Thank you Abdullah for doing better than I with these 10 tips for better coding.

Writing code can sometimes be the most difficult part of any software development process. If you don’t organize everything from the start – especially for big projects — the coding processes and code management afterwards may end up not just time consuming, but also a big headache.

Good code is maintainable, reusable, and testable. The following tips address how you and/or your development team can handle various coding tasks and how to keep everything as neat as possible. I will introduce you to some “best practices” that will help you write better code and help make you and your team happy and efficient.

via phpmaster | 10 Tips for Better Coding.

The past couple of weeks, I have been consumed with getting the TYPO3 Training Method Effectiveness Survey up and running and now trying to promote it so as to get maximum responses from as wide a range of TYPO3 users at all levels across the world as possible.

By the way, if you haven’t taken the survey already, please do, it only takes a few minutes. Click here for the survey.

I used the TYPO3 extension Questionnaire (pbsurvey) to put the survey together and the ease of use and excellent manual allowed me to concentrate on survey design rather than spend a lot of time learning how to use the extension. Patrick Broens has done an excellent job all around with this one. The manual even gives good advice on how to design a survey.

The related extension Questionnaire export (pbsurveyexport) allows you to export the results into a csv file that can be analyzed in statistical packages like SPSS and OpenStat, meaning you can use this extension to do serious statistics. This is not a simple poll type extension.

One of the most impressive things is the wide range of question types supported, from choice to matrix to open-ended to presentation, 16 choices in all. Questions with choices may have one only or multiple answers, responses can be mandatory or not, and presentation types are not really questions, per se, but allow you to format and present information pertaining to the questions in a variety of ways.

As an example, I used the Matrix – One Answer per Row (Option Buttons) question type for my main question. I didn’t want people to enter more than one response as the responses will be analyzed numerically and, for my questions, only one answer is possible or the response becomes meaningless. With this question type, you can have as many rows as you want (see below), which could also be looked at as an easy way to ask many similar questions at once. I was also able to set it so each person can only complete the survey once (subject to the usual limitations of identifying repeat users).

The answers for this question type are entered using the Answers Wizard. This comes with prepopulated selections or you can make up your own. In this case, I was looking for a 1 to 5 range of Very Ineffective to Very Effective and selected this prepopulated option. I added the “Don’t Know” response because people should not be forced to make a judgment on something they are not familiar with.

Here is what this question looks like on the front end:

To see eaxmples of other question types, please take the training method effectiveness survey! Click here for the survey.

What I have written here only scratches the surface of this excellent and versatile extension.

From May 30, 2009

It’s possible to let TypoScript to help you with enabling secure URLs when the incoming connection is requesting such. To do so, put the following code in your TypoScript template in Constants or Setup depending upon how you set config.baseURL or config.absRefPrefix in Setup.

config.baseURL = http://www.example.com/
config.absRefPrefix = http://www.example.com/
[globalString = _SERVER|HTTPS=on]
	config.baseURL = https://www.example.com/
	config.absRefPrefix = https://www.example.com/
[end]

From our professional experience, we’ve found that a full URL for absRefPrefix is the long term solution as TYPO3 extensions move away from using baseURL to create their own links to letting the typolink method do so.

If you use the cal extension, you might need to unset absRefPrefix on pages with a cal view by the following TypoScript.

config.absRefPrefix >

But, I want to Enforce Secure URLs

The above code is great to keeping to secure URLs when the incoming request is via a secure URLs. However, it doesn’t force an insecure URL request to secure. To do this, I strongly suggest using Florian Schlichting’s excellent TYPO3 extension “Page HTTP/HTTPS Enforcer – https_enforcer”.

The https_enforcer is fairly easy to setup and use, but it does require a slightly different TypoScript modification than normal. In this case, the PAGE object needs to reference the extension directly before any other PAGE sub-objects are requested so that the secure URL check and redirect happens in a timely manner.

Setup TypoScript modification

Look at the new page.5 inclusion.

page = PAGE
page.typeNum = 0
page.5 < plugin.tx_httpsenforcer_pi1
page.10 = USER
page.10.userFunc = tx_templavoila_pi1->main_page

Sample TypoScript constants

Be sure to not include protocols or slashes in the domain names.

https_enforcer.always_allow_SSL = 1
https_enforcer.secure_typo3_root = www.example.com
https_enforcer.unsecure_typo3_root = www.example.com

Use Both

By using both secure URL options, you can ensure that pages that should be secure are secure when called and the same for the follow-on URL requests.

