How Tos - Practical Info for Developers

This section has popular tutorials and how-tos that incorporate multiple, related technologies that are covered on blazonry.

Tips for Picking a Web Hosting Company
Understanding the needs of web hosting for a site with programming requires a different set of criteria than most standard web hosting sales pitches address. No web hosting company is a perfect match for your needs. No web hosting company is perfect. It’s a matter of trade-offs. Jump in. Just do it. Back up your files. It’s not that hard to change web hosting companies if you are unhappy. Better to have a website you can call your own than to keep your development efforts limited to “localhost.”

Introduction to Web Databases (PHP & MySQL)
Build a web-based database application using PHP and MySQL. This tutorial walks you through the complete creation of a sample web database, creating tables, inserting data, viewing the data and working with the data. The example is a simple database of links that can be built on for more complex applications.

How to Install Apache + PHP + MySQL
Originally written to walk through the setup of Apache, PHP and MySQL on a Red Hat Linux system, this has been updated and now provides a discussion of installing on Windows. There are handy links to the sites that provide the software that you need.

PHP vs. ASP vs. JSP
My biased overview of PHP, ASP and JSP to hopefully help you sift out the differences between them. I have worked with all three technologies. I worked with ASP and JSP for jobs. When I get to pick the technology, I go with PHP without a doubt. PHP has gotten even more powerful since I wrote this article back in 2002. I have never worked with .NET so I do not discuss it it here. Frankly, I don't want to. Though I have heard great things about .NET, I like that PHP is free, runs on low cost servers that run a free operating system that is easy to maintain.

MySQL & JDBC — installing JDBC drivers for MySQL

Overview of Client Side — quick overview of the client-side technologies (as opposed to server side) covered on blazonry, with links to each section. Ajax is making client-side technologies relevant again.

Introduction to Debugging
Learn a basic technique used by all programmers to figure out what their programs are doing, or failing to do. This tutorial provides examples written in PHP. The basic technique is relevant for all programming. Many people ask me how to fix their programs. No programmer gets their code to work the first time. Experienced professional programmers use techniques like described in this tutorial.

Margins Flush With Edges of Browser
This is a “miscellaneous” page that doesn't really fit anywhere, so here it is. It gives a basic reference on how to make your web page margins flush with the edges of the browser. Margins have given me many headaches, so I created this.

Specifying Alternate Document to Print
Another page that doesn’t fit neatly on any section of the site. Printing a page online usually means printing more than what you actually want. Webpages are quite fancy nowadays, with ad banners on top, navigational links on the left, and so on. That’s fine when you're viewing the page online, but when you’re printing the page, you want to print out only the “actual content,” and nothing else from the page!