It was more than 80 days since I last post here, time waits for no man.

The good thing is, I was able to upgrade to the latest versions of WordPress as they’re released. This WordPress thing is fantastic and it enables you to upgrade within a single click. Thanks to the team behind this useful tool and thanks to all the WordPress community.

Now, I will restart updating the blog regularly as well as I will start some undecided online project.

By the way, I was writing this using Windows Live Writer!

Likewise, every PHP newbie would ask the same frustrating question and would want a description of the mystery behind the error.

Here, I will show you a quick tip to turn your test environment into a study center. Follow the steps below and enjoy your time with PHP.

Hint: I assume you are using XAMPP (the all-in-one suite of Apache, mySQL and PHP) running on Windows machine.

Preparation

Download and install XAMPP on your computer.

Visit the PHP manual download page, and select one of the downloads under the ‘Many HTML files’ column. There are many languages to choose from but the English version is the most accurate.

Extract the downloaded archive. Inside the extracted archive you should find a folder named ‘html’. Copy that folder —and its contents— into the following directory:

C:\<your-xampp-installation-path>\

After successfully copying the folder into the XAMPP installation directory, rename your copied folder to ‘phpmanual’. It should be something like this:

C:\<your-xampp-installation-path>\phpmanual

Installation

Well, we placed the PHP manual above the DocumentRoot, just in an out-of-web-reach directory, the reason is that there may be multiple domains or hostnames maintained on the machine via VirtualHost containers, so we need to make the manual work on every domain or hostname on the machine.

Open the XAMPP configuration file:

C:\<your-xampp-installation-path>\apache\conf\extra\httpd-xampp.conf

…then insert these lines in it:

Alias /phpmanual "C:/<your-xampp-installation-path>/phpmanual/"
<Directory "C:/<your-xampp-installation-path>/phpmanual">
    AllowOverride AuthConfig
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

Just make sure to change C:/<your-xampp-installation-path> to your XAMPP installation drive and path, respectively.

Configuration

Next, open your PHP.INI file found at: C:\<your-xampp-installation-path>\PHP\php.ini and find the following line:

;html_errors = Off

Uncomment the above directive, then turn it on like this:

html_errors = On

Find these two lines:

;docref_root = "/phpmanual/"
;docref_ext = .html

Uncomment the above two directives, they should match the code below:

docref_root = "/phpmanual/"
docref_ext = .html

Save your changes and close the file.

—

Restart Apache.

Testing

Now, lets see if our effort is working properly. Create a PHP file with the following code inside it:

<?php 

include 'a-php-file-that-does-not-exist.php';

?>

Save the file as test-manual.php in C:\<your-xampp-installation-path>\htdocs\, then visit the following URL in your browser:


http://localhost/test-manual.php


If everything was correct, you should receive an error like the following one:

Warning: include(a-php-file-that-does-not-exist.php) [function.include.html]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in C:\web-server\htdocs\localhost\test-manual.php on line 3

Warning: include() [function.include.html]: Failed opening 'a-php-file-that-does-not-exist.php' for inclusion (include_path='.;C:\web-server\php\pear\') in C:\web-server\htdocs\localhost\test-manual.php on line 3

function.include.html should be hyperlinked and when you click it you should see a page describing the error, otherwise, there is something wrong with your configuration.

Warning

Never use this feature for production boxes. This feature was intended to support your development since it makes it easy to look-up an error or function description. However it should never be used on live websites (e.g. systems connected to the Internet).

One visitor emailed me recently asking me if I could tell her how I managed to display recent, related or random posts in my sidebar.

Well, I don’t use either a plugin or SQL statements for this part.

As you may know, I used the conditional tags to check the current page and to execute the right part of the code.

The Code in Pieces

I divided the code into three pieces, so you can understand it easily.

Recent Posts

<div class="widget">
<h2>Recent Posts</h2>
<ul>
<?php $posts = get_posts('numberposts=3'); foreach($posts as $post) { ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?><br />
<span><?php the_excerpt(); ?><br /><em>&mdash;Posted on <?php the_time('n/j/Y') ?></em></span></a>
</li>
<?php } ?>
</ul>
</div>

The above code picks the latest three posts. You can change the number of posts displayed by changing number in get_posts('numberposts=3'); to whatever you like.

