Development
How to install WordPress in WAMP?
by masterdipesh on Mar.04, 2011, under PHP
Steps for installing wordpress on WAMP are as follows :
1. Go to www.wordpress.org and download the latest zipped version of wordpress.Do not forget to save the file to your computer or harddisk, Download WAMP and install it.
2. Left click on the small wamp icon on your desktop computer and click on phpMyAdmin because we must now create a database in order to install wordpress on our wamp server.
3. Click on privileges and click on add new user. Fill in the following information :
(a) Username = any name that you want
(b) Host = localhost
(c) Password = create your own password
4. Where you see Global Privileges just click on check all and then click go.
5. Click on the home icon within phpMyAdmin and where you see create a database put in a name for your database and click on create. ( The necessary database for installing wordpress has now been fully created ).
6. Extract all files from the downloaded wordpress zip file and navigate on your computer to wamp and the WWW folder and place the unzipped files within this WWW folder.
7. Open up the wordpress folder within the WWW folder and edit the wp-config-sample.php file by
(a) Changing it to wp-config.php and
(b) making the following information within the newly create wp-config.php file :
// ** MySQL settings ** //
define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress');
define('DB_USER', 'root');
define('DB_PASSWORD', '');
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
define('DB_COLLATE', '');
(1)DB_NAME = ‘ the name you created for the database within phpMyAdmin ‘
(2) DB_USERNAME = ‘ the name that you created for yourself within phpMyAdmin’
(3) DB_PASSOWRD = ‘ the password that you created for yourself within phpMyAdmin’
(4) DB_HOST = ‘ localhost’ Do not forget to save all the changes to the wp-config.php file.
8. Left click on your small wamp icon again on your desktop and click on localhost.Within YOUR PROJECTS you will see the wordpress folder and just click on it and it will bring up the wordpress installation procedure.
9. Give your blog a name and put in an email address eg info@localhost.com and click on install wordpress.
10. Before you hit the log in button make sure to copy and save the given password because this password has too many characters to remember.
11. Hit log in and fill out the username : admin and just copy the saved password into the password field.
12. Go to users within your wordpress panel and click on edit admin.Scroll down to the password section and create a new simpler password for yourself.

40+ Must-Bookmark PHP Classes & Libraries For Developing Faster
by masterdipesh on Jul.14, 2010, under Development, PHP
PHP, being the most popular scripting language, has lots of documentation, tutorials and resources about itself.
And, as a feature-rich language, it is possible to accomplish many tasks by default from handling e-mails to images, PDFs to database connections, etc.
However, there are high-quality and free PHP classes and libraries which helps you get more like:
- good looking charts
- form validation
- parsing feeds
- better image or database handling
- and more.
Here is a collection 40+ totally free PHP classes and libraries that every PHP developer would love to bookmark:

Content
BackPress
A complete library, that grew from WordPress, which offers the most common tasks for creating web applications like user management, HTTP transactions, logging, formatting and more.
PHP User Class
The class aims to ease the handling of user management tasks like registration, login, logout, etc. for PHP-MySQL applications.
phpSEO
Do you want to automate the process of generating keywords or meta tags from the content? This is what phpSEO does.
It can create any desired number of keywords from a given string or URL, generate a description and does all with not using any banned words you define.
PHP Typography
A PHP class for improving web typography with features like hyphenation, spacing control, wrapping of long text, character replacement for items like ordinal suffixes, trademark or math symbols and more.
Tag Cloud
The class creates tag clouds from a given array of items where each tag can have its own color, URL and style.
Handling Documents
PHPExcel
A set of PHP classes for writing to and reading from different file formats, like Excel, PDF and HTML.
It supports many MS Excel features like adding worksheets to a spreadsheet, inserting data and formulas to cells, calculating formulas and much more.
PHPPowerpoint
Set of classes for reading and writing to Powerpoint documents and supports adding slides, rotating images and more.
TCPDF
A complete PHP PDF class with features like custom page formats or margins, support for images and automatic page header/footer management.
It can also handle document encryption, PDF annotations, bookmarks and table of content.
FPDF
A PDF generator class with flexible page format and margins support. It can automatically arrange page breaks and can insert images into documents.
ZipStream
Compared to many PHP zipping libraries, this class does not require “writable temp directory” and can generate + start the download after the client timeouts (good for huge files).
File Uploads, Images & Colors
EasyUp
A clean and simple PHP file upload class which can also delete the file uploaded and get the size + filename of it
class.upload.php
A PHP class for manipulating and uploading image files on-the-fly.
