There are 13 chapters in the book, covering majority of the important features and aspects of Yii Framework, including topics like URL Routes, AJAX and jQuery, Database & Active Record, Forms, Modules, Components, Widgets, and also some Testing, Performance, and Security related examples, which are ready-to-use in PHP-based web-applications.

The cookbook is all about examples, demonstrating various features of Yii Framework. As I mentioned in my previous Preview post, this book will benefit those developers who have a basic knowledge about Yii, and have a limited amount of time to work on their projects, as it’ll provide you with a large number of quick solutions which are very generic and practical. And the best thing is, the examples can be applied to your projects in a matter of seconds. You may download the source-code of all the examples found in the book from the publisher’s website on buying the book.

The Yii Framework official documentation is generally not considered to be very good, due to lack of many such examples. Yii is relatively new web-application framework in the PHP scripting line, and due to this reason, the documentation is still going through a lot of changes. This book completes it by providing a large variety of examples on almost every feature in Yii.

Although it’s a good read, I won’t recommend it to the beginners who are starting to learn Yii or PHP. As I just mentioned, the book emphasize on real-time examples, not the basic theory part. However, I would consider the combination of Yii Definitive Guide, and this coobook to be perfect for every aspiring Yii developer. The definitive guide will walk you through the basics of Yii, explaining most of it’s features and provide some basic examples. And the cookbook will sharpen your knowledge by providing more straight-forward examples, which are easy to understand and apply in our day-to-day work.

Another thing I like about this book is that, it provide references to every topic after examples, for further reading, and understanding the concept completely.

I also learnt some cool new Yii tricks, which I find very useful, and rarely available on the Internet, hence making it a worthwhile experience for me.

I rate this book 4 on a scale of 5, and I highly recommend that every Yii developer should buy it, and read. It’ll come very handy in tight situations when it’s difficult to find quick solutions to your web-development related queries. You can buy an electronic version of the book from the Packt publisher’s website.

Earlier, I wrote about a web-application project which I was working on, based on a PHP-based framework called “Yii”. That was my first project developed on a core PHP framework, apart from WordPress and Joomla who have already established themselves as high-end Content Management Systems (CMS). Since then, it’s been a very intriguing experience for me.

The moment I installed Yii Framework and started working on it, I was so very amazed about how easy and time-saving it was to develop a web-application with Yii as it’s beating heart. Yii provided all such features I desired in my application, some of which are:

1. High-performance with less loading time.
2. Easy jQuery & AJAX integration for Form validation, updating page elements dynamically without refreshing, etc.
3. Customized Themes, and Modules/Widgets integration.
4. User-friendly interface, and debugging system.

For more details on the platform & it’s features from a practical point of view, please refer to my earlier blog post “Yii Framework (PHP) Explained: A Practical Approach”.

Recently, I received a review copy of the Yii 1.1 Application Development Cookbook by Alexander Makarov from it’s publishers, Packt. The best thing about the book is that it already have some ready-to-use solutions to general day-to-day problems, people usually face while developing their projects. It’s not just for the beginners who are willing to learn Yii, but also for the regular Yii developers as it’ll prove out to be a very handy guide.

I’ll be going through the entire book in the next few days, and will post a review here. For more details, Table of Contents and Sample Chapter, please refer to the official webpage of the book on PacktPub.com.

There haven’t been too many books published on Yii Framework in the past. Being a relatively new framework, Yii is gaining popularity at a rapid rate, and currently stands at a challenging position with other PHP Frameworks like Zend, CodeIgnitor, CakePHP, Kohana, Symfony, etc. for the top spot.

Yii is truly a very fascinating platform for PHP developers, and I highly recommend it’s usage for the development of a wide-variety of websites and web-applications.

