new phpdn forum

We know you have an opinion on how things should be run around here. These are suggestions for the forums, and the website.This forum is not a place to ask for suggestions to your own coding (or otherwise) problems.

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s.dot
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new phpdn forum

Post by s.dot »

I've had this idea for quite a while now, but not necessarily for phpdn. I even started developing a web site for it and had a good domain name (phpthoughts.com if anyone wants to grab it before it's gone ;)), but I got sidetracked and don't really feel like finishing it.

Anyways, new forum - articles.

They're not tutorials, snippets, or pieces of codes. Instead they're "discussions" of best practices, address common issues with php programming, showing alternate ways of doing things, etc etc etc.

Some sample articles I was doing:

- Using proper PHP tags -- explaining why to use <?php instead of <% or <?
- what register_globals is and how to work with it
- same for magic_quotes_gpc()
- code portability
- mysql_num_rows() vs. count() in the query, for some examples
- avoiding easy bottlenecks
- the so-called death of php4

The topics are just so limitless and could go from very beginner to very advanced. For example a while back I asked a question about referral systems, and I was referred to an article on sitepoint about this. It discussed linear table data and hiarchial table data using the modified preorder tree traversal algorhythm. We could have that HERE, and so many more.

And instead of linking to topics when users ask beat-up questions like headers already sent, we could link them to a phpdn article explaining it, rather than a topic full of posts when really one post is what they're looking for.

Plus given the tremendous amount of subjects to write about, it couldn't hurt devnet's search engine rankings.

What do you guys think? That's my $0.02 ;)
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The Phoenix
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Re: new phpdn forum

Post by The Phoenix »

scottayy wrote: And instead of linking to topics when users ask beat-up questions like headers already sent, we could link them to a phpdn article explaining it, rather than a topic full of posts when really one post is what they're looking for.
Thats really what I felt the tutorials were meant to accomplish (that and the starting user tour thread).

Whats the real difference from a tutorial?
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TheMoose
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Re: new phpdn forum

Post by TheMoose »

The Phoenix wrote:
scottayy wrote: And instead of linking to topics when users ask beat-up questions like headers already sent, we could link them to a phpdn article explaining it, rather than a topic full of posts when really one post is what they're looking for.
Thats really what I felt the tutorials were meant to accomplish (that and the starting user tour thread).

Whats the real difference from a tutorial?
The article that Mordred wrote about hashing (link), to me, is quite different than a tutorial. It doesn't explain step by step how to produce a secure hashing script. Instead, it explains the pros and cons of different methods, and how to overcome certain risks when creating a password system.

A tutorial, on the other hand, is something that gives code examples (Maugrim's Challenge/Response). It gives detailed instructions on exactly what you need to create a working challenge/response system. It also gives you a complete code example of a working setup, that if necessary, can just be copy/pasted and slightly modified for your environment to work "out of the box".

They're quite different in detail, but in general, they are trying to accomplish similar feats. Instead of creating a new forum, just rename "Tutorials" to be "Articles & Tutorials", since they're both providing reading material to use as a guide to a coding goal. If someone wants to figure out some best practices for securing their passwords, they could look in there for both articles pertaining to security AND tutorials pertaining to security (hashing + challenge/response).
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Post by s.dot »

That's a perfect example of an article.
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Kieran Huggins
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Post by Kieran Huggins »

Don't forget his amazing PHPDO article!

viewtopic.php?t=48499

Maugrim strikes again!
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The Phoenix
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Re: new phpdn forum

Post by The Phoenix »

The Phoenix wrote:
scottayy wrote: And instead of linking to topics when users ask beat-up questions like headers already sent, we could link them to a phpdn article explaining it, rather than a topic full of posts when really one post is what they're looking for.
Thats really what I felt the tutorials were meant to accomplish (that and the starting user tour thread).

Whats the real difference from a tutorial?
Sorry for the triple quote, but here I think its worth it. Note where I've added emphasis above..
TheMoose wrote:The article that Mordred wrote about hashing (link), to me, is quite different than a tutorial. It doesn't explain step by step how to produce a secure hashing script. Instead, it explains the pros and cons of different methods, and how to overcome certain risks when creating a password system.
I will agree with that.
TheMoose wrote:A tutorial, on the other hand, is something that gives code examples (Maugrim's Challenge/Response). It gives detailed instructions on exactly what you need to create a working challenge/response system. It also gives you a complete code example of a working setup, that if necessary, can just be copy/pasted and slightly modified for your environment to work "out of the box".
And I agree there too. I think a tutorial, by this definition, is the best solution to the "beat up questions" issue. Articles, on the other hand, don't give quite enough to 'end the discussion' sufficiently.
TheMoose wrote:They're quite different in detail, but in general, they are trying to accomplish similar feats. Instead of creating a new forum, just rename "Tutorials" to be "Articles & Tutorials", since they're both providing reading material to use as a guide to a coding goal. If someone wants to figure out some best practices for securing their passwords, they could look in there for both articles pertaining to security AND tutorials pertaining to security (hashing + challenge/response).
I think they are different, now that you've spelled it out. I think the article isn't nearly as helpful to a newcomer or a one-off request, where the tutorials definitely are. Articles, on the other hand, could be thought of as a polished version of a Theory&Practice discussion, much as tutorials are meant to be a polished version of repeated answers to common questions.

Just my thoughts, now that I understand better.

Or put another way, Scottayy's idea gets my vote.
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Maugrim_The_Reaper
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Post by Maugrim_The_Reaper »

I think one of the weaknesses of the current approach though is we're a forum. It's not the most ideal medium for publishing articles/tutorials where something more like a lite publication app would be (something simple like http://devzone.zend.com or simpler since we're not an advert driven site giving the inches to Adsense).

Now this could be forum driven - post to the forum, but aggregated to the front facing article/tutorial page. The forums would still drive all content, but there would be some subdomain where articles are presented a bit more like a typical article site with search-engine/people friendly URI forms.

The proposal would get my thumbs up. But we'd need some plan to keep the articles/tutorials flowing. I mean two a month is not a big number for a minimum total. It would be cool if people could agree to post an article every 2-4 months (a 1000 word minimum would not be hard to come up with).[/url]
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