In doing some digging, I learned about the child themes feature of WordPress, which allows you to effectively extend an existing theme. I created a directory under wp-content/themes called fluid-blue-custom. In this directory, I created a styles.css file with these contents:

/*
Theme Name: Fluid Blue (Custom)
Template: fluid-blue
*/

@import url("../fluid-blue/style.css");

body .syntaxhighlighter code, body .syntaxhighlighter .gutter { font-size: 12px !important; }

The Template line of the comment block indicates that this theme is a child theme of the existing Fluid Blue theme that resides in the wp-content/themes/fluid-blue directory. The @import line pulls in the styles.css file from that directory, after which I can apply any CSS overrides I like. The last line is a CSS rule specific enough to override applicable rules from the parent theme in order to increase the font size to something more easily readable.

It appears I’m not the only one who’s encountered this issue, so I hope this post helps someone else.

class web {
    package { 'httpd':
        ensure => 'present',
    }

    package { 'php':
        ensure => 'present',
    }

    # Update this to use your respective time zone value
    exec { 'php_config':
        command => '/bin/sed -i "s/^;date.timezone =/date.timezone = \'America\/Chicago\'/g" /etc/php.ini',
        require => Package['php'],
    }

    service { 'httpd':
        ensure => 'running',
        enable => true,
        hasrestart => true,
        hasstatus => true,
        subscribe => Package['httpd', 'php'],
    }

    # Drupal requirements
    package { ['php-pdo', 'php-mysql', 'php-xml', 'php-gd', 'php-mbstring']:
        ensure => 'present',
        require => Package['php'],
    }
}

class mysql {
    package { 'mysql-server':
        ensure => 'present',
    }

    service { 'mysqld':
        ensure => 'running',
        enable => true,
        hasrestart => true,
        hasstatus => true,
        subscribe => Package['mysql-server'],
    }

    # Equivalent to /usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation without providing or setting a password
    exec { 'mysql_secure_installation':
        command => '/usr/bin/mysql -uroot -e "DELETE FROM mysql.user WHERE User=\'\'; DELETE FROM mysql.user WHERE User=\'root\' AND Host NOT IN (\'localhost\', \'127.0.0.1\', \'::1\'); DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS test; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;" mysql',
        require => Service['mysqld'],
    }
}

class {'web': }
class {'mysql': }

With this code saved to a file called manifest.pp (.pp being the file extension for puppet manifests), I can spin up a VM and do the following to set it up:

scp -i key.pem manifest.pp ec2-user@host:~/
ssh -i key.pem ec2-user@host
sudo yum upgrade -y
sudo yum install -y puppet
sudo puppet apply manifest.pp
rm -f manifest.pp
exit

At this point, I have a basic Apache/MySQL/PHP configuration capable of receiving a Drupal 7 installation.

10. Building PHP-GTK with Cairo Support on Ubuntu Jaunty – 2009-04-25

Very interesting that this post was in the running at all. It’s over two years old, goes back five Ubuntu versions, and deals with PHP 5.3.0RC1 (current is 5.4.0RC4) and PHP-GTK when Cairo support was relatively new. (There’s now a separate PECL extension for it now.) If you want to learn more about this, you should definitely check out Elizabeth Smith and Michael Maclean.

9. Renaming a DOMNode in PHP – 2010-02-09

It seems this isn’t as uncommon a problem as I would have thought. Sadly, in the 22 months that have passed since I authored the post, it seems the DOM extension hasn’t been updated further to support the DOM 3.0 standard or the renameNode() method mentioned in this post.

8. PHP_CodeSniffer Article in php|architect – 2011-04-28

It’s nice to see this post get attention even if was just a brief hand-waving to point people to the article, which is one of two I wrote for php|architect Magazine this year. It’s also nice to see that despite being seen by some as a more menial facet of quality assurance, other people consider it important enough to read the article and take something away from it.

7. ‘New SPL Features in PHP 5.3′ Hits php|architect – 2011-02-01

Another post that was just hand-waving to an article that dealt with a topic I saw as underrated. The article followed my php|tek 2010 session and preceded a Zend webinar this year on the same topic.