It can convert, resize and work on uploaded images in many ways: add labels, watermarks and reflections.
Image Resizing Made Easy with PHP
A PHP class which can open, resize (smart resizing with no distortion) and save a number of images in multiple formats.
It is explained very well with a detailed tutorial.
WideImage
A feature-rich PHP library for image manipulations by providing a simple way to loading and saving images from/to files, strings, database, uploads and URL addresses.
You can apply filters, get channels, merge, resize, crop or rotate images using the library.
Asido
A powerful PHP image processor with features like resize, rotate, watermak, frame, convert, rotate, crop and much more.
xColor
An impressive class to make various calculations on colors like converting between formats (HEX,RGB,HSL/HSV), getting the end color when a color is added to or removed from a pallette and more.
PHPMailer
One of the most popular PHP e-mail classes around with features like multiple receivers, embedded images, HTML or plain text, SMTP authentication and much more.
There are also other projects by the same author for form-to-emails, mailing list and bounce management.
Swift Mailer
The library can send emails using SMTP, sendmail, postfix or a custom method.
It supports SMTP authentication, handling attachments and much more. A great thing is, it is extendable with plugins (there are already ones for antiflood, throttling and logging).
Forms
PHP Validation
A set of rules for instantly adding server-side validation to our forms.
The rules include “required, length, e-mail, date, numeric, string and much more. Also, you can add custom regular expressions.
VDaemon
It can check user input by comparing to the rules defined and, if necessary, display errors.
The library has methods like required, e-mail, zip codes, IP address, date, time, integer, string and much more.
Securimage (Captcha)
This PHP captcha class can create complex images or captcha codes and can be easily added into existing forms.
The codes generated can be in custom length, font and use backgrounds. Also, a Flash button can play the mp3 of the image.
Database & Backup
Crystal
This PHP database wrapper offers a human-readable SQL and makes CRUD operations so easy.
It also handles data validation and database manipulation (creating databases, tables, etc.)
ADOdb
A database abstraction library for PHP which supports almost any database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Interbase, Firebird, Informix, Oracle, MSSQL, Access, SQLite, etc.).
It is fast, supports advanced features like SQL code generation, database-backed sessions and more.
Doctrine
It offers a powerful database abstraction layer with many features for database schema introspection, schema management and PDO abstraction.
Also an object relational mapper (ORM) that sits on top of a powerful database abstraction layer (DBAL) which can write database queries in a proprietary object oriented SQL dialect called Doctrine Query Language (DQL) providing developers a powerful alternative to SQL that maintains flexibility without requiring unnecessary code duplication.
ezSQL
This PHP database class makes using popular databases a breeze.ezSQL with detailed debug functions to find outwhat’s going on in your SQL code.
NYT_Transformer
A free PHP class that is developed by the NY Times development team.
It can convert various input types to many other types like Oracle to MySQL or from a database to a flat file.
PHPMYExport (Database Backup)
The class enables users to backup and restore databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MSSQL, etc.) from a web-based interface.
BigDump (Staggered MYSQL Database Importer)
Taking backups of large MySQL databases via scripting (like from phpMyAdmin) is usually an issue as backups may not be completed because of the PHP timeout value.
This class backups databases with small portions every time and continues from where it had stopped.
Database CSV Class
It extracts data from a database and generates a .CSV file with it.
The class can be set to prompt you to download the generated file or save it in a folder (or both).
Charts
pChart
A PHP charts class for displaying the data beautifully.
It supports line- bar and pie charts in both 2D and 3D.
JpGraph
An impressive graphing library with support for lots of chart types. It generates web-friendly, small images, can draw 200+ flags with a built-in function and has an internal caching.
Sparkline PHP Graphing Library
Sometimes charts are not what we need and displaying the data within a paragraph, just like a word, works better.
This library exactly does that. Using it, you can create tiny graphics to present your data.
Feeds
SimplePie
It is the ultimate PHP class for fetching, caching, parsing feeds with lots of integrated methods from social bookmarking integration to one-click subscriptions for popular feed services.
Last RSS
A simple yet powerful RSS parser with features like caching, limiting items and date formatting.
Magpie RSS
A modular and bandwidth-friendly (transparent GZIP-encoding) RSS parser with an integrated caching system.
3rd Party Services
Short URL Class
There are many sort URL services and it is possible that you may not want to stick to only one.
This class can shorten URLs with TinyURL, Is.gd, Hex.io, Tr.im & Bit.ly API.
