SecondVersion

I, as well as many open source developers, have joined the Go PHP 5 initiative. Starting February 5th, 2008 - we will be dropping support for PHP version 4, and will be using PHP 5 instead. My Domain Name Portfolio project is one of many going in this direction.

GoPHP5’s official Press Release:

PHP projects join forces to Go PHP 5

5 July 2007 — A consortium of PHP developers has announced today that several leading Open Source PHP projects will be dropping support for older versions of PHP in upcoming releases of their software as of February 5, 2008 as part of a joint effort to move the PHP developer community fully onto PHP version 5.

The Symfony, Typo3, phpMyAdmin, Drupal, Propel, and Doctrine projects have all announced that their next release after February 5, 2008 will require PHP version 5.2 as part of a coordinated effort at GoPHP5.org, and have issued an open invitation to any other PHP projects and applications, both open source and proprietary, that want to participate in the effort.

Most PHP-based web applications today run in both PHP version 4 and PHP version 5. PHP 4 was released in 2000, and quickly cemented itself as one of the dominant web development languages. Version 5 was released in 2004 with dramatic improvements in functionality, but adoption has been slow due mostly to the “chicken and egg” problem that accompanies many new platform releases.

“Most of the PHP developers I talk to want to use PHP 5 but can’t because so many web hosts offer PHP 4 by default,” said Larry Garfield, a Drupal developer and one of GoPHP5.org’s founders. “The hosts won’t upgrade until projects do, but projects won’t upgrade until the hosts do. That has made a lot of projects reluctant to be the first to drop support for PHP 4, so we’ve decided that we will all be first.”

By pre-announcing plans to require PHP 5.2 in upcoming software versions in 2008, GoPHP5 hopes to provide web hosts with the incentive to upgrade their servers to newer, more stable, more featurerich versions of PHP as well as sufficient time to do so. Users that are already using current versions of participating projects won’t be left out in the cold, either. All involved projects will continue to support current releases on PHP 4 for their normal life cycle, giving both users and hosts time to plan and implement an upgrade.

“The phpMyAdmin project is very enthusiastic to join the GoPHP5 initiative,” added phpMyAdmin’s project lead, Marc Delisle. “We see GoPHP5 as a way both to improve our product’s new versions — not always having to add workarounds to remain PHP4compatible — and improve the experience of our users — by projecting the correct message about the PHP system itself and its evolution.”

PHP 5 offers developers a wide array of features designed to make developing fast, modern web applications faster and easier. That includes vastly improved XML handling for Web services, an integrated SQL database called SQLite, better handling of time zones, dramatically improved security tools, stronger objectoriented functionality, and more.

Many PHP projects already require PHP 5. Encouraging a larger installedbase of PHP 5 will broaden the market for those projects as well.

PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development. PHP is one of the leading web development languages in the world, running on a third of the world’s web servers. It is the platform of choice for companies from Yahoo to Facebook as well as the most widely-available development platform on shared hosting, which powers millions of web sites world wide.

For more information:

http://gophp5.org/
http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/gophp5.php
http://drupal.org/gophp5

Press Contact: larry.garfield@gophp5.org

I came across a neat podcast earlier today, regarding PHP and security. This podcast is by Eli White and Zend.com.

The tips & techniques mentioned in this podcast can be considered somewhat basic, and what most intermediate-advanced coders should know; but it’s still great to listen to.. especially for you beginners out there.

You can find the link below.

Description from Zend.com

HP Abstract, the new PHP centric podcast is here. Sit back, relax, and let the funky beat wash over you. While you are at it, grab a nugget of information.

Episode 1: PHP Security Tips

Special Guest: Eli White
Release Date: 06/05/2007
License: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0

Eli talks to us about practical tips you can use to help make your application more secure.

Hello everyone.

The long and eagerly awaited release of Domain Name Portfolio 0.5.0 is now here; bringing many many new changes.

You can view most of the changes here; and download here.
Have fun!!

www.domainportfolio.us

Hello everyone!

Many of you who visit my site come for my open source project Domain Name Portfolio. For the past 6 months or so, you all have been waiting on me to release Version 0.5.0.

I have some big news regarding the future of Domain Name Portfolio. It’s home will change, it will soon be DomainPortfolio.us. The site will be completed, and launched, once Version 0.5.0 of the script is ready.

What changes have been made to Domain Name Portfolio so far?

