Free PHP Scripts |
|
|
The idea of this website is about sharing PHP scripts, website development related information and links about what useful is out there.
Feel free to submit new stories or scripts, rate or comment on them.
You can also submit post in the discussion forums. There are forums related to php development, website design and content management systems.
We would be more then glad to hear your comments.
|
|
|
|
|
| Browse one of the categories above for PHP scripts |
|
|
What Wimbledon and vendor selection have in common
Published on 03 July 2009 00:00
|
As Murraymania swept the UK, I settled into my Court No. 2 seat on Wimbledon's always-action-packed middle Saturday. In addition to the matches of Serbia's Ivanovic, Australia's Hewitt, and Russia's Safina, I had a great view of the Centre Court scoreboard, so during breaks I was keenly watching the results of Andy Roddick's match.
"Andy's got the first set," I said to my cousin, who's studying in London and joined me for the day. "Andy's not playing yet," interjected the Brit to the other side of me. "Yes he is," I said. Pause. "Oh you mean, your Andy," he replied. "Right," I smiled back, "not your Andy, who plays tonight." Then came the most interesting comment: "Well, he's not really my Andy," the gent said. "I'm English, and he's Scottish."
Territorial rivalries are perhaps more pronounced in sport than any other pastime, be it the Boston Red Sox vs. the New York Yankees, the Calgary Flames vs. the Edmonton Oilers, or the New Zealand All Blacks vs. the Australian Wallabies. Such territorial rivalries aren't altogether absent from the content management vendor selection process, either, and I find this much more pronounced on the eastern side of the Atlantic than in my native North America.
Of course, in Europe and the UK there are many nations and territories (both political and historic) in a comparatively tiny geographic area, which makes a perfect petri dish for such rivalries to fester.
When I work with clients or subscribers to help them select vendors, the two or three finalists often end up being very technologically similar, and once tools have been tested and deemed appropriate for clients' environments, the conversations just prior to final selection often become very much "cultural." It's not just about whether the team is qualified, and if the support line is open when their time zone is open for business. It's also about who they are, and when a few hundred thousand sterling or euros are on the table, the rivalries come out in closed-door conversations.
"They're Belgian -- there's so many jokes about Belgium. Isn't there a reason for that?"
"They're Dutch -- so they're blunt, that's good, right? Aren't the Dutch cheap, too?"
"They're German -- so regimented -- is that right for us? What if the schedule slips, will they charge us double?"
I wouldn't even know where to start on the Scandinavian rivalries, which go back to the days when Sweden and Denmark traded off conquering the whole of Northern Europe.
I end up spending quite a bit of time talking with clients about how they can benefit from vendor characteristics that are different from how their company normally functions. A bit of German organization and Dutch bluntness can be a great thing if your company has neither. I also watch vendors make an extra effort to bring in the "local flavor" to meetings -- someone from the local country or territory, if headquarters is on the other side of the continent. This always makes a big difference to buyers -- more than I believe it should. The English sales guy in the meeting in London isn't going to be the one you'll be working with, or providing you the ongoing service you'll need. Good service is good service, regardless of where it's provided from.
As an American who does a lot of work in Europe and the UK, I also experience trepidation on the part of some buyers. "Oh, you're American," I sometimes hear when I connect with a potential client via phone or meet up in person. Well yes, but CMS Watch is also a UK Limited Company, and one of our Principals is a Brit, and I'm perfectly happy to use the word "whilst" and drink a warm beer with you after work, if it makes you more comfortable. (Note: Americans can be even more blunt that the Dutch.) Expertise may be what matters in the end, but it's far from the only factor when closing a deal.
Stereotyping is dangerous, and as the world becomes smaller, you the technology buyer need to think more about benefiting from that which may seem foreign or "too different" for your organization. Yes, chemistry is important, but suppliers should be adept enough to adapt to your environment, and yet bring new approaches and attitudes to the project to help you be successful. Be it tennis or a vendor competition, the most appropriate mix of factors need to come together to create success, and sometimes those characteristics may not be the ones you're used to, or possessed by your fellow countryman.
As for my final take on Wimbledon: I wish Rafael Nadal wasn't injured. I'd love to see Federer break the majors record, but I'd be just as thrilled to see Roddick pull through. I don't care where Andy Murray is from, I'll cheer for him to play well, along with anyone willing to call himself a Briton.
May the best player win, wherever he's from.
Read more...
(0)
|
|
Clickability shows how not to write a white paper
Published on 02 July 2009 04:00
|
White papers are not something we typically critique or comment on, but Clickability's new white paper, billed on their website as "What Vignette is Not Telling You," does, in fact, require special comment.
