Phil Emerson | Phil's blog about stuff

Find files that end in .old the easy way in Linux

Oct 27, 2016 | Linux

When you’re working directly on a Linux server it’s sometimes helpful to be able to find all files that end in a certain way (e.g. everything that ends with .old). Fortunately Linux provides the solution in the form of the find command.An example might be...

How to use action and filter hooks in WordPress

May 30, 2016 | PHP, Wordpress

One of the most powerful features in WordPress is also one of the most feared – hooks. This article explains what they are and gives you two examples of how you might use them to customise your WordPress-based website. When you redecorate a room you might go...

Create your own shortcodes in WordPress

May 25, 2016 | PHP, Wordpress

In WordPress, shortcodes are special codes in square braces that are auto-magically replaced with pre-defined content. For example, I could place [kitten] in my post content and it could be replaced with a picture of a kitten. This short article explains how you...

Formatting a date using PHP

May 21, 2016 | PHP

[toc]In my last article I explained how to format a date in MySQL using a built-in function that can be used during a database query. In this article I’m going to leave databases and talk about how to do the same thing in PHP. The timestamp Before you can format...

How to format dates directly in MySQL

May 12, 2016 | MySQL

[toc]This tutorial explains how to format a MySQL date field to suit your needs without using PHP or any other post-processing.For example, you can output your dates in a long format such as Monday, 12th May 2016 or as a short date format – 17/Dec/86. MySQL...

Adding users to your databases

May 8, 2016 | MySQL

[toc]This tutorial explains how to create new MySQL database users using SQL commands. As well as creating the users you’ll also learn how to restrict what they can do in specific databases. Please note:All the commands shown in this tutorial are SQL commands....

Connecting to MySQL and creating databases

Apr 10, 2016 | MySQL

[toc]Although there are plenty of tools out there to help you create and manage mySQL databases, sometimes the fastest (or only) way is to use the mysql command line tool. This article will explain how to create a database, create a user for that database and give...