Help Wanted.

[Michael Morris]

Hello everyone. EN World has grown to a size now that it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to keep track of all the bugs and feature requests that folks are making. So in order to keep from being innundated I'm needing the help of an assistant or two. Candidates will be chosen by myself, Russ and Piratecat. It is critical that you have a good history on the boards because this will be, by nature, a position of trust including possible access to the critical code infrastructure of the boards.

Included below is a test of HTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL. ENWorld also uses some javascript, but I'm not competant enough with it to write a test about it and, besides, I've been - for the most part - leaving the stock code of alone. I don't expect anyone to be able to correctly answer all 60 questions, but I do expect you to try if you want to be seriously considered for this position. The test isn't meant as a weeding out process - it's meant to give me a fair estimate of how much you need to learn and in what areas. If you're willing to help out ENWorld and you're honestly interested in learning HTML/CSS/PHP and MySQL in a practical working environment I'm willing to teach.

There are many tasks that need work on here that don't require knowledge of all the areas this test covers. For instance, it would be nice if I had someone to restore the old stylesheets of PHB, Electric Blue and the like and to check over the sheets for existing minor errors. That only requires knowledge of XHTML to do properly. A collaborator for future ENWorld projects, such as the gamers seeking gamers and the completion of the reviews section would be desirable as well.

If accepted, you will report to me and I in turn report both to Piratecat and Russ.

Email your answers to this test to mlmorr0@uky.edu with subject line ENWorld Test. If you do not use that phrase in the subject line my spam filter will most likely kill your message. If you have PM access you may use that to PM me as well.

Good luck

EDIT: This is "open book" per se - but if you cut and paste from the major online dev documents I *will* know - as I read them constantly. Put your answers in your own words.

Section I: XHTML & CSS

1. What is the HTML for a 1 column, 1 row table?
2. What is the purpose of the class element?
3. What is the CSS definition used to set the font size?
4. What is the tag to create a line break?
5. What tag is used to change the caption title in the browser window?
6. How do you make a column in a table overlap multiple rows?
7. Which element of the form tag designates the script that will process the information?
8. Which input type is used to quietly pass information to and from the browser without the user seeing it (unless they view the page source)?
9. Which element of an input tag is used to set the variable that will hold it's data once the form is submitted to the server?
10. Which elements of the img tag control the spacing between the image and the surrounding text
11. What is the html to create a two item combo box (or drop down menu)?
12. Which CSS element is used to set a background image the definition?
13. What are the begin and close marks for HTML comments?
14. How do you set a URL to launch a new window when the link is clicked?
15. How do you define what followed links will look like for a particular class definition (CSS)?
16. <center> was depreciated as of HTML 3.0. This means the tag may not be used in future browsers. What is the correct way to center a block of text in XHTML 1 / HTML 4.0?
17. What is the primary difference between a span and a div tag?
18. What is the tag used to display a section of html code only when a certain condition is met (this is a server side tag - it's removed when the server evaluates a template)?
19. How are special characters accessed in HTML?
20. When variables are put on the URL line which send method is being used?

Section II: PHP

1. What are the rules for variable names?
2. What does it mean to pass a variable to a function by reference?
3. What is the basic syntax of an if conditional in php?
4. What are the three parts of an array variable?
5. What is the purpose of the eval statement?
6. What is the syntax of a foreach loop?
7. What are the global variables that contain information passed from an html form?
8. What is the syntax of switch / case structures?
9. || is short for which logical operator?
10. What is the order of mathmetical operations?
11. What is the purpose of the global statement?
12. What is the function to clear a variable or an array element?
13. Which two functions can be used to transform an array into a single string (for insertion into a MySQL table)?
14. What are their reverses?
15. What is the pattern sought by the following PRCE expression? #\[red\](.*)\[/red\]#siU
16. How do you define a constant?
17. How do you intialize an array?
18. What are the rules for constant names?
19. What are the rules for function names?
20. Write a simple while loop that prints out the numbers 1 to 10.

Section III: MySQL

1. What is the syntax of the SELECT statement?
2. What does RDBMS stand for? What does it mean?
3. What is a primary key?
4. How do you insert a new row into a table?
5. How do you delete a row from a table?
6. How do you change a row in a table?
7. How do you add a new field to a table?
8. What is the syntax of the CREATE TABLE statement?
9. What do you need to be able to join two tables together?
10. Name the parts of a table.
11. Write a query that pulls all the information from the post table
12. Write a query that pulls all the information from the thread table and joins the information about the first posts of each thread from the post table (to do this join the field firstpostid to postid)
13. Write a query that returns Crothian's user information by searching for the user with the most posts (post count is stored on the posts field, user information is on the user table).
14. Write a query that returns all users with paladin as part of their username (username is stored on the username field)
15. Write a query that would set all user postcounts to 0.
16. Write a query that would list all the admins (admins have usergroup of 6, and usergroup is stored on field primarygroupid)
17. Write a query that would delete all users that haven't posted.
18. Write a query that set all blank signatures to "This space for rent" (signatures are stored on the signature field of the user table).
19. Write a query that lists all users by review count in descending order (review count is on field "field16" and is stored on the userfield table. You'll need to join it to the user table on the userid field which both tables have).
20. Write a query that lists all users, grouped by usergroup in descending order (primarygroup id) and sorted in alphabetical order by username.