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Filed under:
Portfolio, Print by Ares on Wednesday July, 10

A night with Da Vinci!

A Night with Da Vince

Poster for the El Paso Museum of History

We recently worked closely with the El Paso Museum of History to create a Poster for the event “A Night with Da Vinci”

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Business Ideas, Marketing by Ares on Wednesday May, 10

Just started a new business? Read this! (Part 1)

Did you know that only half of new business stay in business after 5 years according to the SBA? Of course there are a lot of different reasons behind such statistics but once of them, in many cases, is without doubt lack of planning and marketing.

Marketing consist of many, many things like branding, advertisement, publicity, website, word-of-mouth referrals, even your how you handle your customer service! All of them are important, but the most important thing is how they interact and complement each other to deliver your customer a unique and delightful experience. Continue Reading… »

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Tech Tips by Ares on Sunday March, 10

Recompiling PHP5 on Snow Leopard with MySQLi support, and other things

[update 04.05.2010. If you got the OS X 10.6.3 update you may find yourself reading this again since it overwrites your php library. Yes, we found out the hard way. Backup your library first. ]

We just got a new workstation in the office. After getting it out of the box we were happy to realize that it already comes with a much better configuration for php 5.3 than the old 5.2 of OS X Leopard. Leopard only came with a very few and basic configuration and libraries, that were only fit to new web designer. Apparently they noticed this at Apple and this new version comes with a much better library set.

In general we have more than once person developing a site. So we use mysql databases that are hosted in a server that anyone can access, that way when someone makes a change to the databases it is immediately propagated to all developers, since we use something similar to a “networked drive.”

However, MySQL is still not included, but the folks at mysql have created a dmg that allows you to easily install mysql into your computer. You just need to download it, double click, and follow the prompt. The problem is that php comes with a strange version of mysqli. We were all exited and ready to go when:

Warning: mysqli::mysqli() [mysqli.mysqli] OK packet 6 bytes shorter than expected in /path/to/file on line…

mysqlidev won't let you connect to remote servers

This happens because the mysqli API library that php is using is the one that comes by default, not the one from the mysql version we just installed. Shoots, we need to recompile, and since we are at it, we will also recomplile with the new version of jpeglib.

Now it makes sense just to grab the configure options shown by phpinfo, but for some reason it references some locations that do not exists for jpeglib and libpng. So we will need to compile those too. Also make sure to remove your dir path from pcre otherwise it will also trow you and error.

Okay, let’s do this. First we download our source for PHP, LibJPEG, LibPNG

Lets compile libjpeg first: Once you have uncompressed the source, just go into the directory and type in the following

export MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.6
 
CFLAGS="-arch x86_64 -Os -pipe -m64" CXXFLAGS="-arch x86_64 -Os -pipe -m64" LDFLAGS="-arch x86_64 -Os -pipe -m64" ./configure --enable-shared

That should finish without problems, now go to your libpng folder and type the following

./configure --enable-shared

Again, it should finish without problems. Do the same for libPNG, and

Now, it would make sense to compile php now, but there are some know bugs in php when compiling on a mac so lets get those corrected first, before we continue.

Fist you will need to modify the file ext/gd/libgd/gd_png.c, so open it with your favorite text editor and look for the following string:

if (!png_check_sig (sig, 8)) { /* bad signature */

and replace it for this other line:

if (!png_sig_cmp (sig, 0, 8) == 0) { /* bad signature */

Now, using your favorite text editor go to the following file within your php source code ext/libiconv/libiconv.c
and look for

#ifdef HAVE_LIBICONV
#define iconv libiconv
#endif

and replace the libconv of the second line for just iconv

Okay, now we are ready to compile php, so go to the the root of your php source code and type in (copy & paste) the following

CGLAGS="-arch x86_64 -Os -pipe -m64" CXXFLAGS="-arch x86_64 -Os -pipe -m64" LDFLAGS="-arch x86_64 -Os -pipe -m64" ./configure '--prefix=/usr' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--disable-dependency-tracking' '--sysconfdir=/private/etc' '--with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs' '--enable-cli' '--with-config-file-path=/etc' '--with-libxml-dir=/usr' '--with-openssl=/usr' '--with-kerberos=/usr' '--with-zlib=/usr' '--enable-bcmath' '--with-bz2=/usr' '--enable-calendar' '--with-curl=/usr' '--enable-exif' '--enable-ftp' '--with-gd' '--with-jpeg-dir=/user/local' '--with-png-dir=/usr/local' '--enable-gd-native-ttf' '--with-ldap=/usr' '--with-ldap-sasl=/usr' '--enable-mbstring' '--enable-mbregex' '--with-mysql=mysqlnd' '--with-mysqli=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config' '--with-pdo-mysql=mysqlnd' '--with-mysql-sock=/var/mysql/mysql.sock' '--with-iodbc=/usr' '--enable-shmop' '--with-snmp=/usr' '--enable-soap' '--enable-sockets' '--enable-sysvmsg' '--enable-sysvsem' '--enable-sysvshm' '--with-xmlrpc' '--with-iconv-dir=/usr' '--with-xsl=/usr' '--with-pcre-regex'

Life is good

Now, go and grab yourself a cup of coffee, this is going to take a while. After that you should be able to connect to any remote mysql server that you have access to.