The paper's stated goal "is to provide strategic data and insights that will help in your decision-making process regarding Web Content Management." But the four-page phillipic quickly reveals itself as little more than an arrogant, shrill, and sometimes factually incorrect attack on Vignette and its new parent company, Open Text.
Many of the criticisms made in the white paper (involving upgrade pain, migration pain, slow product innovation, high licensing costs) will be familiar to any student of Vignette-bashing. There's truth in some of the claims, certainly, but it's a dated kind of truth, applying mostly to the Vignette of 2002 or 2004.
The truth is that Vignette has made a good-faith effort, over the past two years, to address many of the well-known criticisms about its products. Along the way, they've managed to produce a significant number of new products and rolled out non-trivial updates to existing ones. They've also become more competitive on pricing, and have clearly gotten the message on upgrade pain. So to drag out the standard laundry list of complaints about the Vignette of Olde and paint the company (yet again) as an innovation-averse, customer-ignoring purveyor of overpriced, outmoded goods is like beating a horse that died two years ago.
Of course, the positive changes that have happened to Vignette and its product line in 2008-2009 are of little comfort to you if you're still running the old V5 or V6. There will be pain involved in moving to a new or different platform. And that's clearly a selling opportunity for vendors like FatWire and Clickability. But those V5/V6 customers are already well aware of their dilemma -- and what does it say about the vendor that pursues that narrow group by painting an entire competing vendor as incompetent?
There are other problems with the white paper. Clickability associates a quote involving "lipstick on a pig" with CMSWire in one part of the paper and then (inaccurately) with CMS Watch in another. In truth, the lipstick statement actually comes from an anonymous comment at the end of an article that appeared on CMSWire.
The name "CMS Watch" occurs four times in the white paper. Lest there be any misunderstanding, CMS Watch was not consulted prior to the paper's release. Our approval was neither sought nor given.
That goes also for the use of my name in the white paper. I did say, in a blog post about Open Text's acquisition of Vignette, that "Open Text's mishmash of .NET, C++, and Java technologies is not particularly well aligned with Vignette's J2EE-based systems" and that "Vignette only adds another layer to -- it in no way reconciles -- Open Text's crazy quilt of technologies." The Clickability paper repurposes these quotes out of context, hoping to turn technical analysis into scathing indictment. That wasn't my intent.
Even if a person at an ad agency (rather than inside Clickability) wrote this so-called white paper, someone at Clickability should know enough about Marketing 101 to understand that you can't mud-sling your way to success. Good marketing isn't about making the competition look bad. It's about raising yourself up. In this case, if Clickability somehow finds itself raised up by this, it will be because it has been hoisted by its own petard.
Read more...
(0)
|
|
Will NYC go with Google Analytics?
Published on 01 July 2009 20:00
|
Just read an interesting post on Tom Miller's blog summarizing NYC Mayor Bloomberg's keynote note from the Personal Democracy Forum. Miller's take on the speech was that the city may use Google Analytics for optimizing web site content. From this passage about the Bloomberg presentation, I'd have to agree:
The Mayor also announced that the city is going to partner with Google to study "anonymous usage data" to "allow us to optimize the content on the web site based on what people are most often searching for."
I have to say, the idea of government web sites using Google Analytics makes me a bit uneasy from a privacy perspective. I just can't get comfortable with the idea of the government passing data to GA so Google can come up with new ways to advertise and market.
There's a lot of activity going on these days around the subject of web analytics and government as it relates to the Obama Administration Open Government initiative and the release of the Web Analytics Association Report on Government and Web Analytics.
We don't usually think of the public sector as a hotbed of web analytics activity, but change has been long overdue. It's great to see that change may be on the way. Hopefully it will be sorted out so that there is a reasonable balance between analytics value and personal privacy protection.
Read more...
(0)
|
|
A browser is a search engine?
Published on 01 July 2009 16:00
|
In a clip on YouTube, an interviewer asks passersby in Times Square what a browser is.The surprising result: many think it's a search engine.
Of course, the video has been produced by the Google Creative Lab so you could expect it to promote search engines. However, students in Rotterdam repeated the question -- and got people answering mostly the same things.
I tend to think a search engine is one of those somewhat hidden components, like the starter engine of a car. Everybody will "search" all the time, but not too many people know there's such a thing as a "search engine" behind it. Explaining the technicalities of what it takes to run it won't particularly help, either, though nobody is happy when it doesn't work well.
