Larry Ullman

Translating Geek Into English

An Apology, an Explanation, and a Plan

You may have noticed, and possibly found yourself quite frustrated by, the fact that I have not updated “The Yii Book” in quite some time. Once again (once again!) my sincerest apologies for the delay. I have not been as productive on “The Yii Book”, or as communicative, as of late as I would have liked, or as you certainly deserve. Though a lack of updates or information conveys nothing to you, “The Yii Book” has been constantly at the forefront of my mind, and no one wants it to be done more than I. I know that progress has been somewhere between slow and terrible, and while there are reasons, I don’t want to make excuses. Basically it’s been a ton of work, and life is complicated. I can see how it could seem from the outside that I’m not prioritizing “The Yii Book”, but it’s on my mind constantly, I’m well aware of how poorly I’ve done (in terms of the schedule), and I really am making decisions towards the goal of finishing it. On that note…

9 Ways to Make the Payment Process Easy for Online Customers (Link)

I recently came across an article titled " 9 Ways to Make the Payment Process Easy for Online Customers". The article describes nine best practices for e-commerce sites: what you should do to have the best possible conversion rate. I definitely stress most, if not all, of these points in my " Effortless E-commerce with PHP and MySQL" book, but they are policies and approaches worth repeating. If you do any kind of web development, and especially if you do e-commerce, give this quick article a read. The only thing the article leaves out is how to convince your client that you’re right when it comes to implementing these policies, especially the one about not requiring accounts to complete orders!

What's New in the 2nd Edition of "Effortless E-commerce with PHP and MySQL"?

The second edition of my " Effortless E-commerce with PHP and MySQL" book is now at the printer, and the electronic version is already available. So, you may ask, what’s new in the 2nd edition? In this post, I’ll highlight additions and changes in the book, and in a subsequent post, I’ll put up the complete table of contents. (And, in the interim, I’ll be working to finish up another book that just won’t end!)

Where Have I Been?

Yeesh! So where am I behind, and by how much? Let me count the ways…

  • I haven’t put up a blog posting in almost a month
  • I haven’t updated the Yii book in two months (ugh!!!)
  • I haven’t sent out a newsletter in almost three months

But other than that…Oh, I haven’t exercised in four months (in the spring, I had started exercising daily, which I did successfully do for two months). So, where have I been?