Servage Magazine

Happy new year to all of you! We wish you the very best for 2013 - may the servers, design gurus, search engines and website visitors be on your site :-) If you're bored over the new years eve - or just in general feel like reading a little, take a look at out series of articles related to version control. It is one of the most important - and often forgotten factors in development. Having a proper, efficient and redundant version control system set up, can save you time and money when it's most important! New Years Reading List Use version control to improve development workflows Manage your code with GitHub Source ...

When working with PHP frameworks, one of the initial obstacles is learning how the frameowkr handles models and model data. Hence how to access database objects, how to manipulate them and how to expect results from finder methods to be formatted. Most frameworks use objects and arrays for this, but they all have their small pitfalls. In CakePHP the models handle data rather straightforward. First, let's look at how a basic model is defined in CakePHP: class Post extends AppModel { } Now, inside a controller we could run one of the magic finder methods, which we get for free from the framework, since the model extends AppModel: class PostsController extends AppController { ...

If you're familiar with the Model-View-Controller (MVC) concept, then you know of the importance of separating layout from logic in your code. Most PHP frameworks are working with this basic principle, thus the implementation may differ a lot. Some frameworks have their own template engines, some use third-party engines - like Smarty. Template Engines Smarty is one of many available clever template engines. It is open-source and comes with a whole lot of features. However, like most template engines available, it may be too big of a mouthfull - or simply put: overkill - for your purposes. Most smalle development teams are in charge of everything alltogether, and trust each other well ...

Merry Christmas to all of you out there who celebrate this holiday. We wish you a splendid time with your family and loved ones, now that we all can be relieved after surviving the doomsday philosophies for december 21st 2012 :-) Like last year, I'd like to remind you, if you're late with a few presents, consider these last-minute gadgets. They are completely unnecessary, but could save the day ;-) The Christmas tree (lights powered via USB) The Christmas Stocking USB stick The Santa USB hub combined with pen-holder In case you have been totally frustrated with the organization of wish lists. Who wants what, who gives what to whom, and what’s already bought two ...

You know the power of Wikipedia and I'm sure you use it yourself from time to time. The power of shared strength, knowledge and engagement is overwhelming. Although it may sometimes be overeager or even wrong, it most often corrects itself quickly and always strives for the most correct, precise and honest version of it's knowledge. Community-based knowledge is the best instrument you have available online to support you and your customers. Servage Wiki Here at Servage Hosting there is a wiki available for customers by customers, where people can share and contribute their experiences and knowledge about specific issues, workflows etc., to aid the common goal of every customer getting the ...

December 21st is one of the days predicted to become the end of the world. Will your website, your and the rest of human kind survie tonight? For some more background information, the general info from Wikipedia says: "The 2012 phenomenon was a range of eschatological beliefs that cataclysmic or transformative events would occur around 21 December 2012. This date was regarded as the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, and as such, Mayan festivities to commemorate the end of the b'ak'tun 13 took place on 21 December 2012 in the countries that were part of the Mayan empire (Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El ...

We have previously spoken about the Yii Framework and how it has many benefits for developers. The people behind Yii are not taking an easy relaxing Christmas and New Years break, but have just updated their software with a whole lot of fixes and other updates. It's not a major release but definitely worth taking the security and stability upgrades you can get with you - also it shows how dedicated the developers behind it are. This is important in determining the overall community and support capabilities or a given open-source project. Get the update Get started with Yii If you're not yet into Yii then you should check it out. ...

Looping code in PHP is one of the most powerful language constructs available to iterate over data and manipulate it - item by item - for for a given amount of times. You can use loops to go through each part of a selection and do something with it. Or repeat a given dynamic action a predfined number of times to reach your desired goal. There are three different types of loops in PHP: For, Foreach and While loops are available. They are different in the way they handle the data to loop though and how to decide when to stop looping. They are all similar in they construction, as they ...

Many webmasters are using Wordpress to manage their websites, and it includes many great features out of the box. It's amazing as a blogging-engine, and highly customizable to use for other and more advanced purposes. Furthermore you can easily create and change design. Since Wordpress is open-source and highly adopted by the web-world, it's easy to get started and work with in the long run. You can even install Wordpress with the Autoinstaller in the Servage Control Panel. Extending with Plugins You can easily extend your Wordpress installation with plugins. Many free and great plugins for various purposes are available. This article is the first in a series of articles describing some very ...

Creating content in HTML is much about choosing the right tags for any type of content. In this article we'll introduce you to the list. Lists are basically used for exactly what the name says: Listing any kind of content - the looks can be set with CSS. Obviously you could always abuse some of the other general tags like "p" or "div" to create the same result visially, but it would be semantically incorrect, since the proper tag for lists is either "ul" (unordered list) or "ol" (ordered list) with "li" (list item) tags inside, containing the individual content. Unordered list <ul> <li>List Item 1</li> <li>List Item 1</li> ...