So if the experiment proves anything it's that the men and women in the street really don't know what's going on behind the scenes. Paradoxically, that's a sign of progress: they don't have to know in order to be able to use it, much the same way as you don't have to be a mechanic to drive a car anymore.
So before you head off on a big search, portal, collaboration, or content management project, invest the time to find out what's what and whether it's actually what's needed. After all, you may have been asked for a search engine -- when what's really needed is just a browser. And likewise, you may have been tasked with setting up SharePoint -- when what you really need is just the search engine.
Read more...
(0)
|
|
The Omniture Drag - and your quest for aligning web content and analytics
Published on 01 July 2009 16:00
|
In recent months I've encountered several customers of web analytics mega-vendor
Omniture who had a very specific gripe about the platform: it was too hard to
integrate Omniture
reports and analytics into other applications, specifically their Web CMS dashboards.
(Note: I'm not talking here about integrating vendor's JavaScript tracking code
into your CMS -- that's usually trivial -- but rather, exposing reports in a
CMS dashboard.)
At least three Web CMS vendors have also privately complained to us about Omniture
in this regard. I think it's revealing that CMS vendors announce plans to implement
Omniture reports in-line, but they never seem to come off.
To be fair, report integration can get difficult other analytics vendor offerings
as well. My colleague Phil
Kemelor points out that WebTrends
and other commercial web analytics vendors can also be rigid in this regard.
He's right, although I've seen WebTrends report or data integrations across
various CMS packages, but have never seen anything similar with Omniture reports.
As our Web Analytics research
subscribers know, Omniture has a reputation for being particularly closed when
it comes to exporting data or reports. It wants to become your web data warehouse
and central analytics hub. Case in point: you have to go to great lengths even
to remove Omniture's logo from their reports when e-mailing them around internally.
I believe this mountain-comes-to-mohammed approach represents a hidden drag
on Omniture licensees.
Why does this matter? I think content managers want to access analytics in
a place where they can take action. Omniture would have you log into their
dashboard, but many casual web managers find that too complicated, too remote,
and not actionable. Web managers then tend to turn to (the probably over-worked)
in-house Omniture guru. That seems wasteful. In these economic times, analytics
are too important to be left only to analysts.
(One increasingly evident alternative -- resorting to the lightweight traffic
metrics possibly built into your CMS -- doesn't solve the problem either. These
CMS-driven systems typically deliver sub-standard metrics that even their vendors
won't fully stand behind.)
Integration aside, the larger point is that web managers need to get savvier
about analytics, rather than depending on others. Questions abound. What are
the key technical issues? What data can you trust more than others? How do you
effectively measure campaigns? And so on. (Disclosure: we answer many of these
questions in our Web
Analytics Fundamentals certificate course.) However you get there, if you're
a web manager or web content specialist, learn more about analytics. Then push
your vendor to deliver the right reports to the publishing tools you already
use every day -- so you can act on them.
What do you think?
Read more...
(0)
|
|
Lucene can read almost anything: Lucid and ISYS team up
Published on 01 July 2009 04:01
|
A few months ago, I blogged about ISYS offering their document converter filters as a separate component. My thought was these would come in handy to add on to Lucene (which, by itself, can't actually read Microsoft Office files, let alone more exotic document types.) That would still leave you with a bit of DIY work, though: integrating the filters in your Lucene implementation.
As it turns out, Lucid Imagination had exactly that idea. The company, which offers commercial support for Lucene and Solr, is now offering it's own "LucidWorks" versions with the ISYS filters integrated. This means one of the gaps between open source and commercial search products has been bridged: with the filters, Lucene, too, can read over 200 file types.
According to Lucid, this has been one of the favorite doubts commercial vendors would cast over the open source search engine, and the move should level the playing field. However, as a customer, you should be aware that there's a couple of other things you may take for granted that are missing. Connectors to various content repositories, for instance, don't come with Lucene, not even a simple web crawler.
Still, the filters are a welcome addition, and they're certainly an improvement over what's currently available as open source. It's not just in the numbers: ask yourself how you think a converter will read a three-column Word document. You may be surprised to know that some will just go across all the first lines from left to right, then the second lines, etcetera. As always in Search & Information Access, the devil is in the details -- and knowing about these details will pay off.
The added filters aren't for free, but not exactly expensive, either. There's a 14-day trial, and you can get a subset (e.g., Microsoft Office) of the filters for as little as $3.250 for 2 years, or pay $10.000 for all of them (including those pesky legacy formats you'll discover in a distant corner of your fileserver when you least expect it.) That's still a long way off from the hundreds of thousands even a Google Appliance implementation may cost you in licensing. (Though there's no such thing as a free lunch or free beer with open source, either.)
