Refreshing the page would cause the mssql_connect function to fail.  A further three or four refreshes would result in further failures, until suddenly one more refresh manages to establish a connection.  This situation would repeat itself, and is completely random.  Despite months of trying to track it down when we had spare time, we just could not get to the bottom of it.

A few months ago, a result began cropping up on Google that appeared to contain some answers. Part of Microsoft’s data programmability team announced they were working a new driver for PHP for use with SQL Server 2005.  Excellent, we thought!  Of course, we haven’t been able to use this driver in a production environment yet as it is still in beta and subject to change (and change it has). However, we’ve ran tests using the driver and so far, it does appear to be more stable.  The only isssue is that the symptom we were experiencing is very difficult to replicate (if nigh-on impossible), and so we cannot know for sure if the driver has aleviated the problem.

Parts of the project are written using an excellent framework known as CodeIgniter.  We took the liberty of also writing an php_sqlsrv.dll compatible driver for it which you can download here.  To use the driver, just unzip it into a folder called “system/database/drivers/sqlsrv” and change your database.php to reflect the changes (change the driver to “sqlsrv“).  Hopefully this will help one person that was in the same boat as us!

The Microsoft SQL Server 2005 driver for PHP is a PHP 5 only extension.  It allows the reading and writing of SQL Server data from within PHP scripts. The extension provides a procedural interface for accessing data in all editions (importantly, including Express) of SQL Server 2005 and also SQL Server 2000.  The API makes use of PHP features such as PHP streams to read and write large objects.

Linux mail server

Over the last couple of months, we have slowly but surely, moved River Internet clients from the old Windows mail server on to our brand new Linux based one. The main reason for this was because of the spam filtering we have installed on this server (Spam Assassin) through Plesk. This, together with the fact that the server is more highly specified (it includes RAID, redundant power supply etc.) we feel Linux gives us much more control and more power when it comes to customisation. It’s flexibility, security and the amazingly low virus count (as opposed to Windows), make it ideal for what we need.

So is Linux secure? What about BSD (unix)?

Most of our experience has been with Linux (predominently Red Hat distributions) and although the learning curve to FreeBSD or OpenBSD would be small, Linux gives us many of the required packages and software etc we need built in. Also, the choice of Unix or Linux distribution would solely depend on the purpose you need it for. OpenBSD is an extremely secure server with many encryption options etc but for a webserver is a bit too much. We choose CentOS 5 as our main Linux distribution (based on the Red Hat core) as this is very stable and performs extremely well as a web server.

But Linux is free, are you just going for the cheap alternative?

Not at all. Yes Linux is free but that is because it has to be under licence restrictions. Some may bring up the argument that not all Linux operating systems (OS) are free but this is wrong. The actual OS itself is free or preferably open source (allows you to view the original code yourself), but what is being paid for is usually support and proprietary software that’s not allowed to be “given” away. CentOS 5 is pretty much identical to Red Hat except all the “paid” stuff is taken out and references to Red Hat is changed to CentOS 5. But we don’t use Linux because it’s free (even though that is an advantage over Windows). We use Linux because it acts as an extremely capable, stable, flexible and very secure server. A high percentage of servers around the world use Linux or Unix including larger companies such as Google and GX Networks (Pipex).

So are we totally disregarding Windows?

No - not at all, some customers request hosting on a Windows based server mainly due to their need for ASP or other Windows architecture for their sites. And, although Apache in Linux does have support for ASP, it’s not completely reliable as of this date so we prefer these websites to be hosted on our Windows 2003 servers.

Why is PHP better? Well there’s two points of view for why it’s better.

From a coders point of view, coding in PHP is a hell of a lot easier with better documentation, plenty of resources available, frameworks to work in making it quicker to get the job done and you can easily adhere to best software practices. It is incredibly flexible and can connect to a variety of databases, most commonly used is MySql database which is (in my view) a better database system to use than MS SQL, it’s syntax, extra functionality and clear documentation that MySql gives me is ace and makes any expansions/requirements needed by the client, no problem to do at all. Which is what every client wants to hear, a yes that’s possible rather than a err, well, that could be a problem.

