Some digging in the code and pulling hairs out lead to the issue: include_once was failing us. Yes, it was doing include of the same file again! One little detail – that only happened when we used both relative and absolute include path, something like:

include_once("../includes/fancyLibrary.php");
and
include_once("/absolute/path/to/document/root/includes/fancyLibrary.php");

Of course that should not be an issue, according to the PHP documentation.
When I started troubleshooting those includes calling
realpath("../includes/fancyLibrary.php");
the truth popped out – realpath was not returning anything. And then we found why – there was missing “read” attribute on the document root directory, it only had executable bit set (711). Changing permissions to 755 (added read attribute’s bit) fixed the issue.

So, problems with realpath or include_once PHP functions? Check folders permissions!

PHP script which was doing ftp_connect was failing on some installations with Segmentation Fault (core dumped) message. After quite a bit of time wasted looking for answers why, I found that problem was with the FTP host name having trailing line break. Well, that host name was coming from config and technically only developers had access to it, so looks like we assumed that variable “safe” and were not doing standard checks on special characters. To make things worse that line break is hard to see with debug output, because that line break is too easy to miss when you check variable value in debugger.

I am still not sure why Segmentation Fault (instead of proper message) – must be some PHP bug (and that server has Solaris OS).

Anyway, hope that helps somebody

Need a guru on entry level employee budget

It may sound attractive to spend same amount of money and get someone full time, but that may be not the most efficient use of the money. If work really requires high level of knowledge and experience and there is a lot of stake, it only makes sense to get call a high level expert. You won’t get them to spend 40 hours in your office, but they don’t really need to. It’s surprising how much time is wasted in the office environment and how much faster the same work will be done by the person with a lot of experience in the subject. And quality will be noticeably better too. Just make sure you picked up right person!

Jack of all trades

Smaller companies often do not have boundaries where responsibilities end, so everyone has to wear a lot of hats. In web design it may one “webmaster” guy or girl who is doing graphics, programming, server administration, marketing, etc, etc. Probably there are people who can do it all, but then they don’t have time for all those tasks and they are sure not experts in all of those areas, just stop kidding yourself. Getting freelancers who specialize in desired fields will be an easy answer. You don’t need to fill all of those positions full time, you get work done on pay-as-you-go budget and you may do not need to worry that someone doesn’t have enough work and create tasks just to keep people busy.

Team work

Freelancers do have connections. You can get a freelancer to lead the project and get more freelancers on board when/if necessary. There are tasks which may be done by mid or entry level specialist as long as they are guided by someone who knows how it should be done. Every specialist will know what kind of work they are best at and when it’s time to call a fellow freelancer to help with the area where another expertise is required. Experienced freelancers always have connections with other professionals, so it is an easy way to build a team instantly and you will know that team can work well together.

Summary

Make it real, get an expertise you need – call a freelancer. You will get better bang for you buck!

This post id dedicated to International Freelancers Day.

Error 400
Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
Size of a request header field exceeds server limit.

That means that your browser is trying to send too much at once. Probably, it’s size of the cookies. The easy way to fix it – delete cookies. Of course, you lose all info in the cookies, but at least you can access site again.

If you develop/manage web site and your customers complain of this error message – there are two things to do:

• Review cookies and limit the size of cookies your application stores in the browser.
• Increase allowed request size in web server configuration

To increase request size in Apache, add directive LimitRequestFieldSize to the configuration file. Default value is 8190 bytes. To increase it 2 times add
LimitRequestFieldSize 16380
Apache restart is required.

These days a lot of applications are actually switching to web services, so you actually do not have to install software, you can just use it from your internet browser. But I can still see quite a few uses of this tool to create client site components for the application.

So, will keep this in mind and may be one day will use it not just to play.

Here is the link

Here is a good list of freelance positions for PHP developers:
http://workfromhomephpjobs.blogspot.com/