Posts tagged PHP
Adding new Social icons to the Mystique theme
Jan 8th
I use my blog to record and share my knowledge, but also to present to possible employers my skills. I use it like a marketing tool for my persona. For this, I need to make available not only the RSS and Twitter account, but also resume profiles like Xing, LinkedIn and Facebook.
Since I am using WordPress and I know a little bit of PHP and MySQL I wanted to customize my current theme.But some time ago I’ve read that they don’t encourage you to customize directly the chosen theme, but instead create your own child theme, with the desired customizations. This way, when the theme will be updated, you won’t loose neither time nor brains trying to redo all the modifications.
7 easy steps to use Webmatrix and WordPress local development
Jan 6th
Almost all good developers that I know have some kind of repository of their code. Mine is my blog, this blog. Stay with me and you’ll find out how to easily be able to create your local version of WordPress, customize and test your plugins.
For´this you’ll need to follow the next steps:
- Go to Webmatrix official website and download the Web Platform Installer which will install for you not only Webmatrix itself, but also a lot of useful tools like an integrated webserver, Internet Information Services Express, PHP interpretor and its connectors just to name a few. But you can also use it to add new features like ASP .Net MVC3! More >
How to add ui-icons to JQuery tabs
May 25th
While working in UniBonn, I have a lot of contact with Ruby on Rails and JQuery; I actually started loving its interactivity and stability. But lately I encountered a small situation with the tabs object that they offer.
This is their default view, with Redmond theme applied. Nice and clean, you might say. But what’s missing? These tabs don’t support images. So you’ll not be able to show an image to specify, let’s say, that this tab has some updated information or a warning that something important is inside that tab.
I wanted to have some kind of control on specifying how the tab should look when I wanted my users to understand that something important is inside and requires their immediate attention.
As I searched through the website, I found the mentions of how to change the tab looks into an “error” style, so that it will attract attention no matter how tired the users are. In the Theming area of JQuery UI website, I found the help for Layout Helpers. Basically, you can specify additional classes who can override the theming of an element. Under Interaction cues, you’ll find all you need to set your elements style to highlighting, error, disable etc.
How to generate image_src for Facebook links in WordPress theme
Feb 18th
Sharing your article for free advertisement on Facebook is a fact. While using different Social Networks sharing tools I had a problem when sharing my articles on Facebook: sometimes the image that I intended to use to represent the article wouldn’t show in the list of the images who can be chosen. Why is that?
It bothered me some while I got the some free time to actually look into this, between exams, work and master research. After some wandering on the internet, I found here the correct directions. What I learnt: Always search for the API!
In order to make sure that the preview is always correctly populated, you should add the tags shown below to the <head> element in your HTML code. If you don’t tag your page, Facebook Share will grab the title of your page as specified in the <title> tag, and will create a summary description from the first text that appears in the body of your page. A list of thumbnails will all be selected from available images on your page.
You can control the exact title, description, and thumbnail that Facebook Share uses by adding the following meta tags to the <head> element in your page:
<meta name="title" content="title" /> <meta name="description" content="description " /> <link rel="image_src" href="thumbnail_image" / >
CursValutar
Jan 7th
Uses: Borland Delphi 7 VCL, HTTP, HTML Parsing, JavaScript, PHP server side script
The program parses web pages from Romanian National Bank site (www.bnr.ro), offering the latest currency ratings, among with a currency calculator, a very useful converter. The program was designed by me in Softwise Development company as a low resource program, hidden in the tray bar of Windows, while periodically checking BNR site and warning the refreshing of the currencies rate. Another feature is that it shows the trend of the user selected currency over the time, allowing you know how it fluctuates – improving the user decision.
The application is designed to be used as a simple, easy to use tool, providing without any previously knowledge of software usage the full functionality and power to the end user.It also has enough options to allow user to customize the time of refreshing data from the BNR site, the visible currencies (although all are refreshed, user may want to see just a number of them), the program start), and the calculator part – a tool visible in the main window of program (in right-bottom corner), but also in a separate window, which can be set to become visible as user clicks on the tray icon.
Softwise Development
Jan 4th
Positions: Junior to Senior Developer, Project Manager
Softwise Development is the company that shaped me as developer. I worked there for 2 years, between January 2002 and January 2004. I enjoyed there not only a good atmosphere, but also discovered a friend in the person of Mr. Dan Trutia, CEO of the company. I was his first employee and I believe that we created a good team. Together we raised the company to a 10 people business, having international contractors while working in software outsourcing industry.
There I had quite a few projects, challenge being the word of the day. I learn a lot about developing Object Oriented applications in Delphi 5 and 6, Access databases, PHP and MySQL, Windows API programming and not to mention user accessibility techniques, helping users with eye problems.