1. Yii Framework (PHP) Explained – A Practical Approach
2. 5 Tips for Designers & Developers to create a wonderful Portfolio

PDF Download Link:

H-DEE Weekly e-Newspaper (Issue: March 2011 | Vol. 1/3)

I’m familiar with PHP/MySQL only, as far as the development part of the data-driven dynamic websites are concerned. So, before I started working on this new project, I was looking for a perfect PHP framework to start with, as I was low on time, and had to develop it real quick. In case if you’re confused about the term Framework, it is basically a structure, a backbone on which the websites are developed. It provides certain set of inbuilt files, rules, methods, classes etc. which we can easily use in our website. Using a framework makes it a lot easier to develop websites, and saves a lot of development time coding each and every part of the website starting from scratch.

I usually develop websites on WordPress, and Joomla but that’s about normal websites. This project is much rather a complete Application. And if you’re developing a Application, you have to keep few things in mind – High Performance with Less Overall Size (including Database, Files etc.). I could have easily opted for Joomla or WordPress, but I was sure that I won’t be using much of their core functions and files, and that would add a tremendous amount of extra bulk to my website (Large Overall Size, with Low Performance). So, I started researching about other PHP basic frameworks, and my research came to an end with two frameworks as the end result – CodeIgniter, and Yii. Though there are many other frameworks like Zend, CakePHP, Symfony, Kohana etc. but I was also looking for one which is Powerful, has a Short Learning Curve, and a very Thorough & Good Documentation available . That’s why I stick to both CodeIgniter and Yii at first.

I tried installing both on my local machine with LAMP installed, with Yii first. It just took me 2 steps to be able log into my new project from Web-browser i.e. 2 step installation before you can start working on an application. First, I extracted the files to /var/www, and Second, I used a command line tool provided with Yii (Yiic) to install the basic structure of my project. That’s it, and I was very impressed. Then, I tried installing CodeIgniter. I extracted the files, and tried to open it from my Web-browser but it showed up 503 error, even though everything was perfect – Apache, File Permissions etc. And I found a few more posts on the Internet related to the same error on localhost. So, I had no other option but to start working on Yii, as I didn’t have much time to research about the CodeIgniter problem, and Yii looked quite impressive at first. I don’t criticize CodeIgniter in any way, and there are a lot of developers happily using it, but Yii diverted my attention away from it. If you want a Detailed Comparison between CodeIgniter and Yii, refer to this article.

I’m using Yii Framework for quite a few days now, and things which I found impressive about Yii framework are:

1. Easy 2-step Installation.
2. Clean and thorough Tutorials and Documentation with large Community base. In fact, if you’re willing to start using Yii, follow this tutorial by Larry Ulman – The best I found so far, on the Internet, from a beginner’s perspective.
3. Uses MVC (Model-View-Controller) Framework structure, which is very popular these days among Web applications. I’ll be explaining MVC in a separate post later on.
4. It generates Model, View, and Controller files for your application project by just accessing the database. So, after the installation, the next step you need to do is to create a Database schema for your application, and use the Gii tool provided with Yii Framework files, to generate those files from the Database schema –  The part I liked most about Yii. Thus, most of the basic frame of your application is generated by Yii within minutes, without requiring your assistance in writing a single bit of PHP code. Other things it generate by default, are a Captcha enabled Contact form, and a Simple Login system, which can be customized as per your requirements.
5. Yii also provides built-in jQuery support, and supports AJAX for many operations such as Form validation, File Upload, dynamically updating page portion, etc.
6. Supports extensions to enhance the functionality of your application. There are increasingly number of extensions available on the Yii Framework’s website.

Publicize your Portfolio on a website

Its always a good practice to publicize your portfolio on the web for the employers to have a look at it anytime they want. You don’t necessarily need to own a Top-Level Domain(TLD) for it. There are many FREE subdomain options provided by many organizations (like Google, WordPress.com, Webs etc) to put up a good portfolio website.

Multiple Contact options

Make it easy for employers to be able to reach you via various communication methods available. I’d suggest you to put a Contact form on the Front-page of the portfolio website itself, and provide other such details with it, like your Social Networking profile links, such as on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook etc. If you prefer to take projects from local employers only, you may also provide your Address, Phone No. etc with it.

