Yesterday I started crawling around the net, about new Frameworks which are build around the new PHP 5.3 version ( formally known as 6 )

Things I found (Later on I will write a few words about them)

Symfony 2.0: the big leader
Shozu: the mini enemy
FatFree ( F3): Another mini
FLOW3: Enterprise “grade” framework

Well, I dont think I had to write much about Symfony 2.0. At this moment it is one of the “big” candidates which will lead over any other 5.3 framework. At this moment there is a sandbox where you could play around with Symfony 2.0 ( but undocumented, or better: No tutorials or something like this ) And a buggy (at least for me) Repository which dont looks often updated at this moment.  This framework should be released at the end of this year (2010). At this moment the symfony foundation  is in contact with phpbb which wants to use symfony 2.0 for its next version as the backend framework. Which dont seems to be a bad idea. And last but not least, the benchmarks about this framework sounds very promising. Ok I know those benchmark are more “fake” then real, or better: They are tweaked for Symfony, but at least it will be faster than Symfony 1.4

Another good candidate is Shozu, ok this one is not real a framework. Its more like a “micro” framework. But it has something really interesting integrated, it is called ReadBean, this is an ORM with automated TABLE and ROW creation. So, no more hazzle around with “inis” yaml setup or whatever you normally use on ORMs like doctrine. just setup the connection and go on with whatever you want. The only problem is see is while you develop, you sometimes  change the database setup. Which would lead to “unused” rows, or even tables. Or if you misspell something, and create two similar rows, where on has only one entry, and the rest is in another row. It could be hard to find the error, why you get a nearly empty page… But maybe this is not a big problem, or there is a solution for build in it but I dont found it. But it has everything you need from a “basic” framework: ORM, Jquery, caching, URL rewriting for clean URLs, and Image manipulation. For a better Jquery experience it has taconite integrated, and a small example.

FatFree is another mini framework, which is (in there words) condensed in one 60K file. So far it looks like a basic framework. Without really “cool” features. Only basic MVC, but there are a few plugins which you could “activate”. The other problem is that you get a special license. The code is released under “GPL” but if you want to use it “commercial”, you have to pay for it. Another problem is that the dont tell you how much you will pay for it. SO I dont recommend it as your standard framework. Only if you want to learn from sourcecode or you just want to experiment with it….

FLOW3 looks like another “big hope” in PHP 5.3 scenario, it looks really thought out, complete and promising. Another problem is that it looks really complex (but Zend is also complex) So I guess it could be competitor to Zend (they dont claim it) but I guess they want to compete versus Zend. Sure it is a hard target they (maybe) set. But they are the creators of typo3, so I guess they know what they are doing

Last but not least: Dont chose “your” framework, based on performance or popularity. Chose the framework you like!

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Hello guys,

sorry for the lack of posts, or (never ) answering comment questions. I was too addicted to Allods and “Heroes of Newerth”. Both are realy cool games. But Allods did too many mistakes and… failed . But this is another story.

Today I want to write about something useful, which could be called a “Web-IDE”. This small tool is perfectly for “quick and dirty” editing of files on your server. Or if you want to code from your IPhone or something similar. While you are on the way to your girlfriend in your train

Sure it is not perfect, but is amazingly fast and small. It has everything you need for your dirty trix on the fly.

Summary:

• File-Browser
• Syntax-highlighting ( Which works in real-time! )
• Tabbed file opening
• File-Uploading
• General file modifying ( open, close, rename, new, rename… )
• And shortcuts to make your life easier ( The about on there website claims:
  keyboard short-cuts lend it the feel of a locally installed application. )

Link: Ecoder

Note: This project look like it is dead, but on the sourceforge forum the author claimed that he “restarted” his project.

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Here I want to write about some common mistakes in web-development. Those things aren´t programming related. More “good” practice things.

If someone make the wesite design. And someone else have to code the “html/css” you should:

Name the elements by site/page and position

For example, if you designed a news background header. Which is seen when a news is shown, you should call it: news_show_header_background.jpg
Or another example, some things need/ have a border. On top, left, right and bottom. For listing news.
you could call it: news_list_border_top.jpg

If you have to show a table. You should determine if the data is scanned vertical or horizontal. Or even both.

