. We are hoping to draw in more clients from the major search engines by adding more content about content providing services.

We are looking for articles contain keywords like:

buy/purchase content
buy/purchase articles
buy articles for website
other synonomous keywords etc…

Article Titles Could Look Like:

Buying Content - Jump Start Your Website
Save Website Development Time by Purchasing Content
Top Content Providers (Obbviously giving the Informative Post a good review.)
etc.

Like I said, I am trying to bring work into the Informative Post, and since the service is new to both the public and the search engines, I need to work extra hard to get it noticed.

If any of you own your own website, and would like to help us out a bit, it would be great if you could give a little link love to http://www.informativepost.com/buy-content. If you don’t own a website, you can also help us by helping us promote our service on forums and other blogs.

New Job Post! Shopperama Buying Guides!

Doug — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 15:08:11 +0000

Hi Informative Post authors! We have a new job post, Shopperama Buying Guides. Below is the job description. So if you think you can write an informative article for our client, please login and do so.

Job Description:
I want to buy articles that are written in the form of buying guides. This is a test order. If I’m happy I will be buying a LOT more. The full subject list is as follows:
Cameras
Watches
Clocks
Diamond Jewellery
Golf equipment
Childrens Clothes
Model Railways
Collectable Alcolhol Merchandise
Collectable Tobacco Merchandise
Collectable Cigarette Lighters
Clothing & Fashion
Computers and software
Shopping online
Secure online shopping
Electronic comsumer goods (TV, Hi Fi, MP3 players etc. etc.)
Finance, loans, insurance, bank accounts
Gadgets
Gifts
Health and beauty products
Home and garden products
Motoring goods
Telephones & Mobiles
ISP’s
Buying domain names
Sport and outdoor goods
Toys and games
Buying holidays, cruises, accommodation

I MUST emphasise I’m interested only in Buying Guides. i.e. How to choose a new TV or Buying a Digital SLR camera etc. etc.

Articles Needed: 10
Minimum Word Count: 500
Price for Article: $5.00
Submissions Yet to Review: 0
Submissions Currently Accepted: 0
Articles Needed Yet: 10

I FEEL Like an American

Doug — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:14:59 +0000

Barack Obama is now the President of the United States.

I don’t know if any of you have noticed, but we had an election yesterday. What an amazing one it was too. Last night, my wife and I went to the polls to vote, and it was an overall pleasant experience. There wasn’t a long wait at all. Well, it took us an hour, but that was hardly an inconvnience. Needless to say, the candidate that I voted for did not win, but it isn’t troubling me.

I was a bit on the fence about who I was going to vote for, and I already had it in my head that I would be happy with either outcome. So saying that Barack is now our President doesn’t bother me in the least. There were positive and negative with both McCain and Obama.

What was the most positive thing about the election for me? No more campaign commercials! I think everyone can agree that they were getting old. They hardily gave any incite to what the candidate was really like, and I would like to think that most Americans did not base their vote on that marketing.

I’ll be honest in saying that the main reason I voted for McCain and not Obama was because I’m an advocate believer in Pro-Life, and I am against Pro-Abortion. That was what I based a lot of my decision off of. I did love how Barack connected with the majority of Americans. He had a certain sort of sincerity in his speech that made people want to believe. Let’s hope that he didn’t fool us.

What now? Where do we go from here? What is going to happen? Only time will tell obviously. Only time will let us know whether the candidate that America chose will follow out with what they promised us all. Will it happen today? No, but hopefully it will happen. We voted, we chose, and now we wait.

Welcome Informative Post Members!

Doug — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:52:12 +0000

I’m glad to see you found your way to BrownPHP.com! This is my personal blog that I want to use to post Informative Post updates. The reason for this is because a lot of what I do on the Informative Post relates to the readers of BrownPHP as well, so there is no reason to have two right?!

To find all the articles relating to the Informative Post, just click on the Informative Post category, and it should organize all the posts about the Informative Post chronologically for you. In the Informative Post category, you can also find a category called, “Needed Content”. This category should help give you an idea about the article topics that we are looking for at the Informative Post.

IMDb Finally Streaming Media

Doug — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:53:32 +0000

What took IMDb so long to start streaming TV shows, movies, trailers and other clips? Who knows. They’ve had nothing new on their site in years. It’s almost as if they have been locked in the 20th century the past 8 years. Oh well, I’m just glad they have figured it out.

Will I use their service? Probably not. If you take a look through a couple of their selections, you will find out quickly just how much of their media is being streamed from Hulu. I would rather skip the middle man and use Hulu. Granted they do have a small selection of media that isn’t from Hulu, but most of the stuff worth watching for me anyway is from there.