Reference

• TypoScript Conditions
• Page HTTP/HTTPS Enforcer – https_enforcer

First Posted on: May 12, 2009. Revised.

Though Acqal was founded during a downward economy and weakening market, It grew. Albeit slow growth, but it’s positively got better every month.

The biggest way it grew, was by letting each person at Acqal do what they did best and to do what they were interested in. Furthermore, if there was a skill set missing for a particular project, we’d call upon family, friends, peers and yes, outsourcers to fill that need.

As time goes by, certain people are called upon more than others and their skill set became ever more useful to become an Acqal offering.

Through Acqal’s growth, it wouldn’t be as successful as it became if it wasn’t for willingness to look beyond ourselves and into the vast talent pool that exists via the Internet.

In our search for quick help and longer term partnerships we came up with some tips to make the relationships a bit stronger.

• Perform due diligence
  • Ask for and check on references
  • Perform code checks
  • Have a real conversation or two about why the provider does what they do – In only for the money folks aren’t usually good choices.
• Dictate a communications policy
  • During a project, communicate at least every 2-business days
  • Provide a consistent mechanism for communication like a support system – We use TargetProcess and communicate through that
  • Failure to communicate leads to lost jobs for all
• Before work begins, analyze the problem together and compare solution ideas
  • Agree to and understand the solution beforehand
  • Any deviations should be discussed before being done
• Ask if they’re obligated elsewhere and what their schedule for the next month is
  • I love travel and adventure, but not a worker leaving for Africa for two-weeks in 3-days on a hot project isn’t a good thing
• Agree to payment terms and stick to them
  • Flat rate
  • Hourly
  • Mix
  • Deposits

Please add your thoughts on partnering and your business below.

Related Links

• Top 7 Tips for Business Partnership
• Building Partnerships

First Posted on: March 16, 2009 – Revised.

First posted on March 10, 2009

But, Still Very Applicable to Now in Choosing a Website Foundation

I’m currently looking for a new apartment in the south Taipei suburbs. It’s gotten to the point that the current place is too small, too noisy, not enough value for the money spent and frankly not what’s desired or needed for my business and personal lifestyle.

Simply put, my current apartment can’t grow or adapt to my needs or wants because it’s static and unchangeable.

For very similar reasons a website can feel outgrown or stuck.

Have A Solid Infrastructure or Wither Away

My current apartment is like a cobbled together website. A little bit of everything thrown together with a little magic glue to barely meet, or not, everyday needs. At some point, it just can’t grow or change with you anymore.

In a content management system or CMS, infrastructure is quite important. It’s important to look at and understand how the underlying systems built up to support your needs for size, scalability, value and ever growing and changing needs.

If your CMS can’t adapt to tomorrow’s needs, how can it grow and help your business grow as well?

Location, Location, Location – Pick One Thoughtfully

In looking for a new place to live, location is playing a very important part.

At present, Peichi and I have either a 10-minute shuttle bus ride or a 15-minute walk to a subway station that then takes another 20 to 25 minutes to Taipei Main Station, 台北車站. Even if not traveling into Taipei itself, we still have to walk 15-minutes for decent sit-down meal options, 25-minutes to shop at a grocery store and 35-minutes to a Carrefour. With these distances, we’re spending valuable time and hard-earned money taking care of basic life necessities several times a week.

In moving to Linkou, 林口, it’s a planned city, we’re drastically reducing our everyday commuting times by being centrally located to restuarants, shops and being just above a Carrefour. Our commute into Taipei Main Station will be a simple and single 25 to 35 minute bus ride with only a 10 Taiwanese dollar increase, about $ 0.25.

Locality in a CMS?

A website content management system has similar location issues to deal with, I consider it the user interface and its usability.

Generally, a website that’s been cobbled together or even a content management system that’s not meant to handle what you’re using it for, will actually force you to spend extra time and effort to accomplish simple tasks.

Do you really need to call a development company every time you want to update a paragraph or to add a page to the main or left navigation?

You Want Me To Add A New Page To The Website?

For well built content management systems, these operations are a no-brainer: login, click a icon where you want to add the page, name the page, add content, review and it’s live.

Time needed depends upon whether you copied and pasted from a Word document or typed in the content fresh, a couple of minutes to twenty minutes.

No matter what, the CMS user interface should support how you work and not force you to do things it’s way.

Just like when I want some fried boneless chicken niblets, I don’t want to trek to the other side of the district for something that’s considered street food.

Got Value?

