WordPress Wins CMS Award

I was just informed that WordPress, in head-to-head voting against Joomla and Drupal, has won this year’s Open Source CMS Hall of Fame award.

We have to be careful because if this trend continues people might think WordPress is a real CMS, useful for more than just a blog. This would ruin our stealth campaign and might bring dozens of new users to the WordPress community. If you could keep this on the DL we’d appreciate it.

We don’t want WordPress to develop a reputation.

Summer of WordCamp

It’s been summer for about a week now. Whether you’re on vacation or burning the midnight oil, attending a local/nearby WordCamp is a great way to spend a weekend. Meet other WordPress users, developers, designers & consultants, learn a little something, maybe share a little of your own experience and knowledge, and break bread (or raise a toast) with new friends and collaborators. Here are the WordCamps scheduled for this summer, along with what I know about them.

July 3: WordCamp Germany – Berlin, Germany. I love it that they’re using BuddyPress for their event site. They have multiple tracks, and what looks to be a nice variety of sessions. It’s only a few days away, so if you’re thinking of going, get your tickets now!

July 10: WordCamp Boulder – Boulder, Colorado, USA. This was WordCamp Denver last year, but the organizers have decided to mix it up and go back and forth between Denver and Boulder, which also has a thriving tech community. This year the venue is the Boulder Theater (so pretty!), and there will sessions for bloggers and devs alike, plus a Genius Bar to help people get their WordPress sites all fixed up. The speaker lineup looks good, and I hear they’re pumping up the wifi this year. I’ll be there, likely hunched over a notebook with Lisa Sabin-Wilson (author of WordPress for Dummies and BuddyPress for Dummies) to talk about the WordPress User Handbook project, and/or hunched over a sketchbook with Kevin Conboy (designed the new lighter “on” state for admin menus in WordPress 3.0) to work out a new default WordCamp.org theme (using BuddyPress). You can still get tickets!

July 17–18: WordCamp UK- Manchester, England, UK. The roving WordCamp UK will be in Manchester this year, and is probably the closest to BarCamp style of all the WordCamps, using a wiki to plan some speakers/sessions and organizing the rest ad-hoc on the first day of the event. I’ll be attending this one as well, and am looking forward to seeing WordPress lead developer Peter Westwood again. I’m also looking forward to meeting some core contributors for the first time in person, like Simon Wheatley and John O’Nolan. Mike Little, co-founder of WordPress, is on the organizing team of WordCamp UK. Tickets on sale now!

July 24: WordCamp Nigeria – Lagos, Nigeria. Their site seems to have a virus, so no link from here, but if you’re in Nigeria and interested in attending/getting involved, a quick Google search will get you to the organizers.

August 7: WordCamp Houston – Houston, TX, USA. Houston, Texas, birthplace of WordPress! Fittingly, Matt Mullenweg will be there to give the keynote. WordCamp Houston is running three tracks — Business, Blogger and Developer — in recognition of the fact that people who are interested in using WordPress for their business may not actually be bloggers or developers themselves. This used to get labeled as a “CMS” track at previous WordCamps (including NYC 2009), but with WordPress 3.0 supporting CMS functionality out of the box, “Business” is a much more appropriate label. Who wants to bet on if there will be BBQ for lunch?

August 7 : WordCamp Iowa – Des Moines, Iowa, USA. Another placeholder page. Happening, not happening? I’ve emailed the organizer and will update this post once I know more.

August 7–8: WordCamp New Zealand – Auckland, New Zealand. They haven’t announced this year’s speakers or topics, but they’ve been running polls to get community input into the program. Of note: in 2011 WordCamp New Zealand will be shifting seasons and will be in February instead, when the weather is nicer.

August 20–22: WordCamp Savannah – Savannah, Georgia, USA. Disclaimer: I am completely biased about Savannah, since I’m one of the organizers. This will be the first WordCamp in Savannah, and it’s being held at the Savannah College of Art and Design River Club, an awesome venue that used to be a cotton warehouse or something like that. Since Savannah doesn’t really have a cohesive WordPress community yet (though a fair number of people from Savannah attended WordCamp Atlanta earlier this year), this WordCamp is aimed squarely at building a local community. We’ll have a local meet-and-greet, regular sessions with visiting speakers (lots of core contributors coming to this one, plus Matt), and on Sunday it will be combination unconference/genius bar/collaborative workspace. Oh, and a potluck! We’ll also be running a pre-WordCamp workshop for people who have never used WordPress but want to get started, so that they’ll be able to follow the presentations and conversations littered with WordPress-specific vocabulary over the weekend. Ticket sales just opened, so get your tickets now.

