January 2012
19 posts
14 tags
Agile Development: One Approach of Many
A lot of the times I come across the question “What process of development should we use for our project”, and I generally respond with “Agile” followed by blank stares and question marks. After repeatedly explaining the process, I thought why not just write out what Agile is for others to read. And thus I am writing this blog entry.
What is Agile
Agile is a highly adaptive development process...
10 tags
Day 60: Finale - Insights on Marketing, Social...
Day 60 is finally here. Looking back at the amount of work it took to get to this point, it’s taken a tremendous amount of time and effort. For the last blog entry, I’m going to cover a few different topics that include MongoDB, marketing, social media, improving your site, plans for the ProdigyView community, and my future plans. MongoDB and GridFS The final two tutorials I released today...
7 tags
Day 59 - Applications, Plug-ins and 1 More day
I’m just focused on finishing. The finish line is in sight and it couldn’t come sooner…except if it was today.
Tomorrow is going to be a killer blog entry. It will sum up everything from marketing, social media, web analytics, mongodb, gridfs, and the future of the community of ProdigyView.
The tutorials today (5 of them) was on applications and plugins. Honestly, I feel these...
11 tags
Day 58 - Image Scaling and Watermarking and...
For the first time since I started, I’ve released 3 tutorials in one day. I generally do not combine two completely unrelated tutorials in the same day, but since time is short, I don’t have much of a choice. The first tutorial was on image scaling and watermarking, the second on hashing a user’s password information, and the third on using PVSecurity::checkAuth method.
The most...
9 tags
Day 56/57 - New Release and Image Manipulation
Yesterday was the the release of ProdigyView 1.5.3 . I actually needed to release that because the remaining of the tutorials regarding image manipulation, authentication, and mongodb required the additions in the release.
Today two slideshows were released. The first one was the basics of using PVImage. It involved creating rectangles, ellipses, getting an image attributes and converting an...
12 tags
ProdigyView 1.5.3 - MongoDB, Authentication and...
Finally released ProdigyView version 1.5.3 . The version has plenty of cool updates in it.
MongoDB
GridFS Addition
Batch Inserts
Options(such as fysnc)
Overall improvements to the queries
Authentication
Hashing
Auth module that is integrated with the database
Auth model that has both hashing and encryption
Improvement to user role checking
Image Manipulation
Drop Shadows
Drawing...
12 tags
Day 55 - Audio and Video Content Management and...
The two tutorials posted today were the last ones on the CMS in ProdigyView. As the title suggests, the focus was on audio and video content management. Similar to file and image content management, files can be placed directly into the CMS. How they differ from image and file content is the conversion and saving of multiple formats.
The audio and video and content was designed to work with...
13 tags
Day 54 - Image and File Content Management
I want to say that I predicted the tutorial on file content management would have more hits than the tutorial on image content management. The file management has 303 views as of 8:17 and is climbing while the image one is only at a measly 28. But I am not sure why since I find image content management more useful and more likely to be used.
Without going to in depth, the file content is...
8 tags
Day 53 - Ecommerce and Text Content Management
Today, and mostly here on out until day 60, was a dual day in tutorials. The first tutorial was text content. Text content was made for supporting documents that are primarily text based. Examples are blogs,documents, even making your own Twitter service, etc.
The second tutorial was a little more of a useful topic, product content which can also be known as e-commerce. Like the name suggest,...
11 tags
Day 52 - CMS Event Content and Opening Up Your...
Extending from yesterday’s tutorial on base content from the content management system, today’s tutorial was on the event content. Event content is any data that can be used describe an event. This will give you access to fields such as:
Start Time
End Time
Location
Contact Person
Longitude
Latitude
Map
Address
City
State
Zip
Country
Normal usage of event content will be...
9 tags
Day 51 - Base Content of the CMS
The tutorial posted today was the beginning of talking about the heart of the content management system in ProdigyView, base content.
Base content can be considered the root from where all content is born. It contains basic fields such as content title, description, language, date created, date modified, and many more. Like the name suggest, the point of these fields is to provide the base for...
13 tags
Day 50 - Url Route Options and Experience Gone...
5-O! 5-O!
That’s what we would yell as underage high school kids drinking in the park as the patrol officer showed up. We would all have a mad dash through the woods but the funny thing is I don’t even think the cop ever cared enough to get out his car. Just flash your lights and their off, job complete.
But 5-O is actually the 50th day of me continuously releasing something new...
10 tags
Day 49 - URL Parts and Routing Basics
Today was one of those dual tutorial today where I released two tutorials.
