Take, take, take
30th January 2008, PHP, Technology, Trends0 Comments
This breaks my heart. Mark has created a wonderful piece of software which has revolutionised the forum as we know it. He’s tried and failed to make money from it so has tried a couple of links and stuff to see what that generates - and from the sounds of things he’s getting cussed for it. This is a sad thing to witness. I’ve experience negative attitudes while contributing the GoogleMapDirectory and you have to wonder who these baddies are? They never seem to contribute just moan. Grrr.
1000th download!
4th September 2007, Ajax, MySQL, PHP, Technology0 Comments
Yay. Feels like a little landmark for me. The GoogleMapDirectory for Vanilla finally reached a thousand downloads today. It’s not massive, but for a wee little plugin, I think it’s done OK.
It still has some way to go, the database layer is still far from perfect and Vanilla sites that use friendly URL’s seem to be having a few problems, but that aside, this has given me a lovely little warm glow inside.
Ahhh.
Vanilla plug-in
30th March 2007, PHP5 Comments
I’ve finally released the GoogleMapDirectory plug in. I’d been mulling it over for ages as i know the database elements of it are far from perfect, but that said, it does work perfectly well. I’ve come to the conclusion I’m too busy to ever actually finish it properly. So I thought I’d put it out there and hope someone helps take it a bit further.
[UPDATE]
Well its certainly getting furthered. But only by me so far unfortunately. Feedback is good and helps with fixing bugs etc. I’d really love someone to look at two elements though - The Database Layer and also the housekeeping when upgrading versions. Lots more to be done and the community certain has no problems in requesting more features! I think I’ll focus on getting the basics solid first though.
To Polygon or not?
27th March 2007, MySQL, PHP, Technology0 Comments
Since releasing Blockhunter, we’ve had a few enquiries about why we chose certain ways of doing things. One that has cropped up a few times is why a block, and not a polygon? Surely a polygon is more accurate as you can mark around specific streets that interest you. Well, yes this is true. And yes, GoogleMaps does indeed support polygons. We did look quite closely at using polygons too, but decided at least for now, this wasn’t a wise move.
There were three key reasons for this which I’ll go through, the last one being the main decider by a long shot.
1. MySQL
We use MySQL. At the time of Blockhunter’s release the MBR spatial extensions seem to be patchy at best. Some basic tests I did resulted in some very dubious results. MySQL is currently not best suited to this but it’s what we have. I think version 5 has improved on this so it may well be we revisit this at some point, however point three below will still prevail.
2. Time
This service is free, we wanted to go live now, not later. Reworking the code versus the benefits simply weren’t stacking up. Again, if time permits, it may be something to revisit. (more…)
Google Map Vanilla Plugin
16th March 2007, PHP0 Comments
I’ve been working on the GoogleMapDirectory plug-in for Vanilla, and it’s now available on Lussumo’s site. Its almost complete, as you can see it working there. What isn’t complete is the database abstraction layer as I can’t quite get my head around the vanilla way of doing things. If anyone wants to help me port what should be the database layer into SQLBuilder, please do get in touch!
Zend Framework User Authentication
10th March 2007, PHP, RoR5 Comments
So as the Zend Framework approaches version 1 (we’re on 0.8 right now), I finally decided to take it seriously and start developing with it. Now I’ve played a bit with Cake, CodeIgnitor, Solar (which I really like btw) and now this. I’m not going to say I’m dissappointed because the framework is not yet at version one, so that would be unfair. But not being a coding guru myself, I’ve found the documentation and some of the attitude on the forums to be rather exclusive. This I think I can validly say I’m dissappointed with. (more…)
HSBC Payment Processing
7th December 2006, PHP, Technology3 Comments
So, finally, we’ve launched our holiday home site Independent Escapes roughly a month after we’d signed off all the code apart from the payment processing.
Why a month? The sheer lack of information coming from HSBC. It was bad enough just getting the merchant account sorted out, but then came the wonder that is a pdf document easily in excess of 200 pages that manages to not help you one single bit. It didn’t even document the HSBC payment server address for you to post details to. We’re talking fundamental stuff here.
On top of that, HSBC offer two forms of payment CPI & API. CPI routes through to a HSBC branded page for payment - if we’d wanted that we could have used paypal. So onto the other method - API - a ludicrous acronym to use confusing one of the most used programming acronyms out there. Who designed this stuff? (more…)
Ruby on Rails mid-life crisis on the horizon?
3rd November 2006, PHP, RoR, Technology, Trends1 Comment
Obviously a bit early to talk of such stuff. RoR is most definately in its infancy and certainly here to stay. I’ve recently finished my first proper application using it and it is indeed a joy. While the project didn’t really get done any quicker, that’s down to learning RoR as I’m going, compared to knowing LAMP inside out. The sheer lack of lots of code in an RoR app is very impressive.
However, three things are happening which may give RoR some problems in maintaining its rate of adoption.
Firstly, Zend are developing a framework for PHP5. PHP5 gives LAMP developers a decent OOP language to work with certainly as good as Ruby when it comes to web applications with the added bonus of familiarity - we all know PHP. (more…)
Procedural vs. OOP
1st August 2006, PHP0 Comments
I’ve been looking into whether or not to migrate to Object-oriented Programming from my vastly more learned Procedural methods. Bearing in mind I’m using PHP4, the benefits of OOP are less clear. Indeed, many basic operations become mind boggling, round-the-houses operations, simply to fit within the object model. This to me feels a little like when dealing with the Council regarding say a parking ticket - you want a simple answer and have to go through 6 or 7 departments to get there. In a big organisation or in this case, big program, I can understand the need for a rigid system and everything having its role (strictly nothing more, nothing less). But in a smaller firm, or in this case my program, it just feels like red tape.
I’ve been spending the last few months refactoring one of my programs after reading up on MVC models, studying a bit of Ruby on Rails and ploughing through tonnes of threads on the virtues of OOP in PHP. (more…)
Vanilla extensions
24th July 2006, PHP2 Comments
Now i’ll be honest upfront. I am not an OOP coder, I’m from the procedural, spaghetti code side of things. I am intending to move into OOP coding but most my work is PHP4 and the deadlines are just too tight for me to take on a better approach. Maybe towards the end of the year I’ll have time to perfect that. But then again I said that last year.
One of the reasons I’ve never taken it on is the endless arguments of PHP not being truly object oriented. I believe PHP5 is, or at least improved, but not PHP4 and when you want to get a site up quickly, cheaply with a host you know, it’s nearly always PHP4 and not PHP5 due to the various stability issues/ISP’s unwillingness to upgrade - something I believe is to do with CPanel not supporting PHP5.
Then something curious happened. I downloaded and tried a great piece of forum software called Vanilla which has, incidentally, just released Version 1 (Note to self: upgrade your installation). Vanilla is entirely Object-Oriented yet works on PHP4.1 or higher.
I realised it was Object-Oriented when I tried to add Google Adwords to it and couldn’t for the life of me work out where to put it. Thankfully I found this extension which saved me trying to work it out.
I’ll be starting some OOP lessons soon though, and while it doesn’t look that complicated, writing something like Vanilla that is compatible with both PHP4 and PHP5 could well be a pain.
