MainelyDesign.com Blog

PHP Curl not Working on Windows 7 or Windows 8 (PHP 64-bit version only)

Posted on 12/18/2013 at 11:10 am | Viewed 27,662 times | 0 comments

Download the Fixed Curl Version

Short Answer: you need to download and install the corrected version of libCurl for PHP to get it working on 64-bit versions of PHP. 

Download from this link:
http://www.anindya.com/php-5-4-3-and-php-5-3-13-x64-64-bit-for-windows/

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GeoTrust SSL Intermediate Certificate Bundle

Posted on 09/20/2013 at 01:27 pm | Viewed 12,138 times | 0 comments

Quick Link to GeoTrust Intermediate Certificate

Update: 1/2/2015 - GeoTrust has changed how it signs QuickSSL Premium security certificates, so you need a new GeoTrust Intermediate CA (for RSA SHA-2).

I'm sick of googling for this:  here is the link to the intermediate certificate bundle for GeoTrust security certificates:

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Making PHP File Uploads Work For Large Files

Posted on 06/18/2013 at 01:01 pm | Viewed 19,596 times | 0 comments

Get PHP File Uploads Working

The first trick to having any user contributed content these days is to get PHP File Uploads working (especially with big files).  Our configuration we use for our Wamp local development and on our Linux server is below.

When managing file uploads to a server, there seems to be a lot of confusion regarding optimized PHP settings and configuration. We have had some experience with this that we would like to share.

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Speeding Up Windows 8 for Web Development (using WAMP)

Posted on 02/25/2013 at 01:33 pm | Viewed 48,774 times | 0 comments

Here is my list of optimizations and changes you can make (and I've had to make) in order to get WAMP (and CakePHP) to run faster on my Windows 8 computer.

Speed Up WAMP Web Development on Windows 8

The short list, in order of importance (stop once you are happy with your localhost web server response time and speed):

• Get the latest version of WAMP.
  Start by downloading the latest wamp.  I used the 64 bit version.  Download WAMP here.
  
  
• Edit your hosts file.
  Make sure it has the proper entries, and most importantly, remove the IPv6 localhost setting.  Your Windows 8 hosts file should look like this:
  
  127.0.0.1          localhost
  #    ::1             localhost
  
  
• Disable IP v6
  A great tutorial can be found here.  My advice is to disable IPv6 BOTH ways- via the network adapter and via the regedit hack.
  
  
• Edit Apahce httpd.conf. 
  These tweaks are supposed to speed up the lstat() system calls when reading files/scanning directories.  They are:
  
  EnableMMAP On
  EnableSendfile On
  
  
• Edit PHP.ini
  Increase the real path cache size.  This helps when you have lots of files involved.
  
  ; Determines the size of the realpath cache to be used by PHP. This value should
  ; be increased on systems where PHP opens many files to reflect the quantity of
  ; the file operations performed.
  ; http://php.net/realpath-cache-size
  realpath_cache_size = 24M
  
  
• CakePHP: make sure debug is off.

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CakePHP Form Security Blackhole on Large Forms

Posted on 06/28/2012 at 11:11 am | Viewed 14,913 times | 0 comments

I kept getting the White Screen of Death (WSOD).  What we at Saco Design have appropriately named the behavior of the default blackhole Security Component setting.  The weird issue was that I was getting the issue only on the live server.  I had recently updated the live server's version of PHP to the latest 5.3.x release.  However, I neglected to update my local PHP version, which was still 5.3.5. 

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Common SSH Commands (An Idiot's Guide)

Posted on 09/25/2010 at 09:25 am | Viewed 13,425 times | 2 comments

Well, I never thought I would be saying this, but I'm starting to love using SSH to manage certain elements of my server.  Now that I'm using ssh bash to make some updates to my server, I find myself constantly hunting for the simple commands.  I'm going to put all the commands I need below, because I'm the idiot and it's my guide.

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CURL on Windows Doesn't Work in PHP 5.2.14 ISAPI

Posted on 09/07/2010 at 08:17 pm | Viewed 13,891 times | 0 comments

Just a quick post to let everyone know what I just found out- the version of CURL (php_curl.dll) that ships with PHP 5.2.14 for Windows ISAPI doesn't work!  That's right- it doesn't work.  I tried the MSI PHP installer package, manual installs, moving dll files into Windows and System32 directories all to no avail.  The culprit: a bad version of php_curl.dll (at least that's my best guess).  The other culprit: using ISAPI, but I don't have time to figure out FastCGI at this point.

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Difference Between Truncate and Empty (Delete From) in Mysql

Posted on 06/23/2010 at 02:30 pm | Viewed 33,257 times | 1 comment

I use Navicat for administering all of my MySQL databases.  It has a command that I always use- empty table.  I noticed today that all along there has been a command right below it for truncate table.  Hmmm.  I figured this would result in the same outcome and wondered what the difference is between emptying a mysql table and truncating the same table.

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Faking Symlinks on Windows 2003

Posted on 09/17/2009 at 04:25 pm | Viewed 17,525 times | 0 comments

My production server is a LAMP server.  I love it.  I have one cental location for my CakePHP application and symlink the folders I need to each individual hosting account.  It's pretty easy to do and very powerful.  I work on another server that is Windows 2003.  Everytime I sit down to do work, I bemoan not having the ability to create symlinks.  Turns out there is a way...

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Invalid Date Value Error in MySQL

Posted on 09/09/2009 at 02:26 pm | Viewed 12,823 times | 0 comments

I ran into an interesting issue with valid dates and MySQL on Windows.  I wrote a CakePHP import function that basically moves MySQL data from one DB to the other.  I never thought that I would see an error related to an invalid date, but I did.

What determines if a date value is invalid (read: warning) or unacceptable (read: error)?

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Manually Installing MySQL on Windows 2003 Server

Posted on 09/02/2009 at 12:02 pm | Viewed 12,127 times | 0 comments

I have been trying to install MySQL on a web server running Windows 2003 for quite a while now.  I was finally successful! Here's how I did it...

Does your server have a hard-coded IP address?

If so, you need to make localhost refer to the manually assigned IP address in your hosts file.  This file is located in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc.

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Using Exif in PHP on Windows

Posted on 08/28/2009 at 09:40 am | Viewed 12,800 times | 0 comments

I'm trying to use the exif functions in PHP on my Windows XP computer.  I want to read the meta data that is recorded by my digital camera (exif - exchangeable image file format).  I like the idea of storing that exif data in the database, so it's searchable. I wasn't having any luck with exif_read_data(), but finally found this posting.

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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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Avoiding Flash (.flv) 404 Errors on IIS 6 (Windows 2003)

Posted on 07/15/2009 at 11:11 am | Viewed 13,937 times | 1 comment

An interesting thing happens on Windows 2003 Server (IIS 6) when you try and play a .flv file through an embedded shockwave player...nothing.  Well, actually you get a 404 error. 

Fixing the .flv 404 error is simple

All you need to do is tell the IIS server that the MIME type for .flv exists.  Then, the web server can send the appropriate MIME-TYPE header when needed.

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