Yii and Me (aka, the Yii Book)

April 23, 2012

Thanks largely to the success of my Learning the Yii Framework series, people are often asking me about my plans to write a book on Yii. Writing a book on Yii is something that I’ve been meaning to do for some time, but have been way too busy for the past couple of years to make it happen. Every so often I post something about the phantom Yii book, and so here’s another. This time, it’s pretty good news…

As for my schedule, I’m now writing the third edition of my “[intlink id=”3168″ type=”post”]PHP 5 Advanced: Visual QuickPro Guide[/intlink]” book. That project will take the next couple of months, through June. I’m hoping it will be entirely done (rewrites and all) in early July. I think I’ll have a decent-sized Web project to do in the fall, but other than that, I have no deadlines and obligations for the latter half of 2012. Little things will no doubt come along, but this kind of free time is unusual for me. (And, strangely, isn’t frightening at the moment, although free time come January could be a problem!) So, reasonably speaking, I will be able to work on the Yii book full time as of August 2012. This should coincide nicely with the hopeful release of Yii 2.0 over the summer. Speaking of which…

I’ve been chatting with Qiang Xue, the creator of Yii, and he has graciously offered to act as the personal tech editor for the book. This is a great honor to me, and will be a wonderful asset in making sure the book is as technically accurate as possible. In return, I’m going to help with some of the official Yii documentation (it’s the least I can do). And the good news keeps rolling in, as Alex Makarov, author of the popular Yii 1.1 Application Development Cookbook (Packt Publishing), has generously offered his assistance, too. These are invaluable pieces that are coming together nicely here.

In terms of publishing, my current plan is…

  • To self-publish an ebook only. I will release it in mobi, epub, and PDF formats, without any annoying Digital Rights Management (DRM).
  • Possibly no DRM.
  • Probably no DRM.
  • The price would be about $15 (USD).
  • People would be able to buy the book in advance, and get each chapter as I write it. Revised chapters would be free updates.
  • People would be able to buy just a single chapter and get revisions of that chapter as free updates.

I’m assuming that I’ll create a separate Web site for the book, as I’m also planning on making some of the book’s content freely available in HTML format. This does mean that along with writing the book, I’ll have to create the Web site and the above functionality, but such are the costs of doing things yourself. And I happen to know of a framework that makes Web development a lot faster…

I’ll continue posting updates here and on Twitter (by the way, I’m on Twitter @LarryUllman) as I have them. Yii postings may be sporadic for the next couple of months as I focus on the PHP Advanced book, but rest assured the Yii book is happening.

All thoughts, feedback, input, and offers of money are most welcome!

In MySQL, PHP, Web Development ,
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Properly Salting Passwords, The Case Against Pepper

April 20, 2012

Anthony Ferrara, creator of the PHP PasswordLib library, just recently posted a discussion of using salts and pepper to improve the security of a stored password. Mostly, the article is a discussion of why a pepper is unnecessary (and if you don’t know what a “pepper” is, just read the article), but the posting also does a good job of explaining the purpose of a salt, and why the salt does not need to be a secret. The posting is relatively short, and is something I think everyone can benefit from reading.

The posting ends with the most important security fact:

Remember, the most dangerous kind of security is a false sense of it. Thinking you’ve made your application more secure, when in fact you’ve weakened it, is the worst thing you could possibly do.

In MySQL, PHP
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My 99designs Logo and Business Card Contest

April 18, 2012

As I wrote in a [intlink id=”3176″ type=”post”]post just published[/intlink], I recently ran a 99designs contest to get a new logo and business card (see that post for the final results). In this post, I want to talk about the experience in more detail, although I should add that I decided (for some unknown reason) to make my contest private, so it cannot be viewed by anyone that is not a 99designs member (membership is free, if you really want to take a peek).

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In Uncategorized, Web Development , , ,
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Five Ways to Lose Work

April 11, 2012

I recently ran a 99designs contest to create my new logo and business card (I’ll write about the contest separately, and you’ll see the results soon enough). Approximately 100 designers participated, and I saw a range of designs, from really professional to sadly amateurish. But I also witnessed a variety of behaviors, which I found to be more surprising and interesting. People often ask me about how one gets work, which is a challenge. In many [intlink id=”1564″ type=”page”]newsletters[/intlink] and emails, I’ve put forth my thoughts on what one can do to get work. What’s easier to identify, though, is how one loses work. This post discusses five quick and easy ways to lose work. This may seem like an odd topic, but by not doing these things, perhaps you can improve your chances of getting work.

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In Uncategorized
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