Portfolio Website: Simple Yet Elegant

Keep the navigation between pages simple. Show what you’re best at i.e. if you’re a web-designer, you should concentrate mostly on the design part of the website, and should not give much stress to the Javascript/AJAX/Flash etc based content. Its generally good to add such scripts and objects to your website to make it look more dynamic, but using a lot of them makes it more bulkier and sometimes hard for some people to easily look around your website. This might prove out to leave a negative impact on employer’s mind.

Put up all your best work on the Front page itself. Also, make sure it isn’t too hard to browse through all your portfolio content i.e. use only a few number of pages for it. Don’t make it too deep. Its generally easier to browse through a portfolio when arranged in various categories such as Logo, Banners, Advertisements, Templates etc.

Screenshots and Live Demo of your work

Its always beneficial to provide full-scaled screenshots, or better, a live demo of all your previous work. Graphic designers should include full-scaled WATERMARKED screenshots of their previous work, whereas Animators, Web-developers etc should provide a Live-demo of their past work, be it an animation video, a live website, or something similar.

Describe your work in Words too

Its true that “A picture can say a thousand words”, but it don’t hurt to describe your work in words either. Always include a textual description of your work, be it for a graphical work, an entire website, or something else. Textual description always help in understanding a person’s work from their own perspective, which sometimes is difficult to understand by just looking at it.

1. Preview: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal), and Unity UI
2. Fetch Top Rankings in Search Engine Result Pages : Part-1
3. Revolutionizing Information Technology with Cloud Computing
4. Establishing yourself as an Online Freelancer

PDF Download Link:

H-DEE Weekly e-Newspaper (Issue: March 2011 | Vol. 1/2)

So, What’s the big difference this time? Is it better than the previous Ubuntu releases? Is Canonical seriously making efforts towards Ubuntu Desktop in order to compete with far more popular Windows, and Mac for global Desktop market share? Such questions generally arise every time a new version of Ubuntu is released, every 6 months.

The biggest difference in 11.04, compared to the current stable 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, is the change in the User Interface. Yes its true, GNOME Desktop Environment no longer ships with Ubuntu now, possibly because of the disagreement with the Canonical Ltd. And, that’s why Canonical started working on its own brand new UI – Unity, after the release of 10.10. Though, it didn’t give them enough time to design a completely new UI given the 6 months development cycle time between every Ubuntu release, still they’re pushing hard, and with every Alpha release, major difference are being made and well noticed, and lots of bugs reported earlier after the Alpha 1 release are fixed now. No doubt, Unity UI looks promising (See the screenshots below – Click them to Enlarge).

Two other important features of Ubuntu 11.04 are:

1. Replacement of Oracle’s Open Office Suite with LibreOffice 3 package, as the default Office suite.
2. With 11.04, Qt Framework is also given a go, thus encouraging a whole lot of new apps based on it. This would also push it for cross-integration of apps with other environments, such as KDE.

Right now, we can’t tell whether if Natty Narwhal is better than Ubuntu 10.10, or if Canonical is seriously planning to rule the Desktop market share in near future, because there are still a lot of changes being made every day, and we can’t judge it until the final product is released on April 28, 2011. I’ll be surely writing a Review on it, after the final stable launch.

There are many Linux experts, who consider the UI change to be a wrong move made by Canonical because of less development time, lots of bugs, complexity in interface design, and might turn down large number of Ubuntu users to switch to some other Linux platform. One can’t be sure about whether its gonna happen or not, at this stage. But, one thing is for sure, Natty would prove out to be somewhat buggy compared to 10.10 despite changes constantly being made to the interface. But, I think it would be fair to judge and compare Unity with GNOME after the launch of Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot”, as it would give Unity a fair time to furnish itself.

I’d certainly love to know your opinions about this brand new Ubuntu 11.04, and most importantly the Unity UI.

