Review Overview

• Book Summary
• Who is this book for?
• Subject Matter
• Notable content/features
• Final Thoughts

Book Summary

The main focus of AJAX and PHP: Building Modern Web Apps is to get you up and running using raw Javascript and php to build practical and useful applications. I was happy to see the book mentions Javascript libraries, but really teaches the reader how to do things with plain old Javacript while accounting for all browsers. It was actually fun learning how to create your own AJAX cross browse compatible objects, which is something I never though I'd say.

To quote the books description and give you a better idea of the subject matter:

This book is a step-by-step, example-driven AJAX tutorial, featuring complete case studies. Each chapter contains a friendly mix of theory and practice, so that your journey through the book will be pleasant, yet efficient. You’ll be coding your first AJAX application at the end of the first chapter, and with each new chapter you’ll develop increasingly complex AJAX applications featuring advanced techniques and coding patterns.

Who is this book for?

In my opinion this book is great for beginners to web development, intermediate web developers looking to polish their AJAX and php skills, or advanced users who may have not had much experience using raw Javascript in web applications.

Anyone wanting to learn how php and Javascript can integrate asynchronosuly together will probably find this book behooving.

Subject Matter

I can't reveal all the details, but there are some seriously awesome applications and tutorials used in this book.

You are first introduced and walked through the basics of everything you'll need to get started, there is also a great primer on Javascript and even OOP style of Javascript, which is a nice bonus.

After that, you jump right in to building example AJAX applications, taking advantage of different web services and API.

Both XML and JSON formats are covered, which is essential.

Notable Content/Features

The section dealing with JSON vs XML is just awesome no matter which side of the fence you happen to stand on. Truth is, both data formats are in wide use, so it's helpful to know how to use them both when it relate to AJAX and PHP.

Another feature of the book I really enjoyed was the bonus on "Design Patterns" where common JS and PHP design patterns are evaluated and explained, it's very helpful for anyone trying to improve their application workflow.

Lastly, I'm very happy with how thorough of a job the authors did when it came to handling and dealing with cross browser issues. This isn't the most fun thing in the world, but any developer knows it's vital that their app work seamlessly across all common browsers.

Final Thoughts

As with nearly every single book from Packt, AJAX and PHP: Building Modern Web Applications is absolutely worth the price. It's a book to keep on your shelf when you're done reading to resort back to anytime you want to get your hands dirty with AJAX, and want things explained in a clear and precise manner.

As Always...

As always, I like to show all of you that I do in fact read all of these books I talk about and review, so here is my wonderfully extremely good looking self rocking the book:

Drew approves; he needs a haircut too!

Get It Now!

You can pick up the book directly from PacktPubs website and get started with AJAX and PHP today

UPDATE!

As of January 14, 2010 I will be picking and emailing the random winners and ensuring those who won are eligible to receive the prize. Please check your inbox and make sure no messages get caught in your spam filter over the next few days. More updates shortly!

The Giveaway Items/Products

We have 11 amazing items and products to giveaway to our readers, they are as follows.

PHP Reference Book (Print Edition)

Courtesy of Mario Lurig - Author

A collection of over 250 PHP functions with clear explanations in language anyone can understand, followed with as many examples as it takes to understand what the function does and how it works. One of the best PHP books to keep around as a PHP reference.
This PHP reference includes numerous additional tips, the basics of PHP, MySQL query examples, regular expressions syntax, and two indexes to help you find information faster: a common language index and a function index.

2 Spotify Invites for the Free to Use Version!

Courtesy of BeCreativeMagazine

Millions of songs - instant and simple
Discover and share music with your friends

Not available in all countries

$25 Amazon Giftcard

Courtesy of BeCreativeMagazine

BeCreative Magazine is an online design/social media magazine. It´s also a blog for people who want to learn how to design, code and write online. Whether you need to know how to design a website from scratch, start developing themes or maybe even want to learn how to write properly for the web we´ve got it.