Related Posts by Category

<div class="widget">
<h2>Related Posts</h2>
<ul>
<?php $posts = get_posts('numberposts=3&category='.$category->cat_ID.'&exclude='.$current_post);
foreach($posts as $post) {
?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title() ?>"><?php the_title() ?><br />
<span><?php the_excerpt(); ?><br /><em>&mdash;Posted on <?php the_time('n/j/Y') ?></em></span></a>
</li>
<?php } ?>
</ul>
</div>

We used get_posts('numberposts=3&category='.$category->cat_ID.'&exclude='.$current_post); to make all the business easier. $category->cat_ID pulls the current post’s category, exclude='.$current_post makes sure to exclude the current post from the related ones.

You may use related posts by tag also — WP Recipes

Random Posts

<div class="widget">
<h2>Random Posts</h2>
<ul>
<?php $posts = get_posts('orderby=rand&numberposts=3'); foreach($posts as $post) { ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?><br />
<span><?php the_excerpt(); ?><br /><em>&mdash;Posted on <?php the_time('n/j/Y') ?></em></span></a>
</li>
<?php } ?>
</ul>
</div>

Our code uses orderby=rand. So WordPress will pick 3 random posts from the database every time our site loads.

Final Thoughts

The above codes can be merged together and displayed on the sidebar using the conditional tags.

If you have enjoyed this post or have any questions or recommendations, please share your information in the comments section.

Problem

I was working on PHP/MySQL based small project which is all about students’ registration system, where the students can register themselves then they’ll be able to receive school transcripts and such stuff by email.

When I finished the project I tested the application to see if it was working properly but I got a problem with PHP’s mail() function, which was not sending any email messages out.

I was feeling frustrated for a while before coming up with the solution below.

Solution

To make our locally hosted web applications talk to any SMTP server including those on the Internet, we will configure that by using the PHP’s configuration file called php.ini which can be found in the following locations (assuming you are using XAMPP installed in drive C:/):

C:\<xampp-installation-path>\php\php.ini
C:\<xampp-installation-path>\php\php5.ini
C:\<xampp-installation-path>\apache\bin\php.ini

Okay, that was locating the configuration files; let’s move to the next steps.

Method 1:

- Open php.ini file and uncomment the php_smtp.dll extension. This is required when sending emails to a remote server.

- Scroll down and find the following lines:

[mail function]
; For Win32 only.
;SMTP = localhost
;smtp_port = 25

; For Win32 only.
;sendmail_from = me@example.com

- From the lines above, uncomment SMTP, smtp_port and sendmail_from
directives, then add SMTP server, SMTP port number and your preferred email address to SMTP, smtp_port and sendmail_from directives respectively, your final code should be similar to the one below:

[mail function]
; For Win32 only.
SMTP = mail.server.com
smtp_port = 25

; For Win32 only.
sendmail_from = something@server.com

- Replace mail.server.com and something@server.com with correct values. The defualt SMTP port number is “25″, therefore, you have 99% chance of not changing this.

- Restart your server.

Everything should work properly now. If not, double check your changes again. If you think you made everything correct, but there is nothing working, try method 2 instead.

NB: You should be aware that once you assign an email address to sendmail_from PHP will force all the senders’ emails to that address.

Method 2:

This method is more easier than the steps described in method 1. We’ll use fake Sendmail Program for Windows (sendmail.exe) which is a simple windows console application that emulates sendmail's "-t" option to deliver emails piped via stdin. sendmail.exe is bundled with XAMPP so you don’t need to install it unless you are using hand made server.

- In method 1 we have enabled SMTP, smtp_port and sendmail_from directives, please make sure that these directives are commented out since we don’t need them anymore. Then scroll down and find the following two lines in your php.ini file:

; For Unix only.  You may supply arguments as well (default: "sendmail -t -i").
sendmail_path = "C:\<xampp-installation-path>\sendmail\sendmail.exe -t"

- Make sure that the sendmail_path directive is not commented out, and the path is correct, then save php.ini and close it.

Edit Sendmail Configuration File (sendmail.ini):

The fake Sendmail program is found in the following location:

C:\<xampp-installation-path>\sendmail\sendmail.exe

…and its configuration file is found here:

C:\<xampp-installation-path>\sendmail\sendmail.ini

Okey. That was that. Let’s configure it, so it will work the way we wanted.