The first tutorial was to help users undertand the parts of the url. I thought before actually getting into learning about routing, it would be good to know the difference between top level domains, second level domains, fragments, paths, etc. Even if the information is never used in routing, it is still good to understand...
6 tags
Day 48 - Security with Access Levels and User...
One of the areas that I forgot to cover was the access levels. The basics of access levels are so that each user is given an access level, which is a number like 1, 3, 5, etc. Then content can be given access levels also. If the user’s access level is greater or equal to the number assigned to the content, they are able to view it. Otherwise, access denied.
The tutorial yesterday...
11 tags
Day 47 - User Relationships
The posted today was on user’s relationships <3.
I mean a relationship as a way of relating two user together based on a common entity. As you read through the tutorial think of relationships not only as friends but users being able to have multiple kinds of relationships. For example, users can be friends, co-workers and also school mates.
When building a social site, those connections...
10 tags
Day 46 - User Roles And More Updates Coming Soon
Version 1.5.3 is on its way. Changes and updates to this version will include:
Mongo updates
GridFS implement
Sorting, Limits and offsets
Pagination
Integration into Helium
Improved Image Rendering
Drop Shadows on images
Scaling Image
Text To Images
Watermarks
Authorization
Hashing Password with Salt
Multiple field authorization
A lot of it has be completed but needs...
7 tags
Day 45 - User Management (Part of the CMS) and...
Finally, we are getting to some of the database tied parts of ProdigyView. I think enough of the other features have been talked about to make the upcoming parts of the framework more usable.
One of the ProdigyView coolest features is the built in cms(content management system). The purpose of the cms is to quicky build a prototype of the of a concept to show to decision makers and stakeholders....
Day 43 & 44 - HTML5 Forms and Email Configuration
The tutorial posted yesterday was on HTML5 form elements. Just the tutorial like the tutorial on regular html elements, becareful when using these elements. Not every feature is supported in every browser.
The tutorial today was on the email configuration. The purpose of the tutorial was learning how to set the default values in the email configuration. Overall, this can make sending emails...
5 tags
Day 42 - PHP Developers From Around The World...
Yesterday I asked this question:
“The year 2011 is over in a few hours and I’d like to hear what are your PHP achievements for the last year and what are you PHP commitments and goals for 2012.”
I got a variety of answers ranging from large complex additions to php, to beginners just starting out in php. To give some recognition to these projects and hopefully spark new...
Day 41- HTML Forms
I’m sorry to say, but after this post, there will be no more post for the rest of the year…..Someone has to make corny jokes so I’ll take the hit for it.
I want to wish everyone a happy & safe New Year’s Eve. And I hope everyone can make New Years resolutions they can keep. Personally, I am not making a New Year’s resolution because I don’t believe in them....
December 2011
34 posts
7 tags
Day 40 - HTML Tags
Day 40, and I’m beginning to feel it. Like one of the free holiday 5k race that you entered but then about half way through your asking yourself why did you bother entering. If you drop out, no one will really care, but at the same time you look like a quitter. Day 40 feels like that. I’m also cutting it close tonight, finally posted at 11pm.
The tutorial today was on using html tags...
13 tags
Day - 39 Audio Conversion, Cloud Storage and...
Another day with two tutorials posted. The first tutorial was on purely understanding the FFMPEG program. I am not sure I made this clear judging from a few responses I’ve gotten back, but FFMPEG must be installed on your server first before you try any of these. If you are not sure if it is installed, ask your hosting provider.
If you are using a shared host, you probably do not have...
10 tags
Day 38 - Hope, Inspiration and Video Conversion
The most interesting part of today was taking some time from work to meet up with a friend. She was talking to me about how she felt her dream of going into marketing and pr was becoming not existent. I was trying to figure out why she felt this way and she said that she was waiting for something to come up. And there was the problem; it is rare in life for anything to just fall in your lap. A lot...
7 tags
ProdigyView 1.5.2
Today was the release of ProdigyView version 1.5.2 . The most exciting update for this release is the integration of MongoDB. Other additions to this version update include:
Mongo Support
Added Add SSL detection to router
Change names of the classes with Render on the end
Fixed problem with text truncating
Add Query Builder
Fixed conversion input and output
Improved Mail...
8 tags
Day 37 - Environments and Server Setup
Today’s tutorial was on PVConfiguration and environments. Setting up how your server reacts can make life easier when scaling large system.
For example, there are normally 3 servers used when releasing web applications: development, staging and production. Development is where new stuff is integrated. At this point the new code should have gone through some sort testing such as unit testing...
