It is a given that one needs to have a local server set up in order to develop and test PHP applications. Most people use Apache, either by installing Apache, PHP, and MySQL individually or by installing one of the LAMP, WAMP, or MAMP packages. Until recently, that was the route I took, using XAMPP Lite from Apache Friends. Read more...

There are a several of plugins available for Habari to deal with spam. Most people seem to prefer the ones that use outside services such as Aksimet and Defensio. I don't like relying on outside services so I rely on the simple spamchecker plugin that comes with Habari and the simple blacklist checker. The concept behind the simple blacklist plugin … Read more...

Recently Habari updated it's administrative code to use a new interface. The new interface relies much more heavily on javascript than the old one did, which allows it to pull off some pretty snifty tricks. One of these is on the entries page, where a list of all the posts you have written is displayed. Read more...

One of the things I've missed most in learning PHP is a debugger. A debugger is a necessity for productive work in any programming language. You need a debugger to step through code to understand how it works and is being called. You need a debugger to examine variables. Read more...

If your blog is anything like mine, almost half your readers or more arrive from a search engine. They went to Google, or Yahoo, or MSN, typed in a word or phrase they wanted to learn more about, and were shown a list of pages that related to that word or phrase. They clicked on a page that looked interesting … Read more...

One problem I've been having with Habari is that the xml-rpc mechanism relies on mbstring support being compiled in to PHP. Unfortunately, my host, A Small Orange, for some reason didn't have mbstring support in PHP 5, though they do include it in PHP 4. Read more...

I love it when I'm able to learn something new, no matter how trivial it may seem. The most recent new thing I learned is how to put the next and previous post links at the top of individual post pages. This may not be the best way to do it, but it does work. Read more...

A couple of days ago, in Sqlite Web Security, I said I didn't see how to move an SQLite database out of the web directory. I feel dumb, because the problem really was silly. Read more...

This is my test blog for learning and experimenting with Habari.
Read more...