MainelyDesign.com Blog

Controlling CakePHP Error Handling When Debug = 0

Posted on 04/19/2010 at 04:27 pm | Viewed 28,180 times | 1 comment

I finally had a client request a piece of functionality that required me to program CakePHP so I could better control the default error handling when the site is in production mode (i.e. debug is set to 0).  By default, CakePHP will throw a 404 page not found header whenever ANY errors occur on a production site with debug equal to zero.  This works great, most of the time.  But what about when you are having database connectivity issues?  Say when there are too many mysql connections to that overloaded shared hosting box?  Modifed CakePHP error handling to the rescue.

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Export to PDF from Microsoft Publisher

Posted on 03/05/2010 at 10:54 am | Viewed 12,372 times | 0 comments

I have a client that sends me newsletters in Microsoft Publisher format.  I wanted to output the newsletter as a PDF, but wanted to keep the text for SEO and so users can copy and paste the text if needed.  Microsoft Publisher doesn't have an export to PDF function, so usually I would just do a File > Print and select Adobe PDF as the printer.  However, this would just be an "image" of the document, not the actual document with selectable text.  This is how you can get a PDF with rendered text out of Microsoft Publisher...

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Cakephp's Flay Class is Amazing - Examples Included

Posted on 09/08/2009 at 09:31 pm | Viewed 14,047 times | 0 comments

If you haven't checked out CakePHP's Flay class, check it out. It's one of the best utility classes for text output in CakePHP.

I just noticed that my blog was using the same META description for all of my blog entries- not good for SEO.  Instead, I want to pull a fragment of the article copy and use that as my META description.  I currently use this convoluted way to get my summaries from the article copy, so I decided to try using the Flay class.  I've used it before but I'm glad I revisited it... it's amazing!

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Network Solutions' Flawed .htaccess and Mod_Rewrite Rules Implementation

Posted on 08/06/2009 at 02:38 pm | Viewed 34,550 times | 7 comments

I can't believe it!  I spent hours trying to get the mod_rewrite rules working in .htaccess on Network Solutions' servers.  Everything I tried didn't work.  Using the default .htaccess (from Cake distribution) failed.  I've used the distribution on several servers and never had any issue with the rewrite rules.  However, Network Solutions's mod_rewrite works differently than [all] other servers.

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Making Apache Parse .html files as .php Files

Posted on 05/13/2009 at 12:09 pm | Viewed 12,560 times | 0 comments

When re-designing a site, or somehow being locked into a given web site structure that uses .html (or .htm) file extensions, it's a good idea to keep the file names the same (especially if the site has been around a while and has good search engine visibility).  Think you can't use PHP on .html or .htm web pages?  Think again.  With apache it's as easy as modifying the .htaccess file.

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