Our current apartment is 10 ping, about 350 hundred square feet. It’s small by American standards and barely acceptably priced at 18,000 Taiwanese dollars, about $ 517 US. By changing to an apartment that’s a better fit for us, we’re quadrupling our space to 44 ping and paying barely $ 60 US more for monthly rent.

Website Value

For your website, is it really delivering value for the money spent on it? Ways to tell.

• Is the monthly hosting fee really reasonable for the web space and bandwidth?
• Are you spending more on the web developer every month than your advertising?
• When was the last time your website was directly responsible for a sales lead?
• Is the annual license or service contract more than your monthly salary?
• Can you quickly edit content and add new pages without a computer science degree?

Only you can really answer if your website is valuable to you, but to get started, I suggest using metrics like asking clients and employees what they think of using your website.

Be prepared for some ugly responses though. We sometimes need to ask these questions to clear up our rose colored glasses.

Looking Deeper

In looking at Peichi’s and my housing needs, we determined that what was thought to be important regarding having an apartment in Taipei was false. Furthermore, we found ourselves to be unhappy with our apartment because we didn’t have the space to have more than 1 or 2 small children over or to handle our daily responsibilities without interrupting each other.

We’ve found that we needed more privacy than current, a balcony to get our garden growing again and a place for guests to visit and stay over without feeling like they’re intruding upon us.

For a website, is it really providing a solution for your needs like the following?

• We need to educate our audience
• We need to provide value to our clients
• We need to obtain information from our visitors
• We need to engage our community

If not, check out the various content management systems out there, like TYPO3 and Drupal and pick one or a few that meets your needs and give them a try.

Just please don’t pick one and go all in without a little reality check demonstration. Ask for help from your staff and even clients.

Every content management system has quirks and best fits. It’s just like renting a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom apartment; sure they’re all 3 bedrooms and 2 baths, but how big, how small, how stinky and why is there storage cabinet in the shower.

Let’s Go Shopping

Before stepping outside or onto the Internet, do try to determine at least your top needs before you begin looking around for an apartment and content management system and modify your list as you go.

Getting all of your needs down will come along as you do research. For now, just get started seeing what the content management system world has to offer.

In shopping around you’ll see things you didn’t think of and even find out sometimes what you thought was important isn’t.

Points to Remember

• Does the CMS have a flexible infrastructure?
• Is the CMS usable by employees, clients and site visitors?
• Can content editors feel comfortable editing the website with less than an hours training?
• Are you website maintenance costs reasonable?
• Think about what your real needs are, revise them as you learn more.

Read more on what we consider highlights of a quality content management system.

PS: We’ve got two last strong apartment possibilities lined up. Boy it’s tough to choose. 15th floor and already to go or a 4th floor bare bones that we can build out and buy in a couple of years. Only 2,000 TWD monthly price difference. What’s the questions we should be asking to make that final choice?

In the past, I presented 10 different ways of using tt_news for various clients. That was then followed up by couple of posts covering the how-to of the first 5 and 2 more different ways of tt_news usage.

Cephalon.com news product and Archive Menu

Cephalon.com is one of the world’s top ten biopharmaceutical companies with over 30 products worldwide for innovative treatments of central nervous system disorders, pain and cancer. Instead of trying to create a specific page for the top products, they let the product’s menu listing be auto-generated. On a similar note, the annual archive is auto-generated as well.

How-to for news product and Archive Menu

This implementation of tt_news categories or archives into the navigation structure by customedialabs is really one of the neatest combination of TypoScript and news content elements that I’ve ever come across.

In essence, the menu is created via multiple HMENU and TMENU objects as normal. However, the news year and category aspects are incorporated into the menu via RECORDS objects surrounded by TEXT objects to properly open and close the ordered tags.

By creating each part of the menu as an independent object and then joining it together in a COA object, maintenance is made simple. The TypoScript follows.

#Remove Anchor Tags
tt_content.stdWrap.dataWrap >

lib.first_sub_nav = HMENU
lib.first_sub_nav.special = list
lib.first_sub_nav.special.value = 13
lib.first_sub_nav {
	1 = TMENU
	1 {
		noBlur = 1
		expAll=0
		wrap =  |
		NO.allWrap = <li>|</li>
		NO.stdWrap.field = title
		NO.doNotLinkIt = 1
		NO.stdWrap.htmlSpecialChars = 1
		ACT < .NO
		ACT = 1
		ACT.allWrap = <li class="section">|</li>