6. Process Isolation in PHPUnit – 2010-08-19

Between views and comments, it seems I wasn’t the only one who ran into this head-scratcher. However, if memory serves, I think there are plans to remove this feature from PHPUnit in future versions.

5. Node.js: A Beginner’s Perspective – 2010-10-19

The post is about a year old now, and sadly I haven’t done anything of merit with Node.js since (though I hope to change that), but it seems the community is still as vibrant and growing as it ever was. Heck, you can even integrate PHP-FPM with Node via FCGI now. Node is definitely a technology to continue keeping your eye on if you don’t already use it.

4. PHPUnit and Xdebug on Ubuntu Karmic – 2010-01-03

It’s surprising that this post is still relevant since there have been four Ubuntu releases since the version that this post deals with. I’ve since moved over to Fedora 16, at least for now, and it seems to address most of my regular needs. I may look at other distributions like Mint later on.

3. Models in Zend Framework – 2010-03-26

Even though it’s over a year old now, I think this post gets the traffic it does because there’s not really one prescribed way to build models and because the existing documentation describes a number of components that can be used to build models, but doesn’t really offer specific guidance on how to approach it. Bit of a double-edged sword, I suppose.

2. New SPL Features in PHP 5.3 – 2010-05-20

I published this post on the same day that I gave my session on the topic at php|tek 2010. It’s one of my longer and more content-rich posts and I’ve updated it on occasion as I’ve had cause to update the benchmarks that go along with it. Good to see that interest in SPL seems to be rising.

1. Database Testing with PHPUnit and MySQL – 2010-01-04

While I love that this post is driving as much traffic to my blog as it is, I do want to get around to contributing related documentation to the PHPUnit project. Hopefully that will happen soon. In the meantime, you can also read more about this topic in the Testing chapter of my most recent book.

So, one big take-away from this post has been that most of my high-traffic posts were written last year rather than this year. I can’t say it’s very surprising since, looking back, a number of my posts from this year were of the hand-waving variety. I’m hoping to publish more content-rich posts more frequently in 2012. I won’t call it a resolution, because I’d likely be jinxing myself in the process, but I will say that I’ll make my best attempt.

Best wishes to everyone in the new year.

We discuss our recently published book PHP Master: Write Cutting Edge Code, how SitePoint brought us together to work on the project, what it was like to write the book, and some reflections on the experience from each of us.

If you’ve heard about the book and not read it or been curious as it, I heartily recommend giving it a listen.

Just over a year ago, I found ledger and began using it to manage my household finances. Some people may find that sort of thing boring, but I think it’s it neat to look at the past year’s worth of transactions, get a bird’s eye view of our spending, identify trends, and so forth.

I’ve had it in the back of my mind lately that I’d like a better and preferably more visual way to do those things. After perusing through a few charting libraries, I found that Highcharts seem to do what I needed. Among other things, it provides a plugin for the the JavaScript library I’m most familiar with: jQuery.

I already had a bit of PHP code lying around to parse ledger’s XML output, give me a monthly spending breakdown by account, and output it in CSV format. I lifted the parsing logic, wrote some more PHP to search transactions by several criteria based on form input, implemented a very simple plugin system to consume the search results and output various charts, and wrote a few simple plugins. Thus, ledger stats was born.

It’s still in a very rough prototypical stage, but it’s got enough functionality for others to start playing around with it. Feel free to fork it on GitHub and suggest improvements.

• Accessing Web Resources with PHP session – slides, feedback
• Creating Desktop Applications with Titanium and PHP session – slides, feedback
• Introduction to Android Development unconference session – slides, comment on this blog post to leave feedback

Synacor, the company I work for, is one of the sponsors for php|tek. Knowing how much we all enjoy these conferences, I encourage you to take a moment while you’re at php|tek and voice your appreciation to Synacor representatives. Also, if you’re in the market for a job, consider applying there to join me in working on cool stuff with smart people.

Lastly, consider placing this badge on your web site or blog to promote the conference.

I look forward to seeing you there.