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Importance of a Portfolio

June 10th, 2009 admin 1 comment

Portfolio. The word sometimes lingers in one’s mind, but usually is associated with artwork, or a collection of works from your high school English class. But really, an online portfolio (whether it’s only artwork/graphics or programming) is very important when trying to find interested clients.

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.

Categories: C/C++, Java, News, PHP Tags: , , , , , , , ,

PHP & Pagination

June 4th, 2009 admin No comments

Very often I see people asking questions about this on forums such as DP and NP. I have probably posted my code snippet on how to efficiently create a simple pagination document more times than I can count (which whether you believe it or not is pretty high ;) ). So I decided I’d go through it here.

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>

Now that’s all there really is to it. Basically how it works is it updates the SQL query depending on the page number (received from $_GET['no']). If none is defined, it reverts to the default and all goes accordingly!

Pagination Tutorial

The download link is above as usual! :) Enjoy

Regards,
Dennis M.

Categories: News, Software Reviews Tags: , , , , , ,

Updates soon… Hold tight!

May 3rd, 2009 admin No comments

It’s been a while since I’ve had a nice fleshed out article. So, I’m going to be creating another PHP article soon about something most users will hopefully find very interesting. Generally, I get great feedback from you guys on what you like and dislike about my articles which I value and greatly appreciate. Keep sending me requests and I will get to them.

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.

Categories: News Tags: , , ,

New Project (Almost Done and Can Start Articles!)

April 11th, 2009 admin No comments

Well I’ve been working on a new project which will cause the other things listed in the last post to be slightly postponed. This project is a very interesting one that I’m actually excited about. Until I’m allowed to talk about it, I won’t give exact details, but the project forces me to use my knowledge of Java Platform programming and PHP/MySQL. It’s exciting and the deadline is early next week, so once I turn that in to the client, I will proceed in writing the articles mentioned below!

Take care,
Dennis M.

Categories: News Tags: , , , ,

The Next Big Update: What to Look For

April 6th, 2009 admin No comments

Hello everyone,

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.

Categories: News Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,