Basic PHP Programming

All over the world, people are using PHP in their daily internet experience and with companies working hard to make it into a more powerful tool for the internet of tomorrow, updates and add-on’s are a fact of life. Zend Technologies, one of the developers who work with PHP has announced the release of their new and improved Zend Framework release 1.8 which makes PHP better by bringing Rapid Application Development (RAD) to the industry. The ability to do RAD allows easy business application development using PHP that is set to fuel business ventures into the cloud. Read the rest of this entry »

This year’s TestFest 2009 is almost here and people from all over the globe work together, each devoting a few hours of their time to the proper testing of the newer and enhanced versions of the platform to allow a wider testing program. Most testing is done by a select few who work their best to test, isolate and address issues that come out with previous releases that should have been addressed by current updates. The test group, spanning 20 countries with a multitude of talents hopes to try out and see if all errors, vulnerabilities and enhancements are up to par with programming standards previously implemented. Read the rest of this entry »

As the internet evolves and the many people who work hard to make it possible try to issue improvements into the already forever present PHP platform, the newest version of PHP 5.3.0, release candidate 2 has been released for evaluation and testing. The update is in efforts to address security vulnerabilities that have been found with the last release only a month or so ago and it is deemed as part of the continuing evolution of PHP into one of the best and most secure web platforms ever. Project managers are advised to download the latest version fro testing with current projects so compatibility issues can be addressed early. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s surprising how many PHP programmers make the mistake of ignoring many of the basics, such as resizing big files. Big files make load times significantly slower, and are a bane to impatient people and people with slow internet connection speeds.

Failing to resize you large files makes you an unintentional elitist - it’s like you hung a sign on your site that says “Folks with slow internet connections speed are NOT welcome here.”

It’s a simple enough tip, but many ignore or overlook it precisely because of that. You might have a fast internet connection, but chances are many viewers don’t enjoy the same luxury. And maximizing viewership is a must for every website, and big files that cause delays in loading times totally defeat the purpose, especially with the shot attention span many people have when browsing the net.

The latest release available for Windows users that is designed to address security flaws in the integrated OPEN SSL libraries with subsequent updates to the Open SSL library (0.9.8k) patching the security vulnerability left by the said windows flaw. The update addresses errors to the ASN1_string function that releases security information upon a call to print. another error that was addressed was with concern to the CMS_verify function which was unable to handle error conditions involving malformed signed attributes. Another issue with the ASN1 structure concerned memory issues that sometimes caused crashes with some installations.
The security holes have long been a problem which the open-sourced community have always managed to release security bulletins and updates to address these issues. The systems which uses the OpenSSL standard is invalidated when the said flaws were discovered making dangerous loophpoles for access by hackers. The update is recommended for all users of the older version of PHP to address and avoid such security issues.

PHP 5.2.7. is on its way out but 5.2.8. is on its way in!

Due to a security bug found in the PHP 5.2.7 release, it has been removed from distribution. The bug affects configurations where magic_quotes_gpc is enabled, because it remains off even when set to on. In the meantime, use PHP 5.2.6 until PHP 5.2.8 is later released.

The PHP Development Team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.8. This release addresses a regression introduced by 5.2.7 in regard to the magic_quotes functionality, which was broken by an incorrect fix to the filter extension. All users who have upgraded to 5.2.7 are encouraged to upgrade to this release. Alternatively you can apply a work-around for the bug by changing “filter.default_flags=0″ in php.ini.

Good thing the previous version was taken out then.

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PHP 5.3 was recently released as an update and it features namespaces, PHP archive files, and garbage collection upgrade for web functionalities, server-side. It is said that the recent upgrade works much better now with Windows. The PHP community has definitely worked very hard on creating a better binary pack for Windows PHP. It now includes Microsoft compilers and it will definitely improve performance. There are also other libraries that are highlighted for Windows PHP applications. Garbage collection will surely improve the memory usage. What it will do is avoid certain conditions that could make it prone to memory leakage.Namespaces on the other hand is a functionality that enables PHP code mix and match form different sources.

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Perhaps, we should start from the very basic of Php. To be able to fully understand the harder principles. What are tags? Tags are the starting and ending point of a specific code snippet that belongs to any scripting language. To give you a simple example, in HTML, we close HTML codes with and . Much the same with javascript code, which is written like this; . In Asp or Active Server Pages, it is written this way; <% 'asp code and then end with %>. Most of the languages for programming uses similar types too. You might ask yourself, why do these programming need tags, but to be able to understand it, you must have a basic understanding of the process of displaying web page in a browser wether it may be Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.

Here are some helpful basics on PHP.
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Begin, at all times, a PHP page with “.” and use “;” at the end of a variable. Before manually starting phpmyadmin to make your PHP program run properly, be ready to set up PHP, PHPTriad first. Next, to enable your php program to function, bring a php page in a .php wing. And lastly, don’t forget that security is the main requirement in using this type of PHP language. In developing a page with PHP, high level of security is necessary. It is also very important to note that if you really want your program to operate, follow instructions to the letter. With this type of system, accuracy is the key. Programming is not really hard. , nowadays, almost anyone can learn the skill. There are tutorials online that should be boosted by a one’s interest. Perseverance entails to a learner reading tutorial lessons and later try out some actual programming.

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Why not exhibit some output onto the screen? It is in truth much easier to achieve with PHP. All you have to do is use PHP language construct called echo and we are done. Here’s how..
Open a blank new file in your editor or notepad and write the below talk about lines in the file. Then save the file with a .php extension. If you are using notepad as editor then be careful about the file extension. In Windows OS the file extensions are often hidden, so you must ensure that file saved has a .php extension.
If that is the exact output on your browser, then it is a success!!! We are on a good start. If you did not see this output, then perhaps PHP was not installed or configured properly. Note that if the PHP file is prompted to be downloaded in your browser, then PHP is not installed or configured properly as the file with .php extension is not being parsed. Please refer to your installation procedure.