7 tags
Day 36 - MongoDB Support
Oh man, its late but as promised, I will deliver something everyday for 60 days. And today’s delivery is bigger than some tutorial, I’ve officially added support for MongoDB to ProdigyView! For anyone who is not familiar with MongoDB, it is a noSQL database that uses a JSON like syntax called BSON, and stores it’s data in collections and documents. If you are interested in...
9 tags
Day 34 & 35 - SMTP Email , Option and Christmas
Right now, I’m in a really good mood. I feel like as I’ve gotten older, I value the time I get to spend with my family now during the holidays. Even without the gifts, a good meal and time with friends and family would be more than enough. I would also like to specially thank the people who had to work. I mean people who have to work in the power plants, hospitals, police officers,...
6 tags
Mongo Support
Among a few other additions and fixes, today I started adding the MongoDB support to ProdigyView.
Right now the beginning of Mongo Support exist with the Prepared Statements of insert, update, and delete. I need to rewrite the query builder for the select statement before I add in the ability to search. I also need to write the query builder for non-prepared statements. At that point,...
10 tags
Day 33 - Email and Car Accidents
Christmas, the time of giving gifts and drinking lots of rum eggnog. It’s also the time for lots of car accidents, omg people cannot drive. I was sitting in Starbucks the other night and I saw a guy walking get hit by a car. The mind blowing part is I just saw the guy in Starbucks getting coffee. Around town there were 3 other accidents that same day. I get up this morning for work and there...
3 tags
Day 32 - Tools
PVTools in ProdigyView is that odd little child that doesn’t resemble mom or dad nor any of his/her siblings. In other words, it has methods that do not quite belong to anyone one class, but the methods are useful. Yesterday’s slideshow below.
Tools - http://www.prodigyview.com/tutorials/slideshare/365/106
6 tags
Day 31 - Encryption
Still behind by a post. Tomorrow I will make sure to catch up.
The tutorial yesterday was on encryption in ProdigyView. I implemented this out of my own frustration dealing with mcrypt for the first time in PHP. PVSecurity acts an an abstract for the mcrypt functions, allowing you the developer to only pass a value to the encryption and not have to worry about setting up the encryption.
One...
6 tags
Day 30 - Custom Validation
Yesterday was day 30th and I am falling behind in my post. Need a morning to catch up on everything. I’m half way through and only have 30 more to go. I’ve surpassed the number of views I wanted for the tutorials. I set my goal for about 1,000 a week or less considering this a brand new framework. So far I’m at 4,500 and increasing more each day. Overall I’m happy I passed...
8 tags
Day 29 - Return to Estados Unidos and Validation
Yesterday was my last day of my vacation and I’m actually do not want anymore to drink or eat, I’m completely content. All you can eat/drink wears off after a few days. So feeling at peace and sitting on the beach, I decided get out a piece of paper and look at my life in retrospect of what I learned, my accomplishments, and what I have to improve on in life. Doing this allows me to...
10 tags
Day 28 - Returning to Mexico and File Management
Returning to Mexico? Aren’t you already in Mexico?
Yes and no. Technically yes I am the country Mexico but no, its not the Mexico I remembered. Today the adventure was taking the bus and venturing away from the resort areas and into one of the cities down the bus route. It was there I encountered my long lost Torta De Milenesa and the Liquado de Platano. Ownerless dogs and cats wander...
6 tags
Day 27 - File Management Part 1
Who’s the most aggressive sales person you’ve ever come across? Did they step in front of you and try to push you into their shop? Do they use the sales tactic of trying to become your friend? Did you tell them ‘no’ but they just keep insisting on trying to sell you something? Have you ever had one of these shop owners put their hands on you?? Well, take that sales person...
Day 26 - Cache Configuration
Yesterday I came in and I crashed after a day of the island adventure. It was zip lining, snorkeling, swimming with dolphins, exploring, eating and drinking. So I never got a chance to blog.
I posted the tutorial on how to configure PVCache. Its relatively short and it shows how to change the default cache expiration, time format, etc. I would suggest that if you change the time format, you...
9 tags
Day 25 - Cancun and Memcache
I’ve been to Mexico twice in my life prior to this trip to Cancun. The first time to Toluca for 3 months and the second time too Saint Martin for 2 months. And I was living kinda rough (got to shower every 2-3 days) but I enjoyed it. Now that I’m in Cancun, I’ve seen a whole different side to Mexico that has blown me way. The clear blue water beaches are expected but to walk into...
