PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Web
Man, I have totally re ‘thunk’ my view on PHP.
In the past the only times I have come into contact with PHP is when I was editing a blog and delving into the code, and let me tell you from looking at the ugly mess of braces and semi-colons - I was happy I didn’t know what I was doing!
But then Ian recently helped me convert the 540 website into a PHP version. As we were on Vent at the time, I got to listen in on his thought process…and it seemed easy. And sure enough, when I looked at the code and saw all the includes it really did make a lot of sense.
And now after having worked with the files myself and done a lot of redesigning the website, I can definitely say that PHP is a must for any web developer. The main reason I am liking the PHP integration is because I can now keep one header/footer file and just have PHP call it and include it in each page, thereby making my life a lot easier when it comes time for site wide changes. The same principle can be applies to navigational aides, sidebars, basically anything that is used repetitively on the site.
In order to further my knowledge I’ve been working on a script that will recursively browse a directory and display its contents. This script will be the foundation for my picture gallery.
Tags: css, html, php, site news
Shutter and Lightbox
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Web
The last 4 hours of my life were spent integrating Shutter into the NextGEN gallery, and comparing the different features between Shutter, Lightbox, and Thickbox
Pain in the ass I tell you, not the actual plugin or coding part. But the constant need to clear the cache, edit posts, and refresh like crazy..drove me crazy. And then to top it off each browser has its own quirks which have to get sorted out.
In the end I now have my images being served with Shutter, found it to be the fastest loader and it also had a nice feature to downsize large images on the fly to fit the users browser.
[singlepic=95,118,149,,]
Yay.
One downside is that because I’m not using the Thickbox plugin, NextGEN won’t take advantage of the JQuery navigation.
All this damn PHP is going to kill me
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Web
Its ridiculous, I end up spending hours on such simple things involving PHP and it turns out to be a simple error my part. For example I’ve spent the last 3 hours trying to figure out how to place the Archives link on the right hand side instead of following the other pages on the navigation bar. It involved looking through all the PHP to write the HTML tags properly, and then over and above that, playing with the CSS to get it position properly.
The CSS is where I spent the bulk of my time actually, so It’s not entirely PHP’s fault.
Phew this site is starting to actually come together, added the following:
- Last.FM scrobble info
- Technology page directory structure
- “tag” support instead of categories
and of course:
- Placing the Archives link on the right hand side
There’s still lots left to do though.
Tags: css, html, php, site news
Photo gallery goes live with NextGEN Gallery
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Web
Well another element of my site has been added and implemented, now its just a matter of maintaining content.
Yes, I’m talking about the photo gallery. I found NextGEN Gallery a while ago and thought it was completely unstable but after playing around with it some more tonight I figured out the source of my problems, the plugin cannot handle high resolution images. Which to many might be a shame, but I disagree, any images that I would put up on my site are meant to be easily viewable and having images that are so big that they require a great deal of scrolling defeats the purpose of sharing them. Even if in the future NextGEN Gallery starts supporting higher resolution pictures I would still only show them at around 800×600, after all if someone really wants to be able to zoom in and fill a whole screen with my nose they can ask me for the originals which I would still have…
If anyone is considering hosting their pictures on wordpress, this is definitly the plugin to try out.
Edit: As it seems no one reads the word ‘Photos‘ at the top, im providing a link.
Tags: photos, plugins, site news
Blog picture
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Asides
Ya I realize my picture isn’t the greatest, but I just had half a shot of Tabasco so give me some credit.
Table plugin
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Web
I couldn’t resist to test the plugin out.
Lets me take either a manualy entered table, or a CSV file and put it into a sortable table featuring AJAX (of course).
Click on the post to see it.
Blog theme
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Web
Well I’ve changed the theme to something a bit more.. pleasing to the eye. Also deleted all the photo galleries in the hopes that I’ll start over and actually incorporate the gallery feature into my site instead of just showcasing it randomly.
So hopefully I’ll be able to actually blog now and then instead of just letting this go to waste.
Oh and check out the search feature :P
Tags: site news