• Improved the is_valid_email function.
• Improved the sanitize function.
• sanitize() function calls cleaned up. There was no need to specify ‘true’ as a 2nd parameter (for stripping \r\n). As it defaults to true.
• Changed ver_check function to only grab the latest version, not do an actual check against the current & latest versions. Both latest version and currently installed version are shown in admin.
• clean() on $_POST vars etc removed. The value is now passed to clean() via the sanitize() function.
• The iif function introduced in 0.4.2 deprecated. No longer used.
• Removed the ‘img’ folder.
• Renamed several folders and files:
  ‘inc’ => ‘includes’,
  ‘tpl’ => ‘templates’,
  ‘funcs.php’ => ‘functions.php’,
  ‘funcs_admin.php’ => ‘functions_admin.php’,
  and several others
• Changed url params for pagination/sort:
  ‘p’ => ‘page’,
  ’s’ => ’sort’
• ‘atomic’ font replaced with ‘rubbfont’ for captcha.
• Added ordering of domains in admin..like it is on main index.
• Added a new database field - ‘issite’. Setting this to yes when adding or editing a domain, will cause it to be linked on the index & search pages.
• Added a new database field - ‘description’ for both domains and categories. Which will allow you to give a domain or category a description.
• You can now add domains in bulk!
• You now have categories!
• You now have search!
• Both the ‘blue’ and ‘default’ templates are gone.
• The editing/deleting of domains/categories share the same files using ‘modes’ (edit.php & delete.php).
• Optimized code.
• Added a referer check on POSTs
• If your server does not support GD, or has freetype, you’ll see this image on the contact form:
  
• Revamped Installer
• Changed table structure of config, and how it is handled
• Added a custom error handler
• Improved MySQL Database class
• All files are now in *nix format, using tabs - no more tabs to spaces (sorry windows users)
• Improved template class.
• Code cleanup (Laziness of using the ternary operator mostly; in cases where an if statement would be easier to read/follow).

0.5.0 promises to be the best yet, you all will love it

Stay tuned.

I had originally set a date for the opening of PHPSociety for around July/August. However, I ‘got my butt i gear’ sorta speak, and opened it yesterday For anyone not familiar with my latest project, I have it on my “My Projects” page, which can be found here.

The site is not quite ‘finished’ by all means. There are plenty more features I plan on incorporating soon; that I’ll keep quiet for now. If you’re into php, and would like a place to not only discuss the language, but find tutorials, scripts, and other misc. resources..then why not join us?

Will see you all there.

SV

After a while of trying to keep this project “hush hush” it got out on NamePros a while back. So, I bring to you my latest project, Domain Name Portfolio.

Latest Version: 0.9.0 as of August 21st, 2007

See the changelog for details.

What is it?

Domain Name Portfolio is a FREE PHP and MySQL based application to help domain owners better organize their portfolio. It allows you to list your domains with their expiry, registrar, price, status, and category. Also allows visitors to your portfolio to contact you about a given domain.

Features (short list):

- List your domains along with a category, registrar, expiry, price, and a status.
- Domains are sortable by domain, category, registrar, expiry, price, or status.
- A quick and convienient contact form is provided for anyone interested in a domain.
- Captcha to help deter spam, and bot emails.
- Secure admin area to add, edit, delete, and set site options.
- Categories
- Domains have their own details page.
- Add domains in bulk.
- Search domains
- Custom template engine.
- Support for MySQL & MySQLi
- Nice clean template.
- Quick and easy installation.
- …and many more!

Requirements

Tested on:

Linux / Apache
PHP 4.3.11 - 4.4.7 & 5.2.x (5.2.4 and later recommended)
MySQL 4.1.21 & 5.0.x (5.0.45 and later recommended)

To use the new captcha feature, you’ll need GD (2.0.35+) w/FreeType(2.3.5+) support.

License

Licensed under the GNU GPL (v2).

What’s new?
You can view changes in the changelog.

Where can I get it?

Project Page: http://www.freshmeat.net/projects/dnport
Home Page: http://www.domainportfolio.us/
Demo: http://www.domainportfolio.us/demo/

This software is considered to be in BETA/Production Stable condition. You may encounter a bug or two. If you have any problems, ideas, or suggestions, post them here, PM me, or contact me at http://www.domainportfolio.us/contact.html

Enjoy!

I came across this article over at articlecity.com, quite interesting. Comparison of ASP and PHP (and no contest here, PHP will always win…for me anyway ).. thought I’d share it with you all.

