Web Development Blog

Why pay hundreds of dollars for a commercial zip code locator when you can make your own in a few hours? This post is a start to finish tutorial on how to make a simple zip code locator using PHP, MySQL, a free zip database, and the Yahoo Maps API. Here’s a demo if you want to see it first.

Let’s get started:

1. Requirements

• You’ll need PHP and MySQL running on your webserver
• You need a zip code database. You can find a free one from the 2000 census here, or you can purchase one. Using the free one is good for getting started, but it is quite out of date.
• You’ll need a Yahoo Maps API key, which we’ll get to later.

2. Get the Zip Database

Download the zip database.
It comes in CSV or SQL format. Download the SQL version (it’s under zipcodedb-MySQLdump).

Go to to step 3 »

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Here we go…

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• Squidoo: This has been around for a bit, but I just signed up. You should too if you haven’t yet.
• Commission Junction: I also signed up this week for this. I’m learning all I can at CJU and will probably make a million dollars next week.
• Good SEO Tips for social bookmarking. I mostly saved this one just for the list of social bookmark sites.
• Link Building Strategies
• Who doesn’t like ASCII Fonts? Oh yeah!!

Have a great weekend!

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Since 1997 I’ve used quite a few different programs to develop websites, and here is the cream of the crop as far as I am concerned:

BBEdit
I used this software on the Mac from 1997-2004 and it was great back then (and I assume it still is). If I used macs on a regular basis (which I don’t), then this would program would have a giant 128×128 icon shortcut right on my desktop. I still tear up a bit thinking about my BBEdit days

From Bare Bones Software: “BBEdit is the leading professional HTML and text editor for the Macintosh. Specifically crafted in response to the needs of Web authors and software developers, this award-winning product provides an abundance of features for editing, searching, and manipulation of text. BBEdit transforms text with high performance.

An intelligent interface provides easy access to BBEdit’s best of class features including grep pattern matching, search and replace across multiple files, function navigation and syntax coloring for numerous source code languages, code folding, FTP and SFTP open and save…”

Dreamweaver
Once Dreamweaver 2004 came out I gave it a whirl and found out that it didn’t suck anymore. In fact, as it progressed in to MX and version 8, Macromedia added really great html and php support with contextual help, and the php manual right in the program. Dreamweaver grew up from the days when it totally mangled your code, into a really handy all-around web development tool. I wish they had an option to install without unnecessary features though, because this program is quite a beast and starts slow and is slow when switching back and forth between programs.

NotePad++ & WinSCP
This year I figured out how to connect WinSCP with NotePad++, and this is now my editor(s) of choice. WinSCP is just an awesome tool for secure file transfer, it has a lot of unix like functions (grep,chmod,gzip,etc.), and it ultra configurable. You can configure it to open files in extrenal editors, and I have mine set up to open everything in NotePad++. It think it could kick FileZilla’s ass any day. NotePad++ is very BBEdit-like: it has code coloring for lots of languages and a function reference, and it’s freakin’ fast to open. While I wish the function reference worked just like dreamweaver’s, it makes up for that in speed.

What’s your favorite program to develop with? Leave a comment or Subscribe to the RSS feed!

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