Get rid of .github folder from project tree in PhpStorm

In 2024 it is as simple as two steps and a couple of clicks:

(click the image above, if animation seems frozen)

These two steps are:

• Right-click .github and select: Mark directory as → Excluded
• Click three-dot button and uncheck Appearance → Excluded Files

The Excluded Files list is per-project setting, so you must repeat these steps for each of your projects.

This is, of course, purely visual fix, to hide a folder. If you want to ignore it, you must use the usual way of adding it to .gitignore folder.

Temp Mail and Temp Number for QA purposes, but not only…

The Temp Mail and Temp Number services were originally created (according to their owners) to lift of your problem of being bloated with stupid newsletters and SPAM emails and text messages, when you use your actual mailbox address or phone number in order to register to some service.

With these services you can totally forget about such pains because you’re getting a fully working email address or SMS receive-enabled phone number that will self-destruct after twenty minutes or so.

If you are a developer you may already catch an idea that you can use this for a QA purposes.

Ultra-fast animated screen capture with LICEcap or ScreenToGif

Up until now I was using fabulous ScreenToGif to quickly capture animated screenshots for bug reporting. It truly is — as its homepage says — free, compact and powerful. It comes with handy installer, but also with portable version. And capturing is ultra-easy with it.

Today I discovered LICECap and immediately felt in love again…

Fresh XAMPP installation — a step-by-step guide

This is more like my private memo, to have a clean check-list of steps I usually undertake, when installing fresh XAMPP for Windows installation. Most steps aren’t unique to my environment, so this article can also help others, that are stuck at some point. Note, that this is purely development environment-oriented installation guide, as XAMPP is not meant to be used as production server.

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Configure email sending solution under XAMPP

This is the ultimate (at least for me! :]) solution to configuring mail sending in your XAMPP. Verified and confirmed that this is working. If you go through these steps and still have no results, I’m 95% sure, that problem is outside XAMPP or sendmail (i.e. something is wrong with your configuration). I hope, I don’t have to remind you, that every wise guy uses XAMPP only for development purposes and never, ever as stand-alone, production, webserver!

Do not get confused! This article is about fake sendmail, a solution designed for development environments, like XAMPP, to mimic mail delivery subsystem for developers, that is found on production servers. This text has nothing to do with original sendmail, world famous MTA, started 1979 (25 years before fake sendmail!) and still widely used on production servers and anywhere else in hosting area.

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Enable LDAP support in PHP served under XAMPP and Windows

Connection to LDAP in PHP isn’t that easy task by itself. Things get even more complicated, if you’re working in XAMPP environment under Windows. It hope this article will help you in getting un-stuck, if you’re stuck on the similar things, as I did.

Notice: solution provided in this article may not work for you! It worked on my office computer and failed completely on my home computer, though both are quite similar (same version of Windows and XAMPP etc.).

Since, we’re talking about very stupid system (Windows) and about even more stupid situation (claiming, that file is not found, though it exists in folder listed in PATH variable), I have no bloody idea, why it doesn’t work (or why it does work on certain computers) and how to solve this problem.

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Self-documenting code is a myth

How many times did I heard that stupid talk? “Comments aren’t needed! Code should be self-documenting”. If you think this way, then… believe me or not, you’re wrong. Good developer does not need comments to describe, what he or she is doing. But there’s always a purpose for doing something, which must be documented for future reference. If you think, you can achieve the same with self-documenting code, you’re going strictly into violating fourth of Five major software development rules. Which says: “Premature optimization is the beginning of all hell!“.

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Upgrading MySQL on-board XAMPP

XAMPP is a great package of Apache, MySQL, phpmyadmin and some others (actually the best I’ve ever used). The only disadvantage of it, is that guys behind this project haven’t got much spare time and update it fairly slow. Newest XAMPP version (1.8.1) is over a year old now and still has MySQL 5.1.41 on-board, while version 5.6.10 is available for download, as of writing this. Here are some tips on manually upgrading MySQL on-board your XAMPP package.

Simple copy & folder switch does the job and is enough to upgrade MySQL on-board XAMPP from 5.1.41 to 5.6.10. However there are slight side effects, you must consider.

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Five major software development rules

To all those, who just don’t get it!

1. DRY = Don’t Repeat Yourself!
2. KiSS = Keep it Simple, Stupid!
3. You ain’t gonna need this!
4. Premature optimization is the beginning of all hell!
5. Copy-paste is time waste!

Never, ever forget about these five, if you’re developing anything.

Why to NOT copy your old code?

I don’t know how common it is, but common or not, it’s still a bad idea — I found a great article at Programmers Stack Exchange about copying code, you wrote for your old employer, when leaving him for a new job. I found arguments given in this article so enlightening, that I actually decided to… copy them to my blog. So, here it is.

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Differences between MVC, MVP and MVVP

Since I have been developing in Yii for my “entire life”, I’m bound to MVC model. And since it suits me very good, I don’t want to and don’t plan to change it. Even though, it is nearly always good to know, what are the alternatives — MVP and MVVP.

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Force HTTP 403 error when there is no index file

If you want to display HTTP 403 error (instead of files list) for folder, where there is no index.html or index.php file, then in .htaccess file you must add following line:

Options -Indexes

This works for current folder and all subfolder (unless .htaccess file if any of these subfolders will “locally” change this setting).