Now-a-days, Internet has made such a huge impact on our lives, be it in terms of Knowledge, Business, Entertainment, Information etc. Everyday, multi-thousands new websites are launched on the Internet, and so the competition is increasing exponentially. People generally head to Search Engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask etc. (too many to mention in here), and rely on the results generated by them based on the query made by the user. Thus, every website-owner wants his/her website to appear on top of Search Engine Result Pages generated relevant to the context of the website, and most-importantly, above their rival competitors on every relevant keyword combination or search queries. These days, Search Engines are so powerful, and their search algorithms are so strong, that most of the users are satisfied with the first two pages of the Search Results generated, with Top-4 entries on the very first page receiving most of the Traffic hits. Even I don’t go beyond 2-3 pages of Search Results for almost 90% of my search queries, and I’m sure neither do you (or most of you).

So, If you are a website-owner or webmaster, I’m going to discuss few of the SEO tricks to make your website Search Engine Friendly (SEF). Search Engines are very specific about deciding the rank of your webpages, based on certain criteria. SEO is a very vast topic. Its actually an entire subject in itself, so it is very difficult to explain everything about it in a single article. Hence, I divided it into few Parts, with each subsequent part extending it further to a next level. Following are the few points, which should be considered while developing a website. “The more SEO tactics you apply on your website, the more SEF it would be, and higher it would show up on SERPs – The S-S-S Rule (Triple S)”.

• It is recommended to have Search Engine Friendly URLs, i.e. URLs which are easy to read and share, like the one on this blog. Though most of the Search Engines don’t see that as a necessity, and don’t generally consider it as an SEO tactic, but some do look into the links for the queried keywords to provide the user with the best results. Generally, data-driven websites, developed using Server side scripting languages such as PHP, ASP.Net etc. uses symbols like ‘?’, ‘=’, ‘&’ etc. in the links to pass the data values among pages. This also makes it hard to memorize them, and so its a good practice to have SEF URLs.
• Always give the utmost priority to the content of the page. The main content of the pages is the most keyword-enriched part of the website, and search engines usually look into the main content while indexing them for search queries. Make it as clear, visible, and above all other non-important things as possible. Always use heading tags to represent headings, or sub-headings within your content.
• Avoid duplicate content. Search Engine crawlers are very smart, and they keep track of whether the content being indexed from a website, is already present in their result pages cache, indexed from some other websites. Thus, if duplicate content is found, they generally have a negative impact on your SERPs. Hence, always generate Unique content, and articles for your websites. Never copy it as it is (without prior notification or link-back to the original author) from other websites. Most of the blogs tend to have same content on many pages, like an article content maybe present on the Index page, and its own dedicated page, under the same domain name itself. This is also considered as duplicate content by the crawlers. But, this can be avoided by using the ‘canonical’ meta tag, as I’m using it for this blog (within the <HEAD> tag).
• Use Javascripts, AJAX, and Flash for non-important content only. Search engines can’t read/index the scripts or objects, or get pass through them. Hence, it is recommended to avoid as much of these as possible especially for the content part, bearing keyword-enriched text.
• The page TITLE tag should not contain more than 60 characters, or it would be cut-off by most of the search engines. Its the first thing Search Engines look for based on the user queries, to match the entered keywords with the keywords used in the title tag, in order to display the appropriate result pages. Always use keywords in your title tag, with most important ones at the start.
• Use of ‘Keywords’ and ‘Description’ meta tags is also recommended. Though, major Search Engines like Google etc. don’t consider the ‘Keywords’ meta tag, some of them do. Hence, it is a good practice to include these two meta tags with 5-10 Keywords, and 160 characters maximum Description size respectively.
• Search Engine crawlers can’t read graphical content, or images present on a website. But, they do have the tendency to index them separately based on their textual meaning represented with ‘ALT’ attribute for images present inside <IMG> tag, along with the text present around the image. Hence, use of meaningful, and relevant ALT attribute for images ensure that your images will also get indexed by Search Engines, who have the capability to show Image search results, like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

This concludes PART-1. But, I’d like to clear one thing right now. End-results never appear that quickly on applying SEO tactics to a website, as some of you might be thinking. It usually takes time for Search Engines to index your website pages on a regular basis, and to note such differences being made to them. It also depends upon your website popularity, and how often its being indexed.