——————————————————–
ASP vs. PHP
by: Halstatt Pires

When building web sites, ASP and PHP are very popular languages. Here’s my opinion on whether ASP or PHP is best

ASP v. PHP

Both ASP and PHP are languages used to build Dynamic Web sites that can interact with Databases and exchange information. ASP (Active Server Pages) is from Microsoft and is used with IIS (Internet Information Server) that runs on Microsoft Servers. PHP (Personal Home Pages) is from Rasmus Lerdorf, who originally designed this parsing language which was later modified by different people. It runs on Unix and Linux servers and it also has an NT server version.

There are a lot of differences between ASP and PHP.

Cost

To run ASP programs one needs IIS installed on a Windows platform server, which is not free. PHP programs run on Linux, which is free. Even the connectivity of the database is expensive in the case of ASP as MS-SQL is a product of Microsoft that needs to be purchased. PHP generally uses MySQL, which is freely available.

Speed

If we compare the speed of ASP and PHP then PHP has an upper hand. PHP code runs faster than ASP. ASP is built on COM based architecture, which is an overhead for the server whereas PHP code runs in its own memory space.

Platform Compatibility

PHP programs can run on various platforms like Linux, Unix, Windows and Solaris whereas ASP is mainly associated with Windows platforms. However, ASP can run on a Linux platform with ASP-Apache installed on the server.

Additional Costs

Many of the tools used in PHP are free of cost and since PHP is open source a lot of code can be found in open source forums. PHP has inbuilt features like ftp, email from a web page or even encryption mechanisms but in ASP such features are not built in and some additional components are required. Therefore an additional cost is incurred for such components.

Base Language

PHP is based on C++ language and the syntax used in PHP is quite similar to C/C++. C/C++ is still considered the best programming language by many programmers and people who love this language would surely feel more comfortable with the syntax of PHP. ASP on the other hand has a more Visual Basic kind of syntax that again is closely related to only Microsoft products. So, it depends on a person-to-person which language he or she is comfortable

Database Connectivity

PHP, being extremely flexible, can connect to various databases, the most popular being MySQL. ASP mainly uses MS-SQL.

Conclusion

Both languages have their advantages specific to users. Some would argue that both the languages have their own importance and depending on the user’s requirements the language and the platform can be chosen. If we talk about developing a discussion board then ASP is equally capable but many feel the best discussion boards are developed in PHP. If a user is looking for some e-commerce application development then many would call ASP the ideal choice. This does not mean that PHP cannot provide e-commerce solutions, only that many people choose ASP.

From my perspective, PHP is an all around better choice than ASP.

About The Author

Halstatt Pires is with the Internet marketing firm - http://www.marketingtitan.com - a San Diego Internet marketing and advertising company offering automated web site systems - http://www.businesscreatorpro.com - for e-commerce solutions.

Hey everyone,

Must say..has been quite some time since I’ve posted here. As usual, things are busy busy busy. Not long ago (about eh, 3 months - when I first got the idea) I started on a project originally called “SVs Domain Portfolio”. It turned out okay I suppose (stopped messing with it after 1 week), never did much with it after that until about 1 1/2 months ago. To keep it short I ended up re-coding the entire thing. And it turned out good, and I’m still working on it. I’ve added to some project places but for now will not give out links. It’s still in the development/Pre-Alpha stage. Once I release a BETA I will let you all know. Stay tuned, it may be sooner than you think

Thanks,

-SV

Hello all, sorry for the loooong delay. It appears a few of the scripts I planned on releasing were lost. But not to worry, I’ll have them re-coded and ready for download soon =) I’ve been fairly busy lately, am moving here shortly. Along with 2 or 3 sites I’m currently working on, it’s kinda hectic.

Scripts that are currently available for download:

SVs Simple PHP Counter - v1.6 as of: May 23, 2007

Features:
- No database needed.
- Easy setup.

The others will have to be re-written, as mentioned above.

Enjoy!

Hello everyone,

My scripts are nearing release. I’ve been delayed a bit, doing BETA testing etc, finding bugs and fixing them. The scripts that I will be releasing are the following:

-SVsSimpMail: Simple mailing list manager using text files..No SQL involved.
-SVsTellaFriend: Simple site recommendation script
-SVsSimpleCounter: Simple visitor counter(currently being rewrote before release, to include the option to use graphics instead of text)

I expect to have them ready to release within the next week. Keep your eyes out.

-SV