PHP command line progress bar
Was just looking through some code and came across this function I wrote some time ago. If you do a lot of your processing scripts in PHP like we do, you probably need to know what is going on sometim...
ob_start and HTTP headers
I was helping someone in IRC deal with some "headers already sent" issues and told them to use ob_start. Very diligently, the person went looking for why that was the right answer. He did not find a g...
Using ini files for PHP application settings
At dealnews we have three tiers of servers. First is our development servers, then staging and finally production. The complexity of the environment increases at each level. On a development server, e...
Autoloading for fun and profit
So, as I stated in a previous post, the code base here at dealnews is going through some changes. I have been working heavily on those changes since then. Testing and benchmarking to se...
Code Organization Dilemma
So, we have been building up our code library at dealnews for 9 years. It was started at the end of PHP3 and the beginning of PHP4. So, we did not have autoloading, static functions, and all that jazz...
Forums are crap. Can we get some help?
Amy Hoy has written a blog post about why forums are crap. And she is right. Forum software does not always do a good job of helping people communicate. I have worked with Amy. She did a great analysi...
Memcached: What is it and what does it do?
I spoke at CodeWorks in Atlanta, GA this week. I totally dropped the ball promoting it on my blog. It was a neat venue. Rather than a large conference they are doing a traveling show...
Wordcraft 0.10 available
The latest package of Wordcraft, the PHP/MySQL based blog software that runs this site, is available for download from Google Code. Just some minor bug fixes and cosmetic stuff. Its gettin...
Forking PHP!
We use PHP everywhere in our stack. For us, it makes sense because we have hired a great staff of PHP developers. So, we leverage that talent by using PHP everywhere we can. One place where peop...
Building PECL/memcache on Mac OS X
My coworker Rob ran into an issue building the PECL/memcache extension on his Mac. He did find the solution however. You can read and leave comments on his blog....