Posts by mattster

I haven't actually built anything with v5 yet to showcase yet, but judging by the release notes, there shouldn't be too much of a problem with rolling with 4.2. Naturally this will change as bugs and security glitches are found...

To me (as a relative newbie to laravel), the docs for v5 look quite impressive. Okay they are a bit wordy with not a great deal of examples, which I can really see as a problem. No idea how it compares to v4.2 in terms of general usage. This dude seems to explain the differences quite well. I particularly like the idea of queues built in, and the templating system looks pretty cool.

Out of interest, what is it that you personally find so different?

As long as England beat France this year then I'm cool aha.

It'll be interesting if Wales can turn things around in their game with Ireland in a couple of weeks.

Well I'm certainly no moderator and I had the same problem a few weeks ago (and was the one that mentioned it to Dani).

Does that mean it's now fixed for normal members too?

If the child theme has been changed or had any work done on it by a person (which it probably has), therefore the changes/work/theme is copyrighted to them.

It will be very clear from the author if you are allowed to use their theme (and if you need to pay for it etc.). If it doesn't clearly say you can use (or pay) for it - copyright DOES apply, so DON'T use it without permission.

If you're not sure, I'm certain the author would prefer you email them and ask.

Well it might be helpful to see your directory structure and upload script..? Common sense.

If you are building a product in PHP on this type of server setup, you need to be sure you're happy with this. Its quite a rare configuration, therefore knowledge, upgrading and support will become difficult. Generally (as @JorgeM points out), ASP.Net is the more common choice for this sort of setup - since the language is designed to work with Windows.

Unline ASP.NET, I don't think you can use the user logged in to the computer to authentacate in your application. (May be wrong)

In responce to the anonymous authentacation question, you CAN login anonymously. According to the manual (http://php.net/manual/en/function.ldap-bind.php), just call the function without the username/password parameters.

PHP queries the AD, yes. For a more thorogh explaination of LDAP, look at this great article.

For general reference, this article is quite useful. It also mentions using the Zend framework, which contains a specialised library for this, which may be much much eaiser to work with overall.

Hi everyone,

I've just found this again, and I think I should introduce another program.

Koala is an amazing tool for compiling LESS/SASS projects into normal CSS, but it also works great for condensing CSS/JS files. If you're into Compass and CoffeeScript (the JS equivalent to LESS), Koala will also compile those.

It has the option to auto-compile, so edit and save your LESS files, then refresh your browser to see the result! Skip the fiddly compiling in PHP!!

Hope this helps!

Your link doesn't work?

I'm finding it quite difficult to understand what you mean, but I'm guessing that you've changed some CSS or something and the site doesn't look the same. If so, this has nothing to do with cookies. Theres clearly a problem in your CSS. What exactly were you changing?

Also, what programs/packages were you using? If you used something with a cache built in server-side, that would need to be cleared before users would see your changes.

There's no way to access a return value from window.print() I'm afraid.

However, IE5+ and Mozilla 6+ both have the window.onafterprint method, which would do exactly what you require (calls a function after printing has taken place). This is achieved in the following way:

function myFunction(){
    ...
}

window.onafterprint = myFunction

It is very important to note, Chrome & Opera (WebKit) and many mobile browsers do not support this method yet - so cross-browser compatability is not going to happen.

Try using the « or « and » or » HTML codes.

These show the double arrows as one character, rather than two < characters - which is a common reason why arrows like this don't match.

ASCII Reference here
Unicode Reference here

Very good advice on storing the data.

How can i switch between questions?

Well that depends on what questions you would like to ask.

You need to come up with a diagram of all the questions you could ask, depending on what answers you get. For instance:

Name? --> Age? --> Country? -(USA)-> State? -->
                            -(UK)->  UKquestions ->

Once we know that much, we can then decide how we're going to write the program. This is completely dependant on what sort of questions and possible answers you have.

Possible method as follows:

Lets say you have a load of pre-defined questions and a selection of answers.

DB.questions:

id - Primary Key
title - Question
previous_id - Parent question
previous_answer - Answer given to parent question

If we used the above diagram + DB structure, and the country question is id = 3. We then have a record in the db like this: 4, "What state are you in?", 3, "USA".

Next, someone enters USA as their country, so you search the DB for a question with a parent_id = 3 (since we've answered the country question), and an previous_answer = "USA". We then use the id & title of the question we find, to provide the question and the parent id for the next question.

Hope that makes sense.

What about park the old domain on your new server?

Here is a link to the OSWASP Top Ten. They provide a few simple steps to securing your application.

Personally (if you haven't already done so), write a function to sanitize something like XSS. Then go through your code (unfortunately line by line) and call the function every time code is outputted.

XSS and code injection are absolute essentials, as these are the most common attack methods. The top ten also highlights other major things you need to check for.

When it comes to protecting against specific things, like writing an anti-XSS function, you'll be able to find a trusted blog from Google to sort you out - protecting against these things isn't too difficult.

Edit:

What @iamthwee is saying is ideally correct, since frameworks are a hell of alot easier to secure. Since you've (presumeably) already written your application.

