Melinda Musil dot Com

Posts Tagged ‘PHP’

My cold is noticeably better today. I’m not all better but I’m definitely better than I was yesterday, and for that I’m thankful.


Our weather has been so odd this weekend. This morning it was pouring rain, so I got up early, fed the dog, and went to my friend’s house to feed her cats. That left me plenty of time to drive to my afternoon destination, normally an hour and a half drive in good weather. But I’d barely been on the road ten minutes when it cleared up- and it took me *maybe* fortyfive minutes. So here I am, an hour early and nothing to do. Normally I’d go shopping nearby but I am not familiar enough with this neighborhood to do that and guarantee that I can get back in time. Besides, I have a great parking spot.


I am spending this afternoon at a not-too-far away community college that is hosting a bunch of free classes as a publicity thing. I have no desire to go to this school but when I heard that they are giving away free PHP classes, I figured, why not? Of course I didn’t know I would be so busy and sick this weekend when I signed up for the classes, but that’s okay. God is giving me the strength for it all.


I’m glad I remembered to toss a pair of earbuds into my bag. I’m sitting here listening to some of my favorite songs and relaxing- it’s actually kinda nice. I just listened to “Come Thou Fount” by Jadon Lavik, which I LOVE, and now I am listening to “Light of the Stable” by Selah, which is a Christmas song but I still love it. Next I will listen to “Remembering You” by Steven Curtis Chapman, which I just think is an incredible song.


More people are wandering in, so I guess I should end this and go figure out if I have to check in or something. Later!
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

I noticed below that a spam email got sent to my “secret” email address and published on this site.  Sorry about that… I will change my secret email soon.  Until then, I apologize if any more spam emails get through.

It’s been a great weekend- quiet but there’s definitely nothing wrong with that!  I’m working my way through a few PHP tutorials- I finally figured out the problem with the blog-by-email on my website, and I know exactly what I need to do to fix it- sorta!  I know exactly which function I need to insert into my wp-mail.php file- I just don’t know where in the file to put it!  But that’s okay, it certainly won’t hurt me.

At the urging of Jackie, I am returning to my series on my car accident (see the first part here).  I spent quite awhile typing up the series of posts today, and I’m hoping to publish one part each day this week.  I hope you all enjoy it, and I encourage you to ask me ay questions about anything at all- just comment and I will try to answer your questions in the next post.

I need to fix up the sidebar which, as you can tell, is having some issues…

But of course, it is never as easy as I want it to be.

It’s some kind of php problem.  That means I have to pull out my notes on php and actually learn something.  Poo.

I remember when I first began shopping for a web host.  I was really surprised by how difficult it was to select a host!  I didn’t know what I should be looking for in my host.  Did I want more hosting space or more bandwidth?  What about email addresses?  File transfer?  Domain registration?  What about server side scripting – PHP, mySQL, Ruby on Rails, and a whole alphabet soup of computer terms I had never heard of!  Just as important was the price, but saving a few dollars a month was pointless if I got a really crummy host.  I searched and searched online for information on the different hosts.  I must have read hundreds of reviews of the different hosts before I finally settled on one.  All that hard work paid off- I am very pleased with my host and have never had any trouble.

Luckily there are now websites that “catalogs” many different website hosts and all the different website hosting features that they offer.  That makes it a little bit easier to choose a host.  Unfortunately there’s no easy one stop way to choose a host.  You have to read articles about hosting and learn about the different features that different hosts offer.  Then you have to consider which features are most important to you.  Maybe you are willing to pay a little bit more for a certain feature, or maybe it is more important to you to save money.  But if you put in the time to explore different hosts, then make an educated choice, you will probably be very pleased with that choice.

So, today I was asked to review a website called Heritage Web Solutions.  I was told nothing beyond the title, but based on that title, I was really quite excited.  I thought this site must have something to do with genealogy (heritage equals genealogy?), and as an amateur genealogist I was quite interested.  Not to mention I’ve toyed with the idea of developing a genealogy blog.  There are a number of quality genealogy businesses and web sites out there, and it would be neat to find another genealogy site!

Anyway, I clicked over to their website and was surprised to discover that it is NOT about genealogy.  But it’s still pretty fascinating.  The site supports a business that provides online small business services.  They provide web hosting for small businesses, and can also assist with website design.  They will even design the whole site for you, if you want.  They can also provide assistance with setting up e-commerce websites.  They also provide a number of powerful web tools.  There is a pretty good sized portfolio of other websites that they have designed available on their website.

