PHP - Tutorials and Articles

Here are a few WordPress themes I thought were buzz worthy. I’ve included a link to each demo and template download file.

1) Clip The Photo (Demo | Download )

2) Upstart Blogger (Demo | Download)

3) AI (Demo | Download)

Google learns to crawl Flash
Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files…
Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/google-learns-to-crawl-flash.html

How to SEO Flash
•    Search Engines and Flash
•    Requirements for Successful Use of Flash
•    SEO Flash Programming
•    Example: Making Flash Home Page Spiderable
•    Scalable Inman Flash Replacement
Source: http://www.hochmanconsultants.com/articles/seo-friendly-flash.shtml

Here are a few comments on this topic from SearchEngineGuide.com:
“Stoney, You hit the nail on the head and pounded it down with one stroke. I completely agree, I have turned down clients in my own business due to flash sites. Now that I am with an agency I find Flash more common, as many of the businesses are big enough and niched enough where they feel that they don’t need SEO for their website. Oddly enough they are often right. Unfortunately SEO can have a big effect on PPC marketing, and most of these accounts suffer from bad keyword quality scores and thus higher click costs in AdWords.”

“Susan: I disagree slightly. Mostly because it all comes down to the intent. Building a flash only website for Ozzy Osbourne is fine, but e-commerce is not. I think you know what I mean”

“ Working on seo for hotel sites, I’ve come across some stunning creative sites designed with Flash. If the designers had thoughtfully used the Flash applications to “wow” site visitors, ie embedding in otherwise SE-friendly pages, it could be a win-win situation.
Perhaps all of you have seen the June info about making Flash SE-friendly. ( http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/google-learns-to-crawl-flash.html )”
Source: http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-degeyter/why-i-still-wont-seo-flash-websites.php

And from SearchEngineJournal.com:
“Disney does it. And so does Oprah. Even my favorite pizza place does it…  Granted these are extreme cases of sites which use flash extensively, but there are other cases where even a little flash can be improperly used. There are also cases where flash is not only appropriate, it is recommended. The question then becomes how to best use flash without affecting search engine rankings”

“Yeah this article doesn’t help a bit. I thought after reading I would be able to find a solution for my all flash website for seo purposes. Thefwa.com is an all flash website, they rank no.1, they didn’t follow your mumbo jumbo about not using too much flash” (Note from Alex: TheFWA.com does not rank no.1. They rank 31,905. Still not bad for an all flash site.)
Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/flash-and-seo-using-flash-on-websites/2247/

Cool online tool that will probe a flash file:

http://www.flashprobe.com/

In the root path of your external swf file, defined an object that represent the root path of the container swf.

var rootObj:Object=this.parent.parent.parent as Object;

Validate email using PHP grep functions

function isValidEmail($email){
    return eregi("^[_a-z0-9-]+(.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(.[a-z0-9-]+)*(.[a-z]{2,3})$", $email);
}

Validate phone numbers

$phone = preg_replace('/[^0-9]/', '', $phone); # remove non-numbers
// check if > 9 digits
if (strlen($phone)>9) {
echo 'Valid';
}

Validate URL links

if(preg_match("/^(http(s?)://|ftp://{1})((w+.){1,})w{2,}$/i", $url)){
#Is a valid URL
} else {
#Is not a valid URL
}

Server Side Includes

SSI, or Server Side Includes: Use to include html files.
<!–#include virtual=”path to file/include-file.html” –>

PHP

PHP is a server side programming language: Use this to inlcude php pages or html pages

Simple:
<?php include(“your_file.html”); ?>
Or
<?php
require($DOCUMENT_ROOT . “your_file.html”);
?>

ASP

Active Server Pages are server side programming languages: Use this to inlcude asp pages or html pages
<!–#include file=”your_file.html”–>

JavaScript

JavaScript is a client side programming language (processed by your browser, no the server): You must take your html code, place it in side of a javascript document.write function to be printed to the screen. Be sure to fix your html quote marks by adding a backslash to the front of each one.  Save the file and include it using below.

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”your_file.js”> </script>

The program runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases.

MySQL is owned and sponsored by a single for-profit firm, the Swedish company MySQL AB, now a subsidiary of Sun Microsystems,[3] which holds the copyright to most of the codebase. The project’s source code is available under terms of the GNU General Public License, as well as under a variety of proprietary agreements.

“MySQL” is officially pronounced /maɪˌɛskjuːˈɛl/[4] (My S Q L), not “My sequel” /maɪˈsiːkwəl/. This adheres to the official ANSI pronunciation; SEQUEL was an earlier IBM database language, a predecessor to the SQL language.[5] The company does not take issue with the pronunciation “My sequel” or other local variations.[citation needed]

Originally designed for producing dynamic web pages, it has evolved to include a command line interface capability and can be used in standalone graphical applications.[2]

While PHP was originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995, the main implementation of PHP is now produced by The PHP Group and serves as the de facto standard for PHP as there is no formal specification.[3] Released under the PHP License, the Free Software Foundation considers it to be free software.[4]

PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. It generally runs on a web server, taking PHP code as its input and creating web pages as output. It can be deployed on most web servers and on almost every operating system and platform free of charge.[5] PHP is installed on more than 20 million websites and 1 million web servers.[6] The most recent major release of PHP was version 5.2.6 on May 1, 2008.[7]