FREE PSD to XHTML Conversion ($123 value)

Courtesy of HiddenPearls

HiddenPearls is offering a free PSD to HTML conversion for one homepage and one contact page, a $123 value, absolutely free to one lucky winner! Be sure to follow him on Twitter!

FREE 3 Month TUTS+ Subscription

Courtesy of Envato

From graphics to web development, audio to video and more, get the skills you want from our family of tutorial and resource sites. Need more? We also offer a Plus program where you can access source files and bonus tutorials.

$50 Credit to any one of the Envato Marketplace

Courtesy of ActiveDen, AudioJungle, ThemeForest, VideoHive, GraphicRiver, 3dOcean, and/or CodeCanyon.

The Envato Marketplaces allow anyone to buy or sell digital goods like WordPress themes, stock audio, After Effects project files, Flash templates and much more. The marketplaces are home to a thriving community of over 300,000 users, authors and buyers and everyday hundreds of new files are added.

AJAX and PHP: Building Modern Web Applications 2nd Edition (paperback)

Courtesy of PacktPub

This book is a step-by-step, example-driven AJAX tutorial, featuring complete case studies. Each chapter contains a friendly mix of theory and practice, so that your journey through the book will be pleasant, yet efficient. You’ll be coding your first AJAX application at the end of the first chapter, and with each new chapter you’ll develop increasingly complex AJAX applications featuring advanced techniques and coding patterns.

Digging Into WordPress the Book (pdf)

Courtesy of DigWP

Written by WordPress veterans Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr, Digging into WordPress is 400+ jam-packed pages of everything you need to get the most out of WordPress. WordPress is great right out of the box, but unless you want an ordinary vanilla blog, it is essential to understand the full potential of WordPress and have the right tools to get the job done.

One Standard Premium Account for Are My Sites Up?

Courtesy of Chris Coyier

Your clients and/or customers don’t care that a hamster chewed through a network cable somewhere in Northern California. They want their website up. You need to find out before they do so you can react fast!

Beginning Zend Framework (print edition)

Courtesy of Apress Publishing

The Zend Framework is one of today’s most popular PHP–based web application development frameworks. Beginning Zend Framework is a beginner’s guide to learning and using the Zend Framework. It covers everything from the installation to the various features of the framework to get the reader up and running quickly.

Beginning Python From Novice To Professional, Second Edition (pdf)

Courtesy of Apress Publishing

Gain a fundamental understanding of Python’s syntax and features with the second edition of Beginning Python, an up–to–date introduction and practical reference. Covering a wide array of Python–related programming topics, including addressing language internals, database integration, network programming, and web services, you’ll be guided by sound development principles. Ten accompanying projects will ensure you can get your hands dirty in no time.

Updated to reflect the latest in Python programming paradigms and several of the most crucial features found in the forthcoming Python 3.0 (otherwise known as Python 3000), advanced topics, such as extending Python and packaging/distributing Python applications, are also covered.

How Do I Enter?

Simple and takes merely seconds! Follow these steps:

1. Tweet about this post on twitter using any text you like. Nothing fancy. Here is a link you may use http://bit.ly/6kzEwQ
2. Leave a comment below about which items you would like to win. Please list at least three (please add more if you can!) in case your desired item is already taken if you win.
3. That's it, I told you it was simple!

As the comments grow larger, you will want to consider requesting choices that haven't been requested as much, to improve your chance of getting your first choice if you win.

How are the winners determined?

Random. All Random. We will choose random winners when the contest is over and try to give them their first item choice, if available. There will be 11 total winners, so be sure to follow the above steps to enter!

Please Support Our Sponsors!

This contest just would not have been possible without some amazing and very generous people and companies. Please take a minute of your time to give one of them a browse when you have the chance. Special thanks to:

• Mario Lurig
• BeCreativeMagazine
• HiddenPearls
• Envato
• PacktPub
• DigWP
• Chris Coyier
• Are My Sites Up?
• Apress Publishing

Once again, please join me in saying a huge "thank you!" to our sponsors!

