Having used a number of test suites for C++, I know how terrible they can be. Most are overly complex, trying to accomplish far more than you would ever expect or need. So when I found myself needing a test system for PHP 5, I didn’t even look for a free one, I just spent the half hour to roll my own.
Tags: downloads, PHP Scripts, scripts, testing
Wordpress is great. I can run their software on my servers, they give me all the source code, and it has a great community constantly improving and extending. When I install Wordpress, however, the first thing I do is install these six plugins. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if most of these plugins are eventually packaged with Wordpress like Akismet is. The “Google Analyticator” is a personal choice for me, but the rest of them, no one should be without.
Tables make formatting a page simple and intuitive. Unfortunately, using tables for formatting makes style changes difficult and time consuming at best. CSS is more complicated to implement if you’re used to tables, but once it’s done, it is very easy to make changes. This tutorial aims to provide an implementation of tables in CSS while maintaining the ease of tables. Try to keep in mind, that this becomes increasingly easy as your grasp of CSS improves.
IrishPubReviews.com was built for two purposes. The first is that there was not an Irish pub directory that was highly ranked in search engines. Of course I am still working on my ranking, so there still isn’t a highly ranked Irish pub directory. The second reason is that I wanted to build an XML based review system in PHP5. It will be used in DrinkingBeer.net for a more general pub review site.
IrishPubReviews.com is 100% AJAX. Meaning that the back end is all PHP5 which is interfaced though asynchronous javascript. I used the jQuery javascript library to speed up development time and reduce the problems with browser inconsistencies. There are many extensions to jQuery available that really ease development, but the best part of jQuery is how easy it is to write extensions. jQuery provides an invaluable abstraction layer between your interface and your javascript.
There’s a bunch of jQuery extensions for mapping, unfortunately, none of them met my needs. They either didn’t provide access to all the features of the current API, or they didn’t provide simple enough interfaces. So I wrote my own. I chose the Google APIs (Google Maps API and Google Search Local API) because it provided international searches, which is a must for Irish pubs
I’m pretty happy with the site, and I now have everything I need to start rewriting DrinkingBeer.net.
Tags: ajax, irishpubreviews, site
DrinkingBeer.net began because I like beer. It provides a platform for beer review and discussion and contains articles relating to beer. This site is built completely in PHP5 and zero javascript.
It was one of my earliest sites, and I’m not too fond of it. I built IrishPubReviews.com because I wanted to create a pub review system that will be used in the rewrite of DrinkingBeer. I have also built some new jQuery extensions that will be used in the new DrinkingBeer site. It’s an outdated site that is begging for a rewrite, and it has enough unique visits a day to make worth my time.
Tags: drinkingbeer, site
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