What do you do when you’re writing a web app that needs to store data, but using a dedicated relational database system would be overkill? Many developers are taking advantage of PHP’s file editing capabilities to use plain text files to store and retrieve data. While this is a more lightweight solution, reading the contents of a file is not always the fastest way to retrieve stored information. Here’s my very own technique to use a database-like system with PHP files only, with just one line of code needed to grab the information, ready to be used.

This technique is best suited to situations when speed is required in accessing the data. It works best with small amounts of data, and it’s possible to store arrays, strings, numbers, etc. Let’s explore the basic theory behind the system.

For a web designer, remembering the properties of all the CSS classes, IDs and elements that have been written, often over multiple stylesheets, can be a real task. Often developers need to keep referring back to their CSS to check the definitions, look at the properties and classes and find the right element. This is time wasted. Time that could be spent on more constructive endeavours.

Social bookmarking allows users to submit, comment on, and “promote” websites. The Gregarious plugin supersedes the Digg This Reloaded Plugin and allows for seamless integration between your Wordpress Blog and social bookmarking sites such as Digg.com, Del.icio.us, Reddit and more. Requiring no editing of templates, and a simple point and click interface, Gregarious is the ultimate social bookmarking plugin for Wordpress.