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Recently, I worked with a client who needed a fast, mobile-friendly website built entirely with clean HTML, CSS, and some lightweight JavaScript. They had a design in mind but weren’t sure how to bring it to life efficiently. I helped structure their content with semantic HTML5, optimized it for SEO, and ensured responsive behavior across all devices using modern CSS techniques. We also made sure the code was lightweight and W3C validated. The result? A fast-loading, accessible website that not only met their expectations but helped them boost engagement and improve load times. Happy client, clean code

You're very welcome! I'm really glad the explanation was helpful and that you're considering integrating tools like Codeception into your workflow. Starting with the right test types and building your CI/CD pipeline around them truly sets the foundation for scalable, maintainable software. Atlassian’s content is definitely a goldmine for best practices, so it’s great to hear that the article resonated with you. Feel free to reach out anytime as you dive deeper—always happy to share more insights or help troubleshoot along the way : https://rev9solutions.com/blog/sqa/the-role-of-a-software-quality-assurance-engineer/

Hello everyone, I recently came across the Beauty of Joseon Sunscreen and wanted to share my experience with it. As someone who has struggled with sensitive skin for years, finding the right sunscreen has always been a challenge. However, this product has really surprised me in the best way possible. Here are a few key points I wanted to highlight: No White Cast: One of the best features of this sunscreen is that it doesn’t leave that annoying white cast, which is common with many sunscreens out there. Lightweight Formula: It feels more like a moisturizer than a sunscreen, which is perfect for those who don't like the heavy or greasy feeling most sunscreens leave behind. Skin Benefits: Packed with rice extract and probiotics, this sunscreen not only protects from UV rays but also helps nourish and brighten the skin. It’s like skincare and sunscreen in one! SPF50+ Protection: With high SPF, it offers excellent protection against harmful UV rays, which is crucial for anyone living in a sunny climate or spending time outdoors. If you’ve been searching for a gentle, effective sunscreen that doesn’t irritate the skin, I highly recommend giving the Beauty of Joseon Sunscreen a try. It has definitely become a staple in my skincare routine! Has anyone else here tried it? I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences!

Thanks for the detailed explanation — that makes a lot of sense! Starting with the type of tests and then selecting the right tools aligned with those tests is a smart approach. I appreciate you highlighting the importance of unit tests, especially for setting up a CI/CD pipeline. It's a crucial step that creates a clear handoff between software engineers and tier SQA engineers, ensuring that quality remains consistent across the board. I'll definitely look into Codeception as a flexible suite tool to support broader automated testing strategies. Also, thanks for sharing the Atlassian article — they always provide solid insights, and it’s great to have a well-structured reference on continuous integration and delivery best practices. Looking forward to learning more and applying these methods effectively!

What's the problem with installing composer? Takes 2 seconds, and that is what PHP uses for dependency management and autoload building. Every option you have is going to start with using composer, and not using it is going back to PHP development as it was done in the bad old days of copying entire library codebases into project directories and everything that was painful, error prone and annoying with PHP library use, as of 10+ years ago. As for "best path" there really isn't one. There are different technical approaches to the problem, that tend to have different requirements, gotchas and limitations. You are best off doing a quick evaluation using the html docs you already have to explore the libraries. One up and coming option you didn't mention is gotenberg: a sophisticated go based conversion engine that has a php api. It has a lot going for it, but also has more moving parts. Here's the PHP Api that lets you talk to the Gotenberg server: https://github.com/gotenberg/gotenberg-php Puppeter (or rather the PHP api to it) takes a similar approach, in that it's a bridge to a headless browser used to render a page, which then allows you to save a pdf version. The https://github.com/zoonru/puphpeteer library is still being maintained, but already it's a fork of the original. You also have more moving parts (depending on Node, and the rialto bridge to Node). jspdf has similar issues, being a js library. For the Pure PHP library options, I'd start with dompdf and see if that works for you. Known limitations are the lack of support for flexbox or grid, so that might be a deal breaker. I probably wouldn't use mpdf, due to the age and lack of updates. It's a fork of fpdf. With that said, not unlike dompdf, if you constrain your html it might be fine for your use case, but the lack of updates is not a great sign. Along those same lines, lots of people are still using Snappy https://github.com/KnpLabs/snappy particularly with Laravel or Symfony, since there are integrations for both of those, but it does depend on a https://wkhtmltopdf.org/ which is now a dead project, even though you can still get builds of it for most linux distros.

