WhoWhatWeb

I upgraded my Debian sarge web server to PHP 5.05 and MySQL 4.1 last night.

Not really very difficult. I followed some procedures in my “Upgrading to PHP5” book, but most of the tricky stuff was taken care of for me by the Debian packages. The PHP 5 package was a backport I got at www.dotdeb.org, since Debian doesn’t have it in either stable or testing. (If anyone wants to see details, let me know.)

All of my stuff just worked afterwards. Of course, I only have four domains and a handful of packages, so testing was relatively easy. I had thought about installing PHP 5 as a CGI for testing purposes, but then decided just to go for the gusto and replace the old version.

For complex sites the more cautious approach would probably be a good idea. There are some tricky incompatibilities between MySQL client and server versions that must be worked around, and there are a few OO things in PHP4 scripts that might break under PHP5.

Now I can start playing with all the stuff I’m reading about in “PHP5 Objects, Patterns and Practice.” It’s a *very* good book so far, and the OO concepts are starting to come together for me.

Now this is what web software is supposed to be like!

I set up a blog for my wife the other day, using WordPress because of all the good things I’d read about it. I’d set up b2evolution before, and wasn’t impressed with the process or the results. Boy, was it different this time around!

WordPress installs like a dream. If you’re doing it by hand, you need to expand the tarball in a directory under your web root and create the database and user. Then you fill in a few details (user, password, database, host) in a text config file. Next, browse to the blog’s new address, and you’ll be redirected to a very short installation wizard that only asks you two questions total! It dumps you into the admin interface and you’re done — less than ten minutes even if you’re a slow typist like me.

The program has many options, but they are well laid out (with contextual help close at hand for most of them) and mostly set to reasonable defaults. You really can start blogging within minutes, which makes this package worth its weight in gold. Once you’re comfortable and want to go further, look at the WordPress web site and elsewhere. There are zillions of interesting free WordPress themes out there, from which I plan to steal code shamelessly as I create my own look. There are also great plugins for altering the posting markup, fighting comment spam, and so forth.

One surprising thing about the program is its versatility. Besides creating blog articles, you (or the authors you designate) can create and edit static HTML pages, effectively making the program a simple content management system. These pages can even contain some dynamic content via special plugins and custom PHP code. Now how much would you pay?

And of course the best part is: it’s Free Software. Free as in freedom and beer. The next time you hear anyone talk about how open source software is lacking in useful documentation, or a great user interface, or even an easy installation procedure, you know what to do. Just point ‘em to WordPress.