I have to admit that I’ve been awfully tempted to hire a company like this to design my website.  On the one hand, it would be a totally ridiculous choice, since I don’t have a lot of money to spend on my websites.  But on the other hand, it feels like I’m learning HTML, PHP, and general web design stuff at a snail’s pace.  And, quite frankly, I’m an impatient person!

If I could afford it, though, I would almost definitely hire someone to build my site for me.  Not that I would stop trying to learn about web design- just that it would be an easy way to jump start my websites.  If you can afford it, then I say, go for it.  Why not?  At the very least, it would be helpful to get design input from someone else.

Okay, so I admit that the exclamation point makes me sound a little more excited than I am.  I’m a teensy bit nervous, mostly because even with the lower price I found, I’m still paying a pretty big chunk of change!  But I am now officially signed up for two classes at ed2go.com.  This afternoon, I signed up for “intro to XHTML and CSS” and “intro to PHP and mySQL”.  I think I’ll learn a LOT from these classes and be thankful that I took them.

I am so so so happy right now.

Remember how I mentioned that I was thinking about taking a class?  At my community college, they offer several computer design and computer language type classes, online.  They are non-credit (community education), six-week-long classes.  They are actually offered by a company/website that the school contracts with to offer these classes (ed2go.com).  I took a class through this website about a year and a half ago, give or take.  That class was an “intro to HTML” class, and it was really quite good.

Anyway, I looked on the website and found 2 classes that I’m very interested in- “intro to CSS and XHTML” and “intro to PHP and mySQL”.  But they each had a price of $129, and I was really really hesitant about that.  $129 is a lot of money, and then if you multiply that by two classes- well, it’s a LOT of money!

I just called the community college and discovered that, if I sign up for the class through the community college, each class will only cost $89!  So for two classes, that’s $178.  That’s still a lot of money, but it’s a lot LESS than the original price!

I’m almost positive now that I will take the classes.  Between the happy lower-cost news, and the encouragement from Becca, I really think I will be glad if I take this class.  I’ll discuss it with the ‘rents this evening, and probably sign up soon after.  Thanks for all your encouragement!

Yep, I’m thinking about going back to school.

But not really.

I’m thinking about taking another design class at my local community college.  They offer several low-cost six-week classes.  Most of them are no-credit classes, but still a good source for learning, particularly if you are not pursuing a degree.  Anyway, I’ve taken a few design classes previously, and learned tons from them.  Now I’m thinking about signing up for a PHP/mySQL class.

Only one thing makes me hesitate: the $129 price tag.  I want the class, but I’m quite hesitant about paying $129 for anything.

Why take a class, you might say… after all, all this information is out there floating around on the internet for free.  Well, yes, that’s true.  Actually I’ve learned a lot of “bits and pieces” just by wandering around on the internet.  But I know myself, and I know I’ve reached a point in my learning when it would be incredibly helpful to have an instructor and be able to ask questions (and get answers!).

But, grrr, I really don’t like that $129 price tag.

Most of you know that I have been working very hard lately to conquer PHP.  Lately I’ve been doing a tutorial that walks me through how to design a WordPress theme.

Tonight, I encountered my first major problem.

I followed the instructions, checked and double checked my work, but suddenly my code is not correct.

I have NO IDEA what I have done wrong.  But it makes me wonder if I need to go out and take a class or something, so that I can get a textbook or something like that, and figure out EXACTLY what I am doing wrong.

I feel so fried today.

First of all, I am exhausted.  I hardly got any sleep last night – between all the commotion with the power outage and the sleep cycle change, I lay in bed awake for most of the night.  When I did get to sleep, it definitely wasn’t that deep, restorative sleep – just fitful tossing and turning.  There was periodic thunder throughout the night, which certainly didn’t help my quest for sleep.  When the lights came back on at 6:30 this morning, our house lit up and I got out of bed.

Now I am attempting to work on my code.  For several days now, I’ve been working through a PHP tutorial of how to design a wordpress theme.  All was going well until today.  I copied, pasted, and typed everything, exactly as the tutorial directed, and something’s wrong.  There’s a syntax error on line 74, which may also be an ansi/unicode error.  I have no idea how to fix it, and it’s incredibly frustrating.

So, between the exhaustion and the frustration, I just feel totally blah.  Maybe I need to take a nap.