See gw1500se and mac_guyver's posts, and implement those changes. One other thing I noted in your code, is that when you mix PHP and HTML, it's best to use PHP Alternative syntax for control structures. For the if -then - else section of your code, here is how you would change that. <?php if ($isadmin): ?> <ul class="navbar-nav"> <li class="nav-item dropdown"> <a class="nav-link dropdown-toggle text-dark" href="#" id="navbarDropdown" role="button" data-bs-toggle="dropdown" aria-expanded="false"> Hello, <?= $thename ?> </a> <ul class="dropdown-menu" aria-labelledby="navbarDropdown"> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="main.php">TLS Materials</a></li> <li><hr class="dropdown-divider"></li> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="logout.php">Logout</a></li> </ul> </li> </ul> <?php elseif ($authenticated): ?> <img src='/files/<?=$theimage ?>' width="75px"> <ul class="navbar-nav"> <li class="nav-item dropdown"> <a class="nav-link dropdown-toggle text-dark" href="#" id="navbarDropdown" role="button" data-bs-toggle="dropdown" aria-expanded="false"><?= $thename ?> </a> <ul class="dropdown-menu" aria-labelledby="navbarDropdown"> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="profile.php">My Profile</a></li> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="main.php">TLS Materials</a></li> <li><hr class="dropdown-divider"></li> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="logout.php">Logout</a></li> </ul> </li> </ul> <?php else: ?> <ul class="navbar-nav"> <li class="navbar-item"> <a href="register.php" class="btn btn-outline-primary me-2">Register</a> </li> <li class="navbar-item"> <a href="login.php" class="btn btn-primary">Login</a> </li> </ul> <?php endif; ?>

strtotime() returns a unix timestamp value. Timestamps are an integer value which is the number of seconds since the January 1, 1970 00:00:00 UTC. Helpers like "+10 minute" are nice for abstraction, but all the minute addition does is add (minutes * 60) to the value. So you might note that this code will print "Same". $t1 = strtotime("now") + 10 * 60; $t2 = strtotime("+10 Minute"); if ($t1 == $t2) { echo "Same\n"; } An important limitation of strtotime is that it doesn't have any concept of timezone, so in most cases you should use PHP DateTime classes, which do allow you to account for timezones and translate between them. You also need to be aware of what the configured locale settings of your server are. In most cases servers should be setup to be UTC, and thus datetime values set in the database will also be UTC. This is the best practice. When you develop your application you want to be aware of the server and PHP settings, and translate the date/time values at presentation time, by applying the desired timezone relevant to your server or the client.

Well, crap - I meant to link to the page as a whole, not the anchor tag. Thanks for the correction!

The DATEDIFF() function will give the difference in days. Use TIMESTAMPDIFF() which lets you the specify the units for the result. mysql> SELECT NOW(), timestampdiff(SECOND, '2025-04-26 20:30:00', NOW()) as diff; +---------------------+------+ | NOW() | diff | +---------------------+------+ | 2025-04-26 21:34:51 | 3891 | +---------------------+------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> SELECT NOW(), timestampdiff(MINUTE, '2025-04-26 20:30:00', NOW()) as diff; +---------------------+------+ | NOW() | diff | +---------------------+------+ | 2025-04-26 21:35:22 | 65 | +---------------------+------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Check out https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.4/en/date-and-time-functions.html#function_datediff

Hi I have a feild in DB that have time() like 2025-04-26 20:30:00. I want to check and get difference between curremt time and the time in DB. example: time in DB is 2025-04-26 20:30:00 current time is 2025-04-26 20:40:00 the time allowed is 15 minutes so from the above example its only passing 10 minutes and have 5 minutes left, how to calculate that?

First off, don't inject variables directly into a query like that - use prepared statements. Secondly, if it's not too late already I recommend switching to the PDO database interface - it's much easier to work with and reason about. Now, as to your actual question, set the value to null. $qry = " UPDATE login_users SET otp_reset = 0 ,otp_expiry = :exp WHERE username_email = :email "; $sql = $pdoObject->prepare($qry); $result = $sql->execute($qry, [ 'exp' => null, 'email' => $myusername ]); Admittedly, I've been in the land of Laravel for about 5 years now and am not entirely sure of my syntax above, so take it with a grain of salt...

Him I have an OTP sysem where the user will enter the OTP that was sent to their email, in the DB it is saving the OTP and the expiry after 15 minutes. After they use it, I need to delete both from DB. I am able to set the number back to 0 since it is an integer. How to reset the dattime field to show 0000-00-00 00:00:00? $sqlUpdate = "UPDATE login_users SET otp_reset = 0, otp_expiry = ??? WHERE username_email = '$myusername'"; if(mysqli_query($db,$sqlUpdate)) { ..... }

Yep - I got so used to saying SwiftMailer I didn't even read the link I posted. Thanks much for that!

Agree strongly with this advice. I would also suggest looking at Symfony Mailer.

