As a quick and easy to follow guide, here are a few things that web designers have to do when creating website.

• Don’t forget to put something descriptive in the Title Tag
• Use the H1 tag for the heading instead of just increasing the font size of your heading text. The content between the H1 tag is a huge factor in SEO. Remember though to use the H1 tag only once!
• Use H2 and H3 tags for subheadings. That’s what they’re meant for. Again, don’t just change font-sizes. Use the header tags accordingly. As opposed to the H1 tag, you can use H2 and H3 tags as often as you want.
• Make use of the “alt” attribute in images. The main purpose of the “alt” attribute in images is for usability. Some users just choose to browse with images turned off. The “alt” attribute gives them an idea of what the image is about. On the other hand, search engines also give credit to the value of the alt attribute so make good use of it.
• Avoid Javascript and Flash in navigation. Search engines like HTML and plain TEXT. That’s it. So if you rely on some fancy javascript or flash for your navigation then you’re doing it wrong. Use ordinary HTML links for navigation as much as possible. You can use CSS to achieve most of the fancy effects you want anyway.
• Don’t use images for paragraphs of text. I know this is absurd but I’ve seen many websites who use images to display paragraphs of text. While people can read it, the search engines can’t. Use plain text for text content… makes sense?
• Comply with the W3C standards. It’s not just for browser compliance. It’s also for the search engines. You can validate your HTML and CSS code at http://validator.w3.org/

I’m sure I missed a few things but the list above should you get started.

The mail function accepts at least three parameters namely the recipient, subject and the message. That alone will do most of what you need to do. The power however of the mail() function is in the option fourth parameter which is for adding additional headers. It accepts a string which can contain any valid email header. The second example above shows how to use the fourth header to specify the sender of the email but it can do more than that.

You can specify CC or BCC recipients in it and if you’re up for the challenge, you can use it to add attachments to your email. Yes, I know that’s tough and that really sucks knowing that other scripting languages such as ASP provide a much better and easier way to send emails.

That’s where the PHPMailer Class comes in. It’s a free PHP class that makes sending emails with PHP easier and more powerful. You can download it here and here’s how to use it.

The power of PHPMailer is more than that. Through it you can add attachments to your email, specify an HTML body for your email, etc. Download it and check out the examples they provide.

Happy emailing and please, don’t spam. :)

Thing is, CakePHP is good for newbies and oldies alike but it does need a little getting used to just as with any other “out-of-the-box” solution. This little learning curve is well compensated by the benefits that you get when you use CakePHP.

So, why am I, a hardcore text-editor programmer, telling you that this is good? I don’t use it but I have tried it and geez it was fast. You create a database according to specs and it maps the database to the application creating the needed code for adding, editing and deleting data. It practically cuts down code-writing to 50% if you ask me.

Best of all, just like with any opensource project on the net, it’s free. So if you like to do things fast and are not so concerned about being intimately connected with your code, then CakePHP will do the job for you.

Check them out at CakePHP.org

Say we have a page called ‘cookiepage.php’ in a particular website that checks for the cookie set by the homepage and will only return the proper output if the cookie exists. How do you do it? Here’s how…

Just in case you weren’t able to catch what we did in the above example, here’s a short explanation.

• STEP 1 creates a temporary cookie file using the tempnam() function.
• STEP 2 loads the homepage and saves the cookie in our temporary cookie file. The key here is this line:

  curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $ckfile);

• STEP 3 loads cookiepage.php with the saved cookie with this line:

  curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $ckfile);

Sleek and simple ei? Hope this PHP cURL Cookie example helped you out!

And what happened? Here’s my quick explanation.

$urltopost

The url where you want to post your data to

$datatopost

The post data as an associative array. The keys are the post variables

$ch = curl_init ($urltopost);

Initializes cURL

curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);

Tells cURL that we want to send post data

curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $datatopost);

Tells cURL what are post data is

curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

Tells cURL to return the output of the post

$returndata = curl_exec ($ch);

Executes the cURL and saves theoutput in $returndata

There ya go! If you have questions, just ask in our forum.

cURL is a command line tool for transferring files with URL syntax. The strong point of cURL is the number of data transfer protocols it supports. It is distributed under the MIT License which makes cURL free software. It supports FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS, TFTP, SCP, SFTP, Telnet, DICT, FILE and LDAP. - based on Wikipedia’s definition

PHP cURL allows you to read websites, make automated logins, upload files and many more. I’m personally using it to automate updating of my many websites.

Now that you know what cURL is, I think it’s time to look at some code.

The simple example above simply gets the contents of www.yahoo.com and saves it in the variable $yahoo. Here’s a line-by-line explanation:

$ch = curl_init ("http://www.yahoo.com");

Initialize curl with the URL of yahoo

curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

Tell php curl that we want the data returned to us instead of being displayed

$yahoo = curl_exec ($ch);

Execute curl and put the output in $yahoo.

But, that’s too simple! That can be done in simpler ways with PHP’s file functions such as file() and file_get_contents()! True but that’s where the comparison ends.

The power of PHP cURL lies within the curl_setopt() function. This function instructs cURL of what exactly we want to do. Let’s say, what if a webpage that you want to access checks for the HTTP_REFERER header? Or perhaps, what if you need to access a webpage that works correctly only if cookies are enabled?