7 tags
Day 24 - Understanding and Basic File Cache
The day before vacation is the worst day. Especially when a whole server infrastructure relies on you for a major site going live in 2 days and everyone is panicked there isn’t a fall-back person. The vacation might be cut a little short if the shit hits the fan and stuff breaks.
Today two tutorials were released. The first tutorial outlined caching in general and gave an overview of...
7 tags
Day 23 - Custom Libraries
Today I added a tutorial about adding custom libraries. It takes you through the procedure of potentially adding your own set of library files to ProdigyView.
The point of this tutorial was not necessarily to show you how to add custom libraries, but to change your way of thinking about programming. In ProdigyView, phrases like “it does not support…..” or “it...
9 tags
Chat Update and Core Version Update
I finally got around to adding the chat directly into the site. It took me a while to implement this because the installation was in python, and I’m not familiar with python. So I didn’t really take the time to go through the installation…call me lazy. But then I realized there was an iframe installation and that quickly changed things. The chat is up so if anyone has any...
7 tags
Day 22 - JavaScript Libraries and Lightbulbs
2 days until Cancun, can’t wait! Its always nice going from 30 degree weather to the 80’s and to get away from 80 hour weeks. Anyone want any souvenirs?
Today’s tutorial was on adding JavaScript files and CSS files to ProdigyView. Natively ProdigyView supports normal javascript and has a distinction among JQuery, Prototype and Mootools. The three were chosen because at the time...
9 tags
Day 21 - Cache and PHP Libraries
I finally found the time to add a caching library to ProdigyView. I think the cache PV is pretty cool because it will allow you to have multiple cache types placed in a file on your server. The caching class also supports Memcache, if you feel more comfortable using that.
And like everything else in ProdigyView, if you want to add your own caching library, just write an adapter and adapt to the...
9 tags
Day 20 - Cookies, Sessions and Encryption
It feels like winter has actually set in, which means no morning in runs short sleeves and shorts anymore. It’s a mixed feelings because I’ve come to love and hate winter training.
Today’s tutorial was all about reading, writing and encryption of cookies and sessions. Reading and writing cookies and session is pretty easy and straightforward. The little extra I added in was the...
6 tags
Day 19 - PHP Session and Cookies Configuration
Totally crashed last night, didn’t even feel like bloggin.
Yesterday’s material posted was on configuring sessions and cookies. I like this tutorial because it explains not only how to configure sessions and cookies in ProdigyView, but the same concepts apply when using normal PHP.
Learning how to manipulate the sessions and cookies is an important part of creating a site and...
Day 18 - Data Miscellaneous
Today’s the tutorial was on some of the database’s miscellaneous features. Today was also one of the days I would like to call “weak sauce” or just weak, because the tutorial put out today was definitely not up to par. I don’t like putting up stuff that I feel isn’t quality, but I guess I’m just human and can’t be on my A game all the time. Make note...
7 tags
Day 17 - Prepared Queries and Database Tips
Prepared Queries are templated sql queries that can improve performance of executing queries in your database. But I have to stress: this not the magic bullet that will improve performance with your database. Below I am going to go over some other ways you can improve the performance of your database.
Indexes: Indexes can greatly improve the performance of your database, but at the same time,...
10 tags
Day 16 - Database Table and Columns
Today’s tutorial was on creating database tables and the columns. The purpose of ProdigyView’s table and column creator is to modify the schema of any database without knowing the exact semantics for that database. It’s part of how ProdigyView is database agnostic.
Currently it supports Mysql, Postgresql and MSSQL but the functionality of the feature still needs to be expanded...
10 tags
Day 15 - Am I really only 1/4 of the way through?
I sit down, exhausted, staring at the ceiling, and it hits me that this only the 15th day of doing these tutorials. 60/15 =4 so I’m only 1/4 of my goal and I look at it in two ways:
The first way is almost self doubt, can I do 60 days of releasing stuff everyday? Is this going to be too much work? And am I going to burnout?
But then I have to look at all the positive. It’s something...
8 tags
Day 14 - Anonymous Functions and Designs
As we come to an end with the design patterns, I hope that these tutorials not only taught you about design patterns in ProdigyView but also how to use design patterns while programming in general. Learning these concepts is part of what separates good programmers from great programmers. It should change the way you look at code and give you the ability to write more efficient and elegant code.
...
7 tags
Day 13 - Adapter Design Pattern
Today’s tutorial is on the adapter design pattern. In ProdigyView, adapters are not adapters in the true sense of the design pattern but a mixture between that adapter and the strategy. The point of the adapter is to override a methods logic without changing any of the core code.
If you look through the code in ProdigyView, almost every method in a class has an adapter. This means that if...