Stay tuned for more…

Well, to be frank, initially even I was pretty much confused about the real meaning of it, and I was really searching for the right answers to these questions. On the Internet, when you type in the term “Cloud Computing” on your Google Search Engine, Bing, Yahoo, or whatever you use, you’ll find many articles, and ‘wiki’ pages on it, with almost all of them either too complex to understand, or too different in terms of approaches being considered in order to explain its real meaning. Whatever it was, certainly took me some time to understand and formulate the real meaning of it.

Cloud Computing can be defined as the advancement in the concept of delivering of hosted service on the Internet. These services could be Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), and Platform-as-a-Service (Paas). The term ‘Cloud’ here is actually used as a ‘metaphor’, usually used to represent the ever-growing size of the Internet, and multiple servers connected in a network. 

There are several benefits of Cloud Computing:

1. The power of computing can be increased by increasing the size of the cloud (i.e. by adding more virtual servers temporarily to the cloud present within a network), at any instant of time to fulfill the urgent demand of bandwidth, and can be removed easily as soon as the demand is fulfilled. Hence, there’s no need to buy too many servers or other hardware devices, thus, making it a cost-effective solution.
2. Its cost-effectiveness, and low-power usage also makes it a ‘Green’ solution. As most of the hosted services would require only a minimal number of servers to fulfill the average bandwidth demand, and further demand can be fulfilled with cloud power, the power-usage for those extra servers can be saved, as they don’t need to be switched on all the time, but only in certain situations when the demand is high.
3. Cloud computing makes it easier to backup, and maintain data, and services hosted on the servers. Examples could be GMail, Hotmail, Google App Engine, Google Docs, Salesforce, Amazon etc. All big organizations are switching to cloud computing due to its multiple advantages.
4. From’s the users or client-side perspective, the cost for running heavy applications, which required high-end hardware devices, and software licenses, can be saved. Even a standard computer with a web-browser installed in it, can effectively use the services hosted on cloud powered sites/servers, as if they were installed on that particular system locally. The examples, as mentioned above, are Email services like GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and Office-applications like Google Docs, etc.

Below is a video I find really helpful in understanding the concept of cloud computing, from a beginner’s point of view. The way with which it was explained, was the best I found on the Internet till date. I really admire the creativity of the person who developed that video, with lots of unique ideas flowing. I do recommend to watch this video at least once, and I bet you’re gonna enjoy this for sure.

[vsw id="QJncFirhjPg" source="youtube" width="480" height="270" autoplay="no"]

Video Source Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJncFirhjPg

However, despite all its advantages, a doubt certainly arises about the reliability factor of cloud technology. Recently, there was a situation where the email accounts of a small percentage of GMail,  and Hotmail users, were totally wiped out, as if they were newly created. Google, though, stated that it was because of some software glitch, and they are taking initiatives to recover all the wiped accounts. But, this certainly puts a question mark on its reliability, as all the user’s data is stored and handled on remote servers, and storage of important and critical data on those servers is certainly not risk-free. I’d surely like to know your opinion about it.

Generally, there are many strong points of differences between Freelancing and a regular job, and many people prefer being a Freelancer than doing a regular job, while others criticize. In my opinion, freelancing have numerous advantages over a regular job, but as we all know it, ‘Pros don’t exist without Cons’. Being a freelancer means you’re FREE to do whatever you find suitable for you, based on your interests, and your skills. You are your own master. Unlike a regular job, where you have to work on a weekly or a monthly basis, a freelancer always have the option to take a break in between projects. Thus, the risk of losing up a regular job on getting sick, or going for a vacation, or something, is not the case here. So, as a freelancer, you get to furnish your skills, earn some quick money, peacefully enjoy vacations, and live the life the way you always wanted to.