I LOVE to hear movements like this though. The more websites that make streaming legal media, like full movies and TV shows, the more people will see how off-base the movie industry giant, MPAA, is full of shit. Streaming TV shows and movies from the Internet is in most cases, easier than downloading them through bittorrent, and then watching them. These websites are giving a viable alternative to piracy, and they are reaping the rewards. If the MPAA would have learned to do this a long time ago themselves, they could have doubled their profits easily, instead of sticking their heads in the sand and throwing out ceist and decists out like rice at a wedding. Hopefully the music industry (RIAA) learns from this.

I kind of went off on a tangent there, lol. Anyway, long story short. Good for them. IMDb finally added a little web 2.0 to their site streaming popular media. I’m curious as to why they didn’t do this sooner, but I’m just glad they did it. What do you think are going to be their next steps?

Review: PHP Job Hunter’s Handbook

Doug — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:02:11 +0000

It has been a while since I last posted to Brown PHP. My life has been going through a large transition recently. I just landed a new job (more on that later), and moved because my wife also accepted a new position in a different location. If that were enough of a stressful environment, I have been re-factoring the Informative Post over the last month trying to get it ready before I begin my new job.

Enough about my own struggles, lets focus on the topic at hand. Michael Kimsal’s new book, PHP Job Hunter’s Handbook. I pre-ordered this book a few months ago, and read the PDF version all the way through before I received my hard copy. Not a big deal, but makes me regret ordering both. I guess I can just add it to my collection of PHP temples of knowledge! In this post, I, Douglas Brown, will be reviewing the PHP Job Hunter’s Handbook and giving a fairly detailed review of my own experiences.

First, let me begin by talking about the author, Michael Kimsal. I am a subscriber and active listener to his podcast at WebDevRadio.com, from which he discusses current events in the web community, and not just PHP. He is a well respected PHP contributer with a wide array of knowledge with many different languages. I find him always willing to help another PHP member in need , and he recently started his own PHP job listings board to also help the PHP community.

What the book covers:

Finding a Full Time Job
Training and Certification
Contracting and Freelancing
Applicable Technologies You Should Know
Interviewing Tips and Tricks
Advice from Those Doing the Hiring
Advice from Fellow PHP Developers

It wouldn’t be extreme to go as far as saying that the book covers too much territory, but for it only being 106 pages, it’s a fair conclusion. He mentions that this book is not meant for advanced PHP programmers who have been around the block a time or two, but more targeted towards beginners, to help them get started. The book fits the bill for that purpose.

Does it contain any useful information?

It doesn’t give to much information that could overwhelm a “noobie” PHP programmer, but it does give just enough to help them get started. I for example, have never had a professional PHP programming position. I do this for my hobby. What I do professionally is C and C++ programming. So you can understand why I love PHP so much. I did get quite a few nuggets of information from the PHP Job Hunter’s Handbook. I got a few PHP job listing sites that I have never heard of to add to my bookmarks. Also what types of information that the HRs look for when going through PHP cover letters and resumes.

So like I said above, I was able to absorb a lot of information from this book that I had no knowledge of previously. However, there is also a lot of knowledge in here that can be picked off the web faster than opening a book. It’s nice that it has been grouped together for a quick reference if needed.

What is missing?

The only two things that I would have liked to see in this book would be a whole encyclopedia of example PHP cover letters and resumes. Don’t get me wrong, with all the information that he provides in the book, you can easily make these out for yourself. This is a Job Hunting Handbook however, and I found it lacking that it didn’t contain any of these in the appendix or somewhere. If added in the next Rev, 2 or 3 of each would improve the book to give new PHP programmers something to go off of when they are compiling their own.

Would I recommend this book?

If you are new to PHP and don’t know where to find all the great places to find jobs, and information, absolutely. If you are not new with PHP and you already know where to look for PHP jobs, and what employers are looking for when in search of an experienced PHP programmer, probably not. Like I mention before though, Mr. Kimsal did not write this book for that audience.

Did it help my job search?

It did and it didn’t. :) I did find a new job, but not in a PHP position. I also never really had that much time to do all the different techniques that Michael Kimsal recommended to help the search. The new job I did find was a Software Engineering position working with C and C++, which are my bread and butter. I’m sure that I learned something from this book that helped me land this new job though.