		IFSUB < .NO
		IFSUB = 1
		IFSUB.allWrap = <li class="section">|</li>

		ACTIFSUB < .NO
		ACTIFSUB = 1
		ACTIFSUB.allWrap = <li class="section">|</li>

		CURIFSUB < .IFSUB
		CURIFSUB = 1
		CURIFSUB.allWrap = <li class="section">|</li>
	}
}

lib.second_sub_nav1 = HMENU
lib.second_sub_nav1.special = list
lib.second_sub_nav1.special.value = 81
lib.second_sub_nav1.entryLevel = 1
lib.second_sub_nav1{
	1 = TMENU
	1 {
		noBlur = 1
		expAll=0
		wrap =  |
		NO.allWrap = <li>|
		NO.stdWrap.field = title
		NO.stdWrap.htmlSpecialChars = 1

		ACT < .NO
		ACT = 1
		ACT.allWrap = <li class="open">|
	}
	2 =
}

lib.second_sub_nav2 = HMENU
lib.second_sub_nav2.special = list
lib.second_sub_nav2.special.value = 267
lib.second_sub_nav2.entryLevel = 1
lib.second_sub_nav2{
	1 = TMENU
	1 {
		noBlur = 1
		expAll=0
		wrap =  |
		NO.allWrap = <ul><li class="close">|</li>
		NO.stdWrap.field = title
		NO.stdWrap.htmlSpecialChars = 1

		ACT < .NO
		ACT = 1
		ACT.allWrap = <li class="open">|
	}
}

lib.second_sub_nav3 = HMENU
lib.second_sub_nav3.special = list
lib.second_sub_nav3.special.value = 269
lib.second_sub_nav3.entryLevel = 1
lib.second_sub_nav3{
	1 = TMENU
	1 {
		noBlur = 1
		expAll=0
		wrap =  |
		NO.allWrap = <li>|
		NO.stdWrap.field = title
		NO.stdWrap.htmlSpecialChars = 1

		ACT < .NO
		ACT = 1
		ACT.allWrap = <li class="open">|
	}
}

lib.second_sub_nav4 = RECORDS
lib.second_sub_nav4.dontCheckPid = 1
lib.second_sub_nav4.tables = tt_content
lib.second_sub_nav4.source = 481

lib.second_sub_nav5 = TEXT
lib.second_sub_nav5.value = </ul></li>

lib.second_sub_nav6 = HMENU
lib.second_sub_nav6.special = list
lib.second_sub_nav6.special.value = 80,103,79
lib.second_sub_nav6.entryLevel = 1
lib.second_sub_nav6{
	1 = TMENU
	1 {
		noBlur = 1
		expAll=0
		wrap =  | </ul>
		NO.allWrap = <li>|</li>
		NO.stdWrap.field = title
		NO.stdWrap.htmlSpecialChars = 1

		ACT < .NO
		ACT = 1
		ACT.allWrap = <li class="selected">|</li>

		IFSUB < .NO
		IFSUB = 1
		IFSUB.allWrap = <li class="close">|</li>

		ACTIFSUB < .NO
		ACTIFSUB = 1
		ACTIFSUB.allWrap = <li class="open">|

		CURIFSUB < .IFSUB
		CURIFSUB = 1
		CURIFSUB.allWrap = <li class="open">|
	}
}

lib.sub_nav = COBJ_ARRAY
lib.sub_nav {
    30 < lib.first_sub_nav
    40 < lib.second_sub_nav1
    50 < lib.second_sub_nav2
    60 < lib.second_sub_nav3
    70 < lib.second_sub_nav4
    80 < lib.second_sub_nav5
    90 < lib.second_sub_nav6
}

plugin.tt_news {
    displayCatMenu {
       catmenu_stdWrap.wrap = <ul>|</ul>
       catmenuHeader_stdWrap.wrap =
       catmenuItem_ACT_stdWrap.wrap = <li class="selected">|</li>
    }
    displayFirstCategory = 1
}

In above, lib.second_sub_nav4 is where the News Releases Products Menu content element is included into the menu structure as the category menu. As you can see below, it’s a very simple news content element of the CATMENU view.

Topconpositioning.com products are news too

Topcon Positioning Systems provides the innovative positioning technology principally for the construction industries. When a year-old, high-end, high-cost proprietary product and content management system failed to do as promised for Topcon Positioning Systems TPS, they turned to TYPO3. Now TPS is managing and presenting latest news, press releases and even products with auto-generating menus and easy to navigate pages.

How-to on products are news too

While I’d like to say that this news as products customization is a major deal, the reality is that it’s not.

Adding new fields to tt_news records is as easy as using the TYPO3 Extension Manager and Kickstarter to create the needed fields. Afterwards, you can modify the resulting ext_tables.php file to group new fields into tabs.

