Handy PHP.com A PHP Resource Website

[vujsa 0]

I have developed a new website using Joomla for the sharing of PHP resources. The new website, Handy PHP , is in addition to VWOne which is my Volkswagen website still in developement.

Handy PHP will feature various small functions which I have written along with a number of tutorials which I feel will answer some of the more common PHP questions. The website template is derived from the template I designed for VWOne. It is a relatively clean template which is variable width but does have a few glitches when viewed in Internet Explorer.

The website will eventually offer script and library downloads, links to other PHP resources, and various PHP information.

So if you could stop by and take a look at Handy PHP and let me know what you think, that would be great. Any feedback will be helpful and will be considered. I usually make better progress from negtive feedback so don't be shy. I'm a big boy and understand that my site is far from perfect.

Thanks,
vujsa

[yordan 10]

Warning: ob_start(): output handler 'ob_gzhandler' cannot be used after 'URL-Rewriter' in /home/beetlema/public_html/vw/includes/mambo.php on line 2771

Is this normal ? This appears on top of your site, just above the VW car.

[vujsa 0]

No, this isn't normal! That started after I was working on some auto prepend/append scripts. Some of the files became corrupt as a result and I haven't had a chance to repair the problems.Thanks for stopping by though.vujsa

[justlikepaper 0]

It is a pretty good site in my opinion. One thing I do not like is the layout of the site. It isn't very appealing, and sometimes that is a bad thing. Make sure that there is barely any white and it may turn out better.Also, you should start making tutorials on how to make a news box that works. I have not seen very many that work, and this would be great for your site.One more thing. Is your site hosted on Xisto? I know it may seem like a random question, but I was just wondering.

[pyost 0]

It is a pretty good site in my opinion. One thing I do not like is the layout of the site. It isn't very appealing, and sometimes that is a bad thing. Make sure that there is barely any white and it may turn out better.

 

I second that. Of course, it is always better to fully develop your web site first, and then switch to the design. Here are some things that I would change.

The pathway text should be separated from the bottom border a bit (that includes the date, too). I would give it 'padding-bottom: 3px;'

The header isn't very good. While I can't say it is TOO simple, it could use some more background effects, and LESS text effects. Also, I would change the text colour to a brighter one, probably white.

You need to add a 'padding-left' to the left sidebar, since the text touches the browser border, which makes it hard to read sometimes.

The top menu is neatly done, but has sharp edges, which I don't like.

As for the content, the titles (with the background) should be vertically centered. I think it looks better that way.

And the last thing is connected to the right sidebar. Again, I think it is another thing that needs to be centered, but horizontally.

Be advised that I am using Firefox, so some of these things might be good in Internet Explorer. But if it's not good in all browsers, it's not good at all

[yordan 10]

/ Can be found at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/// Do not remove this header!

I love this "do not remove".

[vujsa 0]

First, I want to thank ALL of you for stopping by and taking a look at my website. Having a lot of input is a big help when trying to wrap things up. I think I have got some really useful feedback here. I'll try and address each item individually.

 

It is a pretty good site in my opinion. One thing I do not like is the layout of the site. It isn't very appealing, and sometimes that is a bad thing. Make sure that there is barely any white and it may turn out better.

 

I'm not sure what I can do about this. The only white "#ffffff) on the site is a little text and the serch box. I guess you could be talking about the pale aqua background I'm using. Or maybe you are talking about the whitesoace on the website. The "BLANK" areas. Those will be filled in as I add more content. You said that you didn't like the layout but didn't really specify. Is is a matter of where content is or an overall visual problem?

 

Also, you should start making tutorials on how to make a news box that works. I have not seen very many that work, and this would be great for your site.

 

I already have a pretty good list of tutorials that I need to write. I'll be adding a feature soon for visitors to suggest tutorials that they would be interested in having me write. As for a news box, I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean that you like the way that news articles are set up on my website? If this is so, I must inform you that that isn't one of my scripts. I think that I could write such a script and a tutorial for such a script but it would be a pretty advanced topic. I'll keep a more simplified newsbox in mind though.

 

One more thing. Is your site hosted on Xisto? I know it may seem like a random question, but I was just wondering.

 

YES

That isn't a random question at all. You are on a posting for hosting forum so any questions about hosting is always relative. I've been using Xisto hosting since March 2005. Since the free web hosting package here is better than most of the paid hosting packages I could afford, I haven't seen much reason to leave. I may move to a paid server someday if my bandwidth requirements exceed my quota here but if that is the case, I should be able to generate enough advertising income to pay for hosting.

 

I second that. Of course, it is always better to fully develop your web site first, and then switch to the design. Here are some things that I would change.

