The new year has brought a tremendous amount of work along with it and I want to thank all of you. I definitely prefer an abundance of work to a scarcity of work, and that is surely the situation I find myself in today. As soon as I finish these projects up, however, I will be writing some new tutorials.

In the recent and current projects I’ve received I have encountered some tasks that I have found unusual and so took some time to figure out an efficient way to complete the task. Not that some of the things haven’t already been done, but since they are new to me I will try (being not far from the situation of the user seeking help since it was just days or weeks prior that I was in also in that situation) to explain them as thoroughly and simply as possible.

It seems the more familiar a topic becomes, the more difficult it is to relate to the issues of those just learning and that is why I try to write tutorials as soon as I have done something I find intriguing, but also familiarity (as you can see in the PHP/Salt tutorial) is not always a bad thing either because you can easily increase complexity and security. So more or less, it’s a give and take and I’m now beginning to ramble.

So in the meantime, hang tight, subscribe, and I will hopefully get these projects done quickly to write some more tutorials. Yes, I know I have been saying this for over a month, but the Holidays were very busy fortunately or unfortunately and work has to come first to tutorials since it’s a source of income as I’m sure it is for many of you (and so hopefully a bit easier to sympathize with my cause).

Regards,
Dennis M.

Regards,
Dennis M.

As many of you may or may not know, Microsonic used to be a hosting company. From 2005-2008 I ran the site as “Microsonic Hosting.” In 2009, however, I decided to make it a more specialized place consisting of my thoughts and sharing my skills with others. Today, however, an idea ran across my head: re-open the hosting branch. So in this topic, I’ll take you through my head a bit more.

Well, what does this entail? The mere thought makes one wonder what would happen to the current site. Well, it would remain the same. As I mentioned, it would be a “branch” of Microsonic Development. I actually run “Microsonic Development” as a freelance programming company, so I may even revamp this to being much more than simply a blog! A hosting company that is not run by C/O’s who know very little about what they’re selling, but rather a professional selling services to another professional. Keeping in mind the reason I closed up shop in the first place, however, is also very important.

Due to lack of business and trying to keep prices low, costs built up and I ended up taking a loss on the whole project unfortunately. Not that I am in it to solely make a profit, but just like for everyone else, finances are tight. But then again, in retrospect it is important to think about what caused the collapse. My lack of advertising was the ultimate beast that did it in in the first place. All clients I had were extremely happy and very upset when I announced the initial closing of the company, however, had more people known about the satisfaction perhaps more members would have joined.

So now, as I continue to ponder my own thoughts, what are you personal thoughts? Perhaps I should specialize? Rather than web hosting, perhaps I will provide shell or VPS hosting? Let me know what you think! Your thoughts are, as usual, very helpful for me as they inspire my decisions about how to proceed in certain actions and what kinds of articles to write!

Regards,
Dennis M.

Thanks for your understanding,
Dennis M.

As you can see, it has been a long time no post XD. It’s simply because I’ve been very busy with work and projects you guys have been giving me. Within the next week I should be done again and ready for you guys to continue contacting me for more projects. Also, in between projects I will be posting some more blog posts to help everyone. With every project I get I gain greater ideas on what you guys would like to learn.

As for next time, I have a big post planned. I’ve been working on a fairly large project for almost 2 weeks and am finally finishing up. I won’t say much about it until it’s released (and then I will make a whole post about it ), but it’s a great script and definitely will be worth your while to take a look at.

Thanks for checking!

Regards,
Dennis M.

Generally, most people can only establish their names by doing quality work at a great price (or in a few cases, great work and advertising at a high price pays off too – but those are the few giants of the web today). Word of mouth is good, but when you have a website, you should be showing off more than that to your potential clients. When a client visits your site (no matter which way – browsing, by accident, referal, etc.) their first opinion is your site itself. From there, they are looking for a giant link or button that says “Portfolio.”

When the user goes to this link, they don’t want to see just links, but they want a thumbnail shot of what to expect, a link to a working example, and a description of the purpose of the work. Now I know I do not have all of those things right now (just yet, anyway), but they are well worth it. Since most users see other works I’ve done (and after speaking to me on MSN) they are always satisfied with what I have to offer, but I am working on my designing skills and a portfolio script which I shall be launching very soon so I can practice what I preach.