Also, don't forget to look at Google Fonts!

They make insterting fonts easy, and theres a massive selection of all types of fonts.

Just as a warning that many people forget:

Port forwarding and suchlike is extremely dangerous in terms of security, and should only be done if you know what you are doing.

Generally speaking, hosting companies have specialist ISPs, so there is no need for a standard ISP to deal with such requests. Therefore, firewalls on both the ISP and your side of things are not built for this, and as a result you're prone to attacks.

I can think of very few cases where localised hosting is neccisary, as it is merely asking for problems. Ideally, use a free (or even a paid) web hosting service. For the features they come with, it is far less hastle to use someone else.

Okay thanks @diafol, I will look into Laravel and see what I think.

You would just need to link to all the wordpress main functions.

That sounds like a very intensive job!!

When I say wordpress, I mean the webserver I'm planning to do this on already has things working in subfolers. For instance, we have a magento shop and a few other bits and bobs. The website has a homepage and suchlike in static HTML, and I wanted to liven it up abit and make it slightly easier to use. Unfortunately there are a few too many features I would like to create to be using Wp/Drupal etc., so I'm quite happy to do it in PHP.

Feel better soon happygeek! (I'll be nice, as diafol was trying so hard to make you feel better ;P)

last night, I bought a laptop!!!!!!!!!

Here we go, Dani's bought another $8,000 monster with 64GB of Ram just to show off ;p

Well we can't suggest a logo for you aha! The idea of a logo is an image that is unique to you!

If you wan't a custom logo you would have some graphics software, such as Illustrator or Photoshop - we can help you with those if you're stuck. Maybe sketch something on a bit of paper first, then try drawing it?

With regards to premire, there are loads of good tutorials online - maybe worth googling? I got 1.8M results, looks like there are some good ones at lynda.com, mediacollege.com and layersmagazine.com.

Hi All,

I've used CakePHP for ages and as a framework I really like it and it works nicely. However, it has a nasty snag.

Say you wan't CakePHP to be your main application in the website root (/), and you wanted a Wordpress blog in a subdirectory (/blog/). In order to deal with Cake's routing system, as far as I understand it you have to use .htaccess ignore rules (and specify EVERY directory you want separate), or put wordpress in /app/webroot/, and that works fine.

Is there another way of avoiding this (because it's really too awkward)? Do other frameworks have the same problem? Are there ways round it in other frameworks?

Reason being, I have a potential project to start and I really want to use CakePHP (or at least a framework), and I can't have this awkward snag getting in the way. I just thought I would ask to see if there was a simple answer before I actually started to code anything.

Many thanks :)

Well have you got any PHP experience at all? What have you tried? Effort helps.

But because I'm a pretty nice person I will give you some ideas:

This URL is of a dictionary so would have a fairly simple core structure. You would have a big database, probably with an "id", "term", and "definition" fields. You would then use a PHP script to search through the "term" column and find the word(s) you need.

To anyone who knows moderate-level PHP this is a fairly bog-standard task that doesn't pose too much of a challenge. If you have absolutely no idea how to do this, I suggest you learn some basic PHP. It will make your life alot easier.

Sorry my magic ball is in the shop for repairs, so please at least try to give us a clue to what you're on about.

How do you mean generated? Have you saved a HTML file and you've opened it in a browser and found that? Are you certain it's not in the HTML file? Do you see it in all browsers? ...

Recently I've stumbled on a nice tool that I really quite like, so I thought I'd share it:

Personally, I love the power behind PHP. I find it a very simple to use yet possesses the techniques seen in the more complex desktop applications such as Perl/Python/C/C++/C# etc. PHP has always been restricted to server-side web applications, and unlike the others, cannot run as a desktop application – until now. I would like to share an awesome tool I’ve been using recently…

PHP Nightrain is a cool bit of kit: it fully supports popular frameworks such as Laravel and CakePHP, and will run PHP/HTML/CSS/JS freely on Windows, Mac & Linux.

I would write a pretty little tutorial to show you how to install it (which is btw is incredibly easy), but the Nightrain guys are so good they’ve made platform-specific videos to show you (Windows – Mac). Nightrain comes with PHP 5.5+ built in, and can easily run things like AngularJS and Drupal too (there's a preview on their website). The runtime error reporting is excellent, and shows a really nice breakdown for debugging.

I’ve looked into PHP GTK and things like that, but all have either been abandoned, not cross-platform or aren’t as easy to change between distributions.

The best bit, it’s released under the MIT licence & totally FREE/OPEN SOURCE!

With any luck a few people might have a go and it will be interesting to see what you guys think.

@diafol: have you seen the documentation for CakePHP?

I never really have to search much up because the team have written a nice "book" that takes you through getting started right up to caching, localisation and onsole/shell scripting with nifty little examples. I quite like it (generally I really link the framework), what do you think?

CMS'/frameworks have vast ability differences. We can talk about generalized pros/cons all day, but the biggest influence should be your ability. If you've written a fairly decent PHP application before, with maybe some experience in OOP, frameworks are an option. If you want to keep it simple and problem-free CMS' might be a better choice.

