I spent most of the summer going through every chapter and all the code line by line, correcting errors and making the code more efficient. The result is a major rewrite, PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy, Second Edition, which is now in stock at Amazon in the United States, and should be available elsewhere soon. It’s also available in electronic form as a Kindle version, or as a PDF from the friends of ED website.

There’s a detailed description of what the book covers and how it differs from the first edition elsewhere on this site. If you have recently bought the first edition, don’t worry. There’s nothing actually wrong with the original code, but do make sure you check the updates on my site, as well as the corrections on the friends of ED site.

When downloading the accompanying files from friends of ED, make sure you get the files for the correct edition:

• Download files for PHP Solutions, Second Edition
• Download files for PHP Solutions, First Edition

I’ll create a full tutorial on the revised procedure when I get time, but you can find a summary of the main differences on the updates page for The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS4.

The main changes affecting the phpMyAdmin user interface concern the creation of new tables. They can be summarized as follows:

• When setting a default value for a column (field), you need to select a value from the drop-down menu. The options are None, As defined, NULL, or CURRENT_TIMESTAMP. If you select As defined, type the default value you want the column to have in the field immediately below.
• As before, phpMyAdmin treats all columns as NOT NULL. In other words, all columns require a value to be inserted in them. To make a column optional, select the Null checkbox. In the version 2 series, this was a drop-down menu.
• To set an index on a column, choose the appropriate index type from the Index drop-down menu. The choices are PRIMARY, UNIQUE, INDEX, and FULLTEXT. In the version 2 series, these were represented by radio buttons.
• To create an auto incrementing column (normally used in conjunction with a primary key), select the A_I checkbox. In the version 2 series, this was a drop-down menu called Extra.

The new system was introduced in version 2.7.0, but if you move the configuration file, config.inc.php, from 2.7.0 to 2.8.0, it doesn’t work! What’s particularly confusing is that MySQL reports that access was refused because the root password wasn’t used. After a bit of head scratching, I tried the new web interface to create config.inc.php for me. To my mind, the web interface is badly thought out. It’s counter-intuitive and time-consuming to use. Still, using the web interface did at least create a configuration file that worked – and that was the point of the exercise.

Looking inside to see the difference, it turns out that phpMyAdmin now uses an index of 1 instead of 0 to identify the primary server. I’ve no idea if this is a permanent change or just a mistake, but it certainly defeats the purpose of a configuration file intended to make upgrades easier if it breaks on a simple point upgrade.

I’ve updated my updates for Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8 and Foundation PHP 5 for Flash. The really annoying thing is that three pages were reset in the second printing of the Dreamweaver book to take account of the changes in phpMyAdmin 2.7.0. These latest changes now make the updated version already out of date. I don’t mind changes like this when they’re a clear improvement, but changing the installation procedure in 2.7.0 and breaking it in the very next release, just seems like sloppy management at phpMyAdmin