By grouping the new fields into tabs, you can better control the layout of the tt_news record and prevent over whelming editors. The following code comes from ext_tables.php to demonstrate grouping added tt_news fields into tabs. Take a look at the following screenshots to see them in action.

t3lib_div::loadTCA("tt_news");
t3lib_extMgm::addTCAcolumns("tt_news",$tempColumns,1);

t3lib_extMgm::addToAllTCAtypes("tt_news","--div--;Product
info,tx_tttopconproducts_product_image,tx_tttopconproducts_product_image_alt;;;;1-1-1,tx_tttopconproducts_product_fullimage,tx_tttopconproducts_product_fullimage_alt,tx_tttopconproducts_related_file,tx_tttopconproducts_filedescriptions,tx_tttopconproducts_manual_file,tx_tttopconproducts_manualdescriptions,tx_tttopconproducts_marketing_file,tx_tttopconproducts_marketingdescriptions,tx_tttopconproducts_specifications,tx_tttopconproducts_news_order,tx_tttopconproducts_ordervideo_link");
t3lib_extMgm::addToAllTCAtypes("tt_news","--div--;Descriptions,tx_tttopconproducts_shortdescription,tx_tttopconproducts_fulldescription;;;richtext[paste|bold|italic|underline|formatblock|class|left|center|right|orderedlist|unorderedlist|outdent|indent|link|image]:rte_transform[mode=ts];1-1-1;");
t3lib_extMgm::addToAllTCAtypes("tt_news","--div--;Techs,tx_tttopconproducts_technologies_box;;;richtext[paste|bold|italic|underline|formatblock|class|left|center|right|orderedlist|unorderedlist|outdent|indent|link|image]:rte_transform[mode=ts];1-1-1");
t3lib_extMgm::addToAllTCAtypes("tt_news","--div--;Product kits,tx_tttopconproducts_productkits_box;;;richtext[paste|bold|italic|underline|formatblock|class|left|center|right|orderedlist|unorderedlist|outdent|indent|link|image]:rte_transform[mode=ts];1-1-1");
t3lib_extMgm::addToAllTCAtypes("tt_news","--div--;News system,tx_tttopconproducts_news_url,tx_tttopconproducts_related_fielarchive_item;;;;1-1-1");
t3lib_extMgm::addToAllTCAtypes("tt_news","--div--;Right Urls Area,right_part_news,right_part_categories,right_part_pages;;;;1-1-1")

In case you’re wondering, $tempColumns, is configuration array of the new tt_news fields.

Acqal.com Most Popular Blog Posts

Minor bout of self-promotion.

Acqal.com is an official TYPO3 agency in the United States. To let our blog readers know what other have found most interesting, we offer a popular blog posts listing.

How-to for Most Popular Blog Posts

This tt_news view is majorly handled by the TYPO3 extension newsreadedcount. As a bonus, you can check in the tt_news records themselves for the single-view read counts if you don’t show the counts in the popular post entry.

Got More Examples or Have Questions?

Please share them by commenting on this blog post.

First published June 2, 2009.

Come join the in2code crew for a Bavarian TYPO3 4.7 Release Party on Tuesday, April 24th 2012 at 19:00. We’re hosting the party in our new office at Kunstmühlstr. 12a, 83026 Rosenheim, right next to Dinzler Bistro.

Plans so far are

• Look into the new features of TYPO3 4.7
• Celebrating with the good stuff
• Touring in2code’s new office, including showers for us bike commuters
• Sponging up snacks and drinks

Other country and location release party details.

Beware of using [device = wap] in TYPO3, it’s outdated. As such Internet Explorer 8 is detected and your mobile code is activated.

Try using extension wurfl, based upon the Wireless Universal Resource File, instead as follows.

# Send mobiles to mobile site
[userFunc = user_wurfl_getDeviceCapability(is_wireless_device)]
	config >
	config.additionalHeaders = Location: http://m.example.com/
	page >
	page = PAGE
	page.10 = TEXT
[end]

While I haven’t been successful getting wurfl2 working on a PHP 4 box, wurfl does fine.

Though documentation says that [device = wap] detection is over written, I haven’t found that to be the case.

Related Links

• Wireless Universal Resource File Extension
• Wireless Universal Resource File Manual

First published Oct 13, 2009.

My final Saturday afternoon interview was with TYPO3 Developer Days organizers Patrick Lobacher and Sebastian Böttger. A big, special thank you to them for their efforts on making it possible for T3DD12 to be the success it is.