articles
As common or rare as it may be for someone to need the ability to select and deselect checkboxes in a form, here is a way to do it using the Prototype JavaScript Library . I recently needed a way to do this for the Private Message functionality of a Web Application I'm working on. The example code below is taken from this Application. First make the Event observers: ... continue »
A few guys I work with and I have been mulling over the idea of creating a new organization for software authors for a while now. The existing predominant group is hopelessly submerged in internal politics and bickering, and is providing little if any value to it's members. One of the many issues with the that organization was the lack of a decent website. We knew if we started a new group, we... continue »
I recently had someone ask me how I did the Polaroid-ish photos on the company 'About Us' page . The technique is quite simple so I thought I would outline it here for other curious minds. For the About Us page we wanted the polaroids to be about 170 x 140 so I'll use those dimensions in this example. Create the Polaroid image First open Photoshop (or your favorite graphics... continue »
Contest winners are supposed to be random, pulled from a hat so to speak. The process of doing that is a little less obvious when that hat is a MySQL database with 500,000 people in it. You can't just stick your hand in and grab the first peice of paper you feel. Wait.... actually you can. So I needed to select a random group of people from this MySQL table. It's super easy to... continue »
During a session at SXSW on Web Standards and SEO ( transcribed here ), the conversation revolved around how search engines treat semantically correct, valid pages versus the spaghetti mess of code that makes up the bulk of the web. Tim Mayer from Yahoo! said that they do look at valid markup as a 'signal of quality', but can't give extra weight to pages using web standards yet because there... continue »
PHP and Smarty Search Bookmarklets Do you ever want a quick way to search PHP or Smarty Documentation for a function? Here it is! Just drag this link to your browsers bookmarks (or links) toolbar and voila! Search PHP.net Search Smarty Docs Modifiers to Make Life Easier These simple Smarty modifiers have made life easier for me. The use them just save the... continue »
siteWatcher is an easy way to check if your Websites and MySQL databases are up and running. It runs on a schedule you set and simply checks your websites for content you specify and notifies you by email if that content is not found. You can also use it to check connectivity to MySQL databases. To setup siteWatcher all you need to do is download the PHP file, put it on your server... continue »
Everyone wants to display friendly error pages for visitors to thier website. This is easy to do using a variety of methods, but are the common methods always the best decision? There are an abundance of pages that discuss how to make custom 404 error pages. While this practice is an excellent way to help direct misguided visitors to the correct area of your website, it can have some... continue »
If you've ever had to create a bunch of zone files for a bunch of domains you know it can be a pain. Should you ever find yourself in that dark hole again use this. It is a quick and simple DNS Zone File creator for BIND. It takes an array of domain names, creates zone files and adds the zones to your master BIND configuration. All you need to do is put the domains in the array and restart... continue »
The more traffic your Website gets, the more important efficient handling of that traffic becomes. First you want to be sure that your visitors get a fast response, but you also want to make sure that bogus traffic doesn't suck all your bandwidth. Here is a simple way to keep bogus traffic off your Website. Bogus Traffic? O yea... those pesky offline browsers (or site stealers, who... continue »