Planet CakePHP

Here’s a glimpse at what we are listening to right now:
Luke
Rodrigo y Gabriela – 11:11
It is pretty fast guitar flamenco type stuff and I really enjoying designing / coding to it. I’m a fan of no lyrics when working and these guys are perfect for that.

We build several WordPress sites each month and our clients are always asking what plugins they should be using for their new WordPress site. Depending on the functionality of the site, the need for plugins vary. For example, if the client has a blog or plans to have a place for comments, I will always recommend Disqus over Intense Debate and the default WordPress comment system because I think it functions better overall. I like the interface for Disqus much more then any other comment system and they have an Android app that makes it easy for me to moderate comments on the go.

You have written a node.js module lately? It has a test suite? Awesome! Time
to get yourself a nerd badge of honor:

But hang on nerdy warrior, this precious award has to be earned. So go ahead and
check out the sweetness that is Travis CI. Travis is an open
source, free to use, continuous integration server. Initially it was just
building ruby stuff, but these days it supports a ton of other languages,
including node.js.

And luckily, getting travis to run your tests on every GitHub push is really
easy as well:

Step 1: Go to Travis and login/connect with your GitHub account.

Step 2: Hover over your name on the top right, and select "Profile" from the
dropdown.

 
I've done my fair share of working for closed and "open" companies. I've recently (in July 2011) clocked over two years working here at the Cake Development Corporation, and while attending the Open Source Developers Conference (2011) in Canberra, I have had some time to reflect on my experiences with the company, and my feelings regarding my work here.
Traditionally I have found that compa...

With the recent release of PHP 5.4-RC1, I wanted to give it a spin and make sure there weren’t any upcoming issues for CakePHP. I recently saw a great article from Derick Rethans on getting PHP setup from an SVN checkout.

In all domains of our everyday lives, from eating habits to sexual behavior and professional
success, there are fewer and fewer prohibitions, and more and more norms-ideals to follow.
[. . .] In our late capitalist universe, the subject is not guilty when he infringes a prohibition. It
is far more likely that he feels guilty when (or, rather, because) he is not happy – the
command to be happy is perhaps the ultimate superego injunction (Zizek, 2005, p. 225).

A few times in my career, I’ve had the need to test emailing in one form or another. I’ve also had the unfortunate experience of accidentally sending a test email to a real person. As you can imagine, this may cause confusion, embarrassment, lectures, and possibly the death of a small pixie or two. Fortunately, there IS a preventative measure you can take.
When it comes to mail() (as well as many other things), PHP prefers to delegate the heavy lifting to another piece of software: sendmail (or a sendmail compatible command-line mail transport agent). By default, PHP will call your sendmail binary, and pass it the entire message, after composing it from the headers and body supplied by the developer.

Hi all, It has been a long time… As I am moving more and more from backend to frontend stuff and a lot of people/blogs are writing about Cake I thought my blog could be shutdown. If you want to take over the domain or just want to have the admin rights of this blog [...]

I've never been so vain as to think I'll have much impact on the world. I never wanted to be president. I never wanted to be a doctor. I'll almost assuredly never go to war to fight for my freedom and the freedom of others. Way too much responsibility.

Instead, I grew up making virtual things. Apparently, even making physical things was too much. I push bits around as if I'm doing something productive. It's like a reflection of what I see of the grand scheme of things. It's all rather fleeting.

Recent upgrade of Fedora 16 was smooth and silky!

Apache was stuck on the mod_perl issue, however one split of the second of googling found the solution.

You can either download new built rpm for mod_perl from Koji, or comment out loading of mod_perl.so from perl.conf in you Apache config, as described here.

I recently purchased a new Macbook Air and had forgotten all of the various steps to get virtualenv up and running. Using the native Python packaged with OSX resulted in Could not call install_name_tool — you must have Apple’s development tools installed which I found confusing given that, you know, I have Xcode installed.
Resorting to my old friend MacPorts, it took me a few tries and plenty of googling to get up and running. To save you some time should you be in a similar position, here are the commands you will need;

Chad, Firebug Guide for Web Designers
Firebug is one of the most common developer tools used out there. I know that for me it is something I use to try to discover what is going on with a clients site and try to give some insight to the developer to fix it. So last week I came across a great article that gives a good introduction to using firebug.

In a previous post I talked about switching to Vim and how I was using Janus to get a good foundational set of plugins to work with, and make starting with vim less daunting. As I’ve gotten more comfortable with vim, I wanted a simpler way to manage my vim config.

From my presentation at StarTech, here are my slides.

Fake it 'til you make it shows some code and examples on how to make a web app look more like a native mobile application. This can provide a way to build quick prototypes or to build using familiar technologies.

I remember when surfing the web consisted of either using Netscape or Internet Explorer. Those that were new used “AOL” and the great joke was that at least I used a browser that supported JavaScript. Oh how the times have changed, and they have changed for the better. The tools we use today to build websites are better, more powerful, and are built to accommodate what the public wants. With better and more powerful tools to build websites, the browsers have to keep up and for the most part they have.
When I heard the news that IE has dropped just below 50 percent market share on the desktops, I reflected on when I started to develop for the web. When I started web development seriously, I was working for the Davis School District in Utah. We were required to use IE5, but when IE5.5 came out I was so excited. So hearing this news brought back memories (some good and some bad).

Getting older is a humbling experience. Watching other people get older is sometimes equally so. I have an older brother who is almost nine years older than I am. When my parents divorced, I was only 3 years old. My brother moved with my dad and I stayed with my mom. I don't remember the divorce. I don't remember much of anything before the age of 5. As a result, I've considered myself an only child.

Now that I'm a parent with two kids of my own, I find myself trying to remember what it was like growing up with my mother. What was her parenting like? She wasn't overbearing. She wasn't domineering. She wasn't doting or overly affectionate, either. She was consistent. More than anything, she provided. A single mom—a secretary—raising a child on her own. It didn't seem like a burden to her. Things just were.

Most of the sites we work on are already existing and we spice them up and make them more modern. However, every now and then we get to build a site from the ground up such as one of our newest projects, Pan Am.
It’s not everyday we get to work for a high-profile client such as Pan Am, but Keathley Ad, who did the design, came to us and wanted to test our Magento skills and we were up to the challenge.

Back in 88’ my father, my brother Jaye [age 5] and I [age 8] played a game called Ladder on an old original laptop computer called a Kaypro. We collectively tried to beat each other’s high score. The goal of ultimately getting and keeping the top score was a daunting task, each of us always nipping at the heels of the other. After about two years of heavy play it became the center of bragging rights amongst the three of us. My brother was constantly surprising my father and I with large scores yet the competition really heated up with myself and my father. Dad who probably wasted several of his college years playing the game would consistently lead the pack.

Croogo is a free and open source content management system, built on top of CakePHP framework.
A little tweak to your .htaccess file in Croogo will get your css serving correctly from within your themes directory.
Look in your webroot/.htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]

And amend to:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
Options -MultiViews