I spend a lot of time working with LAMP technology and telling people how to make the best of the LAMP stack. But you’d be surprised about how many people don’t really understand what the LAMP stack actually is.

The reality of course is that it is many things to many people - some consider the LAMP stack to be a development environment, others a deployment environment. Some also confuse the technologies in use. Some take LAMP to mean PHP, others Perl, others Python. The truth of course is that all of these are technically correct.

I’ve gone into more detail through this article at ServerWatch.

LAMP is just one of a number of similar acronyms for development deployment environments based on some of these technologies, and I cover some of those acronyms in the article as well.

I recently completed a tutorial at developerWorks on building a web-based store using a combination of PHP for the main code and interfacing with Paypal for obtaining payment for items.

The tutorial was the third and final part of a series on the topic. The code for the project and parts one and two were written by Tyler Anderson. The tutorial expands on the storefront created in “Create a Web storefront using PHP and PayPal, Part 1” and enhanced in Part 2 of this three-part series by integrating transactions, shipping, and e-mail functionality.

The code uses the new PHP Data Objects and although the code shows the use of the Derby database, I was able to make some simple changes to the code to make it use MySQL just as easily.

Make sure you read Parts 1 and 2 before moving on to Create a Web storefront using PHP and PayPal, Part 3.

A while back I wrote an article for ServerWatch.com that covered the three main BSD distributions; FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. The article looked at the ‘other’ free software operating system range (BSD) and how it compared to Linux. I also looked at Mac OS X (or more specifically Darwin), which is based on NetBSD.

After writing that piece I was contacted by a few people who wanted to point out that there are some other BSD variants available. So I started looking around. BSD variants are much harder to come by in comparison to the hundreds (probably thousands) of different Linux-based distributions available.

The resulting piece is available now.

I started writing this piece many months ago, and since then OpenSolaris has been released. Perhaps a comparison between OpenSolaris, Linux and BSD is in order - let me know if you’d like to see this.

As part of the ongoing expansion of the work that I do I am adding some further blogs to the range of titles and topics that I currently write about.

Some of the new blogs are merely a way of sensibly dividing up the content I produce so that readers can subscribe to specific areas of interest, without me bombarding them with a single blog covering the wide range of topics I tend to cover and have an interest/expertise in supporting. Some are designed to support new books, and in one case support the content that would have gone into a book if I hadn’t changed my mind about the scope and content. Some are just ways of generating or re-purposing material that I have had for some time, or for which I have had plans to write and develop and never had a suitable outlet.

Until now.

All of my blogs - under which I have direct control at least - now use a consistent format, if not necessarily a consistent theme, although I’ve tried to use themes that reflect the content of the site in question. All of the sites have an About page (unique to each site), a Contact form, and copies of the About MCslp and About MCslp Projects pages. The latter contains a distilled list of sites and their content. All of them are under the MCslp banner and all of them will, for the moment, be managed and supported directly by me (MC).

Many of these sites are still in their infancy - they all have Welcome messages, but may not yet have specific content. Be patient, it’s either already written and not yet posted live, or is coming.

As with this site, and indeed all MCslp sites, all of the new blogs are free to use and completely advert free. Please see the About page for information on how you can contribute and support the sites and their continued existence.

The new blogs I’m announcing today are:

The Writing Biz

New writers and authors often ask questions about the writing business. For example, how it works, the processes behind writing a book, how to promote your book, whether you should have an agent and many others. The Writing.biz condenses and collates all of this information into a single site.

Improve Your Vocab

Words and phrases have interesting meanings, sources and derivations. Improve Your Vocab aims to distill many of the phrases that you hear in films, TV shows, books and other places that you may not recognize and provide information about their definition, sources, and what they mean within the context of the phrase where they were used.

The Linux Professionals

There are many professional users of Linux out there, and there are also Linux Professionals - people who make a living for supporting and consulting using the Linux platform. The Linux Professionals provides interviews and articles with these professionals to find out how they make use of Linux, and why they chose Linux as their area of expertise.

Change The Way You Work

Change the way you work is a blog designed provide information and guidance on ways in which you can change the way you work to make better use of your time. It looks at different methods, for example project management software, or following a particular methodology or technique designed to simplify your work or improve and optimize your efficiency.

MCslp Map Works

Google Maps and Google Earth - among other technologies - provide some amazing technology for building customized, map based, information websites. MCslp Map Works provides examples, help and guidance along the way for your Google Maps and Earth projects, along with How-To guides, news and other information.

MCslp Virtual Computing

Virtual Computing works at many different levels, from providing separate working zones within an operating system designed to compartmentalize different applications or services right through to emulation technology that provide, in software, the equivalent of a complete PC, including virtual drives, network devices and other components. MCslp Virtual Computing provides information and guides on using these technologies.

If you have any questions or want more information, either us the Contact Us link on the site in question, or ask me a question through the Contact Us form on this site.

Thank you for your continued support!

I recently attended the LinuxWorld Expo 2005 here in London, UK on the 5th October. This was the first dedicated Linux show I’ve been to, and I have to say I was impressed. It was a lot smaller than I expected - about 60 stands - and some of the larger companies weren’t brilliantly represented (a virtually non-existent IBM presence, for example), but there were some gems of products and companies, and a few little surprises along the way.

I’ve got a full report on Linux Today - some nuggets include the Sun stand, the Centrify software and the fun and games of the Gentoo stand.

One of the key reasons why MySQL is so flexible is because of the support for different storage engines. Rather than supporting a single method for storing information you can choose the optimal method for your database and application. But how do you find out what is available, and how do you choose between MySQL Storage Engines. Are there storage engines that are better at some applications than others, and is there a handy guide that tells you?

Well, I hope so, because that is exactly what my new article, MySQL Storage Engines, aims to do.