A big thanks to Scott for pointing me in the right direction. I just got back from the store with the huge book he recommended - PHP and MySQL Web Development. I plan to start work on my first "from scratch" WordPress plugin in the next few days.
[tags]PHP, MySQL, WordPress[/tags]

What got me up early Saturday and then up at 1am on Sunday? Server hardware failure...which led to some database corruption. I have never had to deal with database corruption, so I did not even know my problem was database corruption until after calling the helpful tech guys at Liquid Web. (I am not one to usually call tech support, but at 136am on a Sunday...I did not feel like spending time at mysql.com or google.com.)

I first noticed something on Saturday morning, but after restoring a database table from a backup, everything was golden. I told myself...it had to have been from some user error. Monday morning, after my Nagios server paged me, I noticed that jappler.com had several mysql fetch_row () errors after the server came back up. I decided that this problem was not user error and something else was going on. As soon as I told the tech guy the error that I was seeing onjappler.com and other web sites I manage, he asked me if I had tried "repairing" the databases. I had not even thought about it (especially ... [more]

After finally getting some to to set up my development environment, I began thinking...why am I not using Apache 2.2 and PHP 5.1.2? What made me think about this? "Legacy Release" The phrase "legacy release" is what httpd.apache.org described Apache 1.3.x as in their news section. I have been using Apache 1.x for several years now, only ever really thinking about migrating to 2.0 because of the need to run a subversion server. I have a solid web server solution in place that has made me very happy for the last few years using Apache 1.3.x, but it is finally time to check out something in the 2.x family, and I am going to make that 2.2. I am going to spend some time tomorrow reading about any known issues (especially with PHP, as I remember that being a show stopper for my interest in 2.0 before) and then install/configure it. Stay tuned for some tutorials on what I did to get everything up and running!
[tags]apache, php, mysql, subversion[/tags]

Somethings, I just forget...again and again. Yeah, I need to go through the W3C School's SQL tutorial and learn more about it and databases in general, but for now, here are some helpful tips for people like me that rely on MySQL, but often fall into the same novice traps/problems.

I do not install MySQL very often but when I do, I forget how to set the initial passwords. Post installation instructions
I then sometimes, have a problem (if I install MySQL 4.1) with the MySQL 4.1+ password hashing algorithm. The error: "Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client." The solution:MySQL 4.1+ password hashing algorithm

Don't forget to check out MySQL's own GUI app: MySQL Administrator.