Support Dev-Tips

We've grown a lot in one year, and we're hoping to continue to see that trend in the year 2010. If Dev-Tips has helped you out in anyway in the past year, I ask you to please consider making a small donation to help us offset the cost of hosting and running the site. Any and all donations are very much appreciated.

Follow @Dev_Tips and @DrewDouglass on Twitter!

Enter now!

Read through the contest steps above, and enter your comment now for a chance to win one of the 11 items!

When Will the Winners be Picked?

We will be picking a winner around January 13th. We may extend this a bit to give everyone a fair chance to enter.

Introducing "Minerva"

Minerva is a fresh and clean site template that works great as a portfolio, personal, blog, or corporate site. Minerva comes packed with features and is ready to go out of the box. It even comes with a working AJAX & PHP contact form w/ spam protection!

Screenshots

Home Page

Footer

Contact Page

Blog Comments

Theme Features

• Working AJAX & PHP Contact form.
• Nice jQuery effects in the Footer and ‘Share This’ section.
• Easy to use jQuery Slider in the header.
• Custom Font Embedding with Cufon, falls back on awesome font stacks and still looks great.
• 5 Different page types included.
• Supported in all major browsers, including IE6!
• Valid XHTML
• Custom and in depth online and offline documentation and support.
• Clean, elegant, and semantic code aids in good SEO .
• Minimal use of images and creative use of sprites to save loading times.
• Special attention paid to elements and typography, see demo page.

Demo, Documentation, & Support

http://designthirst.net/themes/minerva/ – Live Demo

http://designthirst.net/docs/minerva/ – Online Documentation

http://twitter.com/DesignThirst – DesignThirst on Twitter

Get Minerva now!

You can get Minerva right now, available exclusively through ThemeForest.

Feedback, Updates, and Feature Requests

If you didn't know, once you buy a theme on ThemeForest, you can download any updates made to that item for free at anytime! That said, we're about to release Minerva version 1.1 version 1.1 has been released!, which comes with some small enhancements, so no matter when you buy it, you'll forever have access to upgrades for free!

I'd love to hear any feedback or feature requests, let me know what you think!

Jason was kind enough to send me a copy for my own reading and enjoyment. Now that I've finished, I'll be quickly reviewing the book and then giving away a free copy to one of our readers, courtesy of Jason Lengstorf and Apress Publishing! Read on to find out more about the book and how to win the giveaway!

You can grab the book on Amazon right now as an early Christmas or Holiday gift to yourself, and start learning php today!

Overall Thoughts

The book was awesome, seriously, it was awesome. I say this as someone who has already had a lot of experience working with php, in fact, I make most of my living writing PHP code.

Don't believe me eh? It's so good, I gave it one thumb up! It would have gotten two, but I needed one hand to hold it:

Drew Approves of This Book

Target Audience

Mostly beginners, but can be used as a great refresher or reference book for intermediate to advanced users.

Do not let the title fool you, this book is no small book! PHP For Absolute Beginners is quite a chunky book, filled with useful information and sample tutorials. Towards the last half of the book, you are walked step by step through building a nice web application.

If you're looking to get started with php, hands down this is the book you want to pick up first. It is not too overwhelming while at the same time stays extremely informative and in depth.

Topics I Found Useful

While there are a ton of valuable resources and topics in the book, a few of them stuck out to me as great references and guides:

• MySQLi Refresher and References
• PDO (PHP Data Objects) and DB Abstraction is taught step by step and encouraged.
• PHP security and best practices are dealt with immediately.
• Great XML and RSS Feed section.

Want a Free Copy?

We're giving away a copy of PHP For Absolute Beginners absolutely free! Read the details below to find out how to win!