I hope you got a better understanding about what to expect if you yourself are looking into a PHP career and would like a little help finding that first job. Maybe sometime in the future, I’ll be approached by a company offering a PHP postion that is too good to pass up, but until then, it’s still my hobby! If you have any questions, please feel free to leave comments. Take care!

Twitter Tag Cloud Service

Doug — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:24:56 +0000

The past few months I have been using Twitter a lot. I’m trying to find and follow people that are heavily involved with PHP or at least providing knowledgeable Tweets about PHP. I guess you could say that I am always open to new networking opportunities within the PHP community.

If you don’t know what Twitter is, well then you aren’t keeping up with your current events very well. I’m not going to use this post explaining what it is more than a mini-blogging service. If you don’t know, check their site out. I provided a link above.

The problem I was having was actually judging whether or not it would be worth my time following their tweets. I mean, I follow someone that is really respected in a certain field, only to find out that they tweet about their new puppy they just got more than anything. So I made a PHP script that generates a “Twitter Tag Cloud.” Using this, you can generate your own Twitter tag cloud to put on your personal site to display the top keywords that you have been tweeting about.

I also provide a REST service so that you don’t have to upload or play with any code yourself other than accessing the BrownPHP Twitter Tag Cloud service. I’ll show you more about that later. Or you can just use the textbox I have here to check out your own Twitter Cloud or a friends.

This is helpful to judge what the person tweets about the most. The more the Twitter-er Tweets about a certain keyword, the larger it appears. Like if you would look at mine. One of the large keywords is “informative.” I also run a site called, Informative Post, and I tweet about it often, so it makes sense that this would be the largest keyword.

View Your Twitter Tag Cloud Now

Try it yourself! Type in a twitter username to see what that twitter-er tweets about more often:

Pretty cool, huh? At the bottom of this, I provide a link where you can download the PHP files from. I am also providing this as a REST service.

REST Twitter Tag Cloud Service

Parameters:

user (required)
- Twitter Username
history (optional)
- Number of past status updates to look for
- Defaults to 100
- Max is 200
size (optional)
- Number of Keywords to return
- Defaults to 50
- Max is 75

Example REST call to get my (dlbrown06) Twitter tag cloud:
http://www.brownphp.com/rest/twittertagcloud.php?user=dlbrown06
Response:

money

taking

networking

social

would

children

account

working

article

start

currently

making

online

twitter

morning

sites

right

informative

hosting

until

people

looking

starting

really

diablo

Then you can use CSS to format the cloud however you like!

Download the Twitter Tag Cloud Source Code:

If you would like to use this source code yourself, you are free to do so. All I ask is that you provide a link to this site, or somehow recognize the work that I put into it somehow. I would love to see what kind of mashups that the PHP community could do with this source code. Enjoy!

Downloaded a total of 117 times

If there are any problems with the source code, please let me know here. Then I’ll update code for future downloads.

My Tweets on 2008-07-22

Doug — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:59:59 +0000

New Post: All About Social Networking Sites: Social Networking sites have great potential for .. http://tinyurl.com/5lk49f #
New Post: How to Make Money Online for a Better Lifestyle: Is making money online possible? Ca.. http://tinyurl.com/6nw8fm #
New Post: Children and Games: This article is about the effects of children playing video game.. http://tinyurl.com/6dc3ua #
New Post: Diablo 3 Announced! Expect it to put Diablo 2 to shame!: Diablo 3 has been announced.. http://tinyurl.com/6emt7s #
New Post: Fraternity: To all the victims of hazing in joining fraternities. I wrote this artic.. http://tinyurl.com/642omg #
PHP Update: CNET’s 404 Podcast Twitter Tag Cloud: : SimpleXMLElement::__construct() [].. http://tinyurl.com/6kdjks #

CNET’s 404 Podcast Twitter Tag Cloud

Doug — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:49:24 +0000

If any of you haven’t heard of CNET’s 404 podcast, you are missing some serious entertainment. I have been listening to them for about a year now, and haven’t missed a podcast since. The guys at the 404 (Randell, Jeff, Wilson, and the new and improved Justin) just started Twittering, or at least telling everyone else that they are twittering.

I decided to make a little php script that monitors their Twitter RSS feeds, and from them, generates a tag cloud from their tweets. From listening to their podcast, I thought it would be pretty interesting to get a quick summary of what they are tweeting about more often.

