Steps to Create Memes Using PHP

With the growing trend of social networking sites, email forwarded messages, and instant messages on social chat applications, the concept of Memes has become very common. Now what is a Meme? To understand what Meme is, the best way is to log-in to your Facebook or Twitter account and scroll for the images and videos shared by your friends. All the images and videos which carry a social message or a phrase with a humorous touch to them are known as Memes. These are an excellent way of spreading social awareness in a humorous way. The humour added to memes makes them more likely to be shared over social networking platforms.

Memes are an effective PR and marketing tool. They are created in such a way that they reach a large set of audience and get widely shared. For marketing purposes, several well known brands tie them up with trending memes and customize their text as per their needs. Since the memes are already popular over the social networking sites, associating a brand with them not only promotes the brand awareness but also helps marketers to be benefitted financially.

If you want to create your own Memes and are a PHP programmer with a knowhow of HTML5, JavaScript, jQuery and Flash then creating Memes is not a difficult task for you. Following are some steps that can be used to create memes in PHP.

Steps for Technocrats to Create own Memes

Step1: Declare a class in PHP. Refer the code snippet below. "<className>" should be replaced by name of the class that user wants to define.

<? Php

Class <className>

{

}

?>

Step 2: In the class, declare different global private variables. For example, variables can be created for font, image, text style, alignment etc. Code snippet below can be referred.

<? Php

Class <className>

{

Private $alignment;

Private $background;

Private $font;

Private $img;

}

?>

Step 3: Declare and Define different functions for following functionalities:

1. Uploading image

2. Entering text

3. Getting image coordinates

4. Getting text placement coordinates

5. Checking if text exceeds the image coordinates

6. Setting text to lower and upper formats

7. Setting font size, font style, font family

8. Setting text alignment

9. Setting image alignment

10. Setting image size, width and height

11. Setting background colour

12. Mixing Image and Text

<? Php

Class <className>

{

Public <functionName ()>;

}

?>

There can be many such functions and that depend on your requirements.

Step 4: Finally make an object of the class and invoke the function that mixes the image and text.

Meme Creation for Non-Technocrats

Even for a non-technical person who doesn’t have knowledge of programming, meme generation is not an impossible task.

With memes becoming so common, several websites are gearing up to capture this business domain. You will find lots of websites (both free and paid) over the internet that allows you to create memes very easily. The sites not only make it easy for you to create memes but also provide several basic and advanced features that can give your memes an attractive look. The features offered by the websites differ on the basis of cost, and you can go with the one which fulfils all your requirements within stipulated budget limits. The general rule of these meme generator websites says: more the features, more the cost.

If you want to instantly create memes, you can visit memes maker which is an excellent site for meme generation.

Features Offered by the Meme Generator Websites

-· Availability of a generic set of images. Some websites also allow the users to upload their own images.

-· Availability of pre-defined set of backgrounds. Some websites also allow users to upload new background images and even change the background colour.

-· Capability of adding text of fixed length.

Advanced Features Offered by Meme Generator Websites

-· Availability of image features that allow users to move, rotate, flip, scale, skew and crop images.

-· Capability of adding multiple images in a single meme.

-· Capability of adding unlimited text.

-· Availability of advanced text features: change of font size, font family, font style, font colour, stroke size and stroke colour.

-· Availability of text features that allow users to flip, rotate, scale and skew the text.

-· Availability of different drawing tools that include freehand pencil drawing that allows users to draw different shapes like lines, square, rectangle, circle etc.

-· Availability of social networking features that allow users to share memes on different social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram etc.

-· Availability of features that allow Adsense support.

-· Availability of features that allow language translation based on culture info in end user's browser settings.

-· Capability of mixing the memes.

Steps to Create Memes in memes.com

Step 1: Access "http://www.memes.com/"

Step 2: On the top right corner, click on "CREATE MEME" button to open the MemeGenerator page.

Step 3: User is displayed with a predefined set of images. There is also an option using which a user can upload his/her custom image. To do so, click on "Browse" button.

Step 4: Choose your image from the specific folder on computer. As you select the image, "Generate Meme" screen will open with "Basic Builder" tab displayed by default.

Step 5: Enter "Top Text" and "Bottom Text" as per your requirements.

Step 6: If you want advanced image and text features, click on "Advanced Builder" tab that will display options to change font attributes such as colour, style etc.

Step 7: Once you are done playing with text and image, click on "CREATE MEME" button on the bottom of the screen.

Step 8: Your meme is ready to be shared.

Advantages of Using Meme Generator Websites

-· They provide an easy and convenient way of creating memes.

-· Meme generator websites are equipped with basic and advanced editors, using which the users can add images and text. Users can play with text and as per their wish. Using the editor, designers can also play with text and image colours and themes.

Author Bio - Meme member - Memes lets you effortlessly share funny pictures. Making meme using PHP is not a child’s play. The author of this article has shared the technique of using PHP to create wonderful memes.