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With MySQL at least it doesn't matter.  MySQL is very forgiving of having numbers enclosed in single quotes though, technically, they shouldn't be.

Depends really.  There are, potentially, situations where you would want to only update things that have changed and other cases where simply updating everything might be a better choice.  I don't think you can say that either method is THE method to use.

You won't notice a difference performance wise Matt.  A good "rule of thumb" is to create a function if you use the same block of code in more than one place.  For exactly the reason you stated, much easier to update it once instead of remembering all of the places it might be.

A cached page would be for everyone and there wouldn't be a copy of a post for each person.  What you see and what I see may be different.  How do you decide which page should be cached.  It's a chicken and egg situation.  You have to build the page to be displayed every time to accommodate user and board settings and preferences.  You can't build a single page that will satisfy everyone.

1. Yes though payments made be made without joining PayPal.
2. To verify who you are.
3. Yes.
4. Huh?

The encapsulation of a transaction should only need to be done, in this particular case, when the "do the transfer" button is pressed.  By that time you should have validated all of the data and amounts and the only thing remaining would be to actually complete the transfer.  Since the transfer itself is an atomic event if it fails for some reason it's very simple to roll back.  "Industrial strength" SQL engines allow transactions to be encapsulated, atomic, for this very reason.

Dave Martin (my IRC name)

Very nice indeed!  Thank you!

I dislike a bunch of things on my desktop so mine is barren when everything is minimized.

Amen to that many many times over!

Both of your examples are perfect examples of having to learn "yet another language" and why it can cause more confusion than it's worth.  In the reference you linked to there are 139 tags and using it would be anything but simple.  You'd be better off learning some XHTML and styling which are both skills that may be used for other things.

I'm probably in the minority on this one but IMO a template system over complicates things and forces one to learn yet another "language" of some sort.  I've yet to see/use a so called template solution that actually makes things easier for people.  I understand what the goal of a template system is but it is much easier to talk about than it is to actually implement in a way that is helpful and easy to use.  Given the goal of simplicity and speed that FluxBB has, developing a template system for it seems contradictory to the overall goal.