Since 28th of June, the new version of phpMyAdmin 3.3.4 came out and here is how you can upgrade your previously installed version to the newer one.
My setup is on Windows with Wamp so if you have another local host running, you’ll have to adapt to your way of working, but I’ll bet that the difference isn’t that big.
My start screen looked something like this, on which we can see the older version and obviously it’s time to upgrade.
Go to the download page and download the latest version you prefer. As my whole environment is set in English I just select the phpMyAdmin-3.3.4-english.7z version.
Second step is to extract the downloaded files to your local location and set the rights as you prefer. This can be done in different ways but I prefer the manual way, this is done by copying the config.sample.inc.php, renaming it to config.inc.php and change the preferences in the file as you prefer.
In my case the only two lines that had to be changed where:
If you need more information, it can be found in the documentation included in the package (documentation.txt).
If we go to the location on our local host now (in my case http://localhost/phpMyAdmin/) we get an error saying that we don’t have permissions to view this page.
In order to get this working we need to set the phpmyadmin.conf file and adapt it, the alias and directory need to be adapted to the freshly installed version.
Alias /phpmyadmin "C:\wamp\apps\phpMyAdmin-3.3.4-english"
# to give access to phpmyadmin from outside
# replace the lines
#
# Order Deny,Allow
# Deny from all
# Allow from 127.0.0.1
#
# by
#
# Order Allow,Deny
# Allow from all
#
<Directory "C:\wamp\apps\phpMyAdmin-3.3.4-english/">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride all
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.1
</Directory>
After restarting your local wamp, you’ll get the correct and new version of phpMyAdmin in your browser.
It isn’t easy to get your client data organized correctly and above all convenient. When you start out on a project you don’t need a complex structure, but as your project grows, you’ll see that your initial small structure grows very fast. Five years ago it might have been sufficient to just work with the mails clients send to you but today, that isn’t enough for several reasons:
colleagues need access to data that is included in the mail
you need backup files of your development files
planning has to be made and followed
you and others need to find information quickly in the future
These and many other reasons can have an influence on your method of working, but I’ll try to explain a few possibilities on how to organize your data properly and correctly. At least, this is how my way of doing things, from experiences I got along the past 5 years.
Most correspondence is done via mail to a specific contact person and he is in my opinion, one of the most important people in the whole cycle. He needs to develop a habit of managing the files directly as soon as he got them and if they might be important for analyze or development of the project. These actions should be done if we are dealing with: source files for development (images, xml …), documents (Word, Excel…) or feedback.
As files should be available for everyone who will work on the project, a shared folder is a good option. Different solutions are possible: Microsoft Groove, SharePoint, a folder on a server with a versioning system placed on it and many other ways. Personally I prefer a shared folder on a local server (if all users have access on this server) with Git or SVN to do the versioning. In this way data will never be lost and everyone has access to the repository.
For more information on Git, I recommend everyone to look at the video, it’s the one I saw Scott Chacon do on the Symfony Live conference in Paris and I must say that it was one of the most clarifying talks I have ever seen on the complex topic of versioning.
The folder you place your files in has to be logically split up in the way you prefer it. I had 2 different ways of organizing my data as I was, art of the time, developing small projects for different customers and developing for one big software.
In the case of the customers I chose to separate everything per client
client seperated structure
As you see everything is split up into customers and sub folders are created as needed, I generally start out with 3 folder: analyse, delivered and work area, each with there own topic related sub folders.
Note that I always use the camel-Case way of writing, this increases readability without using underscores or other special characters. A lot of sources recommend the use of dates in the naming convention, but personally I believe this is not a good way of working. In a versioning system (like Git) the update datetime of files often changes and it would be an extra workload to change the date in the name each time. From my experience, these kinds of updates are often forgotten and date of files and folders is most of the time viewable in explorer windows or Linux (ls –l commando).
In case of the one big software we were developing, we agreed to create 1 folder containing different sub folders for each small sub-project organized by: analyse, customer and documents.
software system
As you can see the structure you use is strongly dependent on the project you are working on, and is a part of development that has to be custom made, but if you start out with one of these basics, I guess you are taking the correct path.
A few things you might ask yourself before creating this kind of structure and will influence your choice are:
What entities and kinds of entities need to be stored?
Who needs access to the data?
Why do they need access it?
Are there any existing standards your organization is following?
The bigger your company is, the harder it might be to change the current way of working.
I recently read a book by Scott Berkun, a ex-microsoft project manager (Internet Explorer), about the mastering of project management and I must say that I was pleasantly surprised with it.
I have always been a bit skeptical about those kind of books, as most of them only contain a list of do’s and don’ts that everybody actually knows. But this one differentiates itself with other books as it mentions a huge pack of exercises and is always explained with examples of his own experiences at Microsoft.
This book covers all the big points on which a project manager should pay extra attention:
how to write good email
how your relationship with colleagues should be
how to divide your time on a project
how to decide what is the most important thing to do first
what should be done in times of crisis
how to negotiate with colleagues, your staff and your bosses
trust and how to work with it
how to organize meetings and be sure that you are leading them
Off course, by reading this book, you won’t be the best project manager that ever existed, but I believe that it’s a great asset to your book shelf to use as a reference.
