A variable is a means of storing a value, such as a text string or a number. In PHP you do not have to declare your variable, as it's automatically declared when you set it. Since you do not need to declare the variable, you do not have to specify what kind of data it contains either.

If you have a web site or blog, it's important to spread the word, and what's better than a properly designed and updated RSS feed? Here's how to write a PHP script that fetches the last 10 items from a database source and writes it to a RSS-file.

Worth your while if you're interested in PHP development. First part in the novice series:

If you want to learn the basics of PHP, then you've come to the right place. The goal of this series is to teach you everything you need to know about PHP so that you can:

• Create and design your own PHP project
• Understand and customize PHP scripts found on the net
• Become the ultimate PHP guru

Is Google Wave the future of the internet? Google is working on a project that promises to revolutionize the internet and change the way we communicate. Here's a look at what they're planning.

Every web site needs a counter. You can implement Google Analytics or some other fully fledged statistics system, but for most sites, that's just overkill. Read on for a simple PHP-based counter that does not rely on database access: http://mirror.magicode.org/content/Simple_PHP_counter_without_database_access

Securing your users passwords is essential if you run a web site that require users to log in, but this issue is too often neglected, and many web sites store user profiles in with plain text passwords. Here's why this is a bad for everyone (http://blog.magicode.org/content/Password_hash_and_salt_with_sha256), and a class for you php developers to use.

At Magicode.org I've written short how to for configuring Apache with wildcard domains.

Setting up wildcard domains with Apache is easy peasy. Step one is configuring the A Record for your domain. Step two is configuring httpd.conf to accept wildcard via ServerAlias. Step three, and this is the tricky part, is setting up Apache's RewriteEngine syntax. At Magicode.org, you get the whole working setup.

Using bitwise operators are faster than modulus operators, right? Apparently this is not the case with PHP.

At Magicode.org, I've taken a hard look at whether using a ternary operator is faster than using modulus. I entered into this thinking the answer was obvious, the bitwise operator would win, hands down. Turns out, it ain't so.

Running several loops in varying steps, the most intensive being a consecutive loop from 0 to 1000000 (million) showed that $i%2 was significantly faster than $i&1==0, being about 9% faster in most tests. The results and the script used to verify the results are available at magicode.org.

So, there you go folks, modulus wins.