So this is interesting news if you're considering Lucene, but what about ISYS? Aren't they selling the family silver? Well, let me wrap up this post by meandering off into history. As the (perhaps apocryphal) story has it, when the Dutch were at war with the Spanish in the 16th century, they were still selling cannons to their opponents. They figured they might as well make a profit out of it: the outcome would be determined by strategy, anyway.
Open source projects and commercial vendors, on the other hand, don't even have to be at war. And as with a Spanish Rioja or a Dutch Heineken, it's all about picking the right one for the occasion.
Read more...
(0)
|
|
Really Strategies acquires DocZone
Published on 30 June 2009 20:00
|
It's proving to be a busy week! Today Really Strategies announced the acquisition of DocZone.com. As subscribers to our XML and Component Content Management research know, Really Strategies' RSuite is an XML-based content management system aimed at publishing and media companies. DocZone.com is best known for its SaaS-based DITA solution for technical publishing.
It will be interesting to see how these companies blend. Really Strategies, while having some experience with DITA, has largely focused on traditional publishing, while DocZone.com has almost exclusively focused on DITA-based technical publishing. Over the last year we have seen each of them "inch" into the other's market as DITA is being adopted outside of technical publishing and publishing, and media companies have begun to look for low cost XML solutions (e.g. SaaS).
Publishing and media companies are under a lot of pressure to "innovate or die" as traditional print-based journalism has begun to rapidly disappear. Really Strategies offers a relatively high-end solution for publishing and media and a client/server-only version. DocZone.com provides a low cost SaaS version. Together they can potentially serve a broader range of customers.
DocZone.com is in a unique position in that its product is portable to any underlying XML technology. The value of portability was shown when their original platform XHive Docato (now known as XDB) was bought by EMC. They maintained that platform and rapidly built another version on top of open-source Alfresco. At the same time, they simplified the interface and consolidated their intellectual capital in the user experience. That type of innovation should stand them in good stead as they blend the technologies.
In addition Really Strategies will gain from DocZone.com's European presence and strong global focus.
Really Strategies has pledged to maintain DocZone.com's product and customer base. The combined companies will be headquartered in Audubon, PA. So.... (for the second day in a row), "tread with caution" if you are considering buying either DocZone or Really Strategies, as it could be quite some time before things truly settle down.
Read more...
(0)
|
|
XYEnterprise Acquired - First Thoughts
Published on 29 June 2009 16:00
|
UK-based SDL remains in a spending mood. The trend began with acquiring longtime Web CMS vendor Tridion, followed by Trisoft in early 2008.
Now SDL has acquired Component Content Management (CCM) vendor XyEnterprise. Time will tell how this acquisition plays out, but it does illustrate how the CCM marketplace could be consolidating into larger players
At first glance it appears to be an odd acquisition, since, as our CCM research subscribers know, XyEnterprise Contenta and SDL Trisoft compete head to head in the marketplace. On closer look however, there is some logic in the acquisition. SDL Trisoft provides pretty strong DITA capabilities and reuse in a multilingual environment. Though not a large vendor, XyEnterprise brings a range of products:
Contenta, a DITA and S1000D CCM
XML Professional Publisher (XPP), an XML-rendering engine
LiveContent, a dynamic delivery engine
SDL says that XPP and LiveContent will be integrated almost immediately. SDL has also indicated that Contenta's S1000D version will continue to exist as a separate product and the strengths of the DITA version (e.g., workflow, authoring bridges) will get integrated into SDL Trisoft. That will not be an easy task, and we anticipate it will take years to complete.
So there are some additions with XPP and LiveContent, and some gap filling (e.g., S1000D), but SDL has a long way to go to make this a truly integrated product. And while XPP is a good rendering engine with a long track record relative to its nearest competitors, it has also grown a little long in the tooth now, and has not kept up to date with all of the newer standards (like XSL-FO).
As in all acquisitions there will inevitably be fall-out and change, and just how well a small New England-based firm like XYEnterprise will operate as a part of a European roll-up remains an open question. How nicely they will play with the Trisoft team is also something to watch closely. So.... (you could see this line coming), tread with caution if you are considering buying either Trisoft or Contenta, as it will be quite some time before things truly settle down.
Read more...
(0)
|
|
Will the success of SharePoint 2007 keep 2010 from leaving the station?
Published on 29 June 2009 16:00
|
Those who have studied physics might be familiar with the "story" of the penny and train. The story goes that if you place a single penny under each wheel of a train, you'll prevent it from moving forward. Essentially, the collective resistance from each penny prevents the train moving forward because it's the same as having the train try to overcome a single column of pennies equivalent to all of the pennies stacked.
