Web Development Tutorials

Below you’ll find a compilation of my web development tutorials and screencasts. My goal is to create very easy to understand bite-sized collections of information. Please comment if you have any suggestions or criticisms.

Screencasts

AJAX with jQuery: The Beginning

This screencast is a ground up exploration of AJAX with jQuery. We will go over some simple examples of how to use jQuery to load data from another page at runtime. We also explore various jQuery selectors.

AJAX with jQuery: A Simple Login Example

This screencasts focuses on using jQuery and AJAX to create a login form. We also explore the concept of graceful degradation to ensure that our users are able to log in despite having Javascript disabled. The article “What exactly is JSON?” is a good companion piece to this screencast.

Understand the Structure of Code Igniter

The Code Igniter MVC framework for PHP is the focus of this screencast. Code Igniter is in the top tier of PHP development frameworks today. In this screencast I’ll go over the structure of Code Igniter and explain the file layout and some of the vocabulary involved with MVC framework and Code Igniter development. This screencast is targeted towards both new and moderately experienced users of Code Igniter.

Developing a Website with Code Igniter Part 1: Development Environment and Framework Configuration

In this screencast we’ll begin creating a website with Code Igniter. We focus on configuring apache and then installing and configuring Code Igniter. By the end of this screencast we’ll have a framework ready to be built into a website.

Developing a Website with Code Igniter Part 2: The Users Database Table and User Model

Following up on our previous screencast we’re going to dig into the web development by creating a users table in MySQL and developing a users model with which we’ll interact with the table. We explore the fundamentals of model development with emphasis on re-usability, modularity, and robustness. The article “How to Write a Better Model in Code Igniter” is a good companion piece for this screencast.

Developing a Website with Code Igniter Part 3: The Login Process

In this video we utilize the user model that we’ve created to create a login process for our website. We’ll use the code igniter form helper, database library, and session library.

Developing a Website with CodeIgniter Part 4: Admin Site CRUD

This video covers the development of an admin user management system (CRUD) and includes updates to the authentication system including a method that is used allow only admins into specific sections of the site.