Posts by Dani

Dani, what's the cutoff date for RSS feeds?

90 days

is there also a maximum number of items returned

100 items

Additionally, in your RSS documentation 'threads' is missing from the article type list.

Will look into it.

http://www.daniweb.com/api/forums/31/ancestors?access_token=MYACCESSTOKEN

No valid data meets your criteria because you are trying to fetch the forum's ancestors and a top-level category (Web Development) that has no ancestors, so there is nothing to return.

http://www.daniweb.com/api/forums/31/ancestors?include_self=true&access_token=MYACCESSTOKEN

Here, you're again trying to fetch Web Development's ancestors, but this time you're saying to include itself also. It has no ancestors still, but the least it can do here is return itself.

http://www.daniweb.com/api/forums/31/ancestors?include_self=false&access_token=MYACCESSTOKEN

When you pass false in as a query string parameter in this manner, it is being treated as a literal string "false" as opposed to the boolean value of false. Therefore, include_self evaluates to true because PHP defines any non-zero integer or string as true. You can do ?include_self=0 or you can pass false in through cURL as so:

$data = array(
    'include_self' => false,
    'access_token' => $mytoken
);
$request = curl_init('http://www.daniweb.com/api/forums/31/ancestors');
curl_setopt($request, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);

Please note that passing in the query string parameter as you are doing is synonymous with doing this:

$data = array(
    'include_self' => "false",
    'access_token' => $mytoken
);

See the difference?

The results aren't random. What is happening is if you select a page that is higher than the number of available pages given your filter parameters, it removes the filter parameters and keeps the page number. Will fix the bug shortly.

OK, I see what you mean. It's totally a bug.

It's for pagination :)

For example, take the URL http://www.daniweb.com/api/members

You will notice that the resulting JSON includes a data field that encapsulates an array of members, and a pagination field that says:

"pagination":{
  "total":"33836",
  "per_page":50,
  "page":1
 }

Now if I were to use the URL http://www.daniweb.com/api/members?page=5 you will notice that the resulting JSON includes the following property:

"pagination":{
  "total":"33836",
  "per_page":50,
  "page":5
 }

Every API request that allows a ?page= parameter to be passed in also includes a pagination property in the resultset. Different API requests (members vs posts, for example) have a different number of results per page. The number matches up to how many results per page for each data type on production DaniWeb, and the number is always included in the pagination property.

OK code fixed. Will be fixed for existing members as the cache repopulates.

Actually, I take that back. Eating something, then going to fix it.

Yup, working on fixing this now :)

We regularly expire pages at which time we start sending back a 410 status code. Is there a way that we can inform Google as soon as possible which pages to remove from its index?

I know that Google Webmaster Tools has a URL removal tool, but is there a mass URL removal tool available anywhere?

Speak for yourself. I love web programming. And I don't know Flash. In fact, I think web designers need flash more than developers do.

This should be fixed. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Ah, I see what you mean. I think this might be a bug. I'll look into it right away.

Update to the code, to fall back on file_get_contents if possible.

Don't you mean to first try file_get_conents and then fallback on cURL?

I've finally upgraded to Windows 8 and everything seems to be working for me without having made any changes. Odd??

Having unique content is important because, if the same content can be found in multiple places around the web, odds are that it's plagiarized. That, and Google only wants to show the same content ONCE in the search results, so it will try its best to figure out who the original author is, show that content, and dock everyone else who had duplicate content.

I'll take a look as to why some of the RSS feeds are giving parse errors. However, it should be noted that you can accomplish the same thing, but significantly faster, by following the following algorithm:

Fetch list of all forums in JSON format
Create an empty array for each forum
Fetch page 1 of recent threads in JSON format
Hash the recent threads by forum (i.e. push onto its forum's array)
Set n = 2
While forums with fewer than 5 elements exist:
    Foreach forum that has fewer than 5 elements:
        Fetch page n of recent threads only in those forums in JSON format
        Hash the recent threads by forum
        n++
    End foreach
End while

Read the second post of the thread :) Submissions up through the end of May.

Find me a directory nowadays that meets that criteria :) They don't exist anymore IMHO.

Well cURL certainly does have advantages over file_get_contents() in that it allows you to manually set headers, manage redirect handling, send POST requests, etc.

DaniWeb is my hobby :) Well, it's my job, but more specifically, I like to surf the web reading up about the latest SEO tactics. So SEO is my hobby :-P I also like to play simulation games like The Sims and SimCity.

What's yours? You never told us.

I would shy away from directories nowadays. While they were good for backlinks many, many years ago, now they're associated more with being "bad neighborhoods" of unrelated, spammy links, that can actually hurt your SEO more than help it.

Personally, I live in a world where file_get_contents() is rather mainstream, but I also live in a world revolving around applications meant to be run on dedicated servers as opposed to shared hosting environments.

Do you have a website that you are using your FB page to promote? Perhaps put 'Like' widgets on your website to drive traffic and fans to your FB page.

Perhaps a mailing list? If you could encourage new visitors to sign up, then you can pull them back at a later date.

Also check out Google AdWords remarketing campaigns. Grow your audience of repeat visitors by drawing back in people who have recently visited.

Get hit by any good april fools' jokes today?

