Web Technology and Design SIG

June 2009 Meeting - Tuesday, June 23

There are a couple of options to adding an event calendar to your website. For websites that use WordPress, there are a couple of add-ons available.

Easy PHP Calendar is another PHP based calendar that is easily integrated into your website and is simple to customize. It supports a flat-file database format as well as mySQL so you can use this application even if your webhost package does not include mySQL.

Mark your calendar. I look forward to seeing you there!

Rita Trelewicz
Web Design SIG Leader

May 2009 Meeting - Tuesday, May 26

While Forums may be considered to some people as older technology, they do offer a great way for people to share opinions as a community effort. This month we will talk about some of the most popular forums coded in PHP. We will demo PHPbbb and Vanilla. If time permits, we will touch base on a ASP driven forum.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Rita Trelewicz
Web Design SIG Leader

April 2009 Meeting - Tuesday, April 28

PHP is a popular server scripting language for building dynamic web pages. From simple form action scripts to robust applications such as a WordPress blog, Drupal and Joomla content management systems or a PHPbb forum, there is a lot to choose from.  Understanding the basics is immensely useful when expanding the capabilities of your website.

Katrina Niolet, our guest speaker for April, will guide us through the basics of PHP. She will discuss how to install an Apache server, MySQL database and PHP so you can test your code before you go live. Then she will provide an overview of server side scripting vs markup vs client side scripting as well as an introduction of variables and functions.

Katrina leads classes often and is a software engineer at KDAB.  She is quite knowledgeable and her presentation is sure to be worthwhile. I look forward to seeing you all there.

Rita Trelewicz
Web Design SIG Leader

September Meeting - Tuesday, September 23 (postponed until October 28th due to Ike)

As your web development skills advance, the benefit of using server side scripting becomes more attractive. However, do you want to run the risk of causing havoc on your live site while you experiment?

This is where setting up a testing server is important. It is not as hard as you think to install Apache, MySQL and PHP. Having the ability for contained testing makes it worth the effort. Join us as we go through a case study on setting up a testing server, installing WordPress and then launching the site live.

Rita Trelewicz
Web Design SIG Leader