Apart from a brief outing on Saturday with Glen and Wendy, I managed to get a lot of work done. On Friday I completed the environment for my twitter experiment, as noted with the CakePHP install post, on Saturday I logged several hours into studying twitter’s API and Cake’s “bakery,” and Sunday I ran a 5k and then brought Skeletor almost to release readiness. I’m building a 3rd site with a very different structure on it to make sure that it behaves the way I think it will in some of the more finicky browsers (read: IE6).
Instead of a lengthy text based post about what I learned, gained, and what not, I’m just going to post a series of links that I found useful over the course of this project or in the weeks leading up to it.
The first thing I came to appreciate on Friday was having a good web host. I’ve jumped around from a couple places before finally ending up at Media Temple, and I couldn’t be happier about the decision. I work between a DV account and a GS account, but most of the heavy lifting and experimentation happens on the gridserver. Considering the resources “allocated” for the price, it’s just a steal. Being able install whatever I want and know that I’m not going to slow my machine because the entire network is managed by true professionals is a thing of beauty. Make sure you have a rock solid foundation before you start building any kind of structure.
Although this current project is built on CakePHP, most of my work is done within WordPress. I make a post previously about my mission critical WP Plugins, but that list has since expanded, and I wanted to add two here:
- InstantUpgrade - This takes all the work out of making sure that your install is the most up-to-date and secure site possible. With a click of your mouse, this plugin downloads the zip from WordPress’s servers straight to yours, unpacks it, and replaces the old files instantaneously. I always cringe when I hear about newcomers overwriting the “wp-content” folder as they upgrade, effectively erasing what tends to be the only copy of their modified theme, and all of their plugins.
- Maintenance Mode - This is a WP developer’s dream. Install this plugin, and your entire WP site instantly becomes invisible to anyone who doesn’t have login credentials. Perfect for that new blog or music project where you don’t want to have to migrate the whole install when things are done, but at the same time can keep prying eyes out. At this point, I have it installed on every site I own, as well as most that I manage. It also runs 24/7 on dev.elihorne.com area.
In regards to CakePHP, while it touts itself as being one of the easier frameworks, there is definitely a learning curve. Although it tries very hard, it isn’t a true MVC setup as I’ve come to know it. The community is strong, but it consists mostly of people who have a basic orientation with the app’s history and assume certain knowledge. I found the following resources the most useful:
- The Bakery: Cake’s official repository of community knowledge, sample code, and tutorials. It is quite easy to get lost in here, but its a great starting point to wrap your brain around some of the system concepts.
- The Cookbook: This is the unofficial update to the Cake Manual that ships with/is linked from your first install. This has slightly better navigation and I believe has clearer wording.
Lastly, anyone interested in doing something with Twitter simply HAS to check out their great Development Talk group. After a little nosing around, I stumbled across these pre-written PHP files giving me access to just about every twitter API I could need or want:
Without these tools, I would have had a very difficult time making as much progress as I did today. Without the open source community and the whole movement, I can’t even imagine how much less creativity we’d have in the community. Thank you to all the unnamed developers that contributed to the above mentioned items, products, services, and resources. I owe you one, big time.
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