surefire

Hey all. While preparing a proposal for a client, an idea hit me that would make an excellent article, IMO. I zipped over to AListApart and found that they are not currently accepting submissions. So, where are your favorite places to read about design topics and coding? If I were to post the article on my own blog, which I may do, what is the best way to get it picked up by others? Although I've written a plugin for WordPress, I'm very new to blogging. So, I thought I'd ask the more experienced folks out there. Thanks.

Excellent tutorial Jim. This is the same stuff I teach each client before I give them their email accounts. I'd add one thing. If an email account is compromisted and it's getting flooded with spam, the chances of rescuing it are very slim. Better to burn the account and open a new one. Also, I am a happy and loyal Thunderbird user. Their bayesian filter is excellent for sorting through spam.

Search engines have been indexing dynamic urls for some time now. So having variables in your url after '?' won't prevent you from being indexed. There is a theory that a page with a static url will rank better than the same page having a dynamic looking url. There's also a theory about having your desired search terms in the url itself. So if your site is about fishing, you would want. somesite.com/fishing/links/ The short version of 'How to rank well with search engines' goes something like this >Have relevant text links pointing back to your site from high ranking sites >Have lots of content relevant to the search terms >Keep the content fresh

Guys... I have a support forum for these kinds of things. They're usually very easily solved.

4.3.11 isn't an issue. Nor is php 5.0 for that matter. It's flat out easier for me to give support in the forum I run. I won't give a link, but it's in the readme docs and on the website where you downloaded.

It seems I'm the only one that wasn't thrilled with Drupal. It has lots of very good features, but the admin is not straightforward. When I looked at Drupal I was looking for a KISS admin that I could then turn over to my client. I can't imagine teaching them about 'nodes' and some of the other intricacies of the Drupal admin. But I can that once you get up the learning curve, it could be an excellent CMS.

I bought new hurricane panels a few weeks ago to the tune of $6000. A drop in the bucket to the alternative, but still... wouldn've loved to spend the money elsewhere. Now I'm biting my nails waiting for them to get installed. Living within view of the Atlantic, plywood just didn't cut it very well last year.

That's sad. I know someone else that died in a similar way.

Thanks... I love it to. But it's not my creation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automagically

It's called Static Jack. It makes it very easy to upload static files (php, html, etc) to your server and have them automagically woven into your current template/theme. Requires WordPress 1.5+ and permalinks on. As it's my first plugin, I'd love some feedback. And since it's free, opensource, I assume there's no issue with linking to the page: Static Jack

If you're looking to make your queries run faster, then consider testing them in phpMyAdmin under the SQL tab and clicking 'Explain SQL' after running the query. Look at the number of rows returned and try to reduce that number by using ANSI style joins. Do a search on 'ANSI joins' if that terms is unfamiliar. Lots of great free tutorials on it. If you can reduce the number of queries and the size of the results returned, your pages will run much faster and the drain on resources will go down by quite a bit.

Depending on the server setup, you might be able to do it with a php include. (As TCH Bruce showed above) Having said that, I wouldn't do it. It will slow down the page load. If that other page doesn't change often, just copy it over to your server and do a regular include. If it changes every so often, then set up a script to read the file, write the contents to a local file, or a database table, and essentially cache the content on your local site. You could set up a cron to update the content as often as you need. This may seem like a lot of extra work, but I really would discourage including an external file if you can.

Just to be fair, I have no experience with those products or anything similar in the php arena. I just find it difficult to believe that a code generator is going to replicate higher level php code. But maybe that's my overblown sense of self importance rearing it's ugly head.

In the same way that Dreamweaver can't handle CSS-P and complex id tags automatically (at least as of MX) I doubt you'll find a drag and drop, plug and play sort of code creator that is going to do more than the very basic php code generation. I'd suggest finding a database extraction class and learning the two or three basic functions and how to use them. I would recommend either PEAR, phpclasses.org, or adodb. There are plenty of others. Database extraction doesn't have to be very difficult. And the reason that I think that hand coding gives you more power and flexibility is that when you learn more comples SQL joins and multiple table queries, you're able to cut down on the resource drain you put on a database and your pages load faster. Years ago I used Dreamweaver MX for CSS but eventually learned that hardcoding CSS beats plug and chug hands down, and it's faster if you know what you're doing. Same goes with php.