Here is an example

As you see, the vertical line are thicker as the horizontal lines. Which make it easier for the eyes to read the vertical data. The numbers are right aligned. Which makes it easier to compare them. You could even alter the colors, of each row. But use only “slight” different colors. So just a little bit brighter/ darker.

You have to remove both lines, if Data should be read vertical AND horizontal. But try to avoid things like this. Better make two tables.
Well the last case should be easy to know. Make horizontal lines thicker and the vertical lines thiner.

Try to do queries at the end of script ( or other external things like soap/ xml ) So the user see something when it may”stop”

This is  more “ui” related, try to build with as less points as possible. And everything reachable with two clicks

The points thing. An example:

Bad:

[table]
[tr]
[td]THING ONE[/td]
[td]THING TWO[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]THING THREE[/td]
[td]EMPTY FIELD ( NOT SEEN)[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

Better like this:
[table]
[tr]
[td]FIELD ONE[/td]
[td]FIELD TWO[/td]
[td]FIELD THREE[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

So the eyes have to move “less”

• The so called F navigation system is the most excepted “site style”
  Top navigation, left sub navigation, and in the middle the content.
• Use everywhere the same header and bottom design. So the user knows where  the content starts and ends.
• The most start position for a mouse on a website is top left.
• The eyes move from: Dark to bright, from big objects to small objects.

movement binds the user to look at. so try to create movements which “aid” the eyes. Simplest example are arrow. AND stop the movement after 2 secs or less. ( OR if there is no way to stop it, or it must move) add a stop button or make it “slow”.

So don´t use big “rectangles” where you just place “eye candy”

Some people know how colors “create” reactions on people. But most of them don´t know that different countries, have different color “feelings”. It is no problem if you write in German for example, or in Chinese language. Those sites are “targeted”. But if you write in English, people could come from everywhere. If you don´t want to “annoy” Chinese people ( Just an example ) Try to use very bright or dark colors. Or avoid colors at all . Cause very bright colors, or dark colors don´t “trigger” the color emotions. If you take a look at mc donalds, amazon or ebay. They use bright colors. And have much “white” background.

With this way, they don´t create emotions, which they don´t want to create.

Another thing is: Try to avoid faces. Or forms which could look like a face ( If you write in English ). Faces create different emotions, from different persons. The only exceptions are womens. ( Sorry, but sex sells ) Or if you are a model agency, or sell clothes. Or it is your “personal” blog. Faces make things like this more “personal”. Or a small firm.

I hope, I could help some people with this, if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

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Man,

the horror story no one wants. My mysql server stopped working. And I got a warning message from my “server watch” service.
First I thought, ok lets see whats up.  And browsed to my site. To see:

The mysqli error was: Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock’ (2).

Man, and then I tried to fix this problem, but something must gone wild. Cant reinstall mysql, no way to purge it. Or remove it.
Every time I tried to reinstall a new problem went up. Nothing worked. The problem stays. Try to link it, recreate it, reinstalled, purged,
copied and so on. No chance…. I have no clue whats wrong. Even the “almighty” google wasnt a help. All solutions doesnt worked. so I have
to reinstall my vserver

And I still dont know why my mysql.sock vanished. I dont touched the server in the time where it could happened….

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Hello,

I added some new widgets to wordpress. And changed the theme. Something which surprised me,
was that all widgets integrated nicely into the design. Ok the lijit search looks odd. But its ok for now.
Maybe I will change it ( Can I change it? )

I think the best thing is the disqus widget/ plugin. It allows easy entering of comments, and allows
twitter and facebook login. Very nice

Hope you like the new theme ( I will change the header if I find some time for it ) And the new plugins
Btw: You could rate posts. If you dont like the new plugins and themes. Just give this post a low rating

Or some other things you want to mention? Just use the comments!

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Well, tried hard to get the fine module to work. But I cant… Problems I run into:

After adding a node returned to wrong domain ( main domain ) fixed by ucommenting out the $base_url variable
in settings.php

Content not shown on right site ( all sites ), every time all “pages” are shown on all sites.
Or they where only shown on one site, even when all sites are selected.
This could be fixed by using “views”. But this would mean much work.
Cause you have to create MANY views…

well, I will use the normal, multi site setup of Drupal

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I searched for something which could replace piwik. Cause it is not stable ( OsDate crashed with it )
I searched around and found on a blog a comment about open web analytics. A long time ago,
I saw this php website analytics tool. But I was not interested in something like this. And forogt about
this one.

