• checking the "Oops! An Error Occurred" error page
• checking the "Credentials Required" error page
• ensuring a favicon exists
• test the production server to be sure it's ready for the Symfony application
• setting up the escaping

Each of these items (and many more) give more information when you click on them of how to perform the check and a checkbox next to it so you can work your way through it easily.

When data sets get large and MySQL database querying to search become too load heavy and slow, full indexing is required. Several solutions are available but in this article I will be demonstrating the Apache foundations Solr Java Lucene implementation. For this a Java build will be required. Linux or Mac is less of a problem but for windows I use the Apache Tomcat server.

He shows ho to use the Solr PHP interface to make the connection to the server, ping it to be sure the connection is working and, based on the schema and search information, return a set of results in a PHP object.

I'll start with an over simplification: OData is a protocol for creating data services that make it possible to retrieve and edit data using HTTP. More specifically, OData enables you to define a data model that lets clients address data as resources by using URIs. Data is retrieved and updated by using the HTTP actions of GET, POST, PUT, DELETE and MERGE.

He shows how to use the OData SDK for PHP to connect to a data source, build out some pre-generated classes and pull down the information from the Northwind service based on a customer ID.

Since most developers (myself included) are also generally bad at developing good specs, it becomes even more difficult to create such a rule. However, I heard a great adage from someone recently that I thought summed up how developers can see specs nearly perfectly. "If it takes more than 15 minutes to determine what it is that you're building, the spec wasn't done properly".

He suggests that not a single line of code should be developed before the spec is completed and, since developers usually aren't the ones creating the spec, they need to have a clear, concise definition of what's expected before hand.

Google Analytics (GA) is the de facto solution for analyzing web site traffic and trends. [...] If you're not regularly relying upon Google Analytics or a similarly capable analytical service, then you're left at a major competitive disadvantage in terms of your ability to effectively understand the interests, demographics, and technical requirements of your audience.

Using the Google Analytics site is a pleasant experience, but having to log in just to check your numbers each day can get tiresome quickly. Jason introduces a way, using the GAPI class to pull things like traffic statistics and account information. More examples of how it can be used are shown on the GAPI website.

Ever wanted an all purpose, easy to use method of resizing your images in PHP? Well that's what PHP classes are for '" reusable pieces of functionality that we call to do the dirty work behind the scenes. We're going to learn how to create our own class that will be well constructed, as well as expandable. Resizing should be easy.

The simple eleven-step process (don't worry, it sounds worse than it is) has you go from a basic image and, with the help of a custom PHP class, create a resized image based on a type such as "landscape", "auto" or "exact". Full code is included for you to cut and paste or you can download the source and have the full code ready and waiting.