AJReading

CodeIgniter did not include a user authentication class on purpose. There are a lot out there and the one ive used in the past is called IonAuth. If you want to write your own to learn then thats fine but if you want to get stuck into CI then i recommend it!

I tried it briefly, I did not like the idea of being signed in indefinately, but also, signing in each time would be a pain... It would be nice to be able to enter a PIN number or somthing so you can get access to Facebook and Twitter quickly but not leave it constantly logged in so family members cannot post inappropriate things on my accounts I've stopped using it anyway because I could not even work out how to tweet from it...

Off the top of my head I've no idea, check out WhatTheFont its very useful to determine which font is being used. It also has an iPhone app!

The point of a framework is to make it easier to develop applications by taking care of common tasks for you from things like cleaning users input to database interaction, session management, validation, templating, email, encryption etc. They are usually based on the Model View Controller (MVC) which seperates code into three parts, data access/manipulation (model), application presentation (view) and application logic (controller). They can take a while to learn and get your head around the concept but after using a framework for a while it speeds up development time and encourages the re-use of code. I've developed libraries for certain projects that I can simply and seamlessly use for other projects. I've linked the wikipedia article on MVC if you want to know more.

Excellent start, you will go a long way if that truely is your first proper attempt! If your struggling to decide what you want on the home page I would suggest you highlight the most important parts of the business, possibly and intro paragraph, the services and if I was the customer the first thing i would like to see is a price per lesson or special offers to entice me in.

Smarty is a template engine, not a framework. A rather bad one too! Check out http://nosmarty.net/ for a few reasons. I'm using CodeIgniter at the moment and it's great, however it does have a few limitations. I'm using it mainly because the ExpressionEngine CMS is built upon it and it's my CMS of choice. For smaller projects, one of the guys in the office has written his own lightweight MVC framework which suits our needs perfectly. I would like to check out CakePHP in more detail too as im told it's much better than CodeIgniter As for Jordans reply saying "i like the idea that I've done it myself rather than left it to some framework" I find that a little silly. Frameworks will speed up development time and make things much more managable especially for larger projects. I like to do things myself too but I don't like to reinvent the wheel, especially when there are solid relaible "tried and tested" wheels out there. Frameworks simply provide basic libraries for common things such as sessions, databases, ftp, validation etc. I would write my own classes to handle these but there is no point when the frameworks provide solid bug-free ones for you. Of course they are easy to extend if they do not suit my needs.

PM Sent

You should also check out Campaign Monitor. http://www.campaignmonitor.com/ It's a similar service to mail chimp and comes with lots of templates you can use to get up and running.

You're quite right... my bad. But i knew there was a reason I hardly ever use it, mysql_fetch_assoc() is more efficient since it essentially just returns the one associative array (unless your using the second result type parameter)

I've not tested it myself but I can see an issue... function read($id) { $result = mysql_fetch_array(mysql_query('SELECT * FROM sessions WHERE id="'.$id.'"')); return $result['data']; } You're using mysql_fetch_array which returns an array with numeric indexes not associative. Change to mysql_fetch_assoc(). function read($id) { $result = mysql_fetch_assoc(mysql_query('SELECT * FROM sessions WHERE id="'.$id.'"')); return $result['data']; } On a side note, tweaking your error reporting to show notices would have highlighted the undefined index on the $results array. Hope that helps

MODx does look quite good actually but I forgot that EE 2 beta is out! The new EE does look fantastic and certainly has a bunch of new featutes that are useful to me. Im also warming towards it due to the fact its now written in the codeigniter framework. BlueDreamer, do you think its safe to use the EE public beta? I understand i may have to update it quite often if any major bugs are found. Would you imagine this is likely to cause any problems? The website must be completed by March and its a very tight deadline so unexpected issues with the beta could throw a spanner in the works for me! Thanks for the advice

My only concern is the way expression engine handles pages/navigation. I've used the pages module but that does not really do what i need, and ended up using a mixture of categories and stuff to get a 3 level navigation. It worked but the end user found it difficult to use. They would ideally like to be able to click "Add page" and choose a sub page or location within the navigation... nice and simple. I guess usability is an important factor since there will be many hundreds of users all with varied computer experience updating and adding content. Well ive tried EE before, perhaps i should have a little play with Drupal and then decide.

Hi all, I'm about to start a very large project for the council and they have a very strict set of requirements. I'm assuming Joomla is out of the question for this one and I've used expression engine for a similar project before and hated it. My attention has now been turned to Drupal which im hoping will suit their needs. Whilst im looking into Drupal, does anyone have any other suggestions for a CMS which may be suitable for the following: Multi user with access control Page management Uploading of photos/videos to be inbedded in pages News publishing Attachments/links/comments for all content Blogs Simple event managment/calendar Newsletter sign up Useful links management "Features" which can be chosen to appear on each page from a list

The best solution would be to use Paypal IPN (Instant Payment Notification) that way you could email or force the download only after a successful payment. IPN can be a challenge to get your head around but it's certainly the best way to go if you are using Paypal. Edit: Just thought I would give a bit more detail. Paypal posts back to you after a payment is made and there are ways for you to check and confirm a valid payment. After checking, you would serve up the download!

Correct, you really should check the mime type of the file. I could upload myVirus.exe if i renamed it to myVirus.jpg Also do not use $_FILES['image']['type'] to check the mime type as this is sent by the browser. Take a look at this for working out mime types: http://us3.php.net/manual/en/ref.fileinfo.php Also use filesize() to work out file size. Again, don't count on the browser to return reliable data.