Web Advent 2008

Introduction

Christmas is upon us once again, and it’s time to have a look at what’s under the Web Advent tree. Join us each day as our wonderful authors provide presents of tips, tricks, & tidbits to usher in the new year. Mele Kalikimaka!

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Seasons: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012

24^th Dec: PHP Without PHP by Terry Chay

Take a simple PHP trick and follow it on a huge tangent to the philosophy of good web architecture…
23^rd Dec: On Internationalization by Nate Abele

Two weeks ago, I was in Buenos Aires for CakeFest. It was an excellent opportunity to connect with the community and discover some of the creative…
22^nd Dec: What Time Is It? by Derick Rethans

As of PHP 5.1, PHP has more advanced date/time support, so you can finally write code that doesn’t have to deal with timestamps and time zone abbreviations…
21^st Dec: Listen by Paul Reinheimer

I recently had the opportunity to attend Adobe MAX. Meanwhile, my associate Elizabeth Naramore attended the Microsoft Web Developer Summit…
20^th Dec: PHP Is Not Java by Luke Welling

Java has its place. Maybe it has many places. I’m OK with it being on your phone, in your refrigerator, and on my bank’s web site. I’m even…
19^th Dec: Practice Safe Idempotent Methods by Ben Ramsey

All web developers should be familiar with the GET and POST methods. These are the primary methods used in everyday development…
18^th Dec: Less Whining, More Coding by Elizabeth Smith

How many times have you heard or seen someone griping about PHP? Maybe the documentation was wrong, or they couldn’t figure out how to install it…
17^th Dec: Full-Text Searching with SQLite by Scott MacVicar

I’ve evangelized SQLite a lot this year, speaking at various conferences and user groups to try encourage use and support within…
16^th Dec: PHP Meritocracy by Andrei Zmievski

When Chris Shiflett asked me to write an article for PHP Advent, my first inclination was to talk about Unicode support in PHP 6…
15^th Dec: MySQL Client Tips by Ligaya Turmelle

PHP developers commonly have to work with many technologies other than PHP, and frequently only know enough about them to avoid tripping…
14^th Dec: “Yet” by Marco Tabini

Have you ever wondered why PHP was invented? It’s relatively easy to find out how the language grew out of one of those scratch-an-itch situations…
13^th Dec: Optimize This by Maggie Nelson

One of the greater challenges of writing good software is avoiding bugs. And, if that can’t be done, finding them…
12^th Dec: JSON is Everybody’s Friend by Ed Finkler

Last year I wrote some kind of feel-good, hippie crap for the PHP Advent Calendar. This year I got a haircut, took a shower, and am ready to tell you…
11^th Dec: The Framework as Franchise by Paul Jones

Why bother using a public framework not of your own design? You have heard that frameworks are heavy and slow…
10^th Dec: Guide to Conferences by Ivo Jansch

There are a wide variety of conferences in the PHP world: there are small half-day conferences at one end of the spectrum and full-blown 5-day conferences at the other…
9^th Dec: Coping with the Holiday Shopping Spree by Helgi Þormar Þorbjörnsson

Now that the holidays are closing in, a lot of people are realizing that they have not yet bothered buying gifts for their close ones…
8^th Dec: Getting Started the Right Way by Keith Casey

Everyone has that grand idea. A few want to finally write that open source project or that great novel. Most need to clean the garage…
7^th Dec: Commenting on Commenting by Eli White

Everyone knows the standard programming mantra “Document your code” (although some people seem to still not follow it), but today…
6^th Dec: Questions to Ask Before Changing Jobs by Cal Evans

Many people seem to be interested in switching jobs these days, so I’ll share some advice that I follow when I am considering a change…
5^th Dec: Which Web Service? by Lorna Mitchell

We have seen a dramatic rise of the SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) in our shiny new Web 2.0 world…
4^th Dec: Why Using PHP Makes You Cooler by Elizabeth Naramore

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of writing a regular column for the now defunct International PHP Magazine…
3^rd Dec: Don’t Commit That Error by Travis Swicegood

It’s easy to get caught up in testing patterns, frameworks, and other “correct” ways to to handle testing…
2^nd Dec: Use Responsibly by Matthew Weier O’Phinney

Hopefully you’re following Chris Cornutt’s advice, and you’re engaging the PHP community through a variety of media…
1^st Dec: You Need the PHP Community by Chris Cornutt

Let me paint a picture for you—there’s a young developer, sitting in his parents’ basement, hacking away at his latest masterpiece…