PHPBuilder.com has a new tutorial posted showing how you can grab screenshots of websites using the free GrabzIt web service.

GrabzIt has just launched their screenshot service, which allows developers to easily take screenshots of websites for free using the open source GrabzIt PHP Library. To take a screenshot with GrabzIt you first need to register to get your application key and secret, once done you will be up and running in no time.

Their (quick) example shows you how to configure the library object with your keys and call the "take picture" method to grab the shot of a given site URL. You get back an ID that can then be used to fetch the screenshot from the service as needed (pulled down and put into an image file with a file_put_contents.

In a new post Sameer Borate shows you how to take screenshots of websites with PHP (and a little help from the wkhtmltoimage tool).

aking screenshos of websites is not a frequent requirement for developers but can come handy on many occasions. Although there are some nice solutions on the web, a particular one I found very good is wkhtmltoimage. wkhtmltoimage is a simple shell utility which can be used to convert html to images using the webkit rendering engine, and qt.

He includes some brief instructions of how to get the tool installed and how to run it (via the command line first) to grab a screenshot of the bbc.com site. To use it in PHP, he suggests either using it in a shell_exec type of function or by using the snappy wrapper that handles some of the interfacing with wkhtmltoimage for you.

Thijs Lensselink has a new post to his blog today showing a step-by-step guide to setting up a vim editor environment to provide a richer experience than the plain-text defaults for working with your PHP code.

For my coding work i mostly use Zend Studio. And i am a big fan of this IDE. But i also do a lot of work in the shell. And that asks for at least basic vim knowledge. My colleague is a big vim fan. And does most of his work in vim. So last week i was compiling a cheat-sheet for my self. And came across a slideshow of one of Andrei Zmievski's talks. This slide show got me inspired enough to start playing around with vim a bit. And this is the result of it.

He walks you through everything from scratch - installing vim, setting up some of the configuration files, grabbing some plugins to help with highlighting, adding in ctags for code completion and a plugin to give the editor more of an "IDE feel". There's a few screenshots included in the post as well, so you can be sure your environment is looking the same as his.

From CMStr.com there's a new tutorial showing you how to set up Joomla manually just in case something happens with the install and you need to change things yourself.

Why would I want to do a manual install when my web host has this Fantastico thingy that will install Joomla for me? Good question. [...] If you are building websites for a living, and or plan on using Joomla a lot, then you really need to start doing your own installs. [...] If you are an experienced parachute jumper, you would pack your own chute right? This is no different.

Screenshots are included to help make the process easier as they walk you through setting up the basics like language settings and database information. They also touch on the FTP setting (off for security) and removing the admin user's information to help make things a bit more secure. It's not a comprehensive list of the things you'd need to do to get it 100% configured for just what you need, but it's a start.

Developer.com has posted the latest part in their series on using the Google Maps API. This time they focus on something a bit more complex - working with more than one point and creating complex routes between them.

This installment tackles another fascinating aspect you'll undoubtedly encounter when building location-based solutions, namely distance calculation. Whether you want to simply plot the distance separating two points on the map, or perform more complex operations involving measuring the total distance spanning a more complex route, understanding how to perform these sorts of calculations will prove invaluable time and again.

The tutorial gives you example screenshots and complete code to calculate the distance between two points and, based on plots of a few different points, how to determine the distance traveled. His example is of a running route around a park.

The Magento eCommerce platform is quickly becoming one of the favorites, but it's also known for being bit tricky. This new tutorial from NETTUTS.com shows you how to take some of the first steps - installation, working with the admin interface and themeing.

Magento is the next generation of eCommerce! It is incredibly well architectured, fully flexible, scalable, and fun to work with. If you've ever thought about creating an online shop, Magento is your choice! Today we are going to install it locally with XAMPP Lite and review the essentials.

The tutorial also helps you to install the XAMPP package - a Windows all-inclusive web platform that includes Apache, MySQL, PHP and phpMyAdmin. Once its started, you can create the database Magento needs and import its data. Log into the admin, change a few settings and you're all set.

On NETTUTS.com a recent tutorial has been posted about the integration of your PHP application with PayPal's Instant Payment Notification system.

Today we are going to combine Paypal with PHP to allow for the easy processing of payments on your website.

You'll need a Premier PayPal Account to get it all working as well as already have a server with a working PHP installation (there's no setup and install for that in this tutorial). There's ten different steps in the process and screenshots and code are provided the whole way:

• Creating a PayPal Account
• Enable IPN
• Building a Simple HTML Page
• Building a PayPal Button
• Writing ipn.php
• Creating the Database
• Account Creation
• Emailing the Login Credentials
• Invalid Payment Email
• User Login

In this new post to her blog Elizabeth Smith takes a look at something easy you can do to help out the PHP project without ever writing a line of C code - helping the Documentation project. How, you ask? Well, if you're working with Windows, this is your lucky day. Elizabeth uses the rest of the post to show you how to install PHP, grab the phpdoc XML files from CVS and get PhD up and running.

So, you've decided you want to help out - where do you start? Before you can edit a file or document an extension you need to be able to build the manual to check your changes. So you need a working install of PhD. In order to accomplish this goal you'll need three things installed and configured, which is what this article is intended to help with.

You might need to grab a few other things (like the Microsoft 2008 C++ runtime or a QA build of PHP 5.3) to get things running, but her guide - complete with screenshots - walks you through every step of the way. For those that are a bit more experienced with working with Windows & PHP, you might find the five minute install a bit faster.

This new tutorial from the Server-Side essentials blog on SitePoint introduces you to one of the most powerful content managemnt systems the PHP community has to offer - Joomla.

Joomla (TM) is among the most popular Open Source content management systems that exist today, in the company of Drupal and WordPress. If you just need to build a web site for yourself and are unfamiliar with all this HTML stuff, or you develop web sites for other people, or if you're at the pointy end of developing web-based applications, then Joomla really should be on your evaluation list. It's easy to install, use, and extend.

He walks through the entire process complete with screenshots - installation, configuration and even included some links to other resources (community sites, reference links).

Tomas Mysik has posted some screenshots of the recently introduced PHPUnit functionality added into their development branch of the NetBeans for PHP tool.

I would like to continue writing about our PHPUnit support in NetBeans; today, let's have a look at our new addition - UI for test results. [...] This feature is available in development version of NetBeans, please feel free to file issues in NetBeans IssueZilla (component php, subcomponent phpunit).

Their screen shots show setting up a test, the results of the runner, how failed and passes tests are shown and where to get at the full output of the PHPUnit testing run.