Bloggy Hell

Ok, I might be a bit of a Rails zealot now, but I still have a sweet spot for PHP. For many years it was my language of choice, and even today, server hosting or legacy applications still means that I have to throw around the < ?php ?> tag.

I just read on the official PHP website, that as of the end of this year, PHP 4 will no longer be updated, bar crucial security patches. This is a big thing, as many web hosting companies still only support PHP 4 as it isn’t possible to run PHP 5 on the same apache server with out resorting to CGI or proxy work-arounds. This basically means that you have 5 months to make sure that your webiste runs on PHP 5.

The PHP website has a guide to migration, and luckily, most of the time things are fairly smooth. Were you might get in to trouble is the new object model. PHP 5 has a brand new, closer-to-real OOP model that isn’t always completely backwards compatible with it’s older sibling. For example, the __construct() method is called as a constructor, rather than function with the same same as the class as per PHP 4. PHP 5 also supports private, protected and public accessors and methods, as well as native XML and SOAP support.
At this point if, you may want to try running all of your websites as CGI scripts via the PHP5 interpreter to make sure that they can run ok, and if they do, start moving everything over to ensure a smooth transition.

Even though I left Bam two weeks ago, we have been covertly finishing off one final client project together - Prezz E Place. Prezz E Place is an online gift shop for those people how are too busy or phsyically can’t get to a shop to buy that special gift. It features a “dreamboard” where users can place products they would like to receive as well as a built in anniversary reminder system.

Prezz E Place is built in Ruby on Rails and took just over 150 hours to complete. From a technical point of view it utilises the Ferret search plugin for all of the product search, un-obtrusive JavaScript, SEO friendly URLs, plus some of the regular plugins I use such as action_mailer_layouts, custom-err-msg and paginating_find.
Let me (or Bam) know what you think!

… well according to Mashable it is. It made the Top 12 twitter apps for your mobile phone. I suppose that means I should do some more work on it soon

One of my good friends, Matt Brown has managed to keep his boutique online gift store, Moose running for a year, which is no mean feat considering who his dodgy web developer is

Seriously though, Moose has some really amazing pieces of artwork that would make the perfect gift for that friend or family member who has an art-bent  - not only that, but he supports local artists.

To celebrate the first birthday, Matt has organised a 15% discount across the ENTIRE range of gifts - just enter the discount code moose1 at the checkout and help celebrate the milestone!

The past few weeks can safely be described as insane - even when compared to a regular working week for Perth-based web developer.

As hinted in my previous half-arsed blog post, BarCamp Perth has come and gone. The event was amazing. I don’t think anyone could have predicted how smoothly and inspiring the day was. To all the people that put there hand up to help out thank you - I would not have been able to mask my usual lack of organisation with out you. Thanks to Simone and Pascal for sorting out the food, thanks to Jordon for keeping everyone caffeinated, thanks to Gary for all the artwork and the t-shirts and thanks to the helpers that turned up early and setup. The day would have run a lot less smoothly if it wasn’t for you all.

Unfortunately, I forgot to record one of my presentations - luckily it was the one that I spent some time preparing, so you can download the slides if your fancy is tickled. The (impromptu) Intro to Rails talk that myself and Matt Didcoe did was videoed so as soon as I get the link, I’ll post it.

The synopsis of the day is available on the offiicial BarCamp Perth wiki - go and check it out and click through on the notes that have been posted. We had over 55 attendees which was amazing - and there was a great cross-section of people there from many different fields. We had web developers, designers, librarians, educators, podcasters and bloggers which meant that there were lots of new people to meet. We even had a Microsoft evangelist - Scott Barnes, fly over from Queensland to see what the west coast had been up to. The event has really created a buzz around those communities, which is evident in the number of times I’ve been asked “When is the next one?”. To answer, AWIA there will be organising definitely early next year, but there are plenty of events between now and then to keep you appetite whet.
One final BIG thankyou goes to each of the sponsors: Eduka, Itomic, Millstream, River Designs, Central TAFE, Five Senses Coffee and Microsoft Australia because without them, we wouldn’t have been able to put on the food. A great day had by all.

New job, new digs

This week I started work at Norg Media with Bronwen in our new shard office space in the city! We are sharing with Nick and Dave from Softteq and there is still desk space available if your are a start up of small company that needs a desk or two. You can view the guided tour on YouTube.

If you are interested, drop me an email - we can show you around! Our address is 90 King St.
What’s coming up

The WAWA’s are in full swing, so don’t forget to buy your tickets! Only a month-and-a-half to go. The AWIA AGM is coming up in August too, so if you want to support the industry association that supports you, it might be a good idea to head along and maybe put your hand up for committee. It will be on August 1 at the Velvet Lounge in Mt Lawley. As a result we aren’t having any mini-talks next month.

As you can see, busy, busy, busy!

Later.