Yes, that looks like it from the description, but I wouldn't know until I try it. I appreciate the link. I'm not too excited about making the directories world writable But that seems to be a step in the right direction.

On MikeJ's recommendation, I am testing Drupal. (Based on your other posts, Mike, I know you know your stuff) It looks like clean code. Here is my primary complaint with CMS systems: I have yet to find a CMS that cleanly and easily wraps the cms template (or skin) around a php/html file that I upload via ftp to the server. For example, let's say I created a simple php page on my desktop using Notepad that just prints out the current date, the user's IP, and a random quote. A pointless script, but just an example. I should be able to ftp it to the site and have it wrapped in the template skin. A CMS should make my life easier, not harder. Forcing me to create all skinnable content within the framework of the web based login is unrealistic and limiting. Many times it's just plain easier to write the php code and upload it. I think it's silly to have to have one template for my CMS and another templating system for the rest of my site, because, let's face it, many times if you want a custom app, you need to create it or download someone else's and upload it to another part of your site. It's not always feasible to create a module that works with the existing CMS functions, classes, and naming conventions. If anyone knows of a CMS that permits this, then I'm all ears. But that's reason numero uno why I opted for 'rolling my own'. I'd be happy to hear that this is a common element of most CMS systems now and I just haven't looked closely enough. (By the way, I know that some CMS systems attempt to incorporate php code and snippets through the use of eval. IMO this isn't a solution. I truly want to be able to hard code a php page and upload it, and have it skinned to match the rest of the site.)

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/25/big.fish.ap/index.html

Favorite... creating my own. Easier to control how much flexibility and power is needed for a project. I know that's not an option for many, but it came out of a frustration that there were no CMS's that did what I wanted... which is a roundabout answer to your question. Maybe that's changed now that there are several hundred CMS systems to choose from.

PHPmailer from sourceforge.net is a more robust solution and gives you more flexibility, deliverability, and control. http://phpmailer.sourceforge.net/

Excellent links. I already had most, but found one or two gems in there that I hadn't seen yet. Thanks.

Yes, thanks for the heads up.

This is not correct include('http://www.onlineautorama.com/body.htm'); You want include $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/body.htm';

I'm by no means the oldest TCH family member but I've been here a while. Surprisingly, TCH is as good, or better today than back when I first discovered it. Andy just helped me out with a dedicated server/WHM issue and basically held my hand as he 'taught a man to fish'. Now I'm wiser and more self reliant. How cool is it to be able to reach out and ask for a favor and to have the fellow say "Sure, what can I do? And by the way, how's Florida?" Not "what's your customer number?" Not "drop a ticket to the help desk" (which I'd already done) Why did Andy remember where I live? Because he cares. I must have mentioned it in a post over a year ago. Andy, you rock. TCH, you rock.

I'm not talking about javascript. I'm talking about java. Any page with java freezes for about 5 seconds while my machine loads up the Java plugin and the content is served. I'm sure it's good for some things. And admittedly, I've seen some nifty apps with it. But please give me a warning before forcing java down my throat. (as he clicks to disable java in his Firefox browser)

Good tutorial, Nicholas, but I have to throw in my 2 cents and warn that your first method is MUCH safer and secure than the second. I would advise folks to avoid the second version. The second option given trusts the input of the user. Even though you check for the existence of the file first, you open up the possiblity of including files you really don't want included. If you have any doubts, do a search on php security. Also, the code, as written, only will work with register_globals on... which is the case here at TCH. But to make the code more transportable, clean, and safe, better to use the super globals like this: $pageId = $_GET['id']; switch($pageId) { ...rest of code Another way to make all of this even more secure would be to have a single directory where all your include files reside and hard code that into your programming logic: $base = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/path/to/include/dir/'; $pageId = $_GET['id']; switch($pageId) { case 'home': $extra = 'home_page.php'; ...rest of switch logic ... }//end of switch logic @(include($base.$extra)) or die("File include failed"); The @ eliminates giving away the root directory of your website if your logic fails because you changed a file name, or something else goofed. Instead of the typical error message, revealing info you want kept private, the die statement kicks in and gives you the information you need to debug. Anyone who has seen my other posts knows I'm only adding this to help. I'm certainly not trying to take away from Nicholas' generous donation of his knowledge.