Some highlights of this version:

• Zend Framework partly implemented
• HTML 5
• CSS 3
• Updated documentation
• Updated database systems

Packt Publishing offered me  the chance to review “WordPress 2.8 Themes Cookbook”. And that’s what you’re reading right now!

A little about me:
I am Ramon “Ramoonus” van Belzen. A 22 year old webdesigner (HTML, CSS, microformats, Javascript, AJAX, jQuery, PHP/MySQL) and hobby programmer (Visual Basic) with over 10 different WordPress installations online. I`ve been creating webpages since 1997.

The WordPress 2.8 themes design cookbook is one of Packt Publishings cookbook series meaning it contains loads of recipes. Each recipe is a small articles/paragraphs with an idea and how to work it out. Just like a regular cookbook. I haven’t got compression material to compare the book with others of the same topic.

The book is called “WordPress 2.8 themes design cookbook”, which means it’s all about WordPress 2.9 theme designing. After reading the book you should be able to create and modify WordPress themes.

I bet you’re wondering if it’s outdated already since the release of WordPress 3.0? No it’s not. The book is actually until WordPress 2.9 and it should remain usable for the next several point releases. It contains the use of all implemented theme design features in WordPress 2.8.
For the book you will need to have prior knowledge of WordPress (how to use it) and experience with HTML, CSS and basic PHP knowledge. The PHP knowledge isn’t required but trustsme, it’s useful when it comes to debugging typos. Experience with Javascript and frameworks like jQuery is handy but not required. There is no knowledge of WordPress theme design needed.

The first chapter takes you through the basics of WordPress themes and mentions how to use some basic strings you’ll need in every template. It also describes how to make your first theme style.css, how to make a child template and how WordPress template files are organised.

The second chapter helps you create a navigation menu in several ways (horizontally and vertically) and tells you how to implement a search area in your template.

Chapter three explains “the loop”. The loop is the part where a page or post(s) show up. There are multiple ways of displaying the page content for category or tag archives and the homepage. It’s also possible to style sticky pages differently. Finally the chapter explains how to implement advertisement between posts. 

The next chapter explains how to implement template tags like an edit button, previous/next link, using an excerpt and such. One of the most handy things is probably a search highlighters. No more use of third party plugins which break down too often!

The fifth chapter explains how to implement WordPress commenting features in your template.

Chapter six is also an important one (isn’t every chapter?!) since it explains how to work with sidebars. Sidebars can contains widgets by default or manually. The chapter also explains how to use multiple sidebars and pre-install widgets.

Chapter seven explains how to use custom page templates like a photo album or archive page.

The following chapter (eight)  explains how to use CSS and PHP to style images in the theme. It ends with implementing video`s in pages and posts.

Next chapter guides you through author pages and adding custom user fields (like a Twitter field). Creating a custom author page gives the author its own short page about himself.

Chapter ten is one of those you’ll probably need when your theme is nearly finished. Its about adding JavaScript effects to the theme. It also guides you through a simple installation of already in WordPress implemented JavaScript libraries like prototype, scriptalulous and jQuery (UI). This is followed by a JavaScript post slider (skinable), toggle-able widgets and a font-size toggle. Handy functions for every theme!

Template eleven is called Advanced WordPress Themes. It explains how to use a theme options page, use multiple color schemes, create a default theme avatar, how-to localize the theme, implementing your own shortcodes and information on publishing the theme to wordpress.org 

The final chapter (twelve) contains more advanced features like a rotating header image, centring the main content, making draggable items, creating a tabbed navigation and adding a global toolbar to the theme.

I’m glad I got this book. After reading this book (in just a couple of hours – which is good) I can say to people I can design, create and modify WordPress themes. 
The images included really show you what’s the point of what you’ve done and are a good addition to the text.
If you’re looking for a book about WordPress theme design to get started with modifying and/or creating themes, this is the one you should consider buying.