Then I “re-found” it, and tested it. And I must say: Iam impressed. This tool works nearly out of the box.
You just have to make changes in the config file, related to your web-address and database settings. Add your site
Add your tracking code ( A javascript “similar” to google analytics ). And you are done, nice!

And the api looks much more “thought-out” than the one from piwik.

Here are the features from there website:

Invocation

• PHP API – invoke OWA from within your PHP application. This allows for an easy way to build web analytics right into your application logic.
• Javascript Tag – invoke OWA from Javascript. This allows for remote logging and integration with non PHP based applications .
• WordPress v2.x plugin – full featured WordPress plugin seemlessly integrates OWA with the WordPress publishing platform and administration interface
• MediaWiki plugin – provides tracking of MediaWiki articles and special pages.

Tracking/Reporting

• Track Page views, visits, and unique visitors over time
• Track unique, new, repeat visitors over time
• Multiple Web Site Support – track any number of web sites and view statistics in aggregate or by site
• Click-streams – view the actual click-stream of each visitor
• Click Tracking – Track where exactly on a web page users are clicking and view clicks by browser type
• Click Heat Maps – view a heat map of where users are clicking on your web pages
• Google Maps – map your visitors on Google Maps
• Google Earth (KML) – view your visitors in Google Earth via a KML file export
• RSS/ATOM subscription tracking – track unique feed readers, reader types, and feed requests
• Visitor Aging – understand the age of your repeat visitors.
• Canned and Custom Time Periods – generate reports using pre-defined reporting periods or custom date ranges
• Refering Page Analysis – View the title, anchor text, and surrounding text of inbound links from refering web pages
• View visits by user agent
• Track entry and exit pages
• Track pages by custom page types

Development

• Full MVC based framework
• Module framework allows developers to extend OWA’s entitiies, events, reports, and graphs without modifying the base components.
• Plugin framework for authentication, database access objects, data validation, and geo-location
• Object Relational Mapping layer
• Lite templating layer
• Event handlers

Deployment

• Events can be writen to the database asynchronously.
• OWA to can run on multiple front end web servers and write to a remote database.
• Event Logging and admin/reporting user interface can run on the same or seperate servers

WordPress Specific Features

• Track visitors by WordPress user name or e-mail address they use in comments.
• Track all Wordpress Page Types (Posts, Pages, Authors, Archives, Categories, etc.)
• Track the number of comments made by visit
• Reporting accessable via Admin Dashboard
• Track subscribers to RSS/Atom feeds

MediaWiki Specific Features

• Track article , catageory and special pages.
• Track all visitors by user name and email address.

Quite impressive, eh?

now I run crawltrack for, uhm, well crawler things. And OWA for website statistics.

The only problem so far is the “click-map/ heat map” It shows the click points. But not the website.
I hope they will fix this “small” issue

I dont know, why this both programs are not more popular? Together,
they create a VERY strong team!

LINKS:
http://www.crawltrack.net/

http://www.openwebanalytics.com/

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As far as I know. Nearly all engines and there “page ranking” depends on backlinks, and internal links

In the “early” days of the internet. The search engines just counted the backlinks. And generated a “ranking” with it.
“Big” sites were treaded different as “small” sites. And when we “the normal” user talked about something in a forum.
We created a link and “push” the site ranking. And let other users know about this site.

Today with all different ways how links are created:

Nofollow tag
Only viewable after registration
Short URL services
and so on….

And many other ways to “prevent” search engines reading links. We forgot the “normal user”
which are the basic of every internet site, there value and there way of getting new user.

Today, it is not enough that people speak/ write about websites. All they write is “not” counted.
We prevent search engines to show us links, which are “new”. For example. I searched something
about debian and how to setup proftpd. I decided to use this search string:
debian how to setup proftd lenny. All I got was no sense. Unusable stuff.
Without the string: lenny you get “old” things. Which could be wrong, or misleading.

In my opinion, we have to rethink “how” links are treated, and published. Or we end there, where we are now:
Sites are on the top, which spread viruses, trojans and more. This is what happens, when we “lock out” the normal
users….

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