Google Translation PHP wrapper
Google Translate has a limit of translating 5000 words at once. This smart PHP class can translate unlimited numbe of words by splitting the input, sending the queries one-by-one and merging the results at the end.
GAPI – Google Analytics PHP Interface
An easy to use PHP class for getting Google Analytics data.
To view a working demo, check out the tutorial I had published using the class: FeedCount-Like Google Analytics Counter.
PHP Payment Library for Paypal, Authorize.net and 2Checkout (2CO)
If you want to use these providers at the same time in a project, the library offers an API which enables you to handle all providers in the same way.
phpFlickr
It is a PHP wrapper for the Flickr API which returns a friendly array of data to make development easier.
The class has support for uploading photos, getting albums + images inside them and caching.
Twitter with OAuth class
It makes communicating with the Twitter API (using OAuth) easier and supports almost every feature of the API.
PHPWeatherLib
A lightweight weather conditions library that pulls the weather data from the NOAA’s public XML weather feeds.
It can get the temperature (in multiple formats), wind, humidity and an icon for the weather situation.
Others
HTML Purifier
A complete PHP HTML filter library that can remove malicious code (with a whitelist) and also makes sure the documents are standards-compliant.
PHP DNS Query
A set of PHP classes that provides a direct domain name service API.
It offers direct to-server queries, the ability to process the response in detail but still with a simple interface for the developer.
hKit (Microformats Parser)
A simple class for extracting common microformats from a page (currently supports hCard).
XMPPHP
It enables you to connect to any XMPP 1.0 server (like Google Talk), send messages and supports SSL/TLS connections.

Getting started with PHP
by masterdipesh on Jun.12, 2010, under PHP
In this tutorial we will learn the basics of PHP language, capability of php languagehow to install the server for php, MySQL.
Prerequisite of PHP
- Apache Server With PHP support
- MySQL
To install the Apache Server with PHP support and MySQL on Linux, visit my previous blog explaining installation in detail.
http://opensourcelab.info/linux-resource/installing-lamplinux-apache-mysql-php-on-fedora-centos
What is PHP?
PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML.
“Hello World” Example :
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php
echo "Hello World!";
?>
</body>
</html>
Instead of lots of commands to output HTML (as seen in C or Perl), PHP pages contain HTML with embedded code that does(in this case, output “Hello World!”). The PHP code is enclosed in special start and end processing instruction <?php ?> that allow you to jump into and out of “PHP mode.”
What distinguishes PHP from something like client-side JavaScript is that the code is executed on the server, generating HTML which is then sent to the client. The client would receive the results of running that script, but would not know what the underlying code was. You can even configure your web server to process all your HTML files with PHP, and then there’s really no way that users can tell what you have up your sleeve.
The best things in using PHP are that it is extremely simple for a newcomer, but offers many advanced features for a professional programmer.
What can PHP do?
Anything. PHP is mainly focused on server-side scripting, so you can do anything any other CGI program can do, such as collect form data, generate dynamic page content, or send and receive cookies. But PHP can do much more.
There are three main areas where PHP scripts are used.
- Server-side scripting.
This is the most traditional and main target field for PHP. You need three things to make this work. The PHP parser (CGI or server module), a web server and a web browser. You need to run the web server, with a connected PHP installation. You can access the PHP program output with a web browser, viewing the PHP page through the server. All these can run on your home machine if you are just experimenting with PHP programming. - Command line scripting.
You can make a PHP script to run it without any server or browser. You only need the PHP parser to use it this way. This type of usage is ideal for scripts regularly executed using cron (on *nix or Linux) or Task Scheduler (on Windows). These scripts can also be used for simple text processing tasks(Not covered in this post, will be covered in my later post) - Writing desktop applications.
PHP is probably not the very best language to create a desktop application with a graphical user interface, but if you know PHP very well, and would like to use some advanced PHP features in your client-side applications you can also use PHP-GTK to write such programs. You also have the ability to write cross-platform applications this way. PHP-GTK is an extension to PHP, not available in the main distribution. (Not covered in this post)
PHP can be used on all major operating systems, including Linux, many Unix variants (including HP-UX, Solaris and OpenBSD), Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, RISC OS, and probably others. PHP has also support for most of the web servers today. This includes Apache, Microsoft Internet Information Server, Personal Web Server, Netscape and iPlanet servers, Oreilly Website Pro server, Caudium, Xitami, OmniHTTPd, and many others. For the majority of the servers, PHP has a module, for the others supporting the CGI standard, PHP can work as a CGI processor.
