Tag Archives: Best Practices

The MVC Paradox

Use of the Model View Controller (MVC) design pattern is generally accepted as a best practice in modern web applications. Like all design patterns, MVC is a reusable solution to a common problem. The MVC pattern is intended to address the following concerns: Support for multiple types of clients Reduce duplicate code when supporting multiple […]

The Twelve-Factor App Applied to PHP

If you develop web apps, I encourage you to check out The Twelve-Factor App. This is an excellent resource for anyone building and deploying software-as-a-service. PHP has great support for many of the twelve-factors. I want to take a look at specifically how each factor may be applied to a PHP application. I. Codebase “One […]

One Web

Almost two years ago, Luke Wroblewski first described a trend in web development called mobile first. The basic idea was that web applications should be designed for mobile first, as opposed to designed for the desktop first. Luke provided some compelling reasons for this including the explosive growth of mobile adoption, the fact that mobile […]

Phing Build Script

I’ve been experimenting with using Phing to automate building and deploying web applications. I want to share one of my build scripts and perhaps get some feedback from anyone with more experience using Phing. The requirements for the build script are fairly simple: It will not handle deployment. This particular web application is deployed by […]

Web Design and Web Development

Back in October, Jeffrey Zeldman tweeted something that I strongly agree with: Real web designers write code. Always have, always will. #aea This sparked many conversations including these two tweets from Chris Shiflett: According to @zeldman, real web designers write code. (I think he means HTML and CSS, not PHP, Perl, and Python.) What do […]

Open (local) Government

Last night I went to the Burlington, Vermont City Council meeting to listen to our newly re-elected mayor, Bob Kiss, give his State of the City speech and watch the City Council attempt to elect a new council president. I said “attempt” because, after 14 rounds of voting, they were still deadlocked 7-7 for opposing […]

The Web Is Not A Visual Medium

A claim you may have heard me make before is that the web is not a visual medium. Some of you know exactly what I mean and some of you probably think I’m nuts. For those of you who think I’m crazy, let me elaborate. You, like most people, probably experience the web visually. However, […]

CSS for Web Developers

The Burlington, VT PHP Users Group will be meeting Thursday January 22nd from from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm. Since we (Found Line) recently had some demolition – I mean renovations – done we’ve got a bit more space so thought we’d finally host the meeting. Here’s a description of the presentation, “CSS for Web […]

Testing Requirements with Unit Tests

I’m currently working on a project where the client is running their own web server that I will not have direct access to. This is actually a good thing in that it is a nice way to enforce the separation of the development and integration environments from the staging and production environments. However, how do […]

ZendCon 2008

ZendCon 2008 wrapped up last week. This was my first time going to ZendCon and it was definitely worth it. There were over 650 people and over 60 sessions at the Santa Clara conference. I’ll try to post summaries and highlights from the sessions I attended. It was a great opportunity to attended presentations from […]