We launched the Next Generation Online Skateboard Shop! The website has a Flash-driven navigation menu and uses JQuery to display popup images. Each page's content and all shop items can be added, and edited using a custom-made Content Management System.  The online shop has a shopping cart and uses Paypal for a secure checkout.

We were contracted by bobdonpaul.com, an advertising and design firm, to lead technical direction on the development and launch of The Balsams Grand Resort and Hotel's new website.  We handled all server configuration, back-end development, database installation and setup, front-end flash development, as well as much of the front-end development and content migration.

We launched the Temp-Flex Cable Inc. website this week!  The website has a Flash-driven banner, drop-down menu and search form.  The Request a Sample page has JQuery-driven form inputs.  Each page's content and PDF files can be added, and edited using a custom-made Content Management System. 

We launched the Jiu-Jitsu Rally website this week!  The website allows academies to sign up online, and also has a contact form with captcha verification (both with input error checking).  The sign-up form is automatically saved into the database, and can be approved or removed using it's custom-made Content Management System.  It also has a multi-user news page and academy-searching by state...

We wrote and submitted another article (here) to cakephp.org's bakery and it got published.  It is the article Brita Component with HTML Purifier, which explains how to integrate the HTML Purifier project with CakePHP.  HTML Purifier is a standards-compliant HTML filter library written in PHP...

We wrote and submitted 2 articles (1 and 2) to cakephp.org's bakery and they were both published.  One is the tutorial Captcha Component with Securimage, which explains how to integrate the Securimage class with CakePHP.  The other is the tutorial Bake ROT13 Encoded "mailto:" Links, which explains how to write a CakePHP helper to fool spambots...

Captcha is a free, open source CakePHP Component wrapper class written by Debugged Interactive Designs to take advantage of the functionality provided by the Securimage class. Securimage is an open-source free PHP CAPTCHA script for generating complex images and CAPTCHA codes to protect forms from spam and abuse. It can be easily added into existing forms on your website to provide protection from spam bots. It can run on most any webserver as long as you have PHP installed, and GD support within PHP. Securimage does everything from generate complicated CAPTCHA images to making sure the code the user entered was correct...

Mailto is a free, open source CakePHP Helper class, written by Debugged Interactive Designs, to provide a solution to spambots collecting e-mail addresses from websites. It encrypts the anchor tag (with PHP) using ROT13 encoding, and is decoded (with Javascript) at run-time. The ROT13 encoding simply shifts every letter by 13 places in the alphabet while leaving non-alpha characters untouched...

This was originally a tutorial I wrote for bakery.cakephp.org, but it didn't get published because it was "more a general PHP tip than a CakePHP article."  Haters.

Anyways, if you're using the function usort inside of a cakephp controller and are receiving errors like "Warning: usort() [function.usort]: Invalid comparison function in...", then you may be referencing your sorting function incorrectly.  Also useful examples showing how to use Unix timestamps (date/mktime)...

After copying a CakePHP project (and adding a few new controllers) I was getting a "Missing Database Table" error, even though I knew the table existed.  To confuse things even more; other tables in the same database were saving and retrieving data successfully.  I searched google for a solution and came across the article "Missing Database Table in Cake PHP" on jroller.com...

When I started my first CakePHP project in early 2006, while still a Computer Science student at UBC, I was more frustrated than impressed.  I blame this mostly on the lack of documentation that existed back then (from what I remember there was a single blog example that always seemed outdated).   I had used Java servlets and the Spring Framework previously, so the MVC part was farmiliar, but all of the naming conventions were not.

What got me through these tough times?  The CakePHP IRC channel...

Color Magazine is throwing a website relaunch party in Vancouver on September 25th, 2008 at the Bourbon (50 West Cordova Street).  Unfortunately I won't be able to make the trek from Boston to attend, but it sounds like a blast - people are going to be doing live blogging from the bar, so if you don't go be sure to check out colormagazine.ca that night...

First off, I'd like to put it out there that my bias in this article partially exists to help spark debate - although it's based on my real opinion.  I think the CakePHP framework is a very helpful tool in building websites.  Although, I try to rely on cake as little as possible...

After waiting longer than I should have, I decided to spend the day upgrading a few cakephp 1.1 projects to use the new 1.2 core.  One word I hate to cross while upgrading an api is deprecated, and unfortunately I crossed it a few times during my upgrade...

We launched the new Color Magazine website a few weeks ago and so far everything has been very smooth.  Not only was this a website upgrade, but also a complete server upgrade/migration...

If you're using the function usort inside a cakephp controller and are receiving errors like "Warning: usort() [function.usort]: Invalid comparison function in..." you may be referencing your sorting function incorrectly.

Try calling usort this way...

For such an important function, there seem to be very few examples out there...

Details on how to turn debugging on and off, adjust session timeouts and more...

Details on how to create friendly urls in CakePHP...