I have been working with the PHP language since early 2001, first as the nerdy hobby of a spotty teen and then later into my career as a Web Developer. I try to write about PHP things that will be useful to me, useful to you, and everything in between.
One of the most effective spam blocking techniques I used in my custom CMS was a scoring system. The idea is that the more spammy someone is, the higher the score they are given. After a certain cut-off point whereby a person or spam-bot has a score than our pre-set threshold, their comment or correspondence… read full entry »
I’ve had to restart this about 4 times now, because each time I decide to finish off, I get half way and somehow lose the file. I don’t know about l33t PHP Ninja; recently I’ve been l33t file loser. Anyway, quick recap: in Part Two of the PHP Beginners Guide I briefly covered the basic… read full entry »
Let’s have a quick re-cap of what we covered in Beginner’s Guide to PHP – Part One: there are different data types (string, integer, floating point number and boolean) and variables are created by simply assigning data to them. Simple enough? Well, now we’re going to take a look at mathematical operators and what we… read full entry »
…you create a PHP script to parse your telephone bills because you can’t be bothered to install suitable software to deal with .csv files. (If anyone wants that code btw, let me know and I’ll hook you up. It’s designed to parse BT phone bills in .csv format with colour coding depending on the incoming… read full entry »
Due to the relative simplicity of PHP, more and more young webmasters are getting their hooks into scripting. This can be a good thing — it increases the range of functionality and fun that we can add to our websites without the need to learn how to code ourselves — the problem is, a lot… read full entry »
First things first, we might as well get out of the what PHP is not: PHP is not a replacement for HTML. PHP is not a synonym for MySQL. Although they work well together, they’re not the same thing. PHP is not all about layout-based includes. PHP is not magically going to make your website… read full entry »
I’ve released part one of what I hope will be a series of PHP security articles — a PHP Script Checklist for those developing or looking to develop their own scripts. If you have any thoughts on PHP security problems that you’d like to be covered in part 2, or you’re an ‘expert’ and want… read full entry »
To celebrate the success of writing my very own, first ever PHP class I’ve been re-writing the backend of the site. It probably means nothing to you guys, but basically means things should be a bit quicker, a little more “optimised”. I’ve also decided to rejig how the site is laid out too — things… read full entry »
I’ve invented a new method of skinning. Oh yes, me, I am the best. :P No one else gets the code yet, ’cause it’s one of the new tutorials on tutorialtastic (or it will be, when the site is up). Basically, it’s smaller and tidier than the original method of skinning that seems to be… read full entry »
I’ve been thinking about this PHP style switcher business, as well as what I’m going to do with BellaBook3.1 to get it safe and secure, ready for release. I have been trying to figure out the best way to have this PHP styleswitcher without disturbing browsing. I *think* because it’s a server-side language it is… read full entry »