While you can't rate entire threads, you can rate individual posts of a thread. The rating of the first post of a thread is synonymous with whether or not you think it's a good question.

We also use the 410 status code for moderator-deleted messages.

Hi there! Welcome to DaniWeb. IT is such a huge field that it's impossible to learn enough of any small discipline in order to be proficient at it. I think the job of school is to give you an overview of everything there is out there, so you can decide whether you're more of a hardware guy, or a programming guy, or a web development guy, etc. The first stop is to find your niche.

We currently expire our marketplace listings after a certain timespan elapses. Currently, we send back a 410 status code for our expired pages (404 = we've never heard of this page compared to 410 = we know what you're talking about but it doesn't exist anymore and never will again in the future).

However, our Google Webmaster Tools keeps showing more and more 410 pages under not found errors, and this can't be good. Does it not understand what we're trying to do? What's the appropriate status code for expired listings, expired products on an ecommerce site, etc?

Stick to getting the basics right for v1.0 - as long as I can read and post (including PMs) then I will be happy.

It will be using our API and therefore, largely, read only. Write functionality via our API is currently limited to voting up/down on posts and watching/unwatching articles.

the title, tags, and contents of the posts are evaluated for the most number of words in common.

You people are weird ... 50 + 8

Is it possible to generate a DFP Small Business ad tag that forces a particular creative or line item, that I can use as a backfill ad tag for an ad network?

Both the quality of the actual suggestions as well as the placement?

Dating websites are each than niche topic sites because you don't have to spend extra money trying to reach a very narrow audience. Social media can be huge here: especially facebook. Good luck!! :)

I've never heard of it. In what context have you seen this term used?

Most hackers spoof their IP address, so it's most likely not even accurate, unfortunately.

What do you think of the list of related articles that appear beneath the first post of each thread?

I've never even heard of entourank, to be honest, and I put absolutely no faith in Alexa. Nowadays, I will check out Quantcast rankings for sites that have been Quantified, but other than that, I would recommend that you ask to see Google Analytics data before making a website purchase. Google Analytics will give you social activity now, so you should be able to get the complete picture.

Too bad there's no list of approved applications ;)

That will be implemented in the future if the API feature takes off. Right now there are so few applications to warrant it.

Hi,

You can visit http://www.daniweb.com/members/edit_membership

Not sure if that's what you mean though.

So who here has plans to write something up? :)

I think you need to be 18 to receive an Amazon gift certificate, but I'm not sure.

Campaign submissions will be accepted from now up through the end of May.

Voting will take place in June.

The API code snippet competition is being extended to allow submissions up through the end of August, effectively turning it into a full-length summer competition.

The reason for the very extended deadline is because the competition came right on the heels of the API being released, and I completely didn't realize the amount of time it would take to get acquainted with the building blocks of the API before anything could really be developed.

A pop up, or alert box "Are you blind you donut, can you not see the thread is long dead!" Maybe?

We already have a large notice above the message box, and I don't want to prevent bumping old threads altogether. A larger notice would make no difference.

It's time yet again for a DaniWeb Developer Competition!!

This time the goal is to utilize our new API launched last month.

There's a lot that you can do with our API. Essentially it allows your application (web, desktop, mobile, etc) to tap into DaniWeb's backend. Your own application can use DaniWeb's login mechanism, you can write a native mobile app for DaniWeb, you can create your own completely unique front-end for the site, there really are limitless possibilities.

Unlike previous programming contests on DaniWeb which judged submissions based on style of code, efficiency, etc., this competition will be based on the overall final product.

First Prize: $300 Amazon gift certificate
Second Prize: $125 Amazon gift certificate
Third Prize: $75 Amazon gift certificate

Code submissions should be posted within the code snippet library for their language. Downloadable apps, websites, etc. should be posted within the Show Off Your Projects forum within Business Exchange.

Be sure to tag all submissions with both daniweb-api and daniweb-api-contest-submission

Good luck!!!!! :)

The reason why bumping and necroposting is not a concern of mine is because 99% of our traffic comes directly to individual threads from Google search results. People come in, and land on a forum thread, and want to see everything related right there on that page, regardless of how old or new the post is. They are not going to find their way to the forum listing to find related threads. They're just not.

The thing is that ONLY the regulars visit the forum listing page, which makes up such a negligible percentage of our overall traffic. In this case, I'd rather cater to the 99% than to the 1%.

I have an Office 365 account (Hosted MS Exchange). I deleted a few accidentally created calendars in my MS Exchange account. Everything is synced just fine (with the one remaining calendar) in Outlook 2013, my iPhone, and on the Office 365 website. However, the Windows 8 calendar app refuses to remove the old calendars. I've tried:

• Deleting the account, and recreating it
• Deleting the account, and recreating it with a different username (upon changing my account's username)
• Logging out of Windows and logging back in

Thanks. That really helped me too.

Personally, I appreciate these responses as long as they are not blatant signature spam. But if they're genuine, I usually upvote the person.

To each their own.

OK great.

I think the missing piece to the puzzle that you're missing is if you do it the correct non-hacky OAuth 2.0 way, it should work fine from Android and is totally unrelated to our normal login dialog box. Check out two OAuth demos to see what I mean.