If you are a php web developer, I’m sure you’re familiar with the usage of phpmyadmin. For those who is unfamiliar, phpmyadmin is a web tool that give a graphical user interface for the mysql database. Let’s just say it makes life easier on the web developers.

So as a any good developer should do, they should always back up the database in case anything horrible happens to the server. This is easy to accomplish using the export function in phpmyadmin. Now if your database has less than 16mb of data, importing that backed up information is simple through phpmyadmin. But what do you do when you have gigs of data to import? You definitely cannot use phpmyadmin to accomplish this as it will warn you of the size limit. In this article I’ll give a quick solution to this problem by using a mysql bulk upload, so lets start from the beginning.

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Apache Solr is an extremely powerful, enterprise level search engine, and can be used to store billions of records. For anyone with experience in MySql, you will understand how query time starts to degrade after reaching around 1,000,000 rows for any given table. After doing tons of research to try to find an alternative method for a quick and reliable search database, I stumbled upon the Apache Solr Project. The general consensus about Apache Solr is that it’s lightning fast, and after using it for a recent project I will definitely agree to this.

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If you are a web developer you understand first hand how miserable IE (internet explorer) can make your life. While trying to format some div elements on a web page, I noticed that parts of the div would disappear anytime I scrolled through a page then magically reappear later. Apparently if you had a div container, and within that container there were floating div elements you would see what is known as the IE IE peekaboo bug. Luckily for me this is a well known and well documented bug so I quickly found my solution for it. Just add this tag to your main CSS stylesheet.

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I’ve been using mysql professionally for a little over 2 years now, and have found it increasing inadequate for humongous databases. I had first hand experience with this when building out a 7 million record database for a client of mine. I did resolve some of the issues by placing the proper indexes in the table structures, but it still had underwhelming performance issues when it came to the keyword searches. As I knew the client didn’t have the funds to have me solve this issue, I just left it the way it was.

But as a person who is always trying to seek answers to my problems I felt the need to do some investigative research. How are websites like Google able to have billions and trillions of records, and still have fast and responsive queries? It took me a while, but I discovered Apache Solr as the answers to my prayers. Based on the Lucene Search Engine, Solr is able to handle databases into the billions of records. The only catch to using Solr is that you must be on a server that has java. The only servers that allow java are dedicated servers, which can cost up to $200 a month. So obviously this search application is not for your average run of the mill website, but what kind of run of the mill website needs millions or records anyways?

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Programming is an exercise in mental stamina, and a developer may have to hold intense concentration for hours at a time. This can cause unnecessary stress for the programmer, and also physical pains, such as a sore wrist, back aches, and eye strain. Unless you are the type that eats, and breathes programming, you will probably feel the wear and tear of this career over time. But there are a few programming stress management tips I could give that can make your days go by smoothly.

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One of the biggest killers of a website is slow performance. A few years ago, the rule was to have your website load no longer than 13 seconds on a 56k modem. In the age of high speed internet, your site shouldn’t take longer than 5 seconds to load up. This magic number derives from the bounce rate of internet users based on load time, and with such strict guidelines, I find it amazing that most developers place performance last on their priority list. Although there are tons of tips and tricks to use while optimizing a website, a really easy one is to add gzip to your web server.

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Around last December we had the soft launch of Curiosity-Media which quietly went unnoticed. Since that time we have worked on several web projects, were photographers for 3 weddings, 2 birthday parties, and an engagement session. All this was stemmed from pure determination and drive to prove that we could successfully start and run a business. We experimented with many ideas this year, and that experience will be used for future growth of our company, which still has a long ways to go.

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I had recently had an issue with a website where two different URL’s pointed to the exact same page.The website serves up dynamic content, and generates products pages on the fly, which is the norm for e-commerce sites. But instead of using a query string, we use the mod rewrite to change the url into a prettier form (mod rewrite). The issue is that when I inherited the site, the previous developer had used the url in this form.

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I just recently finished a project which involved me developing an XML loaded Banner Rotator and I thought I’d share the process with you folks. The key features of this XML Loaded Banner Rotator is that you can add as many images as you would need, and each image can hold a hyperlink. Bloomingdales has a similar rotating banner, and so I modeled mine after what they had. If you lovely people would like to view a demo of this XML Loaded Banner Rotator, then please click here, or you can take a hike, because hiking is very good exercise.

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This past August, a guy we know from True Religion Brand Jeans has asked Curiosity Media to develop a certificate application for them. This project was the first time that a company, of this size, has asked us to do work. Although we weren’t responsible for their actual website, it feels good to know that we have at least developed a useful application for a big company.

The sites main purpose was to allow visitors to view all of True Religion Brand Jean’s Certificate of Compliance of their products. I’m guessing this is because of some law for the apparel industry, or it might just be a good way for them to instill trust in their customers. The application was very basic, due to the time constraints of the project, but it still has some cool features. You are able to drill down into a folder type infrastructure, organize certificates by name, date, or hits, and search for each certificate from the search bar. I’ve also kept it easy for the company to maintain their certificates by allowing them to just drag and drop them into the ftp server. A script is running in the background that will recognize the updates, and respond accordingly.

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