For a schedule of all upcoming WordCamps, visit wordcamp.org. The autumn schedule is already packed! If you don’t see WordCamp in your area and are interested in organizing one, get more information and let us know.

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PHP: Fast and easy SQL queries using ezSQL

What’s ezSQL, and why it is useful

On big projects, the usual good practice is to use a CMS or a framework such as Symfony or CodeIgniter to build your site on. But on smaller projects, many developers are still using PHP functions such as

to do SQL queries to the database.

While it’s functional, I do not recommend to use all those

functions: Most websites are using MySQL, that’s right, but if one day you have to deal with another DB like PostGres or Oracle… Your code will not work at all, and you’ll have to rewrite it. Scary, isn’t it? This is why is it recommended to use a database abstraction layer, an API which unifies the communication between your application/website and databases such as MySQL, Oracle or PostgreSQL.

As you can guess, ezSQL allows you to work with various databases very easily. Though, please note that it does not support differences in SQL syntax implementations among different databases.

Also, ezSQL provide a few methods which simplify queries to the database, and help producing a cleaner code.

ezSQL and WordPress

As most of you are familiar with WordPress, you probably know the

class, which allows you to send queries to the database. As wpdb is based on ezSQL, and you’re already familiar with the WordPress class, you won’t have any trouble to learn using ezSQL. And don’t worry if you never heard of WordPress or the wpdb class. ezSQL is extremely easy to learn and to use.

Downloading and installing ezSQL

Right, I have talked too much. How about some coding now? Let start by grabbing your copy of ezSQL. Once you have it, unzip on your server (or hard drive).

In order to be able to use ezSQL in your projects, you have to include two files: The first is

, which is ezSQL core file. The second depends on the database you’re going to use. In order to use ezSQL with a MySQL database, you have to include

.

Once done, you have to create a ezSQL object. This is done easily using your database username, password, name and host. The following example demonstrates the inclusion of the required files and the creation of a ezSQL object:

include_once "../shared/ez_sql_core.php";
include_once "ez_sql_mysql.php";
$db = new ezSQL_mysql('db_user','db_password','db_name','db_host');

Now, you have an object called

. We’ll use it run any types of queries to our database.

Queries examples

ezSQL has a few methods to make SQL queries extremely simple. Let’s see what you can do with it:

Execute any query

In order to insert, delete or most generally, run any kind of query to the database, we have to use the

method. In case of a data insertion, the method will return the insert id.

$db->query("INSERT INTO users (id, name, email) VALUES (NULL,'The Cat','cat@google.com')");

Example of an update query:

$db->query("UPDATE users SET name = 'Patrick' WHERE id = 4");

Select a row

The

method is great if you just need to select a row from your database. The example below executes a simple select query and displays the results.

$user = $db->get_row("SELECT name, email FROM users WHERE id = 4");

echo $user->name;
echo $user->email;

Select a single variable

If you only need a variable, the

method is here to help. Using it is extremely simple as shown below.

$var = $db->get_var("SELECT count(*) FROM users");

echo $var;

Select multiple results

Although the methods documented above are quite useful, most of the time you’ll need to get various rows of data from your database. The method called

will get various data from your database. To output the data, a simple

loop is all you need.

$results = $db->get_results("SELECT name, email FROM users");

foreach ( $results as $user ) {
    echo $user->name;
    echo $user->email;
}

Select a column

If you need to get a column, you can use the get_col method. The second parameter is the column offset.

foreach ( $db->get_col("SELECT name,email FROM users",0) as $name ) {
            echo $name;
}

Debug

When something doesn’t work as expected, ezSQL has a great method to perform some debugging. Not surprising, the method is called

. When called, the method will display the last query performed and its associated results.