So now that everyone understands that a portfolio should be more than just a collection of works you done, everyone can start really presenting themselves effectively. Like I said, soon I will be finishing my portfolio script and perhaps releasing it to the public, so if you are unsure about how to get yours started, that may be a great starting point for you!

Regards,
Dennis M.

First off, we’ll explain what pagination is. You may be reading this article not even certain if pagination is what you need. However, if you have multiple MySQL results you wish to organize and display “x” results per page, you’re on looking at the right thing. It is as simple as that. Pagination is really just web jargin used to shorten up “return results only displaying ‘x’ per page.”

So, I’m going to post the snippet and I’ll go into it a little bit, but I do believe that the comments explain pretty thoroughly. First the database structure we’re going to use

CREATE TABLE `pagination` (
`id` BIGINT( 10 ) NOT NULL ,
`name` VARCHAR( 32 ) NOT NULL ,
`content` TEXT NOT NULL ,
PRIMARY KEY ( `id` )
) ENGINE = MYISAM ;

And now.. The moment we’ve been waiting for… The actual pagination script!

<?php
/**
* Pagination Script by Dennis M.
* (C) 2009 Dennis M. All Rights Reserved.
*
* Primary purpose of this script is to teach
* people the art and concept of pagination
* and how to effectively create/use it.
* Please give credit to Dennis M. if you
* take anything directly from this script.
*
*/

// Connect to DB
mysql_connect("localhost","USER","PASS");
mysql_select_db("USER_DATABASE");

// Define results per page
$perPage = 1;

// Define page number in URL
$num = $_GET['no'];

// Define link starting point.
$linkno = 1;

// If no number given, default it.
if(!isset($num) OR !is_numeric($num)){
$num = 1;
}

// Multiply to see where we're at to show results
$currentLimit = $perPage*($num-1);

// Get how many pages we'll have total (for links)
$numPages = mysql_num_rows(mysql_query("SELECT * FROM pagination"))/$perPage;

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM pagination ORDER BY id ASC LIMIT ".mysql_escape_string($currentLimit).",".mysql_escape_string($perPage).";");

// Fetch all the info
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($query)){
$title = stripslashes($row['name']);
$article = stripslashes($row['content']);
?>
<html>
<head>
<title>Pagination Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1><?php echo($title); ?></h1><br />
<p><?php echo($article); ?></p><br /><hr>
<?php
}
print "<p align=\"right\">";
if($perPage <= 2){
while($links < round($numPages)){
?>

<?php
$links++;
$linkno++;
}
} else {
while($links <= round($numPages)){
?>

<?php
$links++;
$linkno++;
}
}
?></p>
</body>
</html>

Pagination Tutorial

The download link is above as usual! Enjoy

Regards,
Dennis M.

Also, I’m obviously for hire for anyone who just wants work done rather than to learn about it. So if you have work, feel free to contact me at dennis [at] microsonic [dot] org or via MSN at admin [at] microsonic [dot] org. But again, just to learn some new things, I’m always to help for free by creating an article on here!

Regards,
Dennis M.

Take care,
Dennis M.

Just an update here talking about the next big update that I have planned for you guys! But first, I’d like to remind you all of the recent “PHP Password + Salt + Encryption” Tutorial that I recently posted yesterday! It is ready for you all to go take a look. So anyone interested in that, might want to go take a look at that

Alright, back to business. So this next update will be broken up. It’s going to be HUGE! Over the next week (in any order, not necessarily how I have them posted here) you should expect extensive posts about the following to be up:

• Simple C/C++ Memory Management Tutorial
• The Importance of RSS Feed and What It Is
• Creating PHP Classes and How to Use Them Effectively
• What is CGI/Perl and How Could it be Useful
• The Basics of Working within a Linux Terminal

Like I said, I’m going to be trying to get these all ready and posted for you guys within the next week or two. Also, as arbitrary as these articles may seem, they come from all of you who have written to me asking for these things. These are among the most popular articles, so please feel free to drop me an e-mail and ask more questions that I could answer!

The e-mail is: dennis@microsonic.org

Thanks again,
Dennis M.