Ariba Tech Solutions’ Web Development Training

Ariba Tech Solutions will be conducting a series of Web Development Training this January 2012. For more details, please visit http://aribawebdevtraining.eventbrite.com/

Yet another Web Development Training with National Computer Center

I was again in Davao City last September 5 to 8, 2011 for another batch of the 4-day Interactive Web Development Training (Using Joomla! CMS) for e-LGUs with National Computer Center (NCC). That was my 3rd time to conduct the same training in Davao. Even though it was really a short notice on the schedule, I still said yes because I like sharing knowledge and helping local government units have their online presence and make it more interactive as possible.

Around 13 participants attended this batch and they are from different LGUs (Local Government Units) in Mindanao. Half the size compared to what I usually have from my previous trainings, which gave me enough time to address all their concerns.

It’s always been a pleasure doing this training and I’m glad that the participants learned something new, which is basically about the Joomla! CMS — on how to manage and customize it, from this short course.

Joomla Web Development Training Batch 4

I was again contracted by the National Computer Center – Zamboanga Field Office to do another batch of the Stage 3 Web Development Training using Joomla for Luzon. This is my fourth time to handle the course and first time to conduct in Luzon. I did a couple in Mindanao (Davao City) and one in Visayas (Cebu City) late last year.

The training was last March 28-31, 2011. The venue was at the ICT Hall of Benguet State University in La Trinidad, Benguet, 30 minutes away from Baguio City. Around 30+ representatives from different LGUs, NGUs, and Academe participated this course.

Most of the participants for this batch are from Region 4A and the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR). It was indeed my pleasure to extend my knowledge to the participants.

To all the participants, thank you for the opportunity and don’t hesitate to contact me for assistance via email and through Facebook. Hope to see you again!

And of course, I enjoyed the weather and super cheap fruits and vegetables.

Joomla Session Handling with Custom PHP Pages

Joomla is an open-source  content management system (CMS), a web appliance, which you can use for any type of website (e.g. community portal, news site, portfolio, corporate sites, for blogging, etc.) And, I’ve been working with some Joomla projects for quite some time now and some clients requires me to do custom application. Joomla uses MVC (Model-View-Controller) web application architecture, so it really requires you to examine the file structure to do custom coding.

Anyway, a recent client asked me to do some custom pages outside the pre-defined files of Joomla and it must pass some session variables. Joomla has its own class for session handling but only applicable inside its system can use it. So, when handling session outside the system, how can we do it? It’s simple. You just need to define the framework path of Joomla in your code. Include these lines:

define( '_JEXEC', 1 );
define( 'DS', DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR );
define('JPATH_BASE', dirname(__FILE__) ); Read more...

WordPress & Joomla: Open Source Web Applications

If you’re into web development or blogging, you surely know these two Open Source web applications I am to talk about – Joomla and WordPress. I have been doing web programming since 2001 which I turned to be an offshore freelance web developer, worked in an I.T. firm in Manila, then came back home to finish my studies but still doing I.T. Consultancy/Web Development and blogging of course. Let me just say that I help write and code the web.

Okay, going back to business now…

WordPress was the first web application I installed when I got my own domain name. I was setting up a blog site that is. WordPress is a blog and publishing platform that you can install in your personal websites if you have a domain name or sign-up a WordPress account for free as a sub-domain of WordPress.org. The advantage of having your own domain name is that you can tweak your WordPress platform according to your preferences. You can even design your own theme or layout, install plugins, and even convert your WordPress to a CMS (Content Management System). Yeah, but that would include some programming. I’ll teach you how later, just keep posted.

Common to many hosting packages is that they have a number of ready-to-install applications over CPANEL which they usually call it Fantastico. CPANEL is your web-based control panel to manage your website. And, installing WordPress is easy as 1-2-3, just follow the steps and your blog will be up and running.

Screenshot of WordPress over CPANEL

Read more…