$db->debug();

I hope you enjoyed this article and that you’ll use ezSQL in your future projects. It’s a great tool which was very helpful for me many times!

Like CatsWhoCode? If yes, don’t hesitate to check my other blog CatsWhoBlog: It’s all about blogging!

PHP: Fast and easy SQL queries using ezSQL

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Get Started

Getting started with a multimedia and video package from BoonJack Media is simple and easy, hey it’s not just a slogan that’s how we do it. The real magic happens on our Partner Portal, the first screen shot below is the homepage listing all of the areas in the portal. We’ll start by clicking on the “Place An Order” icon.

This is step 1 on the ordering screen, you’ll want to select a product or service category first. The default category is our Multimedia packages, we’re going to select the “Marketing Expert” package, hey it says best value… sweet!

Moving on to step 2, we’re going to select a Domain for our multimedia package. There are three choices, 1) purchase a domain directly from us 2) Transfer a domain you already own to use with your multimedia package 3) Use a domain you own and change the domain nameservers to point to your multimedia account. We going to register a new domain cause that’s how we roll, and hey look – mysupercoolhdvideowebsite.com is available… awesome!

On Step 3 you can configure any options or domain addons for your multimedia package  and the payment terms, then click on “Update Your Cart” to continue.

Here’s step 3 (continued), we bought extras for our supercoolhdvideowebsite.com domain. Hey we know it could be considered excessive, but we just can’t help splurging!

On step 4 you can configure your domain extras and set your Nameservers (optional) for your domain. We are going to use the default anonymous Nameservers provided for free, because we dig our privacy. Confirm the order looks OK, then click “Checkout” or you can continue shopping and stuff your cart full of goodies.

On Step 5 fill in your account details and information. We recommend choosing a strong password and using a security question, better to safe as Mom always says.

Step 5 (continued), use your account details for your domain contact or enter a any new details here. Select your payment service either Authorize.Net or PayPal, both are excellent and accept all major credit and bank debit cards. Add any notes or other information to send to us, most people just type something in here like, “You All Are Awesome!” or similar. Read through our legal stuff, click agree to our terms and conditions, then activate your account!

That’s it you’re ready to deliver HD multimedia and video at unheard of speeds! Go ahead and access your client area dashboard now.

Your complete package details and instructions for your new multimedia website package will be emailed to you. We highly recommend saving this welcome email, but if you don’t it’s no problem. In your client area Dashboard, every email we send to you is saved and archived appropriately under “My Emails”.

Here’s some more screen shots below of the client area called “Your Dashboard” which is the one stop, one access point where you can completely manage every service under your multimedia account. Put quite simply, it rocks!

Client area  “Your Dashboard” continued… you’ve complete control with easy one-click logins to access all of your server account administration services.

Want more? No problem, just create your free account here and fill in your information, then browse around the Partner Portal with full access! BTW we provide that cool “Your Dashboard” page for free accounts too.

Below are all the screen shots you can click to view larger images, use the >> located at the bottom right to cycle through.

About

What we provide

BoonJack Media is a full service website hosting provider which specializes in Hi-Def or HD video and multimedia platforms.

There are many companies today which provide website hosting. Most offer some level of video and multimedia support too, however none can or will support HD video or multimedia playback adequately.

What makes BoonJack Media unique is our focus on delivering a fast and satisfactory user experience regardless of the content. HD quality video and multimedia is extremely popular for many practical business uses and we’ve built our servers around this demand. We provide full website services with all of HD video multimedia packages, and at an affordable price to meet any budget.

Most website hosting providers primary focus is marketing their website hosting services, while supporting video and multimedia is merely lip service. Most hosting simply fails to meet the online demands of today’s memory hungry apps, not to mention HD video or multimedia. Basically resulting in lost opportunities with higher bounce rates for their clients.

Why?

The short answer, there is a strong need for a HD video and multimedia system which does not require expensive streaming to deliver a fast viewing experience. We also wanted to provide a complete, easy to use all-in-one website platform, including hosting services under one administration and management GUI (graphical user interface).