The pathway text should be separated from the bottom border a bit (that includes the date, too). I would give it 'padding-bottom: 3px;'

The header isn't very good. While I can't say it is TOO simple, it could use some more background effects, and LESS text effects. Also, I would change the text colour to a brighter one, probably white.

You need to add a 'padding-left' to the left sidebar, since the text touches the browser border, which makes it hard to read sometimes.

The top menu is neatly done, but has sharp edges, which I don't like.

As for the content, the titles (with the background) should be vertically centered. I think it looks better that way.

And the last thing is connected to the right sidebar. Again, I think it is another thing that needs to be centered, but horizontally.

Be advised that I am using Firefox, so some of these things might be good in Internet Explorer. But if it's not good in all browsers, it's not good at all

 

Wow a list. Thanks for specifying. I'll use a list to reply to each item.

That has been something I have been having trouble with. I get it to work in IE then it won't work in mozilla (NS, FF, etc...) or vice versa. It also seems to be very dependant on the version of software being used. Newer versions of IE tend to read the CSS better so I might be able to finally get this issue worked out. I use Netscape which since it used the same Mozilla core as Firefox and Mozilla displays the content nearly the same. Most of the glitches have presented them selves as a result of trying to get IE to display correctly. The newest Mozilla version makes that text particularly difficyult to read in path and date line.

The header was a pretty quick graphic I put together in order to get the template usable. The decorative text was an attempt to overcome the lack of visual satisfaction provided by the image. It will eventually get a makeover.

Again, this is a version issue. The Netscape I normally use (about 2.5 years old now) correctly displays the text about 3px. The new Mozilla core displays the text more like it does in IE. I'll add some padding to that.

I'm glad to here that you like the top menu, I lost a lot of sleep trying to develope it. It is the menu I designed for my Volkswagen website. As for the sharp edges, I think that you mean the sharp pixels which will require me to run an unsharp filter on the images? I'll give that a try.

Is this text vertically aligned currently? I hadn't noticed before. I used the default Mambo template CSS for some of that stuff. I guess I have to go ahead and finish my CSS now.

Is this for the header only or all of the content? The header is the same as the left side in this case. Now that you bring it up, I see a slight difference in padding on each side of the header block. Wow, that'll take a while to figure out.

Thanks for letting me know what browser you are using. It would have been nice if you told me what version but I can now see that it is FireFox 1.5.0.7! I had to choose which features I wanted to work no matter what and ompromise on the other cross-browser compatibility. I think that I can adjust everything now so that it will be better interpreted by all browsers. Now that IE has decided to make an attempt to follow the standards, it will be easier. I'll have to add a best viewed notice for visitor with older browsers.

Boy I tell you, it is not an easy task to design a variable width dynamic template these days. But nearly all of my spacing and posistioning issues have been resolved. I used to get the background image repeat errors when the page width was too narrow.

 

I love this "do not remove".

 

Yeah me too. I don't care how many people use the scripts and tutorials but I want them to remember where they got the information so they can tell others. The entire purpose of my website is to provide PHP help but if all of my content is copied to other websites, then people don't have a reason to visit my site. If people don't visit, what is the point! That's why we require posts to either provide sufficient credit to the original writter or we delete the content and ban the plagiarizing member. We don't want our stuff stollen and we don't want stollen posted here.

 

As for your first post in this topic, I noticed that I had accidentally pasted instead of copied the url information for my new website and left multiple copies of the VW site instead. The VW site has some file corruption due to some xperiments I was doing with my .htaccess files. That site will be getting a fresh installation of Joomla soon to replace the origianl Mambo installation. I'll be an ugly upgrade I can tell you now. So many mods installed.

 

Again, thank you everyone for being candid about your opinions. I'll try to get these issues resolved ASAP.

 

As for anyone else, please continue to review my site as I'm sure there are other issues that'll need to be resolved.

 

When leaving suggestions reguarding how the website looks to you, please include the name and version of the browser you are using as well as the resolution of you monitor if you know it.

 

vujsa

[iGuest 3]

vujsa,

 

Nice site. I plan on stealing gleaning a lot of good information from over there.

 

There is no doubt that it will be successful for you. Any problems if I include a link on my pages?

 

Only thing I noticed was a 'jump' of the page below the horiz menu under the header when on-hover happens. When I load/re-load the page and then hover on the horizontal menu, the image change shifts the contents beow the menu bar. (NS7 OS9.1)(antique)

 

As for tutorials, will you be linking to your tut's here at Xisto? or copying them to the new site?

 

I'll be back regularly. Good Luck with it.