- Open sendmail.ini file and use the following settings:

[sendmail]

; you must change mail.mydomain.com to your smtp server,
smtp_server=mail.mydomain.com

; smtp port (normally 25)
smtp_port=25

- Replace mail.mydomain.com with a valid SMTP server and assign port number (usually 25) to smtp_port.

Your SMTP server may require an authentication. If this is the case, scroll down the file and find the following lines:

; if your smtp server requires authentication, modify the following two lines

auth_username=username
auth_password=drowssap

- Modify the above two directives. Add your SMTP server’s username and password.

Some SMTP servers use POP3. If yours is one of those servers, then you need further modifications.

; if your smtp server uses pop3 before smtp authentication, modify the
; following three lines

pop3_server=mail.mydomain.com
pop3_username=username
pop3_password=drowssap

- Change the values of the above three directives to fit your needs and save your file. Then restart your server and try to send a test message to your email address.

If everything is correct, you can send emails to any server now. The following snippet is a header of message sent from my localhost server:

Return-path:
Envelope-to: jmehmett@host.com
Delivery-date: Sun, 15 Jun 2009 17:18:55 +0200
Received: from [192.168.3.134] (helo=mehmett)
     by host.server.com with esmtpa (Exim 4.62)
     (envelope-from )
     id 1MFrTy-000CQx-OY
     for jmehmett@host.com; Sun, 15 Jun 2009 17:18:55 +0200
To: jmehmett@host.com
Subject: Taste email from localhost
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2009 19:18:39 +0400
From: J Mehmett
Message-ID:
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer (phpmailer.sourceforge.net) [version 2.0.4]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

That was easy, huh?

Final Thoughts

This is a simple mail configuration. I tested it using the SMTP settings of my host and it worked properly.

Gmail users may check Brett Shaffer’s solution, alternatively, AOL users may see KahWee’s solution.

If you have enjoyed with this post don’t forget to share your thoughts in the comments section.

There is an announcement post on the official Development Blog with an eye-catching introduction video.

Features, Tips and Tricks

1. A full list of more than 180 new features, improvements, changes and upgrades. —WP Codex
2. Build A WordPress 2.8 Widget With The New Widget API —WPEngineer
3. The Improved WordPress Widget API —WP Codex
4. The complete guide to creating widgets in WordPress 2.8 —Justin Tadlock
5. Tutorial: WordPress 2.8 Widget API —Jesse Altman
6. Custom taxonomies in WordPress 2.8 —Justin Tadlock
7. Tag description in WordPress 2.8 —Justin Tadlock
8. Loading Javascript in Footer in WordPress 2.8 —Lester Chan
9. WordPress 2.8 and the body_class() Function —Nathan Rice
10. Authentication in WordPress 2.8 —Will Norris
11. Handling Plugins Options in WordPress 2.8 with register_setting() —Planet Ozh
12. WordPress 2.8 – XML-RPC and AtomPub Changes —Joseph Scott
13. List of Plugins Compatible with WordPress 2.8 —WP Codex
14. WordPress Proxysupport —WPEngineer
15. Escaping API updates for WordPress 2.8 —Mark Jaquith
16. Displaying Author Meta Information in Wordpress 2.8 —Zach Dunn
17. the_author_meta() in WordPress Codex —WP Codex

I know there are tons of talks around the new version but these are the only findings I discovered during the development releases of WordPress 2.8.

If you have suggestions and/or some other posts I missed in this collection, please feel free to contribute them in the comments.

I hope you enjoyed with this post.

What is daylight saving time?

Daylight saving time (Summer Time) is the convention of advancing clocks so that afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less. Typically clocks are adjusted forward one hour near the start of spring and are adjusted backward in autumn. Modern DST was first proposed in 1895 by George Vernon Hudson, a New Zealand entomologist. Many countries have used it since then; details vary by location and change occasionally.

—Wikipedia

In WordPress 2.8, they added Timezone enhancements for PHP 5 so you can choose a city in the same timezone as you for Timezone in Administration > Settings > General.

