Before we get started, go ahead and grab the latest version of Kohana here. I’ll be using v2.3.4.

1) Install Kohana

Which really means just copy the Kohana files into the directory you are going to be working in. For the sake of this tutorial, let’s put it in a directory name /helloworld/. Let the install.php script execute and tell you everything is good to go. I’m not addressing server errors in this tutorial (but I am assuming you’re on Apache). After everything is cleared, you can either rename the install.php or delete it.

2) Setup .htaccess

I usually go ahead and setup the .htaccess file. This way I don’t have to worry about troubleshooting this later. Kohana provides an example.htaccess file. Grab the contents of this and paste it into our .htaccess file in the root directory of the application (helloworld/). The only thing we are going to change is the line that reads ‘RewriteBase /kohana/’. We need this to say ‘RewriteBase /helloworld/’ (no quotes). This just tells the server what we will be running our application from the helloworld/ directory.

3) Create Our Controller

Kohana follows a strict naming convention for certain files in our application. For our ‘hello world’ application, we are just going to create a ‘hello’ controller. Create a file named hello.php in our /application/controllers/ directory. This is going to be the main controller for this application.

4) Start coding

Let’s jump in and start writing code and I will explain it as we go along.

First, add this line to the top of the hello.php (after our opening <?php tag, of course):

This prevents the files from accessing itself. You should always add this to each of your controllers.

Next, let’s go ahead and declare our class:

This is where the naming convention can really be seen. Because we are declaring a controller for hello, the file name must be lower case. Also, the class declaration must match the filename, be capital case, and end in _Controller. Our class also extends the Controller class, which gives us access to all of Kohana’s core features for this class.

Example: a blog controller would have the filename ‘blog.php’, be declared as Blog_Controller, and extend Controller.

5) Add Index Function

Let’s go a head and add an index function to our Hello_Controller class.

I’ll cover this a little more in the next step.

6) Test It

At this point you should be able to access your controller. First, let’s look at how Kohana reads the url structure. This is an example of a basic call to a controller:

(application root)/controllerName/functionName

Therefore, we should be able to call our hello controller by accessing (your domain)/helloworld/hello/index. This calls the index function of our hello controller.

*hint* – you do not have to specify index in the url. If a function name is not given in the url, Kohana will look for the index function.

Accessing this function should give you our ‘hello world!’ output from step 5.

7) That’s it

This was a quick and easy example of how to get a simple application up and running. I’ll cover using views and models soon.

You have to make sure you pass the paged parameter to query_posts(), using get_query_var(‘page’). This is all I was forgetting. You could set this to something like ’3′, which would only display the posts that would normally show on page 3 of your paginated archive. Or you could make it dynamic by using get_query_var( ‘paged’ ). This will set it to whatever page you might be on at the time, with the URL containing something like /page/2.

And I always reset the query. Often times I am calling on the post ID in the sidebar, so not resetting the query will mess me up. It’s a good habit to get into when using query_posts().

1) Change the default table prefix.

I always make it a point to change the default table prefix for the database. Anything other than ‘wp_’ helps database security. Although I would not recommend using the full site name, something like that would be too easy to guess.

2) Change the default ‘admin’ user.

You can’t do this from the admin section of WordPress, so you’ll have to edit the database using something like phpMyAdmin. Changing the default username to something not easy to guess also helps prevent any potential security breach.

3) Make sure your /wp-content directory and sub-directories each have an index.php file in them.

I know this is a standard feature with WordPress now, but I still come across sites from time to time that don’t have these files (for whatever reason). But having an index.php (even if it’s blank) will cause someone trying to access something like you’re plugins directory to call the index file, thus not revealing the file structure and any plugins you may be using. The 3 directories that really need this are /wp-content, /wp-content/plugins, and /wp-content/themes.

The next thing to do is call php’s native substr() method. This will take a given string and strip out a sub-string, given the starting position and length of the sub-string. I use the WordPress function get_the_content() to return the post’s content, rather than printing it. This is an example of how I’m using this method on this site:

This basically takes the first 160 characters of a post (starting at position 0), echoes (or prints) it to the browser, and then adds three continuous periods (…), just to signal that there is more to the post. This is usually enough to get the first sentence or two. This will help keep the length on your index page down and you don’t have to remember to write an excerpt for every post. You can see this in use of the front page of this site – here.

This blog is brand new, as am I to the whole blogging thing. Not that I don’t understand or now how to use it, I’ve even built a few. I just never sat down and actually started one for myself. I didn’t start it so I could say “Hey! Look at me! I’m a blogger! And I’m cool because I’m doing it!” It’s not going to be like that. I’ll be talking about all kinds of stuff. From web/programming to music to ministry/religion. This will be my personal outlet, but then again I guess most blogs are just that. Anyway, I appreciate anyone who will take the time to read what I’m writing. Hey, maybe I can even stir up some discussions along the way

Until then, later.
Adam