It's been a very long time since my last blog post and now I must admit that I'm not really much of a blogger.

As you can probably see, I've managed to not keep my promise about creating some tutorials about video and audio broadcast.

I did however learn a lot about HTML, CSS and Javascript by implementing a new design to this site and by writing from scratch a directory script for Helpedia Directory

The previous implementation of Helpedia Directory worked great, eSyndicat is really a very nice script. The bad part about it is that it uses the Smarty template engine which I kind of hate working on and find it too complex for a directory script. It was simply easier for me to create a directory script from scratch and learn a lot of things about PHP and databases in the process.

Now, both Helpedia and Helpedia Directory share the same design, a very clean and modern one.

The PHP manual was also added to Helpedia, offering people a very fast way of finding reference on various PHP functions.

What's next ? Well, I have various ideeas for this site such as writing original and quality content but due to my 9 to 17 job, spare time is really short and I'm not exactly "fresh" after 8 hours of programming. I am considering however allowing people to submit quality, unique tutorials to Helpedia in exchange for some links to their sites in the articles, as long as they're related to it. It's a win-win situation for both parties.

Besides these two main sites, I've worked on SiteThumbs, a new thumbnail service that offers free thumbnails in various resolutions. It is currently in beta stage but fully functional and most important, free for low volumes of thumbnails.

Well, that's about it for now. Hopefully I'll post more often in the future.

Helpedia is getting close to its 1 year birthday, a good moment to draw some conclusions about this whole experience.

I have originally started this project during summer holidays, when I had nothing to worry about. There was a lot of energy and dedication to it.

Unfortunately I really did not consider that the last year of school will bring so many exams and so many problems with it, therefore I had to slow down it's development.

Sure, I could have copied articles, tutorials or guides from all over the Internet, change a few words and fill the site with content. That's just not me, I could never do that. Everything here is original and requires a lot of time, effort and documentation before publishing it. I usually need 4 or 5 days to prepare a tutorial or a guide.

I still love to work and improve the site, I'm still adding lots of features and improving it but everything is "under the hood" and all the changes are made in very small but good steps.

Just two more exams in the next week, the final exam in June and then I'll have again some free time for it, therefore you will see lots of quality tutorials and guides.

The programming section will also evolve, more original, high-quality API examples will be added and new sections will be available.

Some articles that I have in mind right now are about using partitioning, formatting or file recovering tools. There will be in the future tutorials with information about video and audio codecs, about video broadcasting or audio broadcasting (podcasts) using broadcast servers such as Real's Helix or VLC's built-in server.

Another project that will also be improved will be TGDB, a site dedicated to game cheats, hints, walkthroughs and trainers for all the latest, popular games. The site will include previews, reviews, places to buy games cheap and many other nice features.

It's been a good year but the next one will be even better!

After a few months, another blog post.

As you can probably see, the site has changed a bit. I have spent a lot of time in making sure ansolutely everything on the site is according to standards.

A welcomed addition to the site is implementation of URL rewriting.

What is URL rewriting?

URL rewriting is a special way to create web addresses pointing to files that actually don't exist on a web server. As soon as the web server receives the command to send that specific page, a server plugin analyses the URL and converts that address to an address pointing to a file that exists on the server.
This is very good especially for search engines but it's also used to make url's smaller, easier to remember.

For example, "index.php?category=internet" can be easily rewritten to "internet-category.html". It's smaller, easier to rememeber and search engines love it.

I'll let you discover the rest of the changes on the site.