surefire

Scott, what you wrote is a true gem. No doubt. I hesitated to comment out of utter frustration with Google. I really hope that Yahoo takes this opportunity to make the most of their investment in Inktomi. My preference is for there to be more than one major search engine, more than two political parties, more than one major software company, etc... IMHO Google has launched filters that have removed high content, low spam sites. If that's good for their biz, then more power to them... but that's not an accurate search. As a business owner, this has taught me, once again, not to rely on one form of advertising, one product distributor, one supplier, one employee, or one anything. If this sounds jaded and cynical then you miss the optimism that comes with knowing I have control over my future so long as I don't relinquish that control to someone else with an agenda that might zig when mine zags. I'd love to have a better understanding of how to play the Google game and have a real strategy for having my site show up like it used to before the Florida update. But when I look at the hours of tinkering and hand wringing it would take to figure out how to make my site show up for 'keyword' by having as few instances of 'keyword' in a 13,000 page content rich, community driven site.... well I think that there are more productive uses of my time. Working with Google makes me feel like I'm in business with someone I hired based on an amazing reputation, and then one day they start having problems in their personal life, they start drinking on the job, and eventually complain of hearing voices. I can either figure out how to communicate with my insane business partner or I can build my business without them in the mix. Along the lines of figuring out a strategy, Scott, you have pointed out some great things about Google and taught me alot. I read these posts with GREAT interest. I guess It's just that I can't help but feeling that, through no fault of yours, you're basically telling me "Google thinks white is black... and black is white. Up is now down... and dogs and cats are sleeping together at Google." Which makes me think Googled is @#$%'d in the head. Scott, this is a major change because up until this... you had two camps. 1- "Spam is good. Trick the engines" folks. 2- "Content is king. Build a kick butt site and folks will link to you and your content will match what the serps want." folks So tell me this, in what world does it now make sense that content is no longer king? I think you give great advice and anyone looking to improve Google results should listen to you or suffer the results... but think about what this implies for a second. One of my sites is a content rich mother lode of a site in a small niche industry (but a niche that pays out the arse in Overture and AdWords). Yet this content leader is gone because I might have 'keyword' in the name of the site (which I registered long before the damn Florida update) and someone replying in my forum might have chosen 'keyword' as their username... That's insane in the membrane. Absolutely loco. Content is king and the king is dead... that's what I'm hearing. The kingdom has been overthrown by thugs that want me to pay them protection money. Google never received a single dollar from me and whether there's a cause-effect relationship in for what I've seen with my site and other content rich sites... I dunno. Google must have made this move for reasons that benefit them (unless they goofed big time) and so I have to wish them luck... because they seem to be moving in a direction that doesn't involve anyone who can't afford to send them a hefty sum. I'm looking forward to the Google IPO so I can know who the officers of the company are and I can send them a steaming pile of my opinion of them... courtesy of the neighbor's dog. (I'm really not going to do that... this is just a rant so I can get this off my chest) I slept like $%!@ last night so I might erase this entire post... I'm grumpy and tired and it probably shows in what I wrote.

I've seen lots of classes devoted to image manipulation and creation. Are you hard coding this script into the TCH forums? I'd imagine there'd be an add on for invision board. Sorry I can't be more help.

Since you're turning the text into an image on the fly... I'm not so sure. But what should work is putting either a carriage return or <br> in the string where you want the line break.

Good stuff guys... thanks. I'm downloading cutezip right now. I guess all the good utilities actually cost money. Hmmm. The days of free stuff are dissapearing. I'm kinda glad to hear it.

If it wasn't for TCH, I wouldn't have tried FileZilla, a wonderful ftp client. Along those lines, I was wondering if anyone had recommendations on archive utilities that worked on a wide variety of files (zip, tar, rar, etc...)? I've tried WinZip, ProArchiver, and WinRar. My favorite was WinRar until the free trial ended and the dialog kept popping up. I might even consider paying for the software, it works so well, but thought I'd ask everyone here before doing so. Thanks.

By the way, I strongly advise anyone using php includes for web design to name their included files with a .php suffix. Do not use .inc .php suffix is a great way to hide code that you don't want others to see. (but it's not perfect... nothing is.)

Yes. Anything you can do with HTML can be made easier with server side code. (PHP, CGI, SSI, Python, ASP, CFM, etc) PHP is interpreted by the Apached server and executes instructions but sends html and other client side code to the browser. So there is nothing for the browser to interpret in PHP. Either your web host provides it or they don't. (TCH does, obviously) Which brings up the next point: Not by itself, no. Animating images is something done either with javascript or layers, or both... but it's done client side based on movement of the mouse, clicking, or some other trigger (page loading, for example). You can bring your javascript in from another file or have the javascript tags included in your html by the php. But by the time the digital info hits your browser, the server has already done whatever it's going to do with the php (or any other server side code). A great use for PHP in menu bars is in setting classes or modifying your html code based on the url. This is an easy was to have the menu bar 'know' what page you are on so that some sort of marker gives the visitor a visible clue to help with navigation. I can't tell you how amazing this little bit of knowledge is. Once you 'get it' you'll be able to create websites that almost 'think' for you and websites that you can update in seconds with new templates. Or even templates that can be applied by the visitor and remember on the next visit.

If you use sessions or cookies, then you would get over 95% of the folks out there. Very few have cookies disabled. It sounds like you want a super fool proof method. Do a cookie check to see if they can accept cookies and if not, tell them they need to have cookies enabled in order to use your form.

