WordPress Plugin : WP-CFM – manage and deploy WordPress configuration changes

WP-CFM is a WordPress plugin which helps to manage and deploy WordPress configuration changes between different sites.  I haven’t tried it myself yet, but it looks super useful as it allows to separate the configuration options from the content, both of which are stored in the database.  The cherry on top here is the support for WP-CLI, command line interface to WordPress, which is frequently employed for automatically deploying WordPress to different servers and environments.

I have a feeling this plugin will be making its way into our project-template-wordpress setup pretty soon.

How to handle configuration in PHP

Kevin Schroeder has a blog post about the tool that he is building for configuration management in PHP.  The library is still in the early pre-release stage, but it looks like it solves quite a few problems related to configuration, like nesting, inheritance, and environment/context variation.

Here’s the YouTube video that provides a bit of introduction into how to use the tool, and what to expect of it.

The only thing that dials down my excitement in this implementation is the use of XML, even though I understand why he opted for this choice.

I will need a PHP configuration management solution soon, but the priority hasn’t been raised high enough yet for me to jump into the research.  If you know of any other similar tools, please let me know – it all will come handy pretty soon.

MapFight – visually compare sizes of countries

MapFight is a fun little web application, which superimposes the maps of two selected countries to show which one is larger and by how much.  And the best part is that you don’t even to stick just to countries – the continents are in there as well, so you can compare Europe to Asia, or even Russia to Europe.

MySQL 8 is coming

OpenSource.com covers the upcoming release of the MySQL 8.

What happened to 6 & 7?

Years ago, before the Sun Microsystems purchase of MySQL AB, there was a version of MySQL with the number 6. Sadly, it was a bit ambitious and the change of ownership left it to wither. The MySQL Cluster product has been using the 7 series for years. With the new changes for MySQL 8, developers feel they have modified it enough to bump the big number.

The new version brings a whole lot of changes to filesystem organization, indexes, faster ALTER TABLE, and more.