Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       phpStorm and Subversion work together beautifully!  In large software projects, source control is a absolute must, and for this I love using Subversion (SVN).  Subversion allows you to save your changes in an organized manner and if you make a mistake, you can always go back to an older version.  Where more than one developer is working on a project, SVN handles change conflicts with relative ease. In phpStorm, the “changes” shortcut (usually located near ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       Welcome back CorePHP readers.  I’ve now had a chance to explore phpStorm a little more and I’ve found a few widgets that I think you might find useful when developing your own creations, but I’ll only talk about one today. One of the biggest widgets that I enjoy about phpStorm is the smart inspection widget that just works.  The smart inspection widget appears on the right hand side of the window when you are editing a file, just beside the ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 1 – 2 minutes       For several years now, our base development platform has been based on PHP version 5.2.  PHP 5.2 will run under Windows NT/2000/2003 with very few problems.  Of course, during this same time period, the environment has changed. The recommended version of PHP for production use is now 5.3.  5.4alpha1 was released on Jun 28, 2011 and promises to have improved memory usage and performance.  PHP 5.2, the version that we are currently using is no longer supported ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 1 – 2 minutes       Now that the school year is almost over, I’m sure many of you PD Place users have time to think finish up those unfinished projects from earlier in the year.  I’m hoping I may interject an idea into that list of unfinished projects.  Tell us what would you like to see in PD Place.  Over the years, we have seen a wide variety of ideas ranging from adding a new filter all the way up to integrating with other management systems.  When it seems all the ideas ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 4 minutes       If you’re like me, I’m sure you’ve said this at one time or another during the software development process.  The app that just takes forever to load – and then gives you that nasty fatal error message.  With some fiddling and a bit of adjusting, you usually get this to work, but it’s still slow.  What do you do? Following from my last blog, I’ve started using phpStorm for my developing here at CoreSolutions.  Part of this suite includes an ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 1 – 2 minutes       The last few weeks swept away much of the old. It was simply amazing – looking at how all the little tricks I did were no longer needed. The feeling of being free and unrestricted when software just works. The coming storm blows all the tumbleweeds away, removes all the cobwebs and frees your time for things that matter – speed and productivity. Ladies and gentlemen, please let me introduce phpStorm: PhpStorm is a new, lightweight and smart PHP IDE. It ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       We’ve all been there at one time or another.  With confidence we go and make a change and voila, it looks beautiful.  After we celebrate our prowless, a few days later we go over what we did and notice that something just isn’t right.  Why are all my people at the wrong location?  Why are they assigned to the wrong school? At times like these, the existence of a good backup and recovery strategy is paramount.  In the case above, the creation of a ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 1 – 2 minutes       With each new version of PD-Place, many new and exciting features are added. These features range from minor adjustments to large scale changes. How does the PD-Place team determine what new features are added? When the PD-Place team receives a new feature request, the request is recorded in a list of changes. This list of changes is reviewed by the PD-Place team between releases. If the request is a feature that many clients will find useful, the feature is ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       Customized themes are an essential part of the websites we create and use here at CoreSolutions.  While there are literally hundreds of WordPress themes available, none of them fit with the CoreSolutions brand – this is why we have created and customized our own. In a previous article, I mentioned a few themes that I felt were interesting, including “Adventure Journal” and “Nanoplex Theme”.  If you like something about these themes, but not ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       Picking up from where Matt left off last week, WordPress does flex its muscles in terms of themes, plugins and apps for the mobile devices. Navigating to the free themes directory as WordPress.org, there are currently 1321 themes available for download.   If you are looking for a theme to record a recent trip and travel adventure, the Adventure Journal might just be for you.   If you want “add a touch of colour to life”, the Nanoplex Theme may tickle your ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       Have you ever been in that most undesirable situation where you want to do something, know it’s possible, but have no idea on how to proceed? Fear not, both ContinuED and PDPlace have an extensive help system that will show you the path you need to take to accomplish your goal.   In PDPlace, the help system can be accessed by using the rightmost tab in the upper left navigation bar.   In ContinuED, it is the second last tab, again in the upper left navigation ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       Congratulations – you’re the winner! That’s how I felt when I found out that my post would be the first one for our new CorePHP blog (all things WordPress, web and PHP). It definitely gives me a clean slate and some freedom to talk about PHP and related items. For today, let’s focus on one of the core pieces that helped to build this blog: WordPress. WordPress is “web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog,” and, ” is ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       (Source: formrouter.com) Happy New Year!  I hope everyone had a very relaxing and fun-filled holiday. The time off was certainly welcome as it gave me time to think about many of the everyday items that we use; items, for some, that haven’t changed for many years. The thing that came to the forefront for me was the use of traditional paper-based forms. Paper-based forms, originally designed by hand and now commonly designed in many popular software applications ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 1 – 2 minutes       One of the most frustrating issues I had with PD Place™ has now been fixed!  With our new Version 3.8 release, the preferences throughout the product have been re-organized to make them much easier to find. For example, in previous versions of PD Place, you had to manually hunt down all the preferences needed to setup PayPal. Now, all of these preferences are located in the Pay Portal preference category. Additionally, a preference search has been added that ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       There are many new features in the newly released version of ContinuED® that you may find helpful to boost your software’s effectiveness. The first is the newly added register extension pages. With the old ContinuED 2.2 registers, you were limited to a specific number of days where you could record attendance and have it display on the printed register. Generally, this limit was anywhere from 42 to 60 classes. With the introduction of the register extension pages, ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       As the season slowly starts to change, so does ContinuED®. Officially released on August 16th, 2010, ContinuED 2.3.0 offers many significant improvement to many areas. The first area of improvement you’ll notice right away is the new and improved user interface. The revamped interface makes it easier for you to find the class you desire with much less effort. This “stepped” interface allows you to progress one step at a time to filter out the undesired ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       Each of the products we develop at CoreSolutions Software is feature rich, including our software package, ContinuED®. Many of these features are hidden in plain sight but are readily accessible to you. Recently, a client contacted us and asked if there was a way to reduce the number of emails being sent to students. A certain preference had been enabled and was sending an email to students when changes were made to a class. Turns out, the option to override the default ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       ContinuED has been steadily evolving since last summer – Version 2.3 is in its final development stages and will be released this summer. In the meantime, I’ve been steadily going through 2.2.2 and polishing up some of the existing features. One of the requests that I’ve worked on recently involves the attendance registers. For those of you who don’t know, ContinuED can create several different types of attendance or self-study registers. In ContinuED 2.1, ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       Welcome to the first of many entries on ContinuED®. The newly released version of ContinuED® 2.2.1 contains many goodies and requested enhancements that many of you will find quite useful in setting up classes for the upcoming ConEd terms. Some of these goodies include: - New student fields for Driver’s License Number and Citizenship/Immigration Number - Registers now support 45 sessions instead of the original 32. - Visual improvements to the attendance entry ... Read More