Great question. You start with the type of tests and look at tools that are designed for that type of testing. You've been focused on unit tests, which is absolutely the right way to go. Unit tests are your basis for set up of a CI/CD pipeline, and the typical dividing point between the things software engineers are responsible for, and the things that QA is responsible for. There are "suite" tools I've used in the past like https://codeception.com/ that are designed to support many different sets of tools, as the basis for building out a complete set of automated tests of different types. With that said, I'm going to copy this from a pretty good article series Atlassian has here: https://www.atlassian.com/continuous-delivery/continuous-integration So in each category of testing, there are different aims, and different environmental dependencies, tools and approaches. This is why in most mature companies, especially if they are offering SaaS or PaaS they typically have a well resourced QA department with QA Automation engineers, as well as QA Analysts/Testers, who come up with the testing plan, and are responsible for pass/fail. They'll often work with an automation engineer, who is typically concentrating on Integration and UI tests. So when you get into those areas, that is where you are more likely to require a more fully functional "test environment". Often it takes a good amount of effort, usually involving devops, to be able to build up/tear down a full/independent test environment, not to mention the time and resources involved. With containerization, cloud services, kubernetes etc, there are many different approaches that might facilitate this, so it depends on what/how you are deploying into production. Going back just to unit testing, which is where you are concentrating initially, I've found one of the most common areas of pain for unit testing is in "mocking", and the most common place where you might find an additional library to facilitate mocking, even if you are still using the de facto unit testing tool for the language. For PHP that would be an example of using something like "mockery" along with "phpUnit" even though phpUnit has its own mocking features. You also have to evaluate and decide what amount of code coverage is acceptable to you, and what tradeoffs might be involved. When you start looking into this you will find that there are a lot of opinions about certain tools/services. This article does a really good job providing you some background on this: https://djangostars.com/blog/continuous-integration-circleci-vs-travisci-vs-jenkins/ When you start looking into self hosting with something like Jenkins, you will find a lot of different opinions on it as a platform. Same goes for all the alternatives. You also have things like github actions or bitbucket pipelines. They might offer you a good way to move towards CI, although they tend to be limited in comparison to the other options. As I have projects which are using Bitbucket repos (as well as the atlassian suite, particularly jira) I've been working on their tools and find them to be a good way to start, but if I had them in Repo I would probably be trying to see what I could get out of actions as a first step in this direction. CD is also a nice goal to have. The more your work is built to take advantage of the foundation of containers, the more options you will probably find you have.

I hosted on HostGator for a while quite a few years ago and if I'm not mistaken, you needed to authenticate the SMTP requests or emails would just fly out into the ether.

Thank you, I'm trying a different way until can sort the other email address out. a gmail email address has been set up and trying that and from what I read online, a app password needs to be created and use that within phpmailer settings instead of the password used to create the email address

this is a 'contact us' form. for the client to be able to receive and read the emails, they must be sent to an email address that the client has access to. is this To: address at their web hosting (mail_box_name@their_doman_name) or somewhere else, such as a gmail address ([email protected])? i didn't find any information about using unauthenticated smtp at hostgator, but if this is possible, it would require an email account to be created within cpanel for the domain name that's hosted at hostgator, then this email address would be used as the From: address. the To: address can then be anywhere, even the same as the From: address. everything I saw about hostgator email used smtp authentication, which needs an email account to be created within cpanel for the domain name hosted at hostgator, with the password known. if they have an email address at their domain name, but the password is not known, it needs to be reset to a known value within cpanel. for php to be able to send to (the From: and To: addresses would be the same and be the email account at hostgator) or through (the From: address would be the email account at hostgator and the To: can be anywhere) the mail server at hostgator, you would use the hostgator server settings. see the cPanel Emails, Outgoing Email Settings at this link - https://www.hostgator.com/help/article/email-connection-settings#cpanelemails you can, using the phpmailer/swiftmailer class, send an email to or through an external mail server, such as gmail, but this requires the username/password of the account on that external mail server.

Ahh ok sounds like it could be that and silently accepting emails. It's on the web hosting with hostgator. It's in the web hosting cPanel but it still don't seem to be sending, I'm using my email address at the moment as a test and it's not coming through so for some reason it don't seem to be sending the email

the php mail() function and the phpmailer/swiftmailer classes allow php to act like an email client, to send an email to a mail server. when you don't use smtp authentication against a mail box on that mail server, that mail server must be configured to "trust" the (ip address of the) web server where the php code is running. typically, a local mail server at web hosting is configured this way. if you are not getting any errors back, it is likely that the locally configured mail server is setup to silently accept emails, regardless of it it intends to send them, without returning an error. where are you running this php code at? a localhost development system or web hosting, and if on web hosting is the domain name in the From: address hosted at the sending web server or is it hosted at some other location?