Here’s another example… This time we specify the HTTP_REFERER…

In this example, the CURLOPT_REFERER line tells cURL to set the HTTP_REFERER header to http://www.somedomain.com/page1.php.

PHP cURL can do more. It can send POST data, it can log on to a website and automate tasks as if it was a real person and much more. That’s it for now and I hope this PHP cURL Tutorial helped you.

PNG is obviously better! Problem is that Internet Explorer 6 and below doesn’t support PNG images natively and that’s kind of bad for web designers who wish to make use of the power of the PNG image format. Other browsers such as Firefox, Opera and Safari support PNG natively but not IE6 and below. Why? Well you go and ask Microsoft.

Is there a solution? Of course! I won’t try to explain how it works because there are many websites out there explaining how it works. I’ve pretty much based my code on a solution provided by Microsoft which uses the proprietary AlphaImageLoader filter. The problem with their solution is that you have to practically edit all your web pages plus it won’t validate with CSS standards.

After studying the basics, I came up with a simple and valid solution that works. With a little help from a 1×1 transparent GIF and a few lines of javascript, you can properly render PNG images with alpha transparency in Internet Explorer. Here’s what you do.

1. Upload this Nifty 1×1 Transparent GIF to your web server. Put it in the same folder as your html file.
2. Upload this Nifty Javascript that fixes PNGs in IE to your web server. Put it in the same folder as your html file.
3. Paste the following javascript code somewhere inside the <head></head> section of your page.

   <!--[if lte IE 6]>
<script language="javascript" src="iepng.js"></script>
<![endif]-->

4. Refresh the page and enjoy transparent PNGs in Internet Explorer

There you go. Hope this helped.

Although many versions of this game can be found online, I still chose to wrote my own version of the game so I can put it in this blog and let my dear readers solve it as well. The rules are the same so no need to worry about that. So without any further ado…

Click to SOLVE Petals Around the Rose HERE »

Share your experiences with the puzzle here »

Good luck!

Without further ado, let’s go on…

The simplest way to install everything you need to run PHP web pages on your workstation is to install XAMPP. The beauty of using XAMPP is that it can be installed on any of the following operating systems:

• Microsoft Windows
• Linux
• Sun Solaris
• Mac OS X

As for XAMPP, it means:

• X - any of the four operating systems above
• A - Apache (the web server that serves your PHP web pages)
• M - MySQL (the SQL database)
• P - PHP
• P - Perl

It used to be called LAMPP where L stands for Linux but they decided to change L with X since it’s not just Linux anymore. So how do we install it? Simple, go to http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html and download the correct installer for your system. To make it even easier for you, I’m including the links to the installer download pages here.

• Linux - http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-linux.html
• Microsoft Windows - http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html
• Mac OS X - http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-macosx.html
• Sun Solaris - http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-solaris.html

To install, just download and follow installation instructions. (C’mon, you don’t expect me to spoon-feed you everything right?)

After you’ve installed XAMPP, all you need to do is run it. In Windows, all you have to do is run XAMPP Control and start each service that you want. Basically, you’ll want to start Apache and MySQL. After you’ve started Apache, you can now give it a try by browsing to http://localhost/. That should show you the XAMPP welcome page.

The XAMPP Control Panel

XAMPP Start Page (http://localhost/)

XAMPP also comes with phpMyAdmin which allows you to manage your MySQL databases via browser interface. You may access phpMyAdmin by browsing to http://localhost/phpmyadmin

phpMyAdmin (http://localhost/phpmyadmin)

So where do you put your PHP pages so that they are properly served by Apache? With XAMPP, it goes in the htdocs folder of your XAMPP installation. I recommend that you create separate folders for your projects so you can easily manage them.

Now that you have Apache/PHP and MySQL running through XAMPP, the next thing for you to do is install an editor. Any plain text editor such as Notepad will do. However, there are better editors out there that provide syntax highlighting and debugging functions. One of my favorites is Eclipse PDT (PHP Development Tools). It runs on Java which means it is cross-platform.

Eclipse Splash Screen

The easiest way to install Eclipse PDT is to follow these simple steps:

1. Go to http://download.eclipse.org/tools/pdt/downloads/
2. Click the Release Build
3. Download the All-in-One package for your operating system
4. Uncompress the downloaded package and run Eclipse from there

If you did it correctly, then you should see Eclipse’s IDE. Mine looks something like this:

Eclipse PDT Integrated Development Environment

One nice feature I like with Eclipse PDT is that it has a list of all the functions supported by PHP making it easier for me to write thousands of lines of code. Also, since it’s an IDE, it also keeps track of your variables, functions, and classes.

Quick but important note, it’s also best to keep a copy of the PHP manual accessible. If you’re always online, then the manual is just a click away. Typing php.net/str_replace on your browser will take you to the documentation of the PHP’s str_replace function. You may also want to download a copy of the PHP manual if you’re not connected to the internet all the time.

There you go. If you’ve successfully installed XAMPP and Eclipse then you already have the basic needs in getting started with PHP.

Here’s the working sample:

With this API, translating a website from one language to another will be pretty straightforward and FREE. Thanks to Google for providing us with this API, now we can finally increase usability in our websites.