Old WP time settings

New WP DST settings

See also

• WordPress 2.8 Features
• List of PHP supported timezones
• Daylight Saving Time – Why, When, Where? – Cloud view

Congratulations to gunnerpress.com, which soon will turn to 1 year old despite having only 8 posts and 3 comments under his belt.

New gunnerpress.com

I didn’t validate the new theme and I think there will not be terrible CSS/XHTML errors. I will see when I reclaim the time again.

Hmm…

Below, I listed some of the world’s most popular icon resources… wait… they are free to download… you don’t need to spend a penny to have them.

1. FAMFAMFAM

Everybody, yes, even the internet fool, knows or heard about the famous silk icons of Mark James. There are about one thousand icons, a huge collection indeed.

FAMFAMFAM icons are the most popular, as I think. Firefox’s web developer toolbar uses them, a large sum of WP themes uses them, I use them and of course, you may use them, too!

2. Function Icon Set

Function Icons Set contains fabulous 128 icons for free. The features of this icons include shiny style, 48×48px, social media icons such as Design Float, Digg, Delicious, Furl, Technorati, Flickr, Stumble Upon, Twitter, etc… and blogging icons include RSS icons, email icons and so forth…

3. Project Icon Set

Project Icon Set is the work of Navdeep Raj from DezinerFolio. This set contains 18 great icons specialized for project management. This set can be used for free and paid projects and is ideal for business related works.

The designer released this icon set for Smashing Magazine readers.

4. On Stage Icon Set

Yet another DezinerFolio icon set. This one contains 49 free vector icons with PSD source.

The reason I love such thing is that the sky is the only restriction for the usage of this set, you can use them for free.

5. Stationary Icon Set

Still on DezinerFolio. This icon set contains 22 256 x 256 icons related office and studio elements and includes Fireworks source.

6. Simplistica Icons

Simplistica Icons set is free icon pack from DryIcons‘ creative team. Simplistica icons are glossy and shinny and come with 16×16px, 32×32px, 48×48px and 128×128px and all are 32-bit transparent PNGs.

7. Blogging Icons Set

Blogging icons set by BlogPerfume is a set containing 12 high quality shiny icons designed for bloggers. This set comes with 3 sizes 24×24px, 36×36px and 48×48px.

8. Web Application Icons Set

Web Application Icons Set is a 3D glossy and shiny icon set from WebAppers for free for both personal and commercial projects! There are 20 icons designed specially for web applications (e.g. Charts, Profile, Search, Add, Delete, Email, Print, Warning and etc…). Icons come in 3 sizes; 48×48 px, 32×32 px, and 24×24 px. All in PNG format with transparent background.

9. Antique Icons Set

Designed by Nawfal from DeviantArt, Antique Icons set contains 33 realistic, beautiful and grungy icons in 28×28px size and comes with both transparent PNG format and ICO format.

10. 3D Cartoon Icons Pack

This pack contains 111 .PNG, .ICO (Win) and .ICNS (Mac) icons in 3D shape. These icons come in 300×300px size.

Finally

I hope this post will help some of you. Icons are not limited in this 10 and there are tens of thousands of free icons sets on the Internet.s

Any suggestions, comments and corrections are welcome. The comment form is open for everyon.

I know many of you are already aware about this little trick, but I posted this because many people will need it.

The idea

I was recently designing a new theme for my blog and one day I came across an old blog: 1976design.com. The blog has nothing to do with Wordpress and its run by hand crafted blog application written by the owner of the website, but it still inspired me to implement the idea on my own blog.

Implementation

Open your theme’s index.php and find the template tag <?php the_time(); ?> then replace that with the following code:

// The month
<a title="<?php the_time('F') ?>" href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/<?php the_time('Y') ?>/<?php the_time('m') ?>"><?php the_time('F') ?></a>
// The date
<a title="<?php the_time('F') ?> <?php the_time('jS') ?>" href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/<?php the_time('Y') ?>/<?php the_time('m') ?>/<?php the_time('j') ?>"><?php the_time('jS') ?></a>,
// The year
<a title="<?php the_time('Y') ?>" href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/<?php the_time('Y') ?>"><?php the_time('Y') ?></a>

The above code will show something like this: May 14th, 2009.

What do you think?

If you think there is a better way to do this thing or if you have something else to add or to say about this, please share it in the comments part.