PHP Tutorials
Generate Search Engine Friendly URLs with PHP Functions
Generating search engine friendly (SEF) URLs can dramatically improve your search engine results. There's a big difference between "/post.php?id=2382" and "/great-php-functions/". Having search engine friendly URLs also gives the user an idea of what will be on the page they are clicking on if the link text isn't adequate.
PHP / MySQL Database Optimization Function
After frequent record deletion from your MySQL database tables, your tables can acquire overhead. Overhead is empty space left inside the database table due to the deletions. A great way to speed up your MySQL database, not to mention keep it compact, is to use a simple PHP function to optimize your database tables:
PHP Form Helper — Quick & Easy SELECT Dropdowns
One of the most time-consuming parts of my job is creating web forms. PHP web forms generally aren't difficult but they take a lot of time. Any time I can save when creating web forms is great, so I've created a helper function for creating HTML <select> elements.
PHP Randoms – Random Functions To Do Random Numbers, Random Strings, Random Files, & More
Random values are important to a lot of larger websites. Randoms can be used to generate strings for passwords, quotes, and CAPTCHAs. They can also be used for grabbing random numbers for games and other purposes. Here are a few random functions to do random things.
GoDaddy Hosting Tip – Using CURL On GoDaddy Shared Hosting
I want to throw a quick tip out there to anyone that plans to use cURL on GoDaddy hosting servers. I've been developing a shopping cart and ported the site from my development server to the hosting server. I ran into a huge problem when trying to get the cart to connect to UPS for real-time shipping quotes. What was the problem? The connection between my PHP (GoDaddy Server) and the UPS server wasn't being made.
Advanced .htaccess Security – Block Access to Include Files Using .htaccess
When I build websites for clients and myself, I use numerous include files to make my website easy to maintain. These include files may:
Suppressing PHP Errors & Warnings Using @
One part of making sure your website is secure in its hosting environment is to handle errors in a good fashion. If you don't have complete control of your hosting environment, you don't know what you can expect in the way of error handling if you don't do everything you can think of.
PHP Cookies: How to Set Cookies & Get Cookies
Cookies don't have to be an essential part of a website but can provide some of the "little things" that can set your website apart from the rest. Cookies are small tidbits of information that you save on the client's computer so that you can access them next time they visit the website. Session ID's are also usually held in cookies.
Set Your Site’s Date/Time Settings On Shared Hosting Using PHP5′s date_default_timezone_set()
One annoyance with putting my customer's site on shared hosting is not being able to control the date and time on the hosting server. Sure, I could simply host with a local company but that's not always the most cost-effective option.
PHP’s Magic Constants: __LINE__ , __FILE__, __FUNCTION__, __CLASS__, and __METHOD__
Setting constants in PHP is as easy as using the define function, but PHP creates a few constants in every script for you that help mostly for debugging purposes (well, that's generally the only time I use them). These constants are called "magic constants."