An updated version of the Social Bookmarks 4 WordPress plugin is now available. This version does not include any new features. It addresses the AJAX hide-show and the Nifty 404 bugs.
You can download it from the usual location.
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TrackbackHow many times you have stumbled upon a theme or a plug-in that you want to test on your site? WordPress does not offer a preview feature so the only option is to make it live which should not be the prefered (and only) option while testing or in general experimenting with new features.
In this article, we will investigate how we can setup a copy of our WordPress powered site on a local machine will serve as a development and test environment.
Comments rss TrackbackI am happy to announce that Social Bookmarks 4.0 is now available. The previous version had over 8500 downloads. I hope that the new version continues on the success of the previous versions.
Social Bookmarks 4 is possibly the biggest release of the plugin. For a start, it features a new look-and-feel with AJAX and new buttons. The code base has been completely re-written. Also, this version introduces localization to the plugin. You can now download additional language packs from the site to gain access to language specific sites. A template pack is also available so that you can write your own language packs. Finally, the number of included sites out of the box is now 50.
Just head to the Downloads section and grab it!
Comments rss TrackbackFor some time, I have been looking for a PHP database-driven image gallery. I tested both Coppermine and Gallery2 but I concluded that both of them are extremely complicated and very confusing in their use.
I ended up sticking with ZenPhoto, an excellent and lightweight piece of software that does the job with extreme elegance and simplicity. It is worth mentioning that ZenPhoto was granted an honorable mention in the Web2.0 Awards.
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Comments rss TrackbackThe power of PHP rests on its simplicity and speed. One of the common uses of dynamic pages is the processing of HTML forms. PHP does not offer any functions for the development of web forms so managing one in PHP tends to be nothing more than a sequence of print statements. The PEAR library contains the HTML_QUICKFORM package that provides all the necessary classes and methods to display and manage HTML forms.
The HTML_QUICKFORM package (I will be referring to it as QuickForm) provides a set of classes creating, validating, processing HTML forms. Instead of printing form elements one-by-one, we can use its methods to define a form structure that handles the form. QuickForm automatically preserves default values for our elements across form submission, displays error messages, allows custom server-side validation and filtering that can be applied to individual fields and/or the complete form and generates JavaScript code for client-side validation. Furthermore, it simplifies file uploads.
The only reason why someone may feel reluctant in using QuickForm is due to the lack of proper documentation. However, this should not hold you back as this series of articles intends to cover the majority of the package. Among others, we will be concentrating on:
The goal of the articles is to demonstrate how we can make use of QuickForm and SMARTY to develop a web application.
QuickForm not part of the standard PEAR installation. Therefore, we need to download it and place it in the HTML directory of PEAR. Please note that the HTML_COMMON package needs to be present as well.
If the following line does not return an error then you have QuickForm present on your system.
require('HTML/QuickForm.php');
In the case that you are working on a shared host environment and you do not have access to the PEAR directory and therefore you cannot install HTML_QUICKFORM then you can always download PEAR, HTML_COMMON and HTML_QUICKFORM to your webspace. Instructions on the manual installation of PEAR can be found on the PEAR web site.
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