Win a Copy of PHP for Absolute Beginners!

For anyone who might be interested in getting their hands on a copy of PHP for Absolute Beginners, there's a giveaway going on over at Brenelz Web Development.

Three copies are available, so head over to the site and get contest details.

And I know I've been neglecting my blog. However, I'm working on an eight-part series with Chris Coyier right now that should kick off very soon, which covers the development of a PHP/AJAX application from concept to completion. Sorry for the delay, but this series should make up for it.

A big thank you to anyone who has already purchased my book! If you've read it and have a minute, I (and my publishers) would really appreciate you taking a moment to review it on Amazon. Thank you again!
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SXSW 2010, PHP for Absolute Beginners, and an Apology

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... read more

Show the Most Popular Categories with PHP

This week, we'll be going over a quick way to determine what the most popular tags are in a series of tagged entries.

Files and Data Required for This Exercise

Files

  • popular_tags.php — This will contain the dummy code and the function to process it
    • Data
  • Tags — An array of comma-delimited strings containing tags
  • Parsing Function — Function to break apart the array and determine which tags are the most popular
    • The Tag Sets

    For this exercise, we'll be using a comma-delimited string (i.e. "tag 1, tag 2, tag 3, etc.") as a set, and we'll assume that there are multiple entries, each with a set of tags generated by the user.

    Pretty much every blog, bookmarking resource, and app these days features tagging in some capacity. Tags help users quickly identify what an... read more

    Improving the Simple Contact Form

    A few weeks back, we learned how to build a simple contact form to allow our users to send us feedback directly from a site.

    As noted in the comments, there were a few shortcomings with the contact form. Most notably, there was no spam protection whatsoever. Additionally, if the user made a mistake, their message would be lost, which is extremely inconvenient.

    To make this contact form ready to use on a real website, we'll be adding both a basic spam protection system and the ability to store the message in a session in case the user makes a mistake.

    NOTE: Like all projects built on this blog, this is being presented as a teaching exercise and a demonstration, so be sure to double-check it before... read more