So with PHP, you have the freedom of choosing an operating system and a web server. Furthermore, you also have the choice of using procedural programming or object oriented programming, or a mixture of them. Although not every standard OOP feature is implemented in PHP 4, many code libraries and large applications (including the PEAR library) are written only using OOP code. PHP 5 fixes the OOP related weaknesses of PHP 4, and introduces a complete object model.
With PHP you are not limited to output HTML. PHP’s abilities includes outputting images, PDF files and even Flash movies (using libswf and Ming) generated on the fly. You can also output easily any text, such as XHTML and any other XML file. PHP can autogenerate these files, and save them in the file system, instead of printing it out, forming a server-side cache for your dynamic content.
One of the strongest and most significant features in PHP is its support for a wide range of databases. Writing a database-enabled web page is incredibly simple. The following databases are currently supported:
- Adabas D
- dBase
- Empress
- FilePro (read-only)
- Hyperwave
- IBM DB2
- Informix
- Ingres
- InterBase
- FrontBase
- mSQL
- Direct MS-SQL
- MySQL
- ODBC
- Oracle (OCI7 and OCI8)
- Ovrimos
- PostgreSQL
- SQLite
- Solid
- Sybase
- Velocis
- Unix dbm
PHP also have a database abstraction extension (named PDO) allowing you to transparently use any database supported by that extension. Additionally PHP supports ODBC, the Open Database Connection standard, so you can connect to any other database supporting this world standard.
PHP also has support for talking to other services using protocols such as LDAP, IMAP, SNMP, NNTP, POP3, HTTP, COM (on Windows) and countless others. You can also open raw network sockets and interact using any other protocol.
PHP has support for the WDDX complex data exchange between virtually all Web programming languages. Talking about interconnection, PHP has support for instantiation of Java objects and using them transparently as PHP objects. You can also use our CORBA extension to access remote objects.
PHP has extremely useful text processing features, from the POSIX Extended or Perl regular expressions to parsing XML documents.
For parsing and accessing XML documents, PHP 4 supports the SAX and DOM standards, and you can also use the XSLT extension to transform XML documents. PHP 5 standardizes all the XML extensions on the solid base of libxml2 and extends the feature set adding SimpleXML and XMLReader support.
At last but not least, we have many other interesting extensions, the mnoGoSearch search engine functions, the IRC Gateway functions, many compression utilities (gzip, bz2, zip), calendar conversion, translation and the features of PHP are end less.
Now we will start with the simple example
Step 1 : Create a file name helloworld.php in the DOCUMENT_ROOT of your server.
For linux generally it is “/var/www/html” and for windows if WAMP is installed then it is “c:\wamp\www\”
Step 2 : Copy the following content to newly created file.
<html>
<head>
<title>PHP Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>My First PHP Application</h1>
<?php echo ‘<h1>Hello World!!!!!</h1>’; ?>
</body>
</html>
Step 3 : Run the newly created file. Type “http://localhost/helloworld.php” in the web browser. And if every thing goes fine then following output will be shown which renders the page.
“Further tutorial will be posted soon. so keep visting.”

Free Flash Media Server Alternatives
by masterdipesh on Jun.09, 2010, under Flex, Video Streaming
Today, many projects are built around real-time communication (text, voice or video) like collaboration tools, chat applications and much more.
Adobe® Flash® Media Server is probably the most widely used solution for streaming video and real-time communication. It is a stable product that has been experienced for years and used by many companies.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for a free solution to stream your media, there are so few alternatives that you can rely on.
And here are 2 of them (if you know any other free and solid ones, please share):
Red5
Red5 is an open source Flash server that is written in Java and supports:
- streaming audio/video (FLV, MP3, F4V, MP4, AAC, M4A)
- recording client streams (FLV only)
- shared objects
- live stream publishing (Sorenson, VP6, h.264, MP3, AAC and more)
It has installers for OSX and Windows. Also, it can be downloaded as a zip file to be used in any OS.
Mammoth Server
Mammoth is also an open source Flash streaming server that is built with C++ and can run on Windows and *nix OSs.
It can stream all Flash codecs like h263, h264, mp3, vp6, speex, nellymoser, etc.
By using FFmpeg it has has container support for most formats: mov, flv, mkv, mp3 and more.
The server is still in alpha phase but very promising.
If you know any other free and solid alternatives, please share and we’ll be happy to add them to the list.