As SharePoint 2010 draws near, I can't help but think that perhaps the sheer number of both licensees and add-on solutions, collectively represent a penny under each wheel of the SharePoint train. 100+ million licenses and thousands of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) clearly represent a SharePoint strength. In fact, the platform has become so popular that a few colleagues of mine suggested awhile back that perhaps SharePoint had effectively ended the great debate about what portal platform to buy.
If you were to poll most organizations, they would prefer to implement newer technology over older if given the choice. However, this is only true when they have little or nothing invested in the older technology. If you ask organizations the same question, after they've invested a great deal in the older technology, they might have the desire to implement the newer technology, but not the stomach; it's just too painful to think of all the work that would have to be "redone."
Now back to our proverbial train: will the 100 million SharePoint licensees and thousands of SharePoint add-on vendors prevent SharePoint 2010 from getting out of the station? Or will 2010 represent the next round of massive SharePoint adoption? As the SharePoint Report 2009 points out, there are quite a few vendors out there who support SharePoint and 2010 could be a terrific boon to organizations hoping to see more from SharePoint. However, if you've read the Enterprise Portals Report you also know that SharePoint isn't the only game in town (in case you needed reminding).
If organizations are going to spend significant time and money upgrading to 2010, why wouldn't they also consider alternatives?
Read more...
(0)
|
|
The Coming Acronym Crisis
Published on 25 June 2009 20:00
|
As I talk to people in the content-technology industry (if I may call it that), I'm struck by a common thread that has begun to emerge in conversations involving roadmaps and futures. Vendors are beginning to unshackle themselves from acronyms. Let me spare you the suspense and take you straight to the disturbing punchline: I believe we are headed for an acronym crisis.
I've heard Digital Asset Management vendors say that DAM is not a good acronym any more, because it conjures a narrow, obsolete picture of the problem space. DAM platforms have grown. Offerings like MediaBeacon R3volution, MediaBin (now owned by Autonomy), North Plains Telescope, and others, are beginning to include functionalities that are, in many cases, rather ECM-like. Likewise, many WCM products -- Alterian Immediacy, PaperThin CommonSpot, and many others -- continue to incorporate more and more DAM-like features (e.g., lightbox previews, inline image editing, renditions, image metadata support, Flash previews). Some products, like Day Software's Communiqué, have such smooth integration between WCM and DAM offerings that it's hard to tell where one begins and the other one ends.
But it's not just a matter of WCM+DAM convergence (something that's been talked about, and has been happening, for a long time now). Search and Web Analytics are increasingly integral to Content Management solutions, and these technologies are, in turn, driving more personalization and dynamism into Web-facing systems. The information that comes out of all this has high business value and needs to be fed back into any number of other business applications (CRM, BI, KM, Sales Lead Management systems, etc.), lest ROI suffer. But the crisscrossing of so many technologies leads to a paradox: What do you call a system that combines features of WCM, DAM, Web Analytics, Search and Information Access, and maybe CRM as well? No one acronym seems to do the job.
All of this begs the question of whether acronyms are really that important to begin with. I think they are, actually. (Otherwise we wouldn't have so many of them -- and they wouldn't persist for so long after becoming obsolete.) As old acronyms fall into disuse, new ones emerge. CMS gives way to WCM which gives way to WEM (Web Experience Management), which in turn will someday give way to something else. Right now, though, the industry is at a crossroads. What do you call a CMS that incorporates aspects of DAM, WCM, DM, Search, Web Analytics, and Text Mining, plus (say) a few social apps? You can call it a content platform (CP), but that feels vaguely unsatisfying.
Nomenclature is important, I think. But in this case, I'm fresh out of acronyms. And for an analyst, that's embarrassing.
Read more...
(0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
(44)
Fresh updates on PHP related scripts.
|
|
(963)
News that are related to Content Management Systems.
|
|
(59)
Templates that can be used for Websites and also using Content Management Systems...
|
|
(2434)
Website hosting companies which are tuned to run Content Management Systems...
|
|
(69)
Resources for website contents...
|
|
(148)
RSS Feeds which can be uses to provice content for your website.
|
|
(333)
Graphics is an important aspect in website design and CMS...
|
|
(11)
Find out how to make your website a success...
|
|
(35)
Talk about the development of web applications, scripts, tools and content management systems...
|
|
(101)
Tools for webmasters that will make your life easier...
|
|
(79)
What every website designer needs to know about HTML to make attractive web pages.
|
|