However, there are obviously some disadvantages, but if you look at the advantages and establish yourself as a proper freelancer, you don’t have to worry about it. When you get a regular job, its certain you’re gonna get paid on a regular basis (probably fixed amount, be it hourly, daily, weekly or monthly). But, In the initial stages as a freelancer, you might not get enough projects or earn regular income, but if you hold on to it, there are certain chances that you’re gonna get opportunities for sure. In today’s Internet reliable generation, Organizations have gone online, and they are outsourcing most of their projects. And, so there’s no doubt about the number of opportunities in near future. They are surely gonna increase. And, who knows you might be earning much more than you can ever imagine, or the income you’re earning, or going to earn doing a regular job.

Here, I’m going to discuss about establishing yourself as an online freelancer, based on my personal experience. Though its not that much by far, but still, I think I’m well established as I get projects whenever I want to, without much struggling. I’m a web-developer, and I develop websites based on WordPress, and Joomla CMS. I had my own domain then (not this one), where I used to upload and test all my work. I didn’t know a thing about freelancing then. And then, I came to hear about few online websites which give the opportunity to Bid on open-projects outsourced by some organizations or individual employers. And if the employer approves your bid, you get the chance to work on it, and submit it before deadline to earn the money you initially quoted for that very project. I really liked that idea because of the above said reasons. Earning real money sitting at home, no strict working hours, working on projects I was interested in, and capable of handling them on my own…couldn’t get any better for me, as I’m still an under-graduate student. So, I finally started placing bids on multiple Freelancing websites, but one can’t be successful that easily. One has to work harder, and improvise things, and that’s what I did. I improvised my bidding style, created a proper portfolio of work I had previously done, and mentioning it in every relevant bid I place on those websites. But, out of them all, I liked one such website – vWorker (previously RentACoder.com), and thats because of three big reasons:

1. The bidding system was closed, i.e. you don’t get to see other person’s bid until the project is alloted to someone. Thus, giving everyone a fair chance of quoting genuine project price, and preventing cut-throat mechanism (placing the lowest bid by looking at others’ bid price…literally cutting other person’s throat).
2. The mediation system was rock-solid, and very effective. In case if your project goes into arbitration, and one can’t continue to work on the project due to some reason, the moderators analyze it, and take the right decision. It isn’t biased at all.
3. Unlike some other websites, no signup charges, comparatively less commission charges per project, and less money transfer charges.

When I signed up on this website, I was very confident about getting success there, and so I did get my first project (though a small one) on the 4th day after signup, and it never stopped after that. Some people are very talented that they earn their first project on the first day itself, or even within the first hour. But, on the other end, some keep trying and trying, and ultimately lose hope, and self-confidence. And If I look at the other end, I find myself far more lucky, and I seriously feel bad for those who ultimately give up trying. So here, I’m gonna summarize a few important points which you should always keep in mind, if you want to become a successful freelancer:

1. First, and the most important one, do not ever give up trying. If you’re not getting success, don’t worry, just improvise your style and technique. Like, if you’re a project bidder like me, try to improvise your bidding style, and Try again. Don’t try to convince or force the employer to hand-over the project to you, by just saying “I can do it”. Instead, try to convince by saying “How I’ll do it, How I’m gonna approach it, My strategy, etc.”. Mention your previous work experience to them.
2. Be as informative as you can, and yes “Be Professional!”.
   
3. Don’t always run for projects with high budget value. Always go for those projects which you’re interested in, can handle and wrap it up in a given period of time. There’s no use of earning those high-valued projects, if you can’t finish them off on time, with the resources you have available with you.
4. Have your portfolio created, and always available online for the employers to look into, whenever they want to. Almost every employer hand-over a project to someone, only after checking their past work in the similar area. No portfolio…No significant projects.
5. Always keep track of work being done point-by-point, and learn time-management tactics to meet the deadline. If you want success, you should understand the price of every minute you spend, and so, use it wisely. If project demands more time, try to keep up with that pace, or else you’ll surely miss the deadline, and hence lose the project. Or better, don’t take those projects which will certainly put enough pressure on your shoulders. The more you’re free from pressure, the more you’ll have the ability to think, more you’ll be comfortable with it, and more you’re gonna enjoy every second of it.