mary – Page 3 – The Coding Pad

Setting the Time Zone for PHP 5.3.0+

While working with PHP 5.3 scripts, you may have run into an error that tells you you need to set the time zone for PHP 5.3.0. This might happen when upgrading or installing a CMS or other script in your hosted or local web environment. A comment error message I’ve run across several times when working with MODX, SilverStripe, Processwire, etc. is:

date.timezone option in php.ini must be set in PHP 5.3.0+

Another common error message is:

To use PHP 5.3.0+, you must set the date.timezone setting in your php.in.

In this brief post I’ll describe a couple of different ways to deal with this.

Continue reading “Setting the Time Zone for PHP 5.3.0+”

How to Create Multiple Virtual Hosts in Ubuntu

I’ve recently been doing a lot of my dev work and coding on Ubuntu 11.10 installed on a Lenovo Thinkpad T500, and learning the ins and outs of working from the terminal and all that. I have several sites that I’m working on in my local ubuntu lamp set up.

In this post, I’m going to describe the steps to create multiple virtual hosts on my local ubuntu set up for the various sites that I’m working on.

Continue reading “How to Create Multiple Virtual Hosts in Ubuntu”

MODX Revolution Beginner Tutorials Updated to Revolution 2.2

Just a quick post to let you all know that the MODX Revolution Beginner Tutorials series has been updated to reflect the changes made in MODX Revolution 2.2. Initially these tutorials were written using Revolution 2.0.x, but MODX has since graduated to 2.2.x.

The series is now up to 11 parts and there are still more installments to come, but to keep up to date, it was important to me to ensure that those who are starting the series now are able to relate what they see on their screen with what is represented in these tutorials.

So what are the major changes that I’ve made that would affect someone who has used or is using these tutorials? Continue reading “MODX Revolution Beginner Tutorials Updated to Revolution 2.2”

MODX: The Official Guide – Book Review

If you closely follow the happenings in the world of MODX you know that Bob Ray’s book MODX: The Official Guide.
is now available. I was fortunate to receive a copy of the unreleased PDF a few weeks ago and have been looking through it. Now that the book is available for pre-order, I thought it would be a good idea to share my thoughts.

First, I want to say that the release of this book is really exciting and a great step forward for the MODX community. This is not the first MODX book to be published. The first one was written in Japanese and covered MODx Evolution. This was followed later by two books published by Packt that also covered Evolution. I have, of course, not read the Japanese book but have looked at the two Packt books, and I can comfortably say that Bob’s book far supercedes either of the Packt books and is far superior product to either of them, and I recommend it without reservations.

Continue reading “MODX: The Official Guide – Book Review”

Master Drupal for Free with NodeOne Video Tutorials

I thought I would take a minute today, take a little detour, and share a resource I’ve discovered recently that is an absolute MUST for anyone who wants to learn and master Drupal. NodeOne is a Scandinavian Drupal shop and they have the most amazing collection of free video and written Drupal tutorials prepared by Johan Falk. Johan is a skilled Drupal-er and an excellent teacher who explains concepts clearly and systematically, and even though I’m quite comfortable working with Drupal I still find myself learning from him. He’s also written a Drupal 7 book – Drupal 7: the Essentials.

So check out the NodeOne Drupal learning library. For the best results, filter by the version of Drupal that you’re interested in and see what pops up. The screencasts are arranged in sets by topic. Here’s a partial list:

Learn Drupal 7 with NodeOne
Taming the Beast – Learn Views with NodeOne
Learn Page Manager
Learn Flag with NodeOne
Learn Content Access
Learn Rules with NodeOne
and more…

Thanks Johan for taking the time to share your knowledge! You should also follow Johan on twitter.

Enjoy 🙂