[yordan 10]

Yeah me too. I don't care how many people use the scripts and tutorials but I want them to remember where they got the information so they can tell others.

I'm currently having this kind of problems at work.My collegues use my tutorials when they teach things to customers.
They simply remove my sig on the bottom page, saying this is useless for they current purpose.
I think they have to write down they own pages, or mention my name when they use my pages, they should be honest and never remove my name from my tutorials.

[vujsa 0]

Well, thanks for all of the feedback, please keep it coming.

 

Here are the cahnges / fixes I've done so far.

Fixed the pathway text position. Looks nearly identical in Netscape, Firefox, and Internet Explorer now.

I slightly blured the edged of the top menu buttons - is that better?

Vertically centered the contenT titles.

Fixed the height of the left menu buttons. Actually look like buttons again. Not sure how that got out of wack.

Here is what I haven't fixed:

I haven't had a chance to pad the left menu as it will take a bit of creativity. Hard coding it would cause a lot of other problems so I'll have to add some parameters to the content residing in that position.

The right side content header is not as wide as the space it occupies. I'll have to find the CSS entry for this particular part of the template and get that fixed but with the nesting involved in that area, it could take some time.

The website header image won't be cahnged right now because it functions and I have a bunch of other things that need to be worked on.

jlhaslip, I couldn't find the "jump" you were refering to. There is a bit of a shift when a page loads that has scroll bars on it because the top of the page loads then the content loads which is when the browser realizes that the content uses more space than the screen has and scroll bars are loaded. Might I suggest that you upgrade from Netscape 7.02. I'm using NS 7.2 which has the same usability as 7.02 but obviously does a better job of reading more modern webpages. I don't really care for NS 8.1 since it behaves much differently than the NS 7.X series.

As for linking or resusing tutorials here at Xisto, I am not planning to do either. I'll promote Xisto as a free web hosting service and a place to find many people that are knowledgable in PHP as well as many good PHP tutorials but there will be no direct link to the tutorials. I may use my tutorials at Xisto as inspiration for NEW tutorials at Handy PHP but the articles I have written here stay here. If a topic here comes up some day and the best answer to the question is located on my website, I'll post a link but I don't want my website to be an extention to the PHP forum here and I ddon't want Xisto to be the extention to my tutorials.

 

yordan, that's a tough situation to be in. Here is the real problem. If you write a tutorial that you use at work, your employer can claim rights to it. They can argue that because they are paying you to do a job that contributing a helpful guide that aids you in doing your job makes the guide their property. Basically, they feel that they have paid you for the information already and as a result don't feel that you have any rights to the material. This is mre obvious with an architech. The architechs job is to design buildings. His employer pays him to design these buildings. As a result, the designs are the property of the employer. The architech can still claim that he designed the building but can not claim ownership of the plans that he drew. This is significant because if you try to make a fuss about this a work, your employer may simply say that there isn't anything that can be done since you no longer can claim ownership of the tutorials. The only way around something like this is to establish ownership of any plans or documents prior to sharing them with others.

 

I hope everyone will continue to review my website and provide feedback.

 

Thank You,

vujsa

[iGuest 3]

I would like nothing better than to be able to upgrade the Browser I have, but, unfortunately, the hardware and OS9.1 won't run anything newer. I am using an iMac OS9.1 when I am on the Internet because I simply had too many headaches and malware attacks when I use my windows laptop. Not from Xisto or the trap, but other places. So, it might just be this antique machine/browser combination??? Doesn't surprise me at aall

[vujsa 0]

Well, I think that I have managed to address all of the issues brought up here except for the site header image.

It was kind of difficult to get everything right but I found a way to trick IE into displaying everything correctly.

I may eventually write a CSS specifically for each browser and let PHP decide which CSS file to use based on the users browser.

Some of the issues were kind of simple like the off centered appearence of the right column headers. The alignment was "left" instead of "center". The individual modules each reside in a <div> tag so the content isn't centered inside the module, but the modules are centered inside of the column.

The left side required a whole set of new CSS rules to allow for the padding of some items and no padding for the menu items. Simply adding some padding to the entire column would have really casued a bunch of problems with the spacing for the entire website. All of the columns would have had to have been resized along with ALL of the graphics work for each item. Would pretty much meant that the entire website template would have needed to be redesigned.

I'm planning to add a few more functions and tutorials this week or next. Maybe after I get a little more content added to the site I'll start to redesign the website header image. I need to tie in an advertising banner and other promotional graphics work when I do the header. I really need a logo!

I might ask around at Xisto for some inspiration. Thats how I came up with the header at VW One! Of course I found that inspriation is about all you'll get from Xisto since no one bothered to post any real suggestion but were more than happy to narrow the field of images I posted.