If you share your workstation with someone else, then it may be a good idea to secure your mysql installation.

Now, in order to make your .htaccess files to work, you need to change your apache user settings. For that you need to go to /etc/apache2/users/USERNAME.conf and make sure it reads something like this
Options Indexes -MultiViews FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all

You will also need to change the second AllowOverride that you find in your /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

Well, that should do it. So good luck and let us know if you run into any problem.

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Filed under:
Marketing, News by Ares on Thursday October, 09

Phrustrations

Comicmercial - Phrustrations

Comicmercial - Phrustrations

This fall we are trying to do more advertising in different publications. We have come up with an idea, and we are calling it phrustrations. Phrustrations is just a way for us to share some of the stories that we have heard from our customers over the years about what their situation was, and the frustrations they suffered while running their business regarding web design, graphic design, marketing, advertising, and other services we offer.

Continue Reading… »

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Filed under:
Web Design by Ares on Friday October, 09

Web Design for L & J

L and J. The old place by the graveyard

L and J. The old place by the graveyard

If you are an El Pasoan you probably know about L & J Cafe. The restaurant by the graveyard. It is a must-visit place not just for tourist but for everybody. Great food, great ambience, what else do you need?

It was a pleasure working with them, and coming out with a design that would represent the fact that they are a “classic” in El Paso, and also that they are one of the oldest restaurants in Town.

Let us know what you think about the design, and don’t forget to visit L & J for a great mexican lunch.

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Marketing by Ares on Monday September, 09

Why you should get a professional logo and website design

You are just starting a new business and money may be tight… You may be tempted to (ask your cousin to) create your own logo to save an “expensive” fee for a logo, website design, and business image creation. But hold on a second: you should read this before you decide to “save” that money.

Continue Reading… »

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Tutorials by Ares on Friday September, 09

Installing WordPress in Plesk 9

If you are running a web server though Plesk and you are new to it, installing a WordPress blog in it may be a little bit more challenging that you would like. Keep reading to find out how to do it without any problems.

Continue Reading… »

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Tech Tips, Tutorials by Ares on Saturday August, 09

Hiding, Securing & Changing WP-Admin

Your wordpress installation may not be secure

Your wordpress installation may not be secure

Once an open source system becomes so popular as wordpress very often it becomes vulnerable to attacks. I wonder why the folks at wordpress have not done anything to enhance the security of the admin site, which, by default, you can access by going to /wp-admin.

Continue Reading… »

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Web Design by Ares on Saturday August, 09

Olchefski’s Artistic Web Design

Pat's Olchefski site lauch

Pat's Olchefski site lauch

Pat Olchefski-Winston, aka Lady Pearl, is a multi-disiplinary artist, and yoga instructor.

She began her career over 20 years ago, and has shown her work through the US, Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean, and now thanks to his new web design and revamped site, she is able to show, and manage her digital gallery very easy online with the help of our services in web application development.

Click on the image to the right to preview the site, keep clicking and you will be able to see some of her beautiful work.

Do you think that her new design fits her as an artist? Let us know.

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Filed under:
News by Ares on Monday August, 09

New Phidev Web Design

Today, Aug 10th, 2009 we are officially unveiling our new website design. We came up with what we thought a different design for the home page (you can see it at phidevinc.com), and we came up with a standard design for browsers unable to render that page correctly (cough, cough, internet explorer > 6)

At the same time, we are unveiling the Phidev Inc blog, we will be writing about design in general, marketing, and business, and every so often technical things regarding web design.

We would love to hear your comments about it, if it shows correctly in your browser, and suggestions that you may have for it.

Hope you enjoy it.

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  • Logo and branding created for Borderpak.
  • We had the priviledge of creating the site for The Official Sunbowl Store
  • The Ranchers Grill New Web Design
  • Logo, Branding and Brochure created for Concrete and Stone countertops
  • HomegrownElPaso.com. We were happy to created the site for such a wonderful organization
  • We were delighted to create the L & J Cafe website