When you are learning, it helps to be able to look over someone's shoulder!
Site Updates
25 September 2007
Writing Tutorial articles that are a bit more fun than your normal ole run of "lots of words" takes a bit of work.
I have stumbled upon a little free program that will let you take screen shots and run live screen capture, add audio and little Talky boxes explaining what to do next!
This has two advantages.
- 1. It will let you , the reader, stop at each stage so you can get to that step before proceeding and
- 2. It makes for really small (in download file size and bandwidth) flash files, so anyone can use them.
No need to wait for ages for some video to appear if you have a slower connection and it wont bite into you allowed download limit.
19 August 2007
Well the planning is about completed and I've added a few more pages including how to syntax Highlight your code simply using your text editor (Note: Not all editors will allow you to use this technique which is unfortunate.)
Page creation is now becoming a breeze which is where I wanted to get too. Now the hard part of doing all the writing.
This will eventually all be Database driven and I was hoping to be further along that path than what I am at the moment. But all good things take time. What I am seeing is that using this Code Igniter Framework my coding load is greatly reduced. That is becoming very apparent.
In todays PHP Class someone brought up a simple members registration and login script. It reminded me of my early days starting out.
It sure had a few "Holes" in it but it would work Assuming that the visitor entered everything in correctly else it would quickly go "pear shaped" (not work properly).
Which brought us back to Using Code Igniter. The Form Creation and Validation using a Framework is still amazing. Due to the lack of all the validation functions that this particular script required to make it semi decent, CI has built into it and you just use it.
The PHP SNIPPET -> Syntax Highlighting demonstrates a very simple form. Take a look at it and judge for yourself.
For people new to PHP, I'm strongly leaning towards teaching them with this framework as it will help prevent them making alot of mistakes as far as security and robustness are concerned. Something I am a strong advocate of.
I am hoping - Fingers Crossed - to have the comments working on these pages so you can have your say.
It's simply no good me raving on without any feedback from those reading these pages.
So that is high on the list...
15 August 2007
Behind the scenes, I've been making grand changes to the site and adding more content.
I'll be adding in some PHP tutorials and possibly a section on Codeigniter and how I've set this site up.
It is a work in progress
13 August 2007
This site is going to be chopping and changing for a little while. I did have it planned out, but plans can be changed, right?
We are slowly getting the finishing touches done to this site.
It has taken much longer than I had expected as I've been learning a new PHP Framework called Code Igniter
This pretty much lets me create a whole range of facilities for this website, and as most programming does, it's taking its time.
The reasons I have chosen to go down this path are
- It will speed up my development time (once I learn it all)
- It will be much more bug free than if I wrote everything from scratch
- It'd forcing me to structure things properly so it will be maintainable and easily updated.
Updating a website can be a nasty experience if not set up correctly
- It's something else I can teach.
- I like bashing my head against a brick wall (it feels good once you stop)
But seriously, It's one of the many options I have been considering for this website and for my other projects.
Yes I should just use an off the shelf blog or CMS, but I like to have control.
Plus it uses a methodology which I was migrating towards anyway, so if I can reuse more robust code in these projects, I will!
I will still teach my simple PHP templating methods that works well for small sites and many of my PHP students have readily implemented this into their websites, which is great to see.
Once you get a handle on that. migrating to something like Code Igniter won't be so painful.
I have come up with a good to average way to template a website. As with anything though, there are a million ways to do the same thing.
Give the same project to 10 different people and you'll get 10 different ways to do the same thing.
That's just how it works...
As time permits, I will add in a simple blog to this site. It's not overly hard to do.
Upcoming events
Of course I'm hoping to get many more tutorial pages on the site for you. Plus I'm looking into setting up a Free Members Area with more one on one help online through my conference room.
We'll even have a members only Forum
So in between my day job, my jobs I have to do for others, I'll make sure this site gets up and running.
For those of you that have already subscribed, I thank you for your patience and I'll make sure you get something out of this real soon!
Until next time, Take care
Tim Brownlaw
PS. Just to let you know - this whole page was created only using the simple HTML Tags described in Lessons 1 and 2.
With a bit of CSS added (Cascading Style Sheets) to make it look however I want it to. That being rather plain at the moment.
But Plain is good!