JohnHok.Com

Well over time while working with developing PHP web applications, I’ve gathered an increasing list of places I like to go to from time to time when I need PHP reference help. I’ll just list some of my favourite ones.

PHP Freaks
- This one has got some really detailed and well explained tutorials. It’s good for beginners as they provide pretty good step by step instructions and explanations. They haven’t added anything much new in the last little while though.

Pixel2life
- Big tutorial site, they got their fair share of good tutorials. But it’s really a hit and miss with these as some of them are really crappy (both in explanation and actual bad code) but you will find some good ones as well. Just take these more with a grain of salt.

Evil Walrus
- Really nice snippets and tutorials from this site. Has some neat stuff, good once you get the hang of PHP.

Code Walkers
- Again another pretty old site, but it has some good tutorials, just some of them are pretty outdated. Good to learn but not too practical to use in my opinion.

PHP Builder
- A little more advanced articles but useful stuff once you get to know PHP. Nice threads in the forum that you can look through and can be very useful for learning or reading up on other questions people had.

Faqts
- Quick question snippet site. I only find this useful when it comes up on Google searches for my questions. These can be very specific so unless you have a certain problem, the site won’t be that useful.

PHP Classes
- Once you’ve “mastered” PHP, this site is heaven. Has many open-source classes that you can use on your own projects for just about anything you can think of. You really have to know how OOP works in PHP though in order to get the most out of this site.

Here are a couple of very good “programming” forums.
Site Point
- Sitepoint is a hot spot for web developers, web designers, and webmasters. They have some very talented and knowledgeable moderators and members there. Very excellent place to ask about questions.

Programming Talk
- Part of the iNet group which also runs WebhostingTalk, not as active as Sitepoint but usually you can get a couple of good responses.

Well as you can probably tell, I haven’t made a post in a few days. Personally as well, blogs are very new to me and I wanted to create this blog just to have a little experiment. I went ahead and created it and started making some posts but I think I have quickly found out that blogging just isn’t my thing.

I don’t get the same satisfaction from blogging as I do from say coding or designing. Maybe I’m just a different type of person but I can definitely say that I don’t find blogging too “joyful” for me or self satisfying. For me, doing what I enjoy is one of my important philosophies and this is one of the luxuries of doing work on the Internet. It has allowed me to pursue things as designing and programming, which I enjoy a lot, while forgetting other things that I don’t like so much, and experimenting on other new things I haven’t done before.

Clearly though, I just don’t really enjoy blogging so the blog will be on a “temporary hiatus”. I may or may not make posts regularly, rather it will just depend on whether I have anything I feel like writing about and sharing; so don’t be expecting new entries everyday anymore (not like you did anyways). ;)

I found this on James Gill’s blog. Actually to be honest I saw it somewhere else first, I just can’t remember. I didn’t actually decide to repost it until I saw that James added me onto the list.

***Start Copying Here***

1) Write a short introduction paragraph about what how you found the list and include a link to the blog that referred you to the list.

2) COPY the ENTIRE List below and add it to your blog. To avoid duplicate content and increase the amount of keywords your site can accessible for, go ahead and change the titles of the blog. Just don’t change the links of the blog.

3) Take “My Adds” and move them into the “My Originals” list.

4) Add 3 Brand New Narcissistic Bloggers that you know of

My Adds:
Bryan Le
Tyler Cruz
Zane Jamal

The Originals:
Bob Buskirk
Jon Waraas
David Lithman
Gary Lee
Ed Lau
John Chow dot Com
Nate Whitehill
Stephen Fung
Michael Kwan
Jeff Kee
Stuart Hannig
Hannes Johnson
Nomar
Nathan Drach
Chris Gill
Shawn Knight
Bryan Baker
Carl Pei
John Hok

***Stop Copying Here***

I may not give you a lot of traffic, I may not help your page rank increase by linking to your blog, and heck, I may not even like your blog, but here’s how it goes.

If you want me to give your blog a review, leave an entry on your blog telling others about JohnHok.com and how they can get their blog reviewed. You must make sure that you also link back to http://www.johnhok.com or http://www.johnhok.com/2007/03/11/want-your-blog-reviewed/ in your blog post and reference the review as an “iReview” offer. The review can be as long or as short as you wish!

Once you have done this, leave a comment in this entry with a link to your blog entry and I will post a review with a minimum of 200 words for you. That’s all there is to it. If you have any questions feel free to ask as well. I’m looking forward to seeing your responses and participation.

Let’s first take in a definition of both these words.

To revise something is “the act of changing, rearranging, adding and eliminating elements of a work with the goal of overall improvement of the piece”.

To redevelop something is “to knock everything down and start all over again”.

One of the things you might notice about the definition of revise is that the overall goal is for improvement. While to redevelop something is to knock it down and start again from scratch. Webmasters, web designers, and web developers all fall into either one of these categories. There are just some people who choose to redevelop something to improve it rather than revising it to improve something. I personally think that to revise your software, design, or website is better than doing an entire redevelopment.

I’ll outline the pros and cons of both revising and redeveloping so you can get an overall better idea of both these concepts and decide for yourself which is better.

Revising
Pros
- more targetted improvements
- possibly a greater number of overall improvements
- faster overall development time
- less chance of bugs and unexpected problems

Cons
- can get “messy” revising old code or websites
- possibly a perception of less improvements made in the eyes of visitors
- sometimes revising is not a viable option with bad code

Redeveloping
Pros
- the impression of more changes made
- a chance to start from scratch and not rely on an old backend or a dated design
- generally allows more flexibility in your changes
- easier to fix something that may not have been fixible through only small revisions

Cons
- much longer development time
- with entirely new code, you are increasing the likelyhood of introducing new bugs
- you erase all previous improvements and bugs you have fixed
- less proven design or code can lead to viewer confusion or “backlash” towards the new changes

As you can see both revising and redeveloping has their pros and cons. Some of the cons of redveloping have bigger implications such as development time because it reduces the amount of time you have to work on marketing your new changes. You generally decrease the amount of time you spend on your actual site because you are too focused on redeveloping the new design or system. It can be hard to rebuild the strength after such a long abscence for your site.

There are some situations where redeveloping is a more viable solution and there are other times when it is not. Redeveloping something allows you to lay down a new foundation for your project if the foundation was weak to begin with. Just like a house, your site needs a strong foundation and sometimes the only way to do this is to rebuild from scratch.

Are you one of those people whose addicted to Starbucks? Well… I’m not but if you are, you’ll be glad to hear that there is a promotion going on for a “Free Tall Cup Of Coffee At Starbucks On March 15 From 10AM-12PM”!

The offer was discovered by various readers in the March 2007 edition of a magazine called “Parenting Magazine” on page 28 specifically.

Since I know many wannabe Internet dot com moguls are caffeine addicts, I thought I would give everyone a heads up! If your a fan of the Starbucks brew and your willing to wait in a long line for a free coffee then stop by your local Starbucks and get a free cup of coffee or if your Canadian, you can always just drop by your local Tim Hortons and grab a cup of coffee without waiting in a huge line!