• Make a quick tweet about this giveaway/review on Twitter, please include the hashtag #DevTipsGiveaway in your tweet. Here is a short URL to the post you can use - http://bit.ly/6AJ46T
• Leave a comment with one reason why you would like to win this book. Be sure you enter a valid email address so we can reach you if you win.
• That's it, we'll announce the winner a week or two afterward!

Get the Book Now!

Want to get started learning PHP the right way? Go ahead and grab the book now, it's definitely a great book to have on hand!

Live Demo

Folder Structure and Files

Here is a brief overview of how we will setup our folders and files. If you are following along, you can go ahead and create all of these now, we'll get to them all one by one.

Below is the folder structure and files contained within:

• assets
  • css
    • style.css
  • js
    • ajax.js
  • php
    • contact-send.php
    • email-validator.php (will be downloaded and added later on)
  • index.html

HTML and Form Markup

Now we need our HTML and form markup. We will try to keep it relatively simple.

index.html

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
	<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
	<title>Your First AJAX and PHP Contact Form - Live Demo</title>

	<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
	<script type="text/javascript" src="assets/js/ajax.js"></script>
	<link rel="stylesheet" type='text/css' href='assets/css/style.css' media='screen' />
</head>

<body>
	<div id='wrap'>
		<div id='header'>
			<h1>Get in touch with us...</h1>
			<h2>Use the form below to try out the contact form.</h2>
		</div>

		<form method='post' action='./assets/php/contact-send.php'>
		<fieldset>
			<legend>Contact Us</legend>
			<label for='name'>Name (required)</label>
				<input id='form_name' type='text' name='name' value='' />
			<label for='email'>Email (required)</label>
				<input id='form_email' type='text' name='email' value='' />
			<label for='subject'>Subject</label>
				<input id='form_subject' type='text' name='subject' value='' />
			<label for='message'>Message (required)</label>
				<textarea id='form_message' rows='10' cols='40' name='message' value=''></textarea>

			<input id='form_submit' type='submit' name='submit' value='Submit' />

			<p class='hide' id='response'></p>

			<div class='hide'>
				<label for='spamCheck'>Do not fill out this field</label>
				<input name='spam_check' type='text' value='' />
			</div>
		</fieldset>
		</form>

	</div>
</body>
</html>

Everything above should look pretty standard, you'll notice we have a weird input and label towards the bottom of the form. We will be using this as a very basic spam check later on. More on that in a bit.

Also take note we are importing jQuery, our soon to be created ajax.js, and our style.css.

Styles

I'll leave the styles up to you, here is the bare minimum. The only thing we really need to make sure is that we hide anything inside the div class of hide. Notice we have still typed

Do not fill out this field

. We've done so in the very rare chance someone is surfing without CSS, they will know to leave the field blank.

style.css

#wrap {
	margin:0 auto;
	width:960px;
}
.hide {
	display: none;
}
label {
	display:block;
}
input {
	display:block;
}

The PHP Code

If you need to brush up on your php skills check out 5 more quality sites to help you become a php rockstar

A word about email validation

You will need to download a file before I go any further, you can download the google email validation script here.

Got it downloaded? Great! Name it email-validator.php and put it in your php folder you created.

Now, a word about email validation. It is tricky business to say the least. There are hundreds if not thousands of little tiny things to take into account. I recently wrote a blog post titled The right way to validate an email address with php. In hindsight, thhe technique used in that post certainly works, but isn't without it's draw backs. FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL has known bugs and only runs on newer versions of php, so this isn't an option for a lot of people.

Tired yet? Bare with me.

This is where the google code email validation script we downloaded comes in to play. It originally aired on the well known site AddedBytes.com. It has since grown in popularity so much that it has been moved to google code where it has received hundreds of contributions from members around the world, all with a goal to build a very solid and quick email validation system.

In short, the google email validation script kicks ass and we are going to use it.

Back to the main php code

Now is where we let the php do the heavy lifting. If you haven't already created your contact-send.php file, see the structure above and do so now.

