Learning PHP

PHP is the world's most popular web development language. Started by Danish-Greenlandic programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995 it is now installed on more than 20 million websites and 1 million web servers and counting. 


It is estimated that for every 100 PHP developers, there are 42 Perl developers, 12 Python developers and 4 Ruby developers - PHPs popularity is the central reason why you should consider learning it above all others. 


PHP is the basis of Content Management Systems such as Drupal, Joomla and WordPress so gaining a knowledge of PHP would help you in using these scripts. 


Presumably your are already proficient with CSS and HTML and want to take your web creativity to another level. If you aren't, then stop right here. It's unthinkable to tackle PHP without a firm grounding in HTML and a good knowledge of CSS would be extremely useful. 


You don't have to have a complete knowledge of HTML in order to learn PHP but you certainly need to know the basics - the rest you will pick up in tandem with PHP. For instance, if you use Content Management Systems all the time you'll unlikely to be that familiar with coding forms, but HTML forms are an essential part of PHP and you'll need to be able to create them quickly and without fuss. 


Learning PHP is as hard as you can imagine it to be. You need time and lots of patience and preferably a reality you need to escape from for an inordinate amount of time. It's a good idea to pace yourself and set a two year framework in order to become familiar with the core of the language.


An interesting article here.

Evolving Algorithms

Once upon a time, search engines may have used keywords and a few basic bits of code in order to calculate their rankings. This evolved to include other key elements, such as the number of links other people made to your page, and then evolved still further to blacklist certain links in order to avoid specious link farms or exchanges.

Now, search engine algorithms are beginning to take both user behavior and dynamic aspects of the site into account. This was largely predicted by the SEO community as a natural progression of the discipline, and its day seems to have arrived.

First and foremost, bounce rate should be kept under fifty percent. If a user returns directly from your site main page to the search results, chances are they are not finding what they are looking for. This degrades the search engine's performance for its users, so it will respond by reducing your site's rankings for those search keys. Degrading to a 70 percent or 80 percent bounce back rate will likely decrease your rankings, whereas getting up to a 20 or 30 percent bounce rate can help ensure that you consistently make top rankings.

Site performance is another key element in the new paradigm of search engine algorithms. High performance rates, very low down time, speedy searches, working links, and anything else you can do to improve site speed and reliability will prove that your site can handle the traffic the search engine drives to you.

Linking   is an old standard way to increase rankings, but diversity and quality are becoming increasingly critical. It is far better to have a handful of high quality links from respected sources than to have mountains of suspicious or useless links. Making an effort to promote your site only with well-respected sites and web masters, and avoiding link exchanges like the plague, should give results that are well worth the effort.

An excellent way to promote good quality linking and interactivity with the rest of the web is to utilize the most popular social networking and bookmaking sites. Twitter, and especially its blog-broadcasting counterpart Loud Twitter, can be a great way to get exponential linking. Social linking and news sites such as Digg and Stumble Upon can also help you capitalize on Web 2.0 viral growth rates. Sites like Facebook, Myspace, Livejournal, and other massive blog and social networking sites are becoming crawlable; you want to already have a significant foothold in those arenas when other web masters are scrambling to catch up with the newest search algorithm tweaks. And do not overlook the power of RSS. The number of subscribers to your RSS feed is already becoming a key measure of your site relevance and thus your site ranking.

Search engines exist not to count links, but to give users what they want, and content is still what users are looking for. You do still need to do the “real work” of web sites: getting respected authorities to review your products, providing excellent multimedia offerings, and writing articles and posts.

XML & PHP

The SimpleXML extension provides a very simple and easily usable toolset to convert XML to an object that can be processed with normal property selectors and array iterators.

<?php

$xmlstr = <<<XML

<?xml version='1.0' standalone='yes'?>

<movies>

 <movie>

  <title>PHP: Behind the Parser</title>

  <characters>

   <character>

    <name>Ms. Coder</name>

    <actor>Onlivia Actora</actor>

   </character>

   <character>

    <name>Mr. Coder</name>

    <actor>El ActÓr</actor>

   </character>

  </characters>

  <plot>

   So, this language. It's like, a programming language. Or is it a

   scripting language? All is revealed in this thrilling horror spoof

   of a documentary.

  </plot>

  <great-lines>

   <line>PHP solves all my web problems</line>

  </great-lines>

  <rating type="thumbs">7</rating>

  <rating type="stars">5</rating>

 </movie>

</movies>

XML;

?>




You can find more, here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/simplexml.examples-basic.php




Learn How to Install Joomla on Your Website in Less Than 5 Minutes

You can learn how to install Joomla on your website in a number of ways. However, the simplest and by far, the quickest is through Fantastico. This usually takes about 1-2 minutes once you know how. In this article, we are going to cover just that.

So, here is the step by step process for installing Joomla on your own website.

1. Log in to your hosting account's Control Panel. This should usually be http://www.mydomainname.com/controlpanel, where 'mydomainnane' is replaced your own website that is hosted on that hosting account.

2. Look for the smiley icon that says "Fantastico" and click on it. This is where you will be installing the Joomla package from. Note that Sometimes, it may say "Fantastico De Luxe." Don't worry it is the same thing. Much like saying "my room" and "my bedroom" ;)

3. Look for "Joomla" under the "Content Management" category of scripts in Fantastico and click on it. Also, note that the title 'Joomla' may sometimes have some numerical suffixes showing which version it is. For example, the title may read "Joomla 1.5" for version 1.5 of the CMS. Just click on the most recent version and go to the next step.

4. Look for the hyperlinked blue "New Installation" link and make sure you have at least as much as the minimum disk space required for you to install Joomla on your website. This is usually about 25 MB of disk space.

This is not usually
a problem, with most people's disk space running into the tens of gigabytes. But it is still good to make sure you have enough to hold a new Joomla installation.

5. Choose where on your website you want to install Joomla. Will it be on your main domain, an existing sub-domain or a new not-yet-existing sub-domain or directory? Indicate it in this part of the installation process.

6. Fill out other required fields that are required to smoothly install Joomla on the site. This includes creating an Admin username and password. Don't choose 'Admin' and 'password' as your username and password. Many people do this and have been hacked. Also, fill out the site name or main keyword, email address and other details here.

Then click the "Install Joomla" button.

7. On the next page, make sure that all the needed information is correct. Also, note down your Admin username, password and backend page (the one that ends with /administrator).

Finally, hit that "Finish Installation" of a button.

Voila! You have just learned how to install Joomla on your website. This should usually take only 1 or 2 minutes at most. After all, all you are doing is just hitting buttons, except for when choosing a username, etc.

If it still sounds a little like "nerd talk" (with all due respect to all the nerds out there ;) ), you can watch the video version of this article where you see the Joomla installation done live on the screen and see if you can learn how to install Joomla after that.