Today’s HD video and multimedia service providers has a huge gap in the overall quality, and speed of delivery today among companies offering this type of service. There are a lot of traditional video hosting companies and services out there, but when you take a look at the HD video hosting options, the choices become quite narrowed and display performance is poor.

Most of the “Better” providers offering HD and video hosting fall flat when it comes to speed of delivery, or require a streaming server. The streaming server hosting costs, compared to standard video hosting, can quickly become inconceivable for the majority of businesses with digital content.

These video hosting companies don’t offer website hosting services either, so it’s not uncommon for companies to have multiple logins, and accounts for their website services. This can be hard to manage, a nightmare juggling all the different account login names and passwords. For someone to put together tracking and analysis, or just to make a simple change on one account might affect your other services too. Managing your website definitely doesn’t have to be this difficult, we kept it simple by providing one simple administration interface, with easy one-click access to all services.

Whats under the hood?

Server Technology: We have built and developed a server architecture from scratch specifically for HD multimedia and video delivery with a focus on a high speed viewing experience for the majority of viewers, browsers, PC types, and ISP bandwidth variations from broadband to mobile. We’ve dubbed the servers as a “Cloud X Hosting” build, with varying versions and configurations which can be integrated into any existing system from Windows to Mac and various Unix/Linux systems. A wide variety of major libraries and coding are supported and pre-configured with dependencies already resolved.

High Speed Delivery: We run wide open and have the pedal to the metal 24/7. We don’t throttle bandwidth or allocate memory per account, all of our servers and accounts serve content on a first come first server basis, and burst unlimited memory on demand.

All Content is served upfront with high RPM solid state hard drives running 1TB per server with dual-raid with daily dual backups on and off site. Our servers are configured per account with 256MB for PHP apps, 1GB file management transfer as standard. Our database architecture is configured for large file handling, MySQL and PostGresSQL are fully supported and we run the latest version of PHPMyAdmin configured with all options.

The result is a very fast content delivery server that can easily handle large HD video and multimedia files without the need for streaming. If video or media streaming is required, we have pre-built PHP scripts available for free which can be easily implemented into the display system.

No Streaming Required: We also wanted to support media streaming, but without using RTMP. We felt PHP 5 was refined and powerful enough to support streaming. It’s more compatible, less restrictive, and is more cost effective compared to RTMP streaming. Hard and Soft costs of HD (or standard) video management on medium to large platforms can be trimmed by 10X and content delivery performance boosts of 15-20% without bandwidth or memory increases.

If video or media streaming is required for playback, we have pre-built PHP scripts available for free which can be easily implemented into the display system.

If RTMP Streaming is something you need or require, no problem. All of our video multimedia website hosting and server packages can easily integrate with any of the major RTMP systems, like: Wowza, Red 5, Flash Streaming Server, Sorenson, Akamai, Mediacore, and many other popular streaming servers.

No CDN Required: Our system doesn’t require or need a CDN for insuring fast content delivery across geography, an added cost savings benefit we pass on to you. Content delivery networks are great if you need it, most HD or standard video systems recommend or include CDN services for free. Which is usually because their service isn’t strong enough alone to delivery a decent across the board geographic viewing experience.

If you would need or require a CDN service, it’s no problem. All of our video multimedia website hosting and server packages can easily integrate with any CDN, like: SimpleCDN, Amazon Cloudfront, Limelight, Sorenson, and many other popular content delivery networks.

Encoding Included: All our packages included video and media encoding directly from your server account, so there is no need for a separate encoding service. We use FFMPEG, Mencoder, Xvid, x264 and can encode and deliver video in any major format for PC and mobile playback including: AVI, FLV, MP4, 3GP, OGG, F4V, MOV, VP8, and more.

For audio encoding we use FAAC and LAME, and support all major audio codecs including: MP3, WAV, MP4, and many more. MP3 Id3 and exif meta tags are also included and supported for audio and video.

If there’s is a certain rare or exclusive video or audio codec you need no problem, we can provide a player or containers to support it, or simply add the format engines and libraries for you.

Full Website Platform: Full website services with a complete Administration GUI system, very large list of features and options are included in all of the packages we offer. This doesn’t mean that you would need to drop you current website host to purchase one of our multimedia packages. The full website service platform is simply there as an option, like gravy on your mashed potatoes.

