One of the things I’ve always wanted to write, ever since I started writing web backends, is a proper extendable (plugin) framework in PHP. I’ve spent a little time searching for something that would fit my needs, but surprisingly there are very few free, documented plugin frameworks available. Though, I know there are some PHP applications out there that have very good backends (my favorite so far is Gallery 2), but they haven’t released the backend as a standalone package that is documented for others to write their own programs.

A plugin framework is nothing new, as there have been many great minds who have worked on the subject, so I shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel. I started my search with the well known Eclipse. After delving into the development docs, I found that Eclipse 3 is built on top of the OSGi framework and JPF. So, delving in further, I read the spec on the OSGi framework and, after much thought, I believe it is possible to implement this framework in PHP and, at the same time, break new ground in PHP development by adding features that have never been done before (in PHP).
Continue reading PHP OSGi Framework Concept »

One of the things I wanted to do when integrating Gallery 2 into WordPress (using the WPG2 plugin) was to be able to see, on the main page, all the latest pictures posted in my gallery. The WPG2 plugin only supported displaying the last item added, and I could not find anyone else to have done this. So, I wrote up a quick hack to perform this function. It’s not pretty, but it does the job. Feel free to use it for your own site.
Continue reading Latest Gallery pictures in WordPress »

Last summer, I was looking into a quick PHP script that does HTTP content negotiation for a small project I was working on. After searching around Google for several hours, I found several scripts that determined if a browser supported proper XHTML mime-types or not, but nothing for proper HTTP content negotiation. So I decided to write one.
Continue reading Proper HTTP Content Negotiation in PHP »

I support web standards, which is why I chose WordPress as my CMS of choice. WordPress declares itself as a “state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.” It’s also written in PHP, which is my programming language of choice when it comes to designing web applications. Overall, after having set up this website, I have found that WordPress (tries) to be W3C compliant in terms of XHTML and common web practices, and is also not that hard to customize. In this post, I will detail the steps that I took in creating a custom theme for WordPress.
Continue reading Developing a Wordpress Theme »