I have left many comments in the code below, so be sure to read through them. I'll go through a few important bullet points after.

contact-send.php

Editors note: Please ignore any duplicate empty function calls below, this is a known bug of the syntax highlighting plugin. You can always download the source files if you have any confusion.

<?php
//Catch any errors while testing our script
//Remove when going live.
ini_set("display_errors", "1");
error_reporting(E_ALL); 

//Ensures no one loads page and does simple spam check.
if(isset($_POST['name']) && empty($_POST['spam_check']))
{
	//Include our email validator for later use
	require 'email-validator.php';
	$validator = new EmailAddressValidator();

	//Declare our $errors variable we will be using later to store any errors.
	$errors = array();

	//Setup our basic variables
	$input_name = strip_tags($_POST['name']);
	$input_email = strip_tags($_POST['email']);
	$input_subject = strip_tags($_POST['subject']);
	$input_message = strip_tags($_POST['message']);

	//We'll check and see if any of the required fields are empty.
	//We use an array to store the required fields.
	$required = array('Name field' => 'name', 'Email field' => 'email', 'Message field' => 'message');

	//Loops through each required $_POST value
	//Checks to ensure it is not empty.
	foreach($required as $key=>$value)
	{
		if(isset($_POST[$value]) && $_POST[$value] !== '')
		{
			continue;
		}
		else {
			$errors[] = $key . ' cannot be left blank';
		}
	}

	//Make sure the email is valid.
    if (!$validator->check_email_address($input_email)) {
           $errors[] = 'Email address is invalid.';
    }

	//Now check to see if there are any errors
	if(empty($errors))
	{

		//No errors, send mail using conditional to ensure it was sent.
		if(mail('fwdrew@gmail.com', "Message from $input_name - $input_subject", $input_message, "From: $input_email"))
		{
			echo 'Your email has been sent.';
		}
		else
		{
			echo 'There was a problem sending your email.';
		}

	}
	else
	{

		//Errors were found, output all errors to the user.
		echo implode('<br />', $errors);

	}
}
else
{
	die('Direct access to this page is not allowed.');
}

Read through the comments thoroughly, most of the code should explain itself.

A few notes:

• On lines 4-5, we turn error reporting on, this is always a good idea when testing. Remove these lines before going live.
• On line 8, we ensure that no one loads the page directly, but also do a spam check. When spam bots hit a form they usually fill out all HTML input fields, regardless if they are hidden with css or not. Bots also usually fill in every single input field in hopes of successfully submitting the form. We make sure this field is empty before proceeding. This is a small and basic but effective method against some spam.
• Lines 11-12 we include and initiate our email validation object.
• Lines 29-39 check for any empty fields that are required.
• Line 41-43 Check to see if the email is valid

The rest should make sense.

Right now you have a complete and working contact form. Congratulations! However, we can make this even easier on the end user by using jQuery and a simple AJAX request. jQuery is a Javascript library that allows you to easily do all kinds of cool things, such as quick and easy font resizing and animation.

The jQuery/Javascript

Lets walk through the logic of what we want the jQuery code to do for us, before we start coding it. You'll find this will help you think things through and be more efficient.

1. Include the jQuery library, we've done so in our head section of our HTML already.
2. When the form is clicked, ensure that we return false.
3. Setup our necessary variables holding our form values.
4. Show the user that work is being done (e.g. Loading...).
5. Make the AJAX request to our contact-send.php file with input fields as POST data.
6. Grab the response from the php file, and display it under the form, in the response element we have in our HTML page

Again, I encourage you to go through each line of the code slowly, and read the comments.

ajax.js

$(function(){

	//Do what we need to when form is submitted.
	$('#form_submit').click(function(){

	//Setup any needed variables.
	var input_name = $('#form_name').val(),
		input_email = $('#form_email').val(),
		input_subject = $('#form_subject').val(),
		input_message = $('#form_message').val(),
		response_text = $('#response');
		//Hide any previous response text
		response_text.hide();

		//Change response text to 'loading...'
		response_text.html('Loading...').show();

		//Make AJAX request
		$.post('http://dev-tips.com/demo/ajax_contact_form/assets/php/contact-send.php', {name: input_name, email: input_email, subject: input_subject, message: input_message}, function(data){
			response_text.html(data);
		});

		//Cancel default action
		return false;
	});

});

Obviously, you will want to change the address/location on line 19 to wherever your file is. The rest should be self explanatory.

