SXSW 2010, PHP for Absolute Beginners, and an Apology
A Little Bit of Big News
I know I've been silent on here for far too long, but I wouldn't have done it without good reason. Here's what I've been up to over the last two months!
PHP for Absolute Beginners
At long last, I've finally finished my first book! It's called PHP for Absolute Beginners, and it should be on shelves in major booksellers next month sometime. It's already available for preorder on Amazon (though you'll have to forgive the erroneous reference to PHP 6; I've been trying to get that removed for a couple months now), and I'd really appreciate presales.
Despite the title touting the book as written "for absolute beginners," this book should have something for everybody. It covers the construction of a blog from scratch, including using .htaccess to create friendly URLs, resizing and resampling images with PHP's GD library, storing user comments with spam prevention and email validation using regex, and other goodies including using the bit.ly API to generate short URLs for a "post to Twitter" link.
I'm really excited about this project, and I'm even more excited to hear your feedback!
SXSW 2010
I've also thrown my hat into the ring to do a presentation on AJAX at this year's SXSW Interactive Festival.
This presentation would be a joint effort between Robert Banh and myself, and will cover REST and its role in modern web applications. We'll also go over JSON, who's using REST, and the rest of the basics of the technology.
This stuff is already really important in modern web design, and it's only going to become more relevant in days to come.
In order to make this presentation a reality, I need your help! Please head over to the PanelPicker on the SXSW website and vote for my topic.
Finally, an Apology
I'm really sorry that I've been neglecting this blog, and it's a problem I intend to rectify starting next week.
I'll be back to posting articles on a semi-regular basis next week. In addition to posting on Ennui Design, I plan on submitting more articles to NETTUTS and a few other great online publications.
Thanks for sticking with me, and I'll see you real soon!
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Who Is This Guy?
Jason Lengstorf is a professional geek, specializing in PHP and jQuery applications, with a love for XHTML, CSS, and AJAX. If he's not glued to his keyboard, you're likely to find him in line for coffee, brewing his own beer, lifting heavy things, or pretending to know something about wine.
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Email:
answers@ennuidesign.com
Phone: +1 (406) 76-ENNUI (36684)
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Comments for This Entry
Congrats! How far into the intermediate level does it actually go?
Grats on the book! Look forward to it. I like the way you present PHP topics so I'm sure it'll be a worthwhile purchase for a few people I know who are getting into the language.
@Mark:
This book gets fairly involved in image handling (there's an entire chapter on writing an image handling class), and digs into other areas like regex, prepared statements, OOP, and generating and parsing XML.
That being said, this book is an all-in-one starter kit for building your own CMS. Some of it might be review, but I think this book will hold value for anyone that hasn't built a CMS before (and even for some of those who have). If you decide to give it a shot, you'll have to let me know if I'm right.
@Tom:
Thanks! I'll do my best to keep putting out quality work. :)
I think PHP Documentation is very strong
and Google is the Best teacher .
It was not but months ago that you wrote this horrid display..
http://css-tricks.com/php-for-beginners-building-your-first-simple-cms/
And in less then a year since you really think you have the expertise to be able to appropriately teach beginners the ins and outs?
@Tim:
Admittedly, that article had its flaws. However, nothing will teach you good practices faster than having your code publicly crucified.
This book is thoroughly researched, and I had a team behind me checking my facts and ensuring that everything taught in the book is on the straight-and-narrow.
If you find yourself in a Borders or a Barnes and Noble after the book is released, please pull it off the shelf and leaf through it. I'd love to hear your feedback.
Bad-ass. Congrats man!
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