Recently I was playing with the linux command line .. I was testing out a script which i was interested in..

i ran a wget command and download the file to the server and then extracted it using unzip

But the worst part is that the after the extraction i ran a mv command to move the files to root directory

And the command replaced the sites’ index.php .htaccess and robots.txt

I did not bother for a couple of days until I figure out that the site is not working as the main index file is broken and also google and other search engines started deindexing the site as the urls were broken and worst part is that robots.txt had a Dissallow * line

Its a Very painful mistake both for me and the site ..

So the lesson learnt is that Never try out new things / change files on a live site without prior testing even if ur confident enough ..

Such mistakes can cause irreversible damage to the site and might take days / month to discover ( glad i found in 2 days )

IM not surprised of the incident when Google recently flagged the whole web as Malware.

So having a Local , Dev or Staging environment .. even on same godamn server or machine would make a HUGE difference in such calamities

Daily backups were disabled for this site as its small one .. and the weekly backup was taking ages to extract

Only the host Servint saved us from this disaster .. they restored the files needed from a recent backup and we were back on track.

We had about 10hrs of downtime due to this negligence .. Unforgivable !

I have been hearing a lot about Facebook these days. It has become really popular amongst the developer community after Facebook launched its API for public use. I was interested to explore FB after Ram @ Photon worked in Facebook App project.

I have still not got hands dirty on the Facebook API. Din’t find the time so far.But I managed to browse the site.

Now why is Facebook better then Orkut.

1.Great and Simple UI

The nice shades of blue mixed with other colors make it really pleasing for the user.

2.More Real Users

Facebook comes with an User Verification feature which lets you verfiy urself by supplying your phone no. Orkut is full of spammers and idiots these days .

3.Plenty of features

Since facebook is was initially targetted at the Student and Professional Community its comes with a lot of features. Groups, Events, Photos , Notes

4.Mark Zuckerberg - 23yr Old Founder

Really admire this guy for making a site real big in no time. FB was founded in just Aug 2005.Started the site while still in college ( Some what similar to my story.. Actually I started mine in March and still trying to figure out what I want to do with the website).
This guy has redifined the meaning of Social Networking atleast in the Business Context.

5. Developer API

In August 2006, It was the first major social network to give access to its API. Its limited to 100,000 requests per day though.

6. Its built on PHP

I am a PHP fan and Facebook is a brilliant example of what you can do with PHP and prove that its nothing inferior to ASP.Net (Orkut)

CakePHP is a pretty new and decent PHP framework which works well with both  PHP4 and 5.

I have been trying to build something using CakePHP and ran into trouble a lot of times as the Documentation is poor.

Any one in India who has tried CakePHP ?

Woah !! This is cool !! I can run PHP5 code only under a certain directory by adding these lines to the .htaccess file in the dir.

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php

Sounds like i will be moving all my php4 development to php5 from now

I major upgrade is scheduled for one of my projects. Most of you will know which one..

I have been avoiding XML till now but this time round I cant escape without using the same..

I know a bit of XML but using it with PHP is what is puzzling me. PHP5 has built in XML support but PHP4 not much.

Need to use some 3rd party classes I believe.

Building the new system is going to take some considerable time for sure, but its worth the effort.

I was trying to figure out whether ASP.Net is better than PHP. I have been in PHP for some 2 years now and also tried my hands on ASP. Now trying my hands on Asp.Net

PHP’s OO is not the best even if PHP5 has pretty good OO support.
Found these interesting reads in this regard.
Sitepoint Debate

Sitepoint Top 10 Myths

PHP vs Asp.net Redux

Microsoft Whitepaper

Its a very important to know the differences between PHP as an Apache Module and PHP as a CGI Binary.

PHP installed as Apache Module

• Inherits Apache’s Permissions
• Considered feature rich
• Plethora of options
• Most servers support PHP as server module
• Security issues might need some handling ( i am ok with it )

PHP as CGI Binary

• Considered the worst possible way to deploy PHP
• Slower compilation times as compared to Module
• All PHP requests pass through the CGI (considered secure but dunno why ?)

Links

• PHP Apache
• PHP CGI

He leaves a short email saying goodbye

Stored Procedures at last in version 5 of MySQL.

Often people from the SQL Server world would downplay MySQL saying that it lacks views and stored procedures which have been present in the MS world and the PostgreSQL world for a long time.

With the latest version of 5.0.18 MySQL has made a promising effort to bring these cool features into its feature set. I had blogged about Views in Mysql 5 here earlier.

Now got some time to write about the Stored Procedures feature in MySQL 5

Why Stored Procedures ?

• Stored procedures reduce the amount of code in your application be its PHP, ASP, JSP or .NET .
• Its also brings in a lot of security into your application coz most of the logic and decision making are handed over to the database.
• It also means that the database delivers in any kind of environment.
• Reduced Network Traffic

Links

Database Journal Article
I will post a part 2 of this article where i will take you through some examples

News.com says that Open-source database company MySQL said it has secured $18.5 million in series C funding, a round led by Institutional Venture Partners. The total venture investment in the company, which has operations in Sweden and Cupertino, Calif., is about $39 million.

The money will be used to fund the company’s growth, product development and expanded marketing and sales operations, MySQL said. Also participating in the round were Intel Capital, Red Hat, SAP Ventures and Presidio STV, the venture investment subsidiary of Sumitomo. “With the release of MySQL 5.0, the company is offering deep functionality at a fraction of the cost of the competition, prompting many CIOs to reconsider their database strategy,” said Steve Harrick, managing director and general partner of Institutional Venture Partners.