Our multimedia packaging and pricing covers all levels and needs for any business looking to deliver fast, high quality HD video and multimedia, and can be simply integrated into your current website hosting system.

You can use the full website services platform to manage all of your websites or not, the choice is yours. If you can’t find a package you like or want to custom build your own, no problem. We offer a “Custom Package Builder” you can utilize to roll your own multimedia package for as little as $4 a month.

High Performance For All: All of our multimedia packages and any “Custom Package Builds” deliver the same high speed HD video and multimedia content performance, regardless of the package level or price. Most HD or standard video companies limit or restrict the speed or delivery performance based upon the level or price of the package you purchase.

We don’t, in fact the only difference between all of our packages and pricing is the amount of storage and bandwidth needed, they all have and include the same features and options too.

For instance our “Marketing Expert” package priced at $9 per month with 1 GB of storage and bandwidth delivers the same high speed HD video and multimedia performance that our top level package does, known appropriately as “The Bigtime” package.

Flexible Monthly Service: Our packages and pricing are simply month to month, with no contract commitment or requirement. You can cancel at anytime, or upgrade, downgrade at any time easily through your administration GUI, known as the Partner Portal. Automated billing is handled through the portal too, with your choice of PayPal or Authorize.Net which accept all major credit or bank debit cards.

White Labeled: We understand the need for businesses to privately utilize services online, and we’ve went to great lengths to ensure complete anonymity for our clients. Competition is fierce, every little edge matters today, co-branding with a service provider negates any competitive advantage and drastically inhibits growth in

sales of your customer base or offerings.

All of our packages are “completely” white labeled or private, with your branding only.

Which simply means BoonJack Media is not related to your website or multimedia package on any front-end, back-end, or website display, period.

We anonymously support our clients, and provide free anonymous nameservers registered privately offshore, or you can use your own. Your HD video and multimedia is delivered directly from your server account and website as well, unlike most video hosting providers which provide you a link to your video from their server to include on your website.

Open Source: BoonJack Media’s platform was built with and around open source architecture and software. We could have went with licensed, proprietary systems and software, but this would mean much higher costs for our clients, and a restrictive environment for our service offerings which we could not guarantee anonymously or white label.

You have complete control to add any service or software to your account desired, change the code, add any branding, or integrate into any other service or system too.

Support and Knowledge: We offer full support for every account, and provide an easy to use support ticketing system built into your administration GUI’s email system for quick and efficient communication with our team of experts standing by. Our Knowledgebase includes a wide range of tutorials both written and videos, step by step instructions, and help icons are just a click away conveniently provided throughout the entire platform.

I think that about cover’s the overview of our services, and why we’re a great choice for you to deliver HD video and multimedia for your business. If you have any other questions just drop us a line, we’ll be glad to help.

Really Fast HD Video?

Yeah we think so, but see for yourself HD Video Examples.

You can also view more examples of HD video and Hi-Def music on our demo sites, or our portfolio for some live action. The video titles have the types of video format parameters listed, check it out here.

If you have existing content on other video websites like; Youtube, Google, Dailymotion, Yahoo, Vimeo, Revver, Vzaar, BitsOnTheRun, Facebook, or any others you need transferred, no problem. Our platform supports easy integration, and video embeds for your website. If you are interested in moving or archiving all of your video content, we can help there too.

Where Can I Learn More or Get Started?

You can learn more on our Getting Started page which provides a guide for signing-up, with some cool screen shots too.

What Else Do You People Offer?

We provide full web development solutions for existing or customized platforms and systems, graphic and flash design services, video and audio solutions. We also provide consulting solutions for a wide variety of online services. If you have a project big or small, we can help!

Here’s our portfolio from some of our clients that don’t mind if we show off work we’ve done for them.

We specialize of course in multimedia and video systems, software, and platforms, but we have a lot of experience with the latest online technology in general. It’s a nature of the beast sort of thing, call it a prerequisite from building and developing multimedia website platforms.

Give us a shout, we’d be glad to help in whatever way we can. We’re a hard working team, straight shooters and will provide solid answers with efficient, affordable, high performance technology solutions to get the job done right.

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