The book should be available at all good book stores right now. You can also order it online (on paper or as E-Books) at https://www.packtpub.com/wordpress-2-8-themes-cookbook/book. This is also the link for more information. A sample chapter (chapter 3 – the loop) can be found at https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/8440-chapter-3-the-loop.pdf 

Review by Ramon “Ramoonus” van Belzen

Written by Lee Jordan & Nick Ohrn

Book published in July 2010, by Packt Publishing (Open Source). 296 pages. Paperback

ISBN13: 9781847198440

This book will guide you through the complexities of implementing add-ons, components, modules, and plugins in Joomla! 1.5. After learning the basics the books teaches you the more advanced stuff like modifying the database and building 3rd party applications using the API.

The book is written for PHP programmers and experience with the MVC design pattern is usefull.

What you will learn from this book :

• Understand the structure and design of the Joomla! 1.5 framework and how it operates at its core to develop efficient and well-designed extensions for Joomla! 
• Extend the database conventions for the database schema and common fields
• Access and manipulate the database with the help of JDatabase and JTable classes
• Design extensions that work within the Joomla! structure
• Incorporate User, Session, Request, and Browser classes in extensions
• Organize your code with the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern
• Build your own components to manage and present a specific set of data
• Enhance our component by creating a module, which will add new functionality to our frontend
• Modify your system’s functionality without the need to alter existing code
• Discover how to add pagination, ordering, filtering, and searching to make your extensions more user-friendly, and increase the chances of having successfully created a commercially winning or freely available extension
• Improve your extensions by customizing the document properties, adding multilingual capabilities, and providing an interactive user experience
• Access remote third-party services from an application with Joomla!’s API (Application Programming Interface) and web service
• Master the techniques of error handling and access control to prevent malicious attacks on your systems

If you`re interested in the book I`ve got the following article for you: Customize backend Component in Joomla! 1.5.

yum install httpd
yum install php php-devel php-gd php-imap php-ldap php-mysql php-odbc php-pear php-xml php-xmlrpc php-eaccelerator php-magickwand php-magpierss php-mapserver php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-mhash php-mssql php-shout php-snmp php-soap php-tidy curl curl-devel perl-libwww-perl ImageMagick libxml2 libxml2-devel
yum install mysql mysql-devel mysql-server
yum install httpd-devel ruby ruby-devel
yum install mod_python
yum install mod_perl
yum install perl-HTML-Parser perl-DBI perl-Net-DNS perl-Digest-SHA1 perl-ExtUtils-AutoInstall perl-NetAddr-IP perl-Archive-Tar
/etc/init.d/httpd restart

Now you have got everything installed except for mod_ruby;

cd /tmp
wget http://www.modruby.net/archive/mod_ruby-1.3.0.tar.gz
tar zxvf mod_ruby-1.3.0.tar.gz
cd mod_ruby-1.3.0/
./configure.rb --with-apr-includes=/usr/include/apr-1
make
make install

/etc/init.d/httpd restart

You have to add mod_ruby by hand in /etc/httpd/conf.d/ruby.conf
By adding 

LoadModule ruby_module modules/mod_ruby.so

OpenX is an open-source PHP/MySQL based advertisement platform which supports unlimited advertisers, campaigns, banners, zones and websites. You can use OpenX to structurize the advertisement on one or multiple sites with one or multiple advertisers and several campaigns and banners. It’s also possible to use OpenX for your Google Adsense or other 3^rd party advertisements.

Why would you believe my review and more important: who am I? I`m Ramon van Belzen, a 22 year old web designer from Holland. I’ve been using OpenX (formerly OpenAds) since 2006. I never got in-depth with it but I’m familiar with most of the functions. I use OpenX to structure my Amazon campaigns and zones on multiple websites. You can find more about me on my blog www.ramoonus.nl
Packt Publishing asked me if I would like to review this book.

The book is a beginner’s guide to the OpenX Ad Server platform. Since the book is a beginner’s guide you don’t need to have any experience with online advertisement, webdesign or the OpenX platform. Currently there aren’t other OpenX books around. Packt has the scoop.