Works Without Javascript!

Keep in mind a small amount of users wont surf with JavaScript enabled. This means anytime you use AJAX or JavaScript, you need to think about what will happen if JS is disabled. In our case, if JS is disabled, the form will refresh, be validated by php, and send the email if necessary. No worries for us

Sit back and relax

If you've been following along this whole time, you can relax and get some bacon now, you've just built a complete AJAX and PHP contact form from scratch!

Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Let me know what you think in the comments section below. And be sure to check out the live demo and/or download all of the files used in this tutorial.

Live Demo

I love Chinese food!

If you found this useful or plan on using this code, will you consider making a donation? I really just want some chicken fried rice.

View Demo

Authors Note:This plugin has now been given the name of NudgeIt and has had a lot of new features added! Please see the two updates at the bottom of this page for more information.

The Plugin Javascript

Creating the plugin is simple and is as easy as creating any other jQuery plugin. I'll try to comment the source code some so you can get an idea of how it all works.

jQuery Link Nudge Plugin
Posted by DrewDouglass on August 5th, 2009
Plugin Source.

Usage

$(function(){
		$('ul li:even').linkNudge({
			elapseTime: 500
		}).css('list-style-type', 'circle');//Plugin allows for chaining, as seen with the css call.
	});

Documentation

To use the plugin, simply include the plugin and jQuery library on your page and make a call to the linkNudge function. You can include three optional parameters, as discussed below.

1. padding - Allows you to set how far the link should be nudged. Defaults to 20px.
2. elapseTime - The time, in milliseconds, over which the nudge should occur. Default to 300.
3. returnPadding - Optional padding to return to when the element is no longer being hovered. Defaults to 0.

Terms of Use

You can't sell it. Otherwise, use it how you would like in your projects, a credit to this page in the notes or documentation would be appreciated. Donations even more so.

View Demo

jQuery Link Nudge Plugin (526) - 19.9 KB

Feed Me

If you have used or enjoy this plugin, I urge you to consider making a small donation so I can buy some Chinese food.




Update:

David Walsh has modified the flexibility of the plugin in a new post on his blog. I encourage all of you to give it a look and download and see how they differ. You can find Davids plugin on his website. Thanks for adding on to and improving the plugin David!

Update Two!

David and I have decided to collaborate on this plugin and host it on a GitHub so everyone can easily keep track of any updates or changes. We are now also calling the plugin, quite appropriately, NudgeIt.

]]> http://dev-tips.com/featured/link-nudge-jquery-plugin/feed 13 http://dev-tips.com/featured/wordpress-plugin-are-you-sure http://dev-tips.com/featured/wordpress-plugin-are-you-sure#comments Sun, 22 Feb 2009 08:26:55 +0000 Drew Douglass http://dev-tips.com/?p=208 Today we are releasing a new and very simple WordPress plugin we think you will all enjoy. The plugin is named Are You Sure? and it was created to prevent any accidental postings. If you have used WordPress for any amount of time, I am sure you have accidentally pressed the 'Publish' button before you were ready to publish. Sure, you can go back and change it, but chances are your RSS readers and anyone browsing the site already have seen it. Are You Sure? uses some simple Javascript when the Publish button is clicked and confirms that you do indeed wish to publish the current content. Read on to download and for instructions.
Are You Sure? (785) - 1.67 KB

Features

Upon clicking the 'Publish' or 'Update post/page' button, a simple Javascript box confirms that you wish to publish the current content. You may cancel the publishing and go back and continue editing.