I see a “hooters” tag in Jeff’s cloud, and I see a “balls” tag in Wilson’s…? Coincidence?

require_once ‘Brown/FeedTagCloud.php’;

$tagCloud = new FeedTagCloud();

// The 404 Twitter Posts RSS Feed
$xml_rss_404 = array(’http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/12298152.rss’);
$xml_rss_Jeff = array(’http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/15454949.rss’);
$xml_rss_Wilson = array(’http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/2029191.rss’);
$xml_rss_Justin = array(’http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/15433229.rss’);

$cloud_404 = $tagCloud->showTagCloud($xml_rss_404);
$cloud_Jeff = $tagCloud->showTagCloud($xml_rss_Jeff);
$cloud_Wilson = $tagCloud->showTagCloud($xml_rss_Wilson);
$cloud_Justin = $tagCloud->showTagCloud($xml_rss_Justin);

echo ‘

404 Tag Cloud

‘;
foreach ($cloud_404 as $key => $value) {
echo “$value “;
}
echo ‘

‘;

echo ‘

Jeff\’s Tag Cloud

‘;
foreach ($cloud_Jeff as $key => $value) {
echo “$value “;
}
echo ‘

‘;

echo ‘

Wilson\’s Tag Cloud

‘;
foreach ($cloud_Wilson as $key => $value) {
echo “$value “;
}
echo ‘

‘;

echo ‘

Justin\’s Tag Cloud

‘;
foreach ($cloud_Justin as $key => $value) {
echo “$value “;
}
echo ‘

‘;
?>

If any of you are interested in the PHP Twitter RSS Tag Cloud Generator, let me know and I can send it to you.

Tweets on 2008-07-21

Doug — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 03:59:59 +0000

New Post: Why I Love my IPhone: The iPhone, an innovation. It can achieve what was once though.. http://tinyurl.com/6pqtb9 #

Douglas Brown is an Impossible Keyword

Doug — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:24:20 +0000

Ok, I started this site so that I can work on projects involved with PHP that I wouldn’t normally do in my current job. Also in the future, after I have built up a few articles, I would also like using this as a resource to find a job that is heavily involved with PHP and web applications. After doing a little research, I’m beginning to notice that with my name being, Douglas Brown or Doug Brown for short, it is a bit like having a name like John Smith.

I would like to tell my prospective employers if they would like to find me, just Google Douglas Brown or Doug Brown, and I will be the first result. I think that this is going to take a lot more work. Searching ‘douglas brown’ today produces results of over 2,250,000. Perhaps competing for ‘doug brown’ would make more sense, as the competition out there is less than 500,000 results. Either way, this is going to take some time.

I’m sure that there are a lot of you out there in the same boat as I am, but I know there are a few of you lucky people that can brand your name without any problem. When a new web app like Twitter pops up, you can just use your real name, rather I need to use some vague alias like dlbrown06.

Anyway, I just wanted to use this post as a little bit of a rant, and I guess having a post with my name in it won’t hurt at all. Today is the day that I begin branding myself, Douglas Brown, as a web recognized PHP Developer! lol

If any of you have a name you feel is impossible to brand, take a moment and mourn with me please.

Zend_Cache is Saving me Money!

Doug — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:23:04 +0000

Let me tell you a little story. My latest site I have been working on for some time was written using the Zend Framework. Since it was launched in Oct 07, it has been growing rapidly enough where I am now starting to feel growing pains.

One morning I went into the site to check some analytics, and my site was displaying a 403 Forbidden error! I suddenly got a cold nervous sweat down the back of my spine. Why was it forbidden? It was fine when I checked it out last night?! So I tried to login to my FTP account. No go! I I thought a hacker has some how blocked me out of my own account. [Exit dramatic build up].

I come to find out that my hosting company revoked my access to the folder that I was using for the domain. I called them up immediately after I noticed that. They responded by telling me that on a shared server, they limit their clients to use only 2% of the servers resources before they shut them down. My site was using 30%. They were then forced to shut the site down without notice, because it was most likely affecting the performance of the other sites running from that shared server.

After some negotiating and explaining to them that I was going to come up with a solution, they temporarily gave me back access to the folder so that I could diagnose further what was going on. The first thing that I did was looked through the server logs. Because of my unfortunate neglect, the server log file was freaking enormous bigger than normal.