Hi I am trying to use phpmailer without the smtp credentials as the client does not know the email password or they don't have it to hand so trying to use phpmailer without the smtp info, I am trying the following code and not getting any errors and it's going to the enquiry confirmation page but the email is not coming through <?php session_start(); use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer; use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception; // Include PHPMailer 6.x autoloader require 'PHPMailer/src/Exception.php'; require 'PHPMailer/src/PHPMailer.php'; require 'PHPMailer/src/SMTP.php'; $name = ''; $phone = ''; $email = ''; $message = ''; if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] === 'POST') { $name = $_POST['name']; $phone = $_POST['phone']; $email = $_POST['email']; $message = $_POST['message']; $error=''; if(!$name || !$phone || !$email || !$message){ $error.="**Please fill the fields.!".'<br>'; } if (!filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) { $error.="**Please enter valid email address.".'<br>'; } if(!$error){ // Initialize PHPMailer $mail = new PHPMailer(true); try { $mail->SMTPDebug = 0; // Enable verbose debug output / Enable SMTP debug information (for testing) //$mail->isSMTP(); // Set mailer to use SMTP //$mail->Host = 'smtp.gmail.com'; // Specify main and backup SMTP servers //$mail->SMTPAuth = true; // Enable SMTP authentication //$mail->Username = ''; // SMTP username //$mail->Password = ''; // SMTP password //$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls'; // Enable TLS encryption, `ssl` also accepted //$mail->Port = 587; // TCP port to connect to $mail->setFrom('[email protected]', "Company Name"); $mail->addAddress('[email protected]', "Company Name"); // Add a recipient $mail->addReplyTo($_POST['email'], $_POST['name']); $mail->isHTML(false); // Set email format to HTML $mail->Subject = 'New Website Enquiry'; $mail->Body = "A new website enquiry has been made. The enquiry information is below\r\n\r\n" . "Name: " . $_POST["name"] . "\r\n" . "Phone: " . $_POST["phone"] . "\r\n" . "Email: " . $_POST["email"] . "\r\n" . "Message: " . $_POST["message"]; $mail->send(); // Redirect upon successful sending header("Location: http://domainname.co.uk/enquiry-confirmation.php"); exit(); } catch (Exception $e) { echo 'Message could not be sent.'; echo 'Mailer Error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo; } } } ?> <form action="#form-section" method="post"> <div class="row"> <div class="col-sm-6 col-lg-6"> <div class="form-group"> <input type="text" value="<?php echo $name; ?>" name="name" id="name" class="form-control" required placeholder="Name"> </div> </div> <div class="col-sm-6 col-lg-6"> <div class="form-group"> <input type="text" value="<?php echo $phone; ?>" name="phone" id="phone" class="form-control" placeholder="Phone"> </div> </div> <div class="col-sm-12 col-lg-12"> <div class="form-group"> <input type="email" value="<?php echo $email; ?>" name="email" id="email" class="form-control" required placeholder="Email"> </div> </div> <div class="col-md-12 col-lg-12"> <div class="form-group"> <textarea name="message" class="form-control" cols="30" rows="8" required placeholder="Message" value="<?php echo $message; ?>"></textarea> </div> </div> <div class="col-md-12 col-lg-12"> <button type="submit" id="submit" name="submit" class="contact-btn btn">Send Message</button> <div class="clearfix"></div> </div> </div> </form> Can anyone see where I have gone wrong please as been trying for hours and can't see what the issue is

Hey everyone, I’ve been working more on full-stack projects recently, and while my backend is typically in PHP, I’ve started building more with JavaScript (Node.js) and Python (mainly Flask). I'm now focusing more on proper QA, especially around web app testing—functional, unit, and integration testing. I wanted to ask what tools or frameworks you all recommend for web app testing in these languages? For example: In JavaScript, I’ve tried Jest and Mocha but wonder how they stack up long-term. In Python, I’ve dabbled in PyTest and unittest, but I’m unsure how to scale them for larger apps. Also, how do you structure your test environments in these languages? Separate Docker containers? VMs? Would love to hear how others in the community handle this. Looking forward to your input!

Highly recommend switching to a library like PHPMailer or SwiftMailer - they're both easier to use and more reliable than php's native mail function.

telling us that something doesn't work is pointless. we are not sitting next to you and didn't see what symptom or error you got that leads you to believe something didn't work. you must tell or show us what result you got and what the expected result should be. do you have php's error_reporting set to E_ALL and display_errors set to ON, preferably in the php.ini on your system, so that php will help you by reporting and displaying all the errors it detects? have you checked in the browser's developer tools, console tab for errors? you should use 'require' for things your code must have. require/include are not functions. the () around the path/filename do nothing and should be removed. $_GET['email'] is an input to your code. it may not exist. you need to use isset() to prevent errors when it doesn't exist and you must trim, then validate it before using it, when it does exist. the two session variables are also inputs to your code. they may not exist. you need to use isset() to prevent errors when they don't exist.