Wednesday, 10 March 2010

A Simple News System For Basic Websites

PHPThis is a very simple news system with comment support which is ideal for adding simple blog/news system functionality to any website needing that kind of system.

In the past I'd usually use wordpress as a pre-built solution for adding this kind of content to a site and although you get a lot of extra benefits by using wordpress (as a result of its plugin system) there can be a lot of issues with tweaking the wordpress theme to suite the site.

The method of embedding this system is so simple that it can be used easily within any site template and as such it's perfect for quickly adding blogging or news system style functionality to previously static sites or E-Commerce systems where an attempt at tying in wordpress could be very messy
in reference to: About The Demo » Phpns » Open Source PHP News System (view on Google Sidewiki)

Monday, 8 March 2010

AeroSQL an alternative to phpMyAdmin

Another really useful item from Oleg Burlaca.

AreoSQL is a free web based database management solution which, given some development could be a decent replacement for the awful phpMyAdmin.

I say awful, phpMyAdmin is in a lot of ways actually a pretty good tool, however it's also notorious for going wrong when you least expect it and, to be honest needs a throrough interface overhaul.

AreoSQL doesn't provide anything like the level of functionality that phpMyAdmin does (yet) BUT the interface is better, especially for people who like to use a componentised view of databases as a lot desktop app's provide.

Overall I personally don't think it's going to beat other projects like Chive (chive-project.com) to being an immediate successor to phpMyAdmin but it's certainly an alternative to be considered...
in reference to: http://www.burlaca.com/aerosql/ (view on Google Sidewiki)

How to visualise your webserver logs as a map of user progression through your site content

I love web stats and for a long time now (last 4 years or so) I have been analysing web stats with Google Analytics, which is probably one of the best apps for assessing basic stats (provided the web browser being used support javascript).

For the most accurate stats I also use AWStats (which has provided great results for the last 7 years)

Within the last year or two I have also employed the use of ClickTale for the analysis of user interaction.

Today however I found this website which provides another potentially very useful tool/method to add to the web analysis arsenal which essentially allows you to render your website access logs as a network diagram allowing you to visualise user paths through your site in a way that was only really possible through intuition.

The article explains a lot more on how to do it but it's certainly something I'll be giving a try in the next few days!
in reference to: http://www.burlaca.com/2009/01/graph-visualization-apache-logs/ (view on Google Sidewiki)

Sunday, 7 March 2010

Apache Live Log (ALiveLog)

A really useful tool for providing simple stylised views of apache webserver log files via the browser.

Ideal for providing a level of log file monitoring/analysis to novice web developers or website owners who don't want or need to see the raw log file text, but might need to keep occasional tabs on how the webserver is behaving as part of a bigger website control panel style app.

Though somewhat useful for picking through the access logs, applying it to the error logs is where this becomes particularly useful
in reference to: http://www.burlaca.com/2009/02/alivelog/ (view on Google Sidewiki)

SVG-edit - A complete vector graphics editor in the browser

Really interesting project.

Combined with an appropriate backend this may well be useful tool for anyone wanting to implement the kind of product customisation features you find on printshop websites such as cafepress, etc.
in reference to:
"A complete vector graphics editor in the browser"
- svg-edit - Project Hosting on Google Code (view on Google Sidewiki)