surefire

From what I've read, having a url like the one you have purchased, can only help, not hurt. It's probably not a huge factor... but it appears that Google will see each of those pieces as a separate word. To give you an example, if you sell pet supplies then www.petsupplies.com will probably only give you credit for "pet" and not supplies. Whereas www.pet-supplies.com will probably give you credit for both "pet" and "supplies". If your category is competitive, then having your keywords in your url definitely helps, but isn't the magic bullet that will automatically get you the coveted number one spot.

Since the page you pointed to is part of the Invision Board script, you could download a free copy for yourself and borrow the part with the security code. That would be a fast solution. If you are going to build one from scratch that puts up one of those 'ransom note' looking random codes then you'll probably need an image file for each character (letter or number) that will be part of the random security code you generate. Generating the random code is easy. Then you could display the images with server side language (PHP or CGI) and compare the user input with the actual string that the server created. Not hard, but a lot of work to get those images together.

Yes... and no. The server needs to know the page has php code so you either need to name it .php or you have to change your .htaccess file in a similar fashion as you did with the SSI.

In the very near future, I will be updating the help documents that go with this script. I secong Jimuni's thoughts that you might be using cpanel to ftp the script and edit it or you're using another tool that cuts the code at inappropriate places. Try using a third party ftp client and starting over with a fresh copy of the code.

Congrats!

I don't have an answer that will help you merge the files... but once you get them straight, you can keep your two copies up to date by using My Briefcase in windows.

So what do you guys think? Good, boring, too advanced, too basic? Are there other aspects of OS Commerce that you want covered?

Critical Mass has a well established online store for knives and other related items. I created a store which has yet to go live but is almost fully functional. I set it up for a veterinarian to sell pet medications and supplies to his clients in Miami. After seeing more questions in the past few weeks concerning OS Commerce, a free shopping cart script, I decided to interview Critical Mass and get his thoughts on setting up an online store.

Sidmel, are you a member(client) of TCH?

Sidmel, I think your final hurdle will evaporate if you set the permissions to the folder conainting the Ultimate Form Mail Script to 777

Sidmel, I'm sorry, but I couldn't replicate your error. Can you give me some more information about what you may have changed or how you installed the file?

Very good glad it's working again.

I saw your post in the Ultimate Form Mail Script forum. This is redundant. So I am going to close it and respond to your original post.

Sidmel, I have never seen that type of error. I don't have time right now to test it, but I will and get back to you.

Webnovice, you will want to make a hidden tag that is called "required" and then list your fields that are to be required. Like this: For this form, the fields from, email, to, message are all required fields and will not send your email until the fields are filled. Hope this helps. If not, reply back.

(Jimuni was faster on the draw and posted while I was writing this...) Answer to 1: No. php is one of the most (if not the most) popular server side programming language in use today. There are plenty of sites with top rankings on search engines and directories that use php as their web 'glue' One nice advantage of php is that all the magic is done on the server level and then basically html is served up. If you use php, you need to end your pages with .php instead of .htm or .html or anything else. There's a way around this with .htaccess but let's stick to the basics for now. I believe a help thread was recently pinned that has info on the .htaccess trick. Answer to 2: PHP is a server side language. So if you want to check EVERYTHING before FTP to the server, then you essentially need to set up a mini server on your computer. There is also another thread here covering this topic ... but unfortunately I couldn't find the post. I'll look again and post if I find it. But I will give you a suggestion that may help. I use Dreamweaver (not required) and hand code PHP. The pages look nothing like they do when I upload them. So for testing, I usually set up a new directory, upload files there, and see what they look like. If they look bad, I try again. If they look and function correctly, they get re-uploaded to the public portion of the site. You mention that IE is ignoring the php statements. One of two things is happening. If these are pages that you loaded to the server then you need to rename the pages with a .php ending so the server knows what to do. If that doesn't help, then your php is malformed. If you are looking at your pages before uploading them to the server, as can be done with Dreamweaver and other html editors, then the reason for the problem is that php is a server side language and your computer is not set up to run like a server and perform php actions. The cool thing about php is that it works with all browsers and all user settings because everything happens on the server before the page is sent over the internet. Therefore, it's just not possible that IE isn't interpreting the php... it's the server that does that and sends regular old html to the browser. But the server only knows what to do if you tell it the page is written with php code in it. Again, you do this typically by ending your page with .php Hope this helps.

I would strongly suggest using a pre-made script available at HotScripts.com or using the one I posted in the Code Central part of the forum. It's pinned as 'The Ultimate FormMail Script'

No. He's referring to 'The Ultimate FormMail Script' which you can find in the scripting forum here at TCH.

Okay... Although I admit that I didn't see that on my first or second visit (which makes it a good trick) this doesn't change the fact that there is content in the head portion of the page. Before someone says "So, what? They wrote bad html..." It's done on purpose. This page bereanhealthcare.com/sitemap.asp Has none of the text and text links that are hidden in the head tags. If anyone spends a few minutes to REALLY inspect this page, I promise that you will see that there is true deception going on here. And apparently, it is working! That doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad... but definitely used for one purpose only... to fool search engines for better rankings.

No... these are not meta tags. Look closely. There are text links and regular content BEFORE the closing </head> tag... and therefore it doesn't show up.

In an attempt to teach myself how to move up the rankings in google, I started looking through the code of some of the sites that score better than mine for the primo search phrases in our niche. I came across a site that is on the first page of results... and has stuffed the HEAD section full of code that normally goes in the BODY section of the site. Like content, text links, etc. Now, NONE of this stuff is visible in the browser. But apparently, it's not hurting their score since they're kicking my butt. Here's the site bereanhealthcare.com What do you guys make of this? Nifty trick, or a ban from Google waiting to happen?

Way to go, Jimuni. That's infinitely better.

About three weeks ago I took over a client's site and changed the design from that of 100% images (even for 'text') to mostly text and text links. During these three weeks, Googlebot hasn't come by to say hello. The PageRank is a 5. Hmmmm.... "Come out, come out, wherever you are" -Robert Deniro, Cape Fear

You've got some cross browser issues with your current CSS. In mozilla, your words in the main div are crossing over into the header. I think your problem would be solved by using some of the layouts you'll find here http://www.sitepoint.com/article/379/1 http://www.glish.com/css/ (good one) http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials...sson/boxes.html http://developer.apple.com/internet/css/in...ocsslayout.html The layout you are looking to achieve is pretty straight forward.

What does this mean for Spam Assassin at TCH?