Drupal updates can be a real pain. Either the update path from one
of the modules is broken, you need to reapply a patch for a bug, which still
isn't fixed or something else goes wrong. In seven years of Drupal development I
basically had it all and I grew so accustomed to it, that I started to do
updates one module after another. I also create a separate commit for every
single updated module. This way I can revert the update immediately, if
something goes wrong. Luckily I found a way to automate this process.
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Use MAMP's PHP Version in Terminal
MAMP is a commercial server stack developed and sold
by appsolute. On Mac OS its pretty much the best LAMP
stack you can find. MAMP comes as a free version with limited functionality and
a fee-based version (MAMP PRO). In MAMP PRO you have some additional features.
For example you can easily change the used PHP version and you can also use this
PHP version in the Terminal. But with a little script I wrote, this can also be
accomplished with the free version.
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jQuery Teamspeak 3 Status
Things you should never do: Creating a PHP script which connects to a different
server, to retrieve some information and display it on your website. And you
should most certainly not do this on every single page request, without even
caching the results. Recently I have been asked to help my brother with a module
he downloaded, which did exactly this. So I created this jQuery Plugin
instead.
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Drupal: Insert PHP
Drupal's PHP filter enables users to use raw PHP code in text fields. While this
is an extremely powerful ability, it quickly leads to serious security issues.
Users with the ability to insert PHP code into your site, can practically do
anything they want with your site. Also the PHP code is stored in the database
and lives outside of your normal workflow. My Insert PHP module tries to fix
the limitations of the PHP filter and provides a safer way to include raw PHP in
your Drupal site.
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Setting up the Alternative PHP Cache on Ubuntu
As some of you might know, PHP scripts are compiled to bytecode right before
they are executed. This process costs time and server resources. Also this is
done all over again every single time your script gets executed, even if your
script hasn't been changed in years. So what could be more obvious than caching
the results of the compilation to reduce load on your server. Today I want to
show you one way of achieving this, with a little help from the Alternative PHP
Cache (APC).
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