In the last six months of his employment, I was trusted with the responsibility to manage several projects to completion in budget and timely manner, being advanced to project manager. I enjoyed this opportunity and tried my best to prove my professional potential and leadership ability. Being a manager on several projects, I was responsible for conducting many meetings with the customers, conducting requirement analysis and requirements engineering that lead to successful projects.
Responsibilities:
- Delivering IT projects to user specification, on time and on budget
- Testing functionalities and modules
- Documenting IT policies and procedures
- Scheduling the project tasks
- Maintaining the IT security in line with group specifications
- Database maintenance, data updates and records checking
Technologies that I used were:
- Borland Delphi 6 and 7 Enterprise, custom built controls.
- Microsoft Access and Microsoft SQL databases, ADO
- Windows ‘98 Api programming
- PHP and MySQL for server-side applications
How to add a nice jQuery slider
Nov 15th
This weekend fun was adding to my website the cool sliding control from Jérémie Tisseau website. That pretty it was, I immediately started thinking it as a container to my BNR exchange rate page. The coded worked perfectly, with few modifications.
Firstly, WordPress uses the $ operator for Prototype library, so if you want to add your jQuery library the invocation to WordPress Firebug will report the error “$ is not a function”. So here’s the fix: you’ll have to change any occurrence of the $ sign to jQuery. Just like in the following example:
$(document).ready(function() {
// Expand Panel
$("#open").click(function(){
$("div#panel").slideDown("slow");
});
// Collapse Panel
$("#close").click(function(){
$("div#panel").slideUp("slow");
});
// Switch buttons from "Log In | Register" to "Close Panel" on click
$("#toggle a").click(function () {
$("#toggle a").toggle();
});
});
TO:
jQuery(document).ready(function() {
// Expand Panel
jQuery("#open").click(function(){
jQuery("div#panel").slideDown("slow");
});
// Collapse Panel
jQuery("#close").click(function(){
jQuery("div#panel").slideUp("slow");
});
// Switch buttons from "Log In | Register" to "Close Panel" on click
jQuery("#toggle a").click(function () {
jQuery("#toggle a").toggle();
});
});
How to add Zend Debugging capabilities to Apache
Nov 2nd
Most developer use a local website to test and develop their applications. One of the most used servers is Apache. Since for many developers setting this complex tool is not worth spending their time, some use smart installers who can do those settings for them. I personally use Vertrigo server, who brings me the advantage of 0 time for install, 0 time required for setting and making other tools work together, like MySQL, PHP, PHP MyAdmin, Zend Optimizer etc.
This tutorial is for Windows environment, but it can be easily adapted to Linux or MAC environments because all the settings are done in the configurations files.
The problem that I want to solve in this tutorial arises when one might want to debug its work. I mean, you wrote your application in PHP. There are some tools to allow you to debug it, but either are costly, like Zend Studio and Zend Server or are hard to setup, like XCode. At the end of the day, you’re paid to create applications, not to do dirty settings in 10 or so files in order to enable a simple debug feature.
How to add a Webslice
Sep 15th
It is very nice and user-friendly to have Webslices on your website. It improves the user experience by allowing visitors to be up to date with the latest content that you provide, assuming that it is fitted to this presentation style. Since my BNR exchange rates page was this kind, I pursued in adding a Webslice especially for it.
Adding a webslice to your website is simple. After you read the main specifications or my previous article, you’ll understand the concept behind: first you signal to the browser that you have a special part of your website by setting to a container element the class “hslice”:
<div id="BNRExchange" class="hslice">
<div style="display: none" class="entry-title">
<img id="image" alt="Radu Poenaru's weblog gives you BNR Exchange rates" src="http://www.radupoenaru.com/bnr/images/radupoenaru.jpg" width="128" height="128" />
<p>
Cursul oficial BNR
</p>
</div>
<p>
<a style="display: none" href="http://www.radupoenaru.com/bnr/bnr.php" rel="entry-content">
<a style="display: none" href="http://www.radupoenaru.com/bnr/bnr.php" rel="Bookmark" target="_blank">
<span style="display: none" class="ttl">5</span>
</p>
<div id="updateTrigger" class="entry-content" runat="server" />
........ your content that you want surrounded by the green webslice part ..............
</div>
Add Webslice to your website
Sep 11th
You might ask: what is a Webslice? It is a chunk of information, allowing you to stay up-to-date with the latest news without actually needing open a website. They are added to special toolbars (special because they usually require a specific version of a browser, like IE 8). But otherwise, the content inside itâ??s just plain old HTML. When a WebSlice is added to the toolbar, it will be represented as a clickable drop-down area, allowing you to click on it and then see a specially designed small-scale version of the website. For example, my website provides a webslice for BNR exchange rates , allowing you to keep up with latest information available.
Usually, while hovering to an area webslice-enabled, the browser will show a specific icon â?? developed by Microsoft and symbolizing this technology. There are few design guidelines that you need to follow, quoted from Microsoft website :