Nearly all of the errors I was getting were:

[03-Jul-2008 09:41:19] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught exception ‘Zend_Db_Adapter_Exception’ with message ‘SQLSTATE[42000] [1203] User blank already has more than ‘max_user_connections’ active connections’ in blah blah blah

I’ll admit, I was in a huge hurry to get this project done, so I wasn’t thinking about the long tern effects. Needless to say, I wasn’t caching my MySQL query results. I know, tisk tisk. Once I discovered this, I added this private method to my classes:

private function loadCache() { $frontendOptions = array( 'lifetime' => 7200, // cache lifetime of 2 hours 'automatic_serialization' => true); $backendOptions = array( 'cache_dir' => './cache/' // Directory where to put the cache files ); // getting a Zend_Cache_Core object return Zend_Cache::factory('Core', 'File', $frontendOptions, $backendOptions); }

Then in each of my classes where I needed to cache my query results, I implemented the above method. Here is an example:

class IndexController extends Zend_Controller_Action { /** * Index Action * */ public function indexAction() { $db = new SomeDB; $cache = $this->loadCache(); if (!$results = $cache->load('cache_variable')) { $results = $db->fetchAll('columnName="whatIWant"'); $cache->save($results, 'cache_variable'); } } }

It’s pretty much as simple as that. Once I did this, it dropped the server load tremendously, which now buys me more time from upgrading my hosting package. About 10 minutes of coding just saved me about $50 a month in hosting fees! That feels good.

Keep in mind that this is not the best approach to solving this problem. If you too are using the Zend Framework in your own design. It was be better to initialize the Zend_Cache in your bootstrap file. Doing it the way I did above will force you to replicate the code method, loadCache, in all of your classes which I dont’ have to explain to you why this is inefficient, and just plain old bad OOP technique!

Email Made Simple with the Zend_Mail Tutorial

Doug — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:22:58 +0000

I just got finished with an update to one of my sites, the Informative Post, which uses the Zend_Mail component frequently. Zend_Mail is a component that is apart of the Zend Framework, and if you haven’t ever used it, now is as good of a time as any!

It is my first time working with Zend_Mail and I must say that I am impressed. This component alone would influence me to use the Zend Framework. It makes emailing from your site so simple. You don’t have to deal with the HTTP headers or anything. Let me show you the code that I used to send a simple email notifying a member that I have received an article that they just submitted.

include_once 'Zend/Mail.php';


$subject = 'We Have Received Your Article';

$fromEmail = 'admin@gmail.com';

$fromName = 'Administrator';

$toEmail = 'author@email.com';

$toName = 'Author Name';

$message= <<
Hi $toName!
I just wanted to notify you and let you know that I received your article and it will be reviewed shortly.
Regards,

Douglas Brown

Follow Me On Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dlbrown06

EMAIL;

$mail = new Zend_Mail(); $mail->setSubject($subject); $mail->setFrom($fromEmail, $fromName); $mail->addTo($toEmail, $toName); $mail->setBodyText($message); $mail->send(); ?>

It is as simple as that. Not too bad is it? You can also send an HTML email. It is just as simple. You would just add setBodyHtml($messageHTML). $messageHTML would contain the HTML and text that you would like to email. You should still add the setBodyText method so that if someone who opens up their email doesn’t not want to display the email in HTML, they have the alternative to view it in plain text.

Zend_Mail Tutorial Conclusion

I know that you are thinking that this is a relatively short tutorial, and your right! The Zend Framework’s Zend_Mail is very simple to use with a minimal amount of code to produce to let you take better advantage of your available time. You can send an email in 6 lines of code if you would like! If you feel that I made a mistake in the above code or that you have a better method to use, please let me know, as I would love to learn how to use this component more efficiently.

In my next post, I am planning on showing you how to use the Flickr API to bring your photos to your own site with ease!

Welcome to BrownPHP.com

Doug — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 22:46:08 +0000

This is officially the first post of many to come. I have never really had the chance to start a Wordpress blog before. Well, maybe mentioning that I never really had the time to work on one would be better. I always enjoyed building a site from the ground up. Starting to think about how I will design the file structure, and what design pattern to choose from always get me excited. I don’t think I need to mention the gratification you get from launching a site that you have been working on for months to the public eye.

So I am admittedly late to the Wordpress blog show, but I am doing this to contribute everything that I have learned along the way about PHP and other web technologies to the PHP community. My motivation behind continued work on this site comes from all the developers out there that have offered advice or have troubleshooted my PHP design mistakes in the past. I hope that I can use this site as a conduit to other PHP developers to share ideas that we can all learn and grow from.

I am currently in a living situation that cuts me out of the loop from the Web 2.0 world. I live in Indiana/Ohio and believe it or not, the only way I can hear about or learn more about PHP is from blogs, and php.net. I’m sure I am not the only person in this situation. Some day, I do plan on moving the West Coast or New York, where I can be around more like-minded people.

I just wanted to use this first post on Brown PHP to welcome you and hope you stick around to contribute and learn more about the great things that PHP can do to make the world a better place!