Every step in the book includes a screen-shot and some describing text along with it. At the end of every chapter there’s a question which summarizes the chapter. At the end of the book every question is answered with a full explanation —why; what’s good and what’s wrong about the other answers. A short summary of the chapter is also included.

The book starts with an introduction.—how the book is written, what OpenXis, why you would use OpenX, what is possible with OpenX, what the system requirements are. This is followed by the installation procedure and some important notes. The whole procedure is shown and described step by step.

The second chapter of the book is an introduction on how to use OpenX. It shows you how to create an advertiser, campaign, banner (not the actual design), website and zone (where the advertisement is placed). At the end of this chapter it’s time to put things together and show the banner on a website.

Chapter three explains how to create a new advertiser and how the campaign systems works. It describes the CPC, CPM, CPA and tenancy revenue models. All ins and outs of these models are explained and put into practise.

The fourth chapter describes the multiple ways how a banner can be implemented and the advantages and disadvantages of each way.

The following chapter (five) explains the website and zone principle. It also shows you how to include the code to a website to actually show the ads. The last bit of the chapter explains how to use dynamic zones and geotargetting.
By the end of this chapter you can start selling ads in the real world.

The sixth chapter of this book explains targeting like site source and browser based targeting.

Chapter seven describes the user account management including all permissions and roles.  Chapter eight is the follow-up of chapter seven. It explains all the user account options.

Chapter nine explains how to upgrade OpenX when a new version comes out. Trust me, it`s not as easy as it sounds. The chapter starts with backing up OpenX, duplicating the right files and running the upgrade wizard.

The final chapter (number ten) describes how to generate reports and statistics. To run a successful campaign it’s important to generate the right reports and do statistics on these results. With OpenX it’s possible to export results to CSV and Microsoft Excel. While inside Excel it`s possible to generate graphics and statistics on the results.

I haven’t found any nonsense in the book. The book is technically correct. This also counts for the language used in the book. I haven’t found weird sentences.

I didn’t have any problems reading the book. The first three chapters were obvious for me whereas the next several chapters only got more into depth. I bet even people who have used OpenX for a while never knew all those features!
This book describes how to use OpenX, not how to use online advertisement successfully.

After reading this book, I’m going to reintroduce advertisement on my site. Now I can use OpenX to improve advertisement targeting and effect. I can also generate reports and implement them.

The only information I see as missing is a short explanation of the different kinds of inclusion methods like javascript, XML-RPC and iframe. The book doesn’t cover these items, although this is actually more interesting to specialized webmasters. The normal way of including banners (through javascript) is the standard way for OpenX and I don`t have problems with it.

If you are interested in the book after reading my review, a sample chapter can be found online here.

And of course, it’s 2010 and it`s possible to buy the book online, both the paper and eBook versions; https://www.packtpub.com/openx-ad-server-beginners-guide/book

Specifications

Language : English

Paperback : 300 pages [ 235mm x 191mm ]

Release Date : March 2010

ISBN : 1849510202

ISBN 13 : 978-1-849510-20-2

Author(s) : Murat Yilmaz

If you have any questions, you can always use the commenting system below.

This book is for PHP programmers who are familiar or unfamiliar with model-view-controller framework CodeIgniter. After reading this book you should be able to use most of CodeIgniter`s features and make your own scripts which run on CodeIgniter.

 CodeIgniter (CI for short) is an Open-Source PHP Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework. Multiple studies concluded that CodeIgniter is faster and lighter than other PHP frameworks like CakePHP and Zend Framework.  This book is targeted at PHP programmers who want to save time, effort and cost by switching to the CodeIgniter framework.

There are several benefits of CodeIgniter:

• It runs on PHP 4 and
• It generates clean urls (using mod_rewrite)
• It’s extensible
• It doesn’t require a template engine
• It’s well documentated (especially when reading this book!)
• It`s free!
• It’s safer
• It saves you loads of time

For a full list of features I recommend you read this link.