From a clients point of view - PHP is free and doesn’t need a Microsoft platform to run on (which isn’t free, you have to pay Microsoft). The database PHP uses most commonly is MySql, which is also free, unlike MS SQL (again you pay Microsoft). The resources available in PHP are vastly greater than ASP meaning whatever a client needs from their site, it’s not a problem to do in PHP. Imagine a simple image uploading tool, in ASP you have to purchase a module _just_ to handle the images, in PHP there’s a wealth of image manipulation libraries at your finger tips at no cost.

With the purchase of River Internet we acquired some estate agent clients whose sites were coded in ASP. The next step for us will be to advise them to have their sites recoded in PHP (for which we use a great MVC framework that builds in many SEO best practices as well as other useful classes) so as to ‘future-proof’ their online marketing activity (now, in the present market, becoming more and more important as traditional advertising costs escalate).

While I’m advocating PHP here, if in another 10 years time there’s a better language out there, I’m pretty confident that we’d be using that. It doesn’t pay to be stuck in your ways when it comes to internet technologies and your clients shouldn’t have to pay for your shortcomings and not keeping an eye on trends in the future.

So for the love of all things good, can we please lay Classic ASP to rest?

Any good applications that you would like to share? Please leave the Kaweb team a message in the comments to this article!

Happy programming!

If it’s there, what’s it saying? “Click here if you’re bored, while we throw a few logos at you from a file that has been so badly actionscripted that it’s eating your bandwidth?”.

Don’t get me wrong, I love cool, well balanced Flash sites (and some designers, movie studios et al do them really well), but those that have a doorway page for the sake of it really need advising on the importance of their home page and a users dwell time.

Rant over.

Flash is a programme that creates a file (called an swf file) containing graphics and text that can provide far more movement, interactivity and sound than a standard HTML page.
In order for a Flash (swf) file to be shown within a browser it must have the correct plug-in installed on the users computer. This plug-in is usually pre-installed with browser software (up to 90% of computers connected to the internet have the latest Flash plug-in according to Macromedia), but can also be downloaded from the Macromedia website.
The way Flash files are programmed has a negative impact on search engine rankings, making it more difficult to acheive the rankings that HTML sites are able to attain. This is due to the fact that all textual data (that is searched upon by the search engines) is not as easily available as it is with pure HTML because all the keywords are embedded within the swf file.

However, integrating Flash files into the layout of a HTML page means Flash movies can still play a vital part in a website, without having an adverse effect on search rankings. Providing a huge potential for different aesthetic and function orientated objectives, including simple animations, video clips and music players that a user can control.

Most sites that use Flash, adopt the principle above. However, some more creative sites (especially those that are well known anyway) are not so concerned about SEO will have entire sites built in Flash - and with download speeds geting quicker and quicker, the ‘Skip Intro’ button hardly has time to appear anyway.

What is HTML?

HTML is the base language used to write the files needed in order to show a web page in a browser. The browser ‘reads’ the HTML code from top to bottom - displaying content as it scans the file. This content includes images, text and other objects within the code that the programmer has asked to be displayed.

At a glance (the icon for this plug-in sits in the status bar of the browser), I can see if the source is up to scratch, and therefore whether or not the coder needs a poke in the eye.

Our old site was getting a little dated in design terms, and we wanted something that was a little simpler and was full of what we’re about (ie. SEO, XHTML, accessibility etc.).

We decided that we should practice what we preach - in telling clients it was important to ensure their web content was updated regularly so as to achieve better ranking status. So we pulled our finger out and stuck a content management system behind it which should encourage us to update it a little more often!

The site makes use of tags, a blog (still developing) as well as focussing on our portfolio.

Early indications are that the SEO workhas had a siginificant impact on our organic ranking within Google.