I have been looking for a website up-time monitoring solution for awhile now. I have used a couple of website monitoring services in the past and have been fairly pleased with them. However, this never stops me from continuing to look around for a better option. Fortunately for myself, I recently stumbled across a new service called UptimeRobot. I have been using UptimeRobot for about a month now and am ready to recommend the service.

There are five main items that sold me on the service:

• There is no cost; the service is totally free. The entire feature set is available to you at no cost with no hidden fees. Their blog talks about their commitment to keeping the service free.
• Your websites are monitored in 5 minute intervals. Most website monitoring services offer monitoring in 30 minute intervals for free and only offer more frequent checks at a price.
• You can monitor up to 50 websites. It goes without saying that 50 is plenty of monitors. Who could expect more for free?
• Instant notification of down-time and subsequent up-time with alerts through e-mail, SMS, twitter, and RSS. There is also a feature which allows you to have more than one person receive an alert.
• Standard (http) and secure (https) protocols are supported.

Have you tried UptimeRobot yet? If so, let us know what you think in the comments.

I mentioned in one of my previous posts, ZFDebug – Zend Framework Plugin, that I have really enjoyed developing my personal web projects with Zend Framework. I am still pretty new to it and am constantly learning new tips, tricks, and best practices. Scouring the web for as much information as I can possibly consume, I came across this free online book. Zend Framework: Surviving The Deep End is comprised of ten chapters with three appendices from introducing Zend Framework to installing Zend Framework to developing a blog application with Zend Framework. You can find a full book index on the website.

As I see it there are three main advantages to this book:

1. Both the book itself and the code snippets within the book are freely available online and licensed appropriately. The book content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License and the code is licensed under a New BSD License. You can see the licensing information in Appendix C, part 2 - Licensing.
2. The content is well written, easy to understand, and well designed for beginners like myself. I don't have any first-hand reviews from advanced Zend Framework developers, but I have gone back to this book multiple times while working with Zend Framework on my own projects.
3. The book is open to user comments. This is a really neat idea. Not only are comments available, but you can comment on every paragraph of the book individually. There are a lot of comments out there already, many of which are quite helpful in reaffirming a statement made in the book or offering further information about the subject at hand.

If you are looking for some good help as you work with Zend Framework to develop your web projects like I was, I would recommend giving Zend Framework: Surviving The Deep End a chance. I have really enjoyed it.

I recently decided sto give OpenX a shot for managing my advertisement inventory. I primarily use Google AdSense, but I wanted to be able to rotate through other ads when the opportunities are available. I had played a little bit with OpenX back when it was phpAdsNew but never got too far into a full implementation. Looking at the screenshots, documentation, and features, OpenX looked like a very good option.

After getting the current version (2.8.5) installed, unfortunately, I encountered a problem as soon as I logged in for the first time. After logging in I was directed to a dashboard page, which was one of my key reasons for trying OpenX again, and it failed to load, showing the following error: "Dashboard Error: M2M authentication error – password invalid (code: 823)." (You can also see the screenshot above). Fortunately, there is an extremely easy fix.

After a few Google searches I was able to find out that the error was occurring because I had used Fantastico to install OpenX, and this was not the first time I tried. I had forgotten that I had installed and uninstalled OpenX once before. Because I had installed it once before, it failed to create a valid m2m password the second time OpenX was installed. The invalid m2m password was causing the authentication error on the dashboard page.

The Fix: Simply go to http://(your path to OpenX)/www/admin/regenerate-platformhash.php

It seems too good to be true, but it is really this simple. I followed that one step, and it worked like a charm. The next time I opened the dashboard I was able to see it without any problems. (See screenshot below of working dashboard). I hope this helps!

Image from http://cs5launch.adobe.com

Adobe is set to release the newest version of its popular software suite, Adobe Creative Suite CS5, on Monday April 12, 2010. There is an online launch event that you can register for. I haven't done a lot of research on CS5, but there are some really cool sneak peek videos showing new features like Puppet Warp and Content-Aware Fill.

If you are interested in some good information regarding CS5, check out http://cs5.org/.

I began using SiteUptime to monitor my blog's up-time a couple of weeks ago; so far I have been quite pleased. I am only using the free version of the service, so I do not get all of the bells and whistles that are offered with the paid accounts; however, I have already been notified of some downtime I had recently on this blog. I received an email and began taking action to get the blog back up.

There are three different accounts available offering different features. You can sign up for a free plan, a premium plan for $5 per month, or an advanced plan for $10 per month. All plans include the following features:

• 4 Monitoring Locations
• Email Alerts
• Monthly Reports
• Online Statistics
• Control Panel
• Web Server (http)
• Email Server (pop3)
• Email Server (smtp)
• FTP Server (ftp)

For more information on what is offered in the different plans, check out SiteUptime's comparison page.

What service(s) do you use to monitor your website's up time? Let us know in the comments.

In case you were wondering... this website answers the question: should I use tables for layout?

I just wanted to share the link; I found it quite amusing.

Now that you have a definitive answer that you should not use tables for layout, here are some CSS resources to help you establish your new layout:

• 15 Places to Find Your Next CSS Layout
• Dynamic Drive CSS Layouts- Tableless, CSS based templates
• The Perfect 3 Column Liquid Layout

I have spent a lot of time recently working with Zend Framework. As I get further into its features and capabilities, the more I enjoy developing websites and web applications with it. While researching ideas and options, I came across ZFDebug, a plugin that adds a debug bar to the bottom of your pages if you are in the "development" environment. The plugin is hosted on Google Code and is licensed under the New BSD License.

At current release (1.5) ZFDebug offers the following features:

• Cache: Information on Zend_Cache and APC.
• Database: Full listing of SQL queries and the time for each.
• Exception: Error handling of errors and exceptions.
• File: Number and size of files included with complete list.
• Html: Number of external stylesheets and javascripts. Link to validate with W3C.
• Memory: Peak memory usage, memory usage of action controller and support for custom memory measurements.
• Registry: Contents of Zend_Registry
• Time: Timing information of current request, time spent in action controller and custom timers. Also average, min and max time for requests.
• Variables: View variables, request info and contents of $COOKIE and $POST

(list from ZFDebug)

I was scouring the web for some MySQL tips, tricks, and documentation to help me as I work on the blog and other development projects. Tuning is often times overlooked; sometimes once the database table structure is built and normalized, development stops there. I am trying to be more conscious of that and during my research I came across a performance tuning video published by Google during one of their Google TechTalks. You can check it out at Google Video or view it embedded below.

There is a new section on the Resources page for Frameworks. This section of the resources page lists popular PHP frameworks like Zend Framework, which is my personal favorite, and CakePHP. The six common PHP frameworks that were added are also listed below:

• Zend Framework
• CakePHP
• CodeIgniter
• Symfony
• Horde Application Framework
• eZ Components

Do you use a different framework from those listed above? Leave a comment about it and I'll get it added to the list.

It's been a while since my last post, a long while. However, after a break to focus on finishing my MBA, I am back. The blog has a new look, and I will be posting new content in the very near future. I hope you like the new look and check back for new content.