Archive for Web Development

PubSubHubbub

// December 28th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Technology, Web Development

For the past few months, my blog has been participating in something called PubSubHubbub. Other than “something with a cool name,” what is PubHubSubbub? It is “a simple, open, server-to-server publish/subscribe protocol as an extension to Atom and RSS.” Using the protocol, servers are able to get near-instant notification of feed updates (feeds are used by blogs and other sites to notify subscribers of new content). Using traditional technology, feed consumers (such as feed readers) periodically poll servers (such as a blog’s web server) for feed updates. This process works, but it wastes bandwidth and other resources since checking is done whether or not updates are available, while also causing delayed notification since polling occurs infrequently. PubSubHubbub fixes this by allowing feed consumers to receive near-instant notification of feed updates. It turns the traditionally-pull-based feed technology into a push technology, so that bandwidth and other resources are only used when actual updates are available and subscribers receive updates almost immediately. PubSubHubbub is a distributed system that is free and decentralized, meaning that no company is at the center of controlling it and anyone can run a “hub,” the component that sits between publishers (such as servers running blogs) and subscribers (such as Google Reader). As you can see in the demo below, this technology enables services to provide a greater level of real-time notification.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Lifestreaming the easy way

// December 3rd, 2008 // No Comments » // PHP

I recently discovered a new PHP/MySQL lifestream tool named Sweetcron. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of lifestreams, a lifestream simply displays posts you have made to your social networks, blogs, photo sites, etc. It displays a stream of content that is representative of your life, I suppose. I began playing around with lifestreams a few months ago after seeing Joe Tan’s lifestream. Although I really like the way Joe uses Yahoo! Pipes to create his lifestream, I am infinitely happier with Sweetcron.

If you have any PHP experience, you will find Sweetcron very easy to install. If you don’t, I imagine you can figure out the installation without too much difficulty. Simply create the database, change a few lines in a couple of files, upload the files, and complete the installation via the web. Adding new feeds to your lifestream is a snap. Once your feeds are added, you can manually initiate a feed check or wait for Sweetcron to automatically do it. Sweetcron’s feed fetcher prefers to be run automatically via Cron or a Cron-like tool, but the software provides its own “Pseudo Cron” in case you don’t have access to such a tool.

My own installation of Sweetcron uses the default theme, but it looks easy to customize the layout and I look forward to doing some of that and posting a follow-up.

By the way, Sweetcron was developed using the CodeIgniter PHP web application framework and provides a good demonstration of what CI can do. I have looked into CI before but never put a lot of time into it. I’m hoping to get to know it better now that I have seen it in action.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

15 Minute SEO List

// November 29th, 2008 // No Comments » // Web Development

Kelvin Chan clued me into a fantastic page from webconfs.com that lists the best and worst practices for search engine optimization. Check it out here:
15 Minute SEO List – Learn how to SEO

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Protecting against SQL injection in PHP

// November 26th, 2008 // No Comments » // PHP

MySQL’s DevZone provides chapter 3 of php|architect’s Guide to PHP Security for free download. The chapter explains how to protect your PHP applications from SQL injection. Download it now.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Get SitePoint’s “The Art & Science of CSS” for free!

// November 23rd, 2008 // No Comments » // Web Development

My absolute favorite web design and development resource publisher is giving away the PDF edition of The Art & Science of CSS, one of their many books. I haven’t read much of the book yet, but I like what I’ve seen so far. To take advantage of this terrific offer, go to Twitaway.com and follow SitePoint on Twitter or give SitePoint your email address. The offer only lasts another 9 days, so get it while you can!

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Yahoo! BrowserPlus now available

// November 21st, 2008 // No Comments » // Javascript

As a follow-up to a previous post, I am excited to note that Yahoo! has released its BrowserPlus technology for general use! This looks like a promising technology and I look forward to playing around with it. I certainly won’t be using it in any client sites any time soon, but I can see it becoming useful in the future.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Yahoo! BrowserPlus

// July 24th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Javascript

Yahoo! recently released a “Sneak Peak” of BrowserPlus, “a technology for web browsers that allows developers to create rich web applications with desktop capabilities.” Perhaps “released” isn’t the right word – Yahoo! is providing the documentation along with a number of demos that utilize the technology, but they are not opening the technology for use by developers yet. BrowserPlus has promise and is a technology I will definitely be following.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Microformats

// October 7th, 2007 // No Comments » // Web Development

I’ve been reading up on Microformats, especially hCard and hCalendar, which are XHTML equivalents of the vCard and iCalendar standards, respectively. Michael McCracken explains the usefulness of Microformats like this:

With Microformats, you can send & publish things like events, business cards, and product reviews as meaningful XHTML that a person can read in a browser, but a program can import, index and remix as native data.

A pretty neat concept. Microformats utilize predefined class names to identify the contents of XHTML tags as data fields. For example, within an hCard, class=”fn” means that the contents of the tag (could be an h1, div, p, span, or any other tag) is the full name of the person described in the hCard. In the near future, I’ll blog about some great uses for various Microformats and, hopefully, show some examples within sites I’ve developed.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”