phpguru.org - Richard Heyes' ramblings and code

RTemplate update

Sat, 16 May 2009 12:42:31 +0100

If you're using RTemplate in conjunction with caching and PHP blocks (ie {php ...} ), then now might be the time to upgrade, as I've just fixed a slight caching issue with it. Or if you like to live dangerously, maybe not... :-) As a temporary immediate fix, you can simply turn off caching and you'll be fine.

Minor datagrid update

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:39:39 +0100

I've updated the datagrid class with (shock horror!) an archive containing everything you need. Should make it much easier (ie less tedious) for you to get it if you want it. To remind you, the datagrid class is a PHP class which makes it rather simple to show grids of your data. You have complete control over the style using CSS and you see an example or 8 here.

Custom error handlers

Sun, 18 May 2008 21:02:28 +0100

If anything they allow you to make your errors look pretty. Or maybe show a picture of a nekkid lady. That will sure draw attention to them. You might not want to do this on your live site though...

But what you can do is use the information to provide you with more information about the error. You could for example use the line number that you're given to a) Read in the file, and b) provide a small snapshot of the line in question and the surrounding few lines. Just a thought - might help in tracking down errors. This is a simple error function you can use to trigger errors. In the error function you could, for example, have it mail() yourself so that you know when errors occur, perhaps instead of showing the error to the user.

Static tabstrip

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:49:11 +0100

Had this for a while now, and now I've decided to make it public. Very useful for organising your pages without overloading your users with information.

SEO tips

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 15:01:10 +0000

Been doing some SEO recently, and here are some words of advice that I've found. This is by no means authoritative, just some common bits of advice that I found.

Content! Probably the most common piece of advice I've found. And not just content, but "relevant content". If your site doesn't have this, it won't be ranked highly for relevant searches.
Don't use images in place of text for navigation. Use text instead, which robots can read and style them how you wish using CSS.
META tags - not as weighty as they once used to be. Still worth having as they don't exactly detract anything. Also, the description meta tag may be used by search engines for page listings, so it becomes somewhat more important. Perhaps not for getting a high ranking, but for conveying purpose to readers.
TITLE attributes for images - use them. And be descriptive. It wouldn't hurt for links too. The title attribute on links is used by some browsers as the tooltip text - so it doesn't hurt to have it.
Page titles: use them and make them appropriate to the pages content. Ideally they should be unique across your site.
Heading images: use tags instead. This also goes back to not using images for page headings. And don't have all the text on your website as a tag. These tags are for headings.
Try article exchanges (as opposed to link exchanges). Full articles, with good, relevant content.
Use a sitemap. This will apparently help the search engine robot(s) to find pages. Not only that it's helpful to your human visitors.

Log class

Sun, 02 Sep 2007 02:48:20 +0100

As in, I made one. Don't really need one, but I got bored. Can log to either a file, email or the screen (for debugging) and automatically prepends the date and time. You can also give an abitrary "level" to aid searching your log file (for example). Get it at the download area.

Low visibility guidelines

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 21:10:29 +0100

If you want some guidelines on making your website(s) usable by people with sight problems, here's a Word (and also a PDF) document that gives you some. A big thanks to those people who sent me the PDF version.