BlogNerds

Today I just did a little planning for the content in my sidebars.

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To get some ideas for later, I’ll be looking at what other sites have done with sidebars. Any ideas?

• First PHP/MySQL Project Day 1: Connecting to MySQL
• Redesigning My Site Day 21: Some Re-redesigning
• Spanish Grammar in a Nutshell
• Links for Learning basic Spanish Grammar

To get started, I first found an example to learn from. Then I learned about a few PHP functions, and then I learned my way around phpMyAdmin, and then I finally connected to my MySQL database with some PHP code! It was pretty time-consuming, but I shrunk it down to a seven-minute screencast:

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Links for Connecting to MySQL:

First of all, I’m using WAMP. See the links on PHP Day 1: Getting Started for more info on that.

From the PHP manual:

• PHP: MySQL Functions - This is where I found the example I’m using.
• PHP: mysql_connect
• PHP: exit
• PHP: mysql_error
• PHP: mysql_select_db

And here are the threads I started on a couple forums to ask why that code worked to connect to MySQL. Some of the replies were very helpful:

• Confused about connecting to MySQL with PHP - WebDesignForums.net
• A couple questions on using PHP to connect to MySQL - SitePoint Forums

I didn’t make much progress on my project, but I did learn a lot for one afternoon!

After deciding to combine all of my blogs into one, I needed to do some rethinking about the header, navigation bar, and what to put on the front page — not to mention whatever else I need to decide on later.

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I also need to think more about the content in the sidebars, the category pages, the archive pages, and the search results page. And that’s before I ever get around to working out the details of how everything should look. Yes, I certainly have my work cut out for me!

I reviewed some basic grammar and breezed right through it, thanks to these sites:

• Spanish for Beginners - An index of many articles from About.com
• Learn Spanish: A Free Online Grammar Tutorial - A pretty complete beginner’s course with plenty of exercises
• Spanish Verb Conjugation Drills

And I listened to a few Spanish podcasts, like these:

• Spanish Phrase of the Day
• Coffee Break Spanish
• Spanish Arriba!

After a little reading and listening, Spanish is really coming back to me! It’s almost like riding a bicycle, but not really.