Anyway, if anyone has any ideas for a logo, let me know.

Well, thanks for reviewing my website.

vujsa

[Vyoma 0]

Well Vujsa, being the artistic person I am, the texture on the header area and the rest of the colour choice - I found it a bit hard to digest. The pastel green is fine, but may be you need to balance the colours a bit. The link on the breadcrumb at the top, looks a bit too saturated yellow.

I know, I am talking a bit vaugely, but here is what I will do to help:
http://www.wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html

Just select the base colour you want, and it gives the other balanced colours that makes the site look balanced. It proposes various schemes within the colour set you have chosen.

In the Tetrad formation of the colour wheel, when it is set on the overall green of your site, here is the set of colour I get:
The Green series
#009999
#006B6B
#BFFFFF
#80FFFF

The orange series
#FF6600
#B34700
#FFD9BF
#FFB380

The ochre series
#FFB200
#B37D00
#FFECBF
#FFD980

And blue series
#1919B3
#12127D
#C8C8FF
#9191FF

This is ofcourse in the standard setting. You can choose a Pastel, Dark Pastel, Contrast or Pale, and you get different set of 12 colours.
Use them appropriately in your CSS and I think you will get a better colour balance.

I know this will be a lot of work - but you asked for it.

[vujsa 0]

Well, this is a lot of information to take in at once since I'm not very artistic and haven't had any art classes since the eigth grade (like 20 years ago). I studied music instead. Wish I had taken an art class in college now. I understand the concept of the color scheme and basically why those colors would be grouped together for the scheme but I have no idea how to use them.

 

Here are the colors that work best for me which is what you described before:

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

 

So I have a few questions for you:

Are these 16 colors the only colors I should use on my website?

- Can various shades of these colors be used or just stick to the 16 that were generated?

Should these colors be used equally or should one shade be favored?

Can black, white and the various grays be used with these schemes?

Should all of the 16 colors be used or should some be excluded?

Should text always be in direct contrast to the background or should it sometimes complement the background?

Finally, what colors would you use where on the website?

I know this is a lot of questions but I really don't have any direction to go in right now. I think if most of the questions were answered for me, then I would have a better idea of what I need to do.

 

Thanks for the link to the color scheme tool. I wish that website provided a little more insight as to how to use the colors.

 

Yes, the yellow is too much. Everytime I look at it, I think I should change it but it never gets done.

 

Well, thanks for taking the time to look at my website and give a few pointers.

 

vujsa

[Vyoma 0]

I will try to answer them one by one. I am no great designer either, but I hope this helps:


1. Are these 16 colors the only colors I should use on my website?
- Can various shades of these colors be used or just stick to the 16 that were generated?
Well, preferably you use these 16 colours only for all the basic elements and constructs of your website. Atleast you start of with it. At a later stage you may deviate a bit with its shades. But trust me, as an amature, I find it hard to get neat design, once I deviate from it. (And say, you do want to use that saturated yellow for some places, then you actually have to work on the tetrad angles - http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ so that you get a good scheme). But as I said, stick to the 16 colours - they should be more than enough, for various elements. (I usually go for a Mono or Contrast scheme - my brain fries out looking at so many colours).

2. Should these colors be used equally or should one shade be favored?
That is not much of a requirement. You give the groups of these colours to element groups. For example, the overall website generally would use your main colour - the green shades. (May be #E6FFFF for background, #009999 for general header, and #005C5C for font colour). Then you use the blue group (which is nearer) or the orange group (which is farthest) for the menu bar may be. It depends on placements also. Try few different things - it is easier now - you only have four groups to choose from - just iterate betweent them.

3. Can black, white and the various grays be used with these schemes?
Blacks and whites and various shades of gray? Well they may be used in various elements as areas of shadows and highlights.

4. Should all of the 16 colors be used or should some be excluded?
Ofcourse you can exclude some of the colours. But if you happen to notice that you need to exclude one full group, try to see if you can get a "Triad' solution working for you. What I mean to say is, try to use atleast one colour from all of the group.

5. Should text always be in direct contrast to the background or should it sometimes complement the background?
I do not know much. I do not yet have a process in place for it yet. But I have inkling that it is a choice of design - whatever looks better or it goes on taste of the designer.

6. Finally, what colors would you use where on the website?
I am not very sure dude. It will require me atleast a couple of days to choose between colours. I am not that good. With 4 colour groups, there are myriad of options - we should be having that many element groups on the webpage for it, obviously. Then, I do the amature work- permutation and combination.

Damn. I do not get points for this, do I?