• Extremely small file size, less than 1.7 KB total.
• Simple to use, just activate and your done.
• Saves you from accidental posting.
• Works on any 'Publish' button, including pages, posts, and quickpress.
• Tested and Compatible with WordPress 2.7+

Screenshot



Installation and Usage

If you have never used a WordPress Plugin, you may consider reading the introduction to plugins on the WordPress Codex.

• Upload the 'areyousure' folder to 'wp-content/plugins/' directory on your server.
• Go to the plugins link in the WordPress sidebar in your WordPress admin panel.
• Find the plugin and click activate.
• Your done!

Download

Are You Sure? (785) - 1.67 KB

WP Version:Tested and working up to WP 2.9+
Current Version: 1.0
Download: Are You Sure? (785) - 1.67 KB
GitHub URL: http://github.com/DrewDouglass/Are-You-Sure-
GitHub Clone: git://github.com/DrewDouglass/Are-You-Sure-.git

Buy Me Some Chinese Food?

If you enjoy this plugin and have found it helpful, I encourage you to consider making a donation of any amount. Donations keep me motivated and help cover a tiny percent of the time and costs that go into developing plugins for the WordPress Community




Feedback and Requests

We'd love to hear any feedback or requests you might have, let us know in the comments below! If you need support you can shoot us an email via our contact page. If you enjoy WordPress and WordPress plugins, you might also enjoy our article titled 'Use the twitter API to create a wordpress plugin'.

]]> http://dev-tips.com/featured/wordpress-plugin-are-you-sure/feed 22 http://dev-tips.com/featured/iblog-a-free-and-functional-html-and-php-theme http://dev-tips.com/featured/iblog-a-free-and-functional-html-and-php-theme#comments Sat, 24 Jan 2009 02:55:02 +0000 Drew Douglass http://dev-tips.com/?p=118 I'm glad to release the first of many free themes to come on Dev-Tips. Every once in a while, we will release another free HTML or WordPress theme for you to use however you like. You cannot sell these themes or use them commercially without the permission of Dev-Tips.com. Other than that, enjoy them! Today, we will have a look at a fully functional HTML and PHP based theme called iBlog.
Download iBlog (565) - 2.63 MB

Introducing iBlog

If you didn't already guess, iBlog was named and inspired by Apple, as are a lot of my designs. Call me a fanboy, I'm cool with that. Below you will find the screenshots, features, and a screencast going over the features and install.

Home Page



Single/About Page



Image Gallery



Contact Message Fail



Contact Message Pass



iBlog Features

• Font embedding via typeface.js
• Twitter updates via JSON
• Working php contact form with custom success and error messages
• Lightbox effect on the image gallery
• The "paper clip" is a seperate image, thus any image can be replaced under it.
• Compatible with IE6+ FF 2+ Opera 9+, Safari 3.0+
• Full psd file included.
• Help file included that explains everything you need to know about setting up this theme.

Important Note

You need to be running PHP version 5 or higher for this to work properly. It may work in PHP 4, however, no support will be provided for those running PHP 4. Please upgrade.

Live Preview

You can view a live preview and all source code at the live preview page for iBlog.

Usage

You may use iBlog in any non-commercial way you wish. If you enjoy the theme, a link back to Dev-Tips is appreciated and helps keep us motivated to build more free themes!

Download iBlog

Download iBlog (565) - 2.63 MB

Get Support

Please read the help file thoroughly before requesting support. If you still need help, please contact us via the contact page with the subject of 'Theme Support'.

Hosting

You can get also get blog hosting over at WHS, if you don't already have a webhosting provider. They can help you find good options should you need it.

Lastly, if you enjoyed this theme, let us know! We'd love to know what you think, and what you would like in the future.

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