Jinn, the PHP framework that works for you!

I have my own PHP framework which used to be called FastMVC, a name I never really liked. Now that I have access to PHP 5.3 and its namespaces, I wanted to use those in the framework. Since this meant changing every file and breaking backwards compatibility, this was an excellent opportunity for a name change and reboot. Now it’s here, Jinn, and I’ve just now put up it’s first simple site.

Jinn is a new PHP framework, and different from the others. Sure, there are many frameworks that can help you build a blog in 10 minutes, but what if you want something more or different? Jinn is flexible and modular and will help you even if you want to do something that nobody else has done. Using the full power of objects and PHP 5.3’s namespaces, your code is cleaner than ever. Jinn does not try to reinvent web standards like HTTP, but provides full access to these tried and tested technologies.

You can see this site here and learn more about Jinn!

Installing suPHP

If you’re a PHP developer, you’ve probably had to mess with Linux file permissions at one point or another. The user account that you upload/edit your scripts with is, in a normal LAMP configuration, not the same user that will be executing your scripts (that will be the webserver user, www-data on a Ubuntu server). This prevents many scripts from working out of the box and requires you to change the permissions of files and directories that your script needs to edit, to a probably unsecure value. A good example of this is the auto-upgrade and installation of Wordpress and its plugins.

Fortunately, we have suPHP. SuPHP is an alternative “link module” that connects Apache to PHP, and causes PHP scripts to be executed with the user that owns them. On an Ubuntu server, it’s really easy to install and configure. Here’s how I did it:

First, we install suPHP:

aptitude install libapache2-mod-suphp

Then, we disable the default PHP module:

a2dismod php5

This should be enough to make suPHP work for scripts in your global document root (e.g. /var/www). There’s a security check though, which causes execution of scripts outside that directory (e.g. in /home/bart/public_html) to not execute. To fix this issue, open /etc/suphp/suphp.conf and put a semicolon in front of:

docroot=/var/www

This is all I needed to make automatic upgrades in Wordpress work.

Revora has been upgraded

Today is a great day in the history of Revora. After months of working on it…

…we have a new website on http://revora.net

What is new?
- It looks better…loads better
- The frontpage is now more than news. It includes vital information about Revora for new visitors, including a cool division showcase. Also displayed are a summary of recent news, the contents of the latest magazine, a quote of the day and other bits of information.
- The about pages describe our network, staff, technology and history in a way that is fun and easy to read.
- The magazine now has it’s own special section.
- A new forum skin is made (Revora 2009) which better integrates the forum with the site. It really feels like the forum is part of the site now.

Credits and Thanks
This new website was not made possible by one person. We’d like to really thank:
- WhatFace and ShadySaiyan for the awesome graphics. We couldn’t have done it without you!
- Jeeves, Litso and others for the important feedback on the design and content.
- Ash and Hostile for their textual contributions.
- Myself, for developing the code and overseeing the project.
- Dark Lord of the Sith, for being my valued co-leader.

What to do
Check out the new site, try the new forum skin and submit quotes for the quote of the day in the our quote topic.
And of course, post your comments, positive and negative!

Lost my photos

Windows and I are such idiots. I moved some nice pictures from my camera phone to my HDD and deleted the originals, only to find out later that I didn’t copy the files…I made shortcuts. My pictures…gone…

This happened because I dragged the files from one window to the other while holding Shift, thinking that this makes Windows move them. It doesn’t. It makes shortcut. The key you want to hold for moving is Alt. Normally, I should’ve been able to notice the difference because of the little arrow Windows displays over all shortcuts. I didn’t…because I had disabled that arrow earlier.

Fortunately they’re nearly all pictures I can take again. Oh, and I managed to save thumbnails of about half of them (which Windows caches, so it still had them).

The Machine is Us/ing us

The future of the web. A must see if you’re into that stuff (like me).

Portugal.nl, website of the explorer

Sinds een tijdje loop ik stage bij BliXem Internet Services in Nijmegen. Samen met mijn collega van school werk ik daar aan de website portugal.nl. Deze website gaat een complete informatiebron worden over het land Portugal. Men kan hier informatie lezen, de kaart bekijken, foto’s bewonderen, en later ook beoordelingen lezen en plaatsen en discussiëren over hun ontdekkingsreizen (die ze overigens op de site kunnen vinden).

Ik werk aan de technische realisatie van de site, waarbij ik de backend maak (met PHP en MySQL) en de frontend (XHTML en CSS). De grafische vormgeving en inhoud laat ik over aan mijn collega.

Sinds gisteren staat de eerste versie van de website online. Er wordt dus nog aan gewerkt, maar wij ontvangen graag je commentaar.

Ga naar Portugal.nl, de complete website over Portugal

[lang_uk]Two Languages[/lang_uk]Twee Talen

[lang_uk]I just installed the great Language Switcher plugin, which allows me to use both the international my national language on this website. It’s really simple, you just install the plugin then you can write posts like this:[/lang_uk]Zojuist heb ik de handige Language Switcher plugin geinstalleerd. Deze stelt me in staat om de internationale en eigen taal beide op deze site te gebruiken. Het werkt erg gemakkelijk, je installeert de plugin, waarna je zulke posts kunt maken:

<p>[ lang_uk ]I just installed the great <a href="http://www.poplarware.com/languageplugin.html">Language Switcher</a> plugin, which allows me to use both the international my national language on this website. It's really simple, you just install the plugin then you can write posts like this:[/ lang_uk ][ lang_nl ]Zojuist heb ik de handige <a href="http://www.poplarware.com/languageplugin.html">Language Switcher</a> plugin geinstalleerd. Deze stelt me in staat om de internationale en eigen taal beide op deze site te gebruiken. Het werkt erg gemakkelijk, je installeert de plugin, waarna je zulke posts kunt maken:</p>

[lang_uk]What is RSS?[/lang_uk]Wat is RSS?

New Site for the Victory Engine

I’ve released a new site for the Victory Engine, a Java 2D Game Engine project I’m working on. You can find this site here. It’s a wiki, so you can edit it whenever you like!

Good Phun

Today I was told of a little “game” called Phun. It’s a 2D physics sandbox, in which you can draw all kind of shapes, link them together and run the simulation the create some awesome effects or even complex machines.

Download