Log the IP in a database with the server time when the form is submitted. Before posting data, query the database for any other entries by that IP and determine the time that has elapsed. If the time interval is too short, kill the script and send an error code... maybe add the IP to another table for banned IP's. When the code runs, it could also go ahead and delete all entries in the table that have passed the required time frame.

Don't reinvent the wheel. I already wrote such a script. You can download version 1.7 now or wait less than 24 hours for an even better one... version 2.1 Beta. Ultimate Form Mail

There's no way to tell you what to change without knowing what code you're using or seeing the source.... of your script, not the form. If you are using my code, Ultimate Form Mail 2.0 Beta, then I can tell you very easily how to change it. But there are hundreds of similar codes out there, so each one is a bit different. We need more info.

There's absolutely no way to tell without seeing the source or knowing what you are doing. Can you provide some additional details?

Forgive my ignorance, but it's been over a year since I've used the Yahoo groups. What is it about their program/service that you are trying to replicate? I seem to recall that the reason I unsubscribed from the group was because I got a bazillion emails every morning from every single new thread that was started. If that's what you want, then I would attack it by modifying Invision Board, phpBB, or the forum of your choice so that every new member was automatically subscribed to every topic.

I've heard that javascript grabs the time from the user's computer... which has some advantages and disadvantages. If you wanted to do it server side and use the time on the server, you could do it like this ><?php echo date("H.i:s") ?>

I just sent you my email address through the TCH forum.

Curious... Since the recipient email address is hardcoded into the script, I don't possibly see how someone could post data to your site that would try to send out mail to a blank email address. The big vulnerability of Matt's FormMail.pl is the fact that you put your recipient information into the html code of your form and it's passed as a posted variable to your script. If you turned off the referrer check, you might possibly get a bunch of email from folks trying to use your site to spam others... but all the emails would come to you. The referrer check is there to give an error message and kill the code if you're sending the data from another site. If someone could point out a vulnerability to the script, I'd be happy to fix it. But if the code, when you boil it down, is basically >mail ("predetermined@yoursite.com", "Subject", $message, "From: yoursite.com"); And I don't see how that could be hijacked. Forward one of those emails to me if you would... I'd like to see if I can figure it out.

You beat me to it, Don. Great job. The other method that I've seen work is to define the root or the path like so define ('PATH', '/this/path/file/dir/'); And then you can include it like include PATH . "header_file.php"; I did this from memory and didn't test it out. But look up 'define' at www.php.net if you are interested in using it.

yes. I would very much like to be kept in the loop of anything you find. I've found a way to get files emailed through a web form without 777 chmod (and will be releasing it on my form mail page soon) but I am thinking that the safest way would be if it were possible to save the files in a database. Maybe, maybe not. I've been short on time lately so anything you find would be a great help. I'll do the same.

Depending on which cards you accept, you're looking at per transaction fees, percentage of sales (2-3%), and a minimum monthly fee. Look into paysystems if you only want to pay an upfront sign up and ongoing per transaction fees and percentages.

Natimage, Since I wrote the code... I thought it would be nice to give you a hand. I don't have any hard and fast answers since I haven't heard of this before. There are several questions that would have to be answered in order for me to diagnose it properly. Before I get into your specific situation, I want to let you know that there is a total rewrite of the code. I started over from scratch and really overhauled the script in a big way. If you haven't downloaded version 2.0 Beta, I would really recommend it. The layout is quite a bit different from the other one, but that's due to the increased power and extra bells and whistles. For example, the messages sent to you and your visitors are sent through smtp... the preferred method of email generation via programming code. Now, what you might be seeing is a failed attempt to use the code to spam. There is a referrer check in the code but some folks turn it off. The way the code is written, even with this off, your code can't be used to send spam, but you might get spammers posting messages to you in an effort to send spam. The reason it doesn't work is that the recipient (YOUR EMAIL) is hard coded into the script. So if the spammer tries to post info to your script with recipient variables, it will only end up sending you the email. If the referrer check is on, then nothing will happen at all. This may not be the issue at all, it's just a guess. But I would do a WHOIS on the IP and see where it points. The other question I'd ask is if the script works when you go to your site and submit information. If it does, then there's no reason to disable it. And finally, I'd remind everyone that I have my own forum where I will answer any and all questions about the code. http://www.surefirewebdesign.com/ufm/ I'm more than happy to answer your questions here... it's just that I get notified immediately when someone asks a question about the script in my forum. Here at TCH, I have to stumble across the question. Upgrade to 2.0 Beta if you haven't already.

It's not 100% safe, no.... but nothing is. I'm looking to see if I can create (of find) a script that uploads files into databases without the need for 777 chmod.

Scott, Your take is one that I haven't seen anywhere else. As you mentioned, there are lots of theories. Given your theory, how would you explain that several sites (some of mine included) didn't drop in rankings but rather totally dropped out of the Google index. These are sites without spammy BS, PR of 5 or better, and some have thousands of pages of content... real content. Why impose a filter that drops high content sites without spammed out pages?

It might help to turn error reporting up. By default, it is set very low at TCH. Try putting this at the start of your script >error_reporting(E_ALL);

Glad to have you on board!

New options I forgot to mention You can set up a form with drop down selection for recipient... without giving away their email addy in the code! Date submitted is on form and is easily customized You can send a receipt to the visitor with the info they sent you