Happy new year everybody! I’d thought I’d start off the new year with a little present for you all.. the new version of my PHP Form Processor. Thanks to Andrew Dunn for some excellent ideas on how to improve the processor, as well as for tweaking bits of code here and there, I’m able to bring you version 2 of the form processor.

The last few months has seen some additional functionality added, as well as fixing a few bugs here and there. Version 2 of the processor is fully backwards compatible with version 1, so don’t panic!

Here’s a brief summary of the changes:

• Callbacks added to radio buttons
• All functions now declared as public or private respectively
• A configuration system, which lets you change the behaviour of the form processor
• The ability to echo the form output or save it to a variable (useful for templating systems)
• A text transform rule has been added, which allows you to set text to be lowercase, uppercase or uppercase the first letter of each word
• A minimum length rule has been added, which allows you to set the minimum number of characters a user must enter
• A maximum length rule has been added, which allows you to set the maximum number of characters a user must enter
• Cleaned up the code
• Swapped exit() statements with exceptions, so these can be caught and handled if necessary

I’ve also created a few example forms to show the functionality of the form processor. Please take a look at the PHP Form Processor article for full details.

Gavin Holt is also doing a series of articles demonstrating practical usage of the form processor. Check it out for some excellent ideas and usage examples.

DOWNLOAD THE PHP FORM PROCESSOR

…but I was today. Fellow web developer Gavin Holt pointed out a new website analytics tool called Woopra. I took a look at the website not expecting to be impressed, but then I watched a few videos demoing it and I just had to give it a go.

Two hours later my Woopra account was activated, and I’ve now got rid of Google Analytics and replaced it with Woopra. I can honestly say that after 5 minutes of using it it beats Google Analytics hands down in almost every aspect. The fact that I can see visitors as they appear on my site in real time, and then talk to them and watch the route they take through my site is frankly phenomenal. Google Analytics took 24 hours to update.. long after my visitors had been and gone.

My only concern is that people might get a bit privacy conscious if I suddenly start talking to them, and asking them if they’re liking the current the page they’re on! Do you see this in a different light? Would you be shocked if this happened to you?

The only flaw i’ve spotted so far is the pop-up chat is a bit unfriendly to initiate, but that would be an easy enough problem to rectify.

I’d recommend that anyone who has a website gives Woopra ago, just to experience the power! If you’re reading this post on my site watch out, I might just demo the power of Woopra to you

Let me know how you get on, and what you think it!

It’s always nice to get recognition for your work, and I definitely received some today when my website was featured on We Love WP, a site that showcases aesthetically pleasing WordPress sites. I’m not sure how popular the We Love WP site is, but it’ll be interesting to look at my traffic statistics tomorrow to see exactly how many users have visited my website.

If anyone can recommend any popular and respected website showcase sites, I’d love to hear from you. Or if you’re feeling in a really good mood and want to submit my website yourself, please feel free to!

Well not quite, but I do have a new site design! As most web designers seem to do, I began to hate my old design, so decided to revamp it! Hopefully the new site is cleaner, more elegant and professional. I hope you like it – the feedback I’ve had back so far has been fantastic.

Please let me know your thoughts, criticisms etc - a site is never perfect and can always be improved!

Why is it that when a voluntary or free project comes along, you just can’t say no! Over the last month i’ve been building a series of new web applications for Escouts, an online community that provides free hosting for Scout Groups in the UK.

I’ve taken on the role of the lead developer / organiser, and have a team of about 8 people working on the projects with me. The team are fantastic – they are a bit inexperienced, but they’re so enthusiastic to learn and improve their skills we’ve got on really well, and i’ve seen a huge improvement in the skills of some of the team over the last few months.

One of the main specifications which we drew up for the applications is to have them all integrated together, so they share user sessions and information. To do this, I suggested we use Jamdora, my web application platform. After typing up a few pages of documentation and letting the team loose at it, the feedback coming in, and they all loved it! I knew I was onto something when I came up with the idea for Jamdora!

The applications we’re currently building are a hosting/order system, a search engine, an awards system, a helpdesk and a server status site. So far we’re about half way through the build, but now the team have got the hang of coding in Jamdora development speed should increase rapidly. I’ll keep posted on this over the coming weeks, the end product should be very interesting!

I’m currently sitting on the train to university and using my laptop running a freshly installed copy of Vista and Windows Live Writer, I’m able to write out my entire blog posts, ready for posting when I get to university. Pretty cool stuff!

Since I got into building complex web applications, I’ve gradually built up a library of custom functions and classes, as I’m sure pretty much every programmer does over time. I’ve taken this one step further, and developed a platform which I now use to deploy all my projects around. I call it Jamdora, and I’m looking to make this open source as soon as I have time to do so! The Jamdora platform is very versatile and comes with a wide variety of classes, allowing your web application to accomplish many diverse tasks, be it creating PDF files, modifying the file system, or even creating audio files.

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G’day!

If you don’t know who I am, please check out the about me section of the website. If you do know who I am, hello! Either way, old or new friend, welcome to my website
As you can see from the menu at the top of the page, i’ve split the website into different sections – Blog, Articles and My Work. Each section will be aimed at different audiences, but there will be a lot of material which does cross between each section, so everything should link together nicely. Here’s a few notes on what i’ve got planned for each section…

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