Be sure to try out some of the exercises or to read his experiences, it will help everyone who is in this position, or wants to improve his methodologies.
In your lifetime there are a few books you have to read if you are moving your way up the ladder, and this is definitely one of them if you are trying the step to project manager/team leader.
What I really like about this book is that it can be used as a reference, but it is also just well written, and that is why I practically read it cover to cover. It is just fun to read about his Microsoft problems and how he solved them alone, or in team. The cool thing about Scott is that he is not only a good writer, but also a very good speaker and that he doesn’t take himself too serious.
He worked at Microsoft on IE, and he switched to Firefox himself as he said: It’s not because Firefox is completely new technology and groundbreaking or because Internet Explorer sucks, but because it is just a good solid program and is the best out there.
Check out some of his presentations, they are available on YouTube or via his own website (http://www.scottberkun.com/), and as he said in one of his lectures, that he will always answer all of your questions, if you just send them to him, I’ll try to send him a few questions to do a small interview and as soon as I get a response, I’ll post them here.
These are some interesting courses on programming methodology in Java, it’s nice you can follow them on YouTube. The teacher entertains us during the whole course and explains everything in a pragmatic way.
Looking back at my own time in school, there where only 1 or 2 teachers giving me the same interest as he does.
Off course, as you will see in the videos and in real life, the only way to know how to program is just, well, start programming…
The coolest thing about these videos is that it probably will be better than the lessons you get at school, if you don’t get how java and object oriented programming in general works be sure to watch these videos. I guarantee every starting programmer that he/she will understand how it works after watching these videos.
I wish I had them when going to school!
Lecture by Professor Mehran Sahami for the Stanford Computer Science Department (CS106A).
If you want to read more, I placed the 6 next lectures on my blog and you can see them by following the link.
If you want even more on these or other courses, you can visit the Channel on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/StanfordUniversity
In my experience it’s true what Mr Roam is talking about, it is very important to use sketches and minimal drawings to explain what you are saying. Everybody will understand your problem a lot faster and it is a fact that next time someone has to explain this problem, he or she will automatically reuse the sketch initially used by the first person (excepted from some minor enhancements).
Dan Roam visits Google’s Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book “The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures.” This event took place on May 27, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series.
With the rise of Google, no single tactic comes up more in innovation circles than their concept of 20% time. Simply put, employees get 1/5th of their time to work on projects of their own choosing. (more info can be found here)
And this:
William L. McKnight (11 November 1887 – 4 March 1978) was an American businessman and philanthropist who served his entire career in the 3M corporation, rising to chairman of the board from 1949 to 1966. He founded The McKnight Foundation in 1953.
He said:
As our business grows, it becomes increasingly necessary to delegate responsibility and to encourage men and women to exercise their initiative. This requires considerable tolerance. Those men and women, to whom we delegate authority and responsibility, if they are good people, are going to want to do their jobs in their own way.
Mistakes will be made. But if a person is essentially right, the mistakes he or she makes are not as serious in the long run as the mistakes management will make if it undertakes to tell those in authority exactly how they must do their jobs.
Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative. And it’s essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow.
Form building, not basic forms containing only a name and a description, but forms that have a variety of influences, is complex.
Here is a presentation of Ryan Singer, about form creation based on a book by Christopher Alexander Notes on the Synthesis of Form.
Especially the Q&A are interesting, be sure to listen to them too. (viewable when clicking ‘read rest of the entry’)
After reading a few books, listening to different people in presentation, I must say that experience is once again very important when creating forms.
Enjoy this presentation, but keep in mind that form and design creation are 2 separate jobs.
I recently had a discussion with someone, and his point was that good designers can be trained from programmers.
Sadly it’s not… it’s something you have in you, just like you have the gift to be top chess player.
If you are a developer, the best way to get the latest news or interesting links and references, is to follow some of the best developers around. I myself have a list of people I like to follow, some of them are quite known, others are not that famous but have some interesting things to say.
Here is a list of guys to follow, by blog or twitter.
Matthew Weier O’Phinney
I met him at Symfony Live 2010 and was one of the most remarkable and helpful people around. Although I’m not into Zend framework, he explained the Symfony-Zend link in 50 minutes.
I am an open source web developer and IT specialist. My expertise lies with LAMP setups — Linux – Apache – MySQL – Perl/PHP(/Python). I am capable of administering a variety of Linux distributions, including Gentoo, Debian, Red Hat, Fedora, Slackware, as well as several other Debian- and RPM-based distros. In addition, I am skilled at installing and maintaining Apache, PHP, Perl, and MySQL on each of the distros previously mentioned, typically from source.
My primary skills are as a PHP developer. I am a Zend Certified Engineer, and a member of the Zend Education Advisory Board, the group responsible for authoring the Zend Certification Exam. I contribute to a number of PHP projects, blog on PHP-related topics, and present talks and tutorials related to PHP development and the projects to which I contribute.
as he said: It’s not because Firefox is completely new technology and groundbreaking or because Internet Explorer sucks, but because it is just a good solid program and is the best out there.