Before reading this book I had no experience with MVC. I do have some experience with PHP/SQL and much experience with HTML/XHTML.
The books requirements are basic knowledge of HTML and PHP. Basic knowledge of (My)SQL is also recommended.

The book covers the following topics:

• Installing CodeIgniter
• Creating a basic CodeIgniter page
• Use CodeIgniter to connect to a database and execute read queries
• Creating HTML pages and forms
• Using sessions and implement security systems like a login system
• Object-oriented programming in CodeIgniter
• Create your own CodeIgniter plugins
• Communicate using FTP and XML-RPC
• Using CodeIgniter to provide dynamic information (for the constructions of calendars and translations)
• Handle files (up and downloading) and images
• Putting your site online, useful tips and trick to avoid errors
• Advice about upgrading CodeIgniter
• Create, Read, Update, Delete; create your first fully database powered script
• In general, how codeigniter works and what the benefits are
• Writers recommendation plugins
• Additional resources (browser plugins, webserver software, literature)
• Appendix: using codeigniter`s cart function to create a shopping cart

After reading the book I’m able to create and enhance websites with features found in the book. I can now tell my customers I make some “advanced” script myself.

The book still leaves me with few questions about advanced topics like database query caching. The book points to the CodeIgniter user guide (online), which fed my information hunger.

The book fulfilled my expectations.

I’ve placed the book in reach of my desktop. Programming can be overwhelming although CodeIgniter makes life easier. I’m happy to have this book in my bookcase! I’m very sure I’m going to use it on my next big PHP project.

I recommend this book to all PHP programmers who are looking for a framework to lower the workload. After reading this book you’re ready to replace most PHP scripts by your own custom made scripts based on CodeIgniter. 

A sample chapter can be found here. It’s chapter 3: “Navigating your site”.

If you’re interested and read more, or buy the book you should check out this link.

I`ve installed Strongbolt OS 1.0.6 on the machine and upgraded to Strongbolt 2.

This upgrade included a new bootrom kernel (2.6.23.8-i586), which includes some changes to be able to boot from a USB device.

Strongbolt 2 still uses CentOS 4 as backend.

Later this week I will put some effort into it to make the machine boot BlueOnyx 5.4, which is based on CentOS 5.4
By having a newer CentOS version I also have a newer kernel and the ability to use newer packages.
I can`t wait to get MySQL 5.5 and PHP 5.3 on the machine.

Another thing I still have to do is to buy another Cisco Serial cable to connect the two routers to my webserver.

The book describes how to start with CodeIgniter beginning with the installation. The first steps followed by connecting databases, creating HTML pages and forms, using sessions and add security etcetera. The final chapters include more advanced features like dynamic information and uploads.

My review of this book will be online somewhere in january.

A sample chapter, which describes the basics of MVC and CodeIngiter can be found here.

More information about the book and and a link to buy it can be found here.

 While converting I noticed several thing`s weren`t going according to plan.

I added the following lines to the .htaccess file to make things run smooth;

php_value max_execution_time 0
php_value post_max_size 32M
php_value upload_max_filesize 32M
php_value memory_limit 64M

Within Gallery 2 changes the following settings:

• Graphics Toolkits: GD
• Performance: Max Acceleration

I also disabled thumbnail generating at import; I will do it at the end when everything is converted.

• HTML 4, 5 and XHTML 1.1
• CSS 2.1 / 3
• JavaScript
• AJAX including libraries like jQuery and Dojo
• Flash / AIR / Flex
• XML
• PHP 5 (including 5.2 and 5.3) / MySQL 5
• Microformats

The website will be valid according W3C, WCAG 1 and Section 508.

I`m familiar with the following third party website engines:

• Joomla!
• Movable Type
• phpBB

I haven`t been working on it much lately but i consider the 1.5.0 release complete. Thats why the release is two weeks late.

Version 1.5.1 is planned for next monday; 17 august 2009.

Changelog

• [Changelog] Links are now bold and red
• [SEO] Added robots.txt to make sure nothing is indexed
• [Bug] Removed an out-dated stylesheet
• [Optimalisation] Added PHP flush`s in the page, just after the header
• [Style] Removed some CSS
• [Style] Added 5 px panning for the menu
• [Style] Added 5 px panning for the mainframe
• [Style] Added 12 pt spacing between menu blocks
• [Style] Moved all current theme files to the default theme
• [Style] Darkened the sidebar from #EEEEEE to #DDDDDD
• [W3C] Fixed an XHTML issue with the news page
• [W3C] Fixed an XHTML Strict issue with the header/height
• [W3C] Fixed an XHTML Strict issue with nowrap
• [Style] Improved the footer by changing HTML into CSS
• [Bug] Removed the base tag
• Removed the breadcrumbs (temporary)
• Moved the “Licensed to” text to the footer

W3C validations

• [W3C] CSS 2.0 valid
• [W3C] CSS 2.1 valid
• [W3C] CSS 3 valid
• [W3C] XHTML 1.0 Strict valid
• [W3C] XHTML 1.1 valid
• [W3C] XHTML + RDFa valid
• [W3C] XHTML Basic 1.0 valid
• [W3C] XHTML Basic 1.1 valid
• [W3C] XHTML Mobile Profile 1.2 valid
• [W3C] XHTML-Print 1.0 valid
• [W3C] XHTML 1.1 plus MathML 2.0 valid
• [W3C] XHTML 1.1 plus MathML 2.0 plus SVG 1.1 valid

The roadmap has changed a lot.

New development tools:

• MySQL Workbench 5.1
• MySQL Query Analyzer
• SubVersion 1.6
• Trac 0.11
• Zend Studio 7.0 Beta
• PHP 5.3

The OpenSolaris bible is written by Sun employees; Nicholas A. Solter, Jerry Jelinek and David Miner. It`s a wealthy 1008 pages thick.

 The book is available at all good bookstores and Amazon.com

Free sample chapters are available at;
http://blogs.sun.com/observatory/en_US/entry/sample_chapter_from_opensolaris_bible and http://blogs.sun.com/observatory/en_US/entry/two_more_chapters_from_the

Table of Contents

I. Introduction to OpenSolaris.

1. What Is OpenSolaris?

2. Installing OpenSolaris.

3. OpenSolaris Crash Course.

II. Using OpenSolaris

4. The Desktop.

5. Printers and Peripherals.

6. Software Management.

III. OpenSolaris File Systems, Networking, and Security.

7. Disks,  Local File Systems, and the Volume Manager.

8. ZFS.

9. Networking.

10. Network File Systems and Directory Services.

11. Security.

IV. OpenSolaris Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability.

12. Fault Management.

13. Service Management.

14. Monitoring and Observability.

15. DTrace.

16. Clustering for High Availability.

V. OpenSolaris Virtualization.

17. Virtualization Overview.

18. Resource Management.

19. Zones.

20. xVM Hypervisor.

21. Logical Domains (LDoms).

22. VirtualBox.

VI. Developing and Deploying on OpenSolaris.

23. Deploying a Web Stack on OpenSolaris.

24. Developing on OpenSolaris.

Updates will now be released on monday`s instead of wednesdays.

Next release is planned for september 22nd and contains some major new features.

Changelog

• [Theme] Small changes to the page layout
• [Database Administration] added the old system (now called Classic) (phpMyAdmin 2.11.9) along with the new (3.0 series)
• [Database Administration] Updated phpMyAdmin to v 3.0.0rc1
• [General] Page-loading has been edited/optimised for safety
• [General] Measurement info has been optimised and now shows the latest 10 measurements
• [General] Added server-side page rendertime display
• [General] added code 100% PHP 5.0, 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3 compatible
• [General] added code 100% MySQL 4.0, 4.1 5.0, 5,1 and 6.0 compatible