Content management systems can be extremely restrictive, because all you're
essentially exending a much bigger program. You have to work as part of that program, whereas a framework your application is completely indipendant. However, as mentioned already, a framework is a powerful tool - often too powerful if you're after a generic set of features. Personally I love wordpress, which is great because it provides an excellent platform to extend what they have done - and offers a massive range of plugins and themes. If you use a framework, however generic, you've got to do most of it yourself. Sometimes it's simply not worth it - most people would ask "can I do it fairly easily in a CMS?" if no, use a framework.

The thing I like about frameworks over writing everything is the security and efficiency. Often I look at bits of code and see dozens of costly mistakes (even in CMS based applications), and always worry: what if I did that in one of my projects? Imagine the damage if someone hacked one of my programs. For most levels, frameworks offer a degree of safety - if you follow the simple …

Yes sorry, the query string splits it up in the following way:
%:

1. id=944& (full ID string and the end "&" character in the specified URL)
2. 944 (ID value)
3. category=119& (full category string and the end "&" character given in the specified URL)
4. 119 (Category)

You can change it to this: (neater but has trailing &)

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (id=(.+?)&)(category=(.+?)&) [NC]
RewriteRule ^page.asp(.*)$ page.asp?%1%3 [R=301,last]

Or this: (longer, without trailing &)

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (id=(.+?)&)(category=(.+?)&) [NC]
RewriteRule ^page.asp(.*)$ page.asp?id=%2&category=%4 [R=301,last]

Yes the order of the parameters do matter, if they are in the wrong order the query string will not be met, and the URL will not be processed.

No worries, you might find you only need the second line - I can't quite remember and haven't had a chance to test it yet.

BTW, if you're ever stuck with regex, look at this: https://www.regex101.com/

It's a great testing tool for a whole load of languages, but allows you to experiment and walks you through everything that happens during validation. I'm sure you will have seen there is no end of help with Regex' out there if you want something fairly specific.

Rep is greatly appreciated if I helped at all :)

prit is right about the format, because if MySQL has a "date" field, it wants it in yyyy-mm-dd and will reject anything else.

Also, why on earth are you storing
a) a password with no apparent hashing or encryption??? Major security problem.
b) the repeat password? You won't ever look at it after validation so what's the use in storing the same thing twice?

While I'm on security, you have no escaping, so you are vunerable to "SQL injection" - might be worth looking at that.

Finally to note, mysql_query() was deprecated as of PHP 5.5, so you really ought to at least look at PDO or mysqli.

Try this:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (id=(.+?)&)(category=(.+?)&) [NC]
RewriteRule ^page.asp(.*)$ page.asp?%1category=%2 [R=301,last]

No problem, but any recognition goes a long way :)

Ahh right, fair enough - I thought it was just when updating text.

Thats interesting, which versions of IE have you tested (and targeting)?

Well it depends: other major CMS platforms are soo big, purely because there are several commercial aspects of it, such as developing themes and plugins. If you cut out the ability for people to do their own thing, you limit the interest. Besides, without templates everyone would end up with similar-looking websites - too generic.
Maybe keep the main idea for the page builder, but make sure it's easy to extend and develop into themes.

I've just tried it :)

Like the new features on the install. Still no db prefix, but the setup was very nice. Might be worth mentioning you are going to create a new db, as some might already have one set up, using a few apps on one db etc. (something to think about).

Locale is very good, only the dropdown isn't in alphabetical order, so "Europe/London" was tricky to find.

Page Builder
Looks very nice and is really really cool to work with. Might need to make the 'done' alert more attractive, but no biggie. The +/- icons change block width, as if changing relative how the page will be: ie. I have two blocks, one a little one and one big one. They both show in the preview as col-sm-4, irrespective of the width in the builder.

After you upload an image, it doesn't move back to the builder, and I need to refresh the builder to get the image to show in 'Asset Management'. May be this needs some AJAX?

A few little things on the other pages (some mentioned already in this thread), so it might be worth later on going back and improving them. Also worth pointing out the db is still in a latin collation, and do you really need menu and menu2? Surely store the data in the same table or rename menu2 to something a little more relevant to the data contained in the table.

As always @iamthwee, looking very good. …

Yeah I did, the drag and drop thing is excellent, works really well.

Doesn't seem to automatically add new pages, though. I have to remove and add all pagesand then build the menu again.

Maybe you could made provision for custom links as well as pages?

I like it :D

BTW: I am using XAMPP on Win 7, and I dont get any of those problems with the install.

Installer works fine, really nice, easy and simple :)

Two things about the install:

• Apparently you cant have numbers in the database name? You might want to look at this as someone might want to use a number at the end.
• There's also no provision for a prefix
• The main account is automatically named 'admin', are you planning on keeping it this way?

I like the look of the rest of the site, but a few pointers:

• The options/profile links in the header have a top-margin, making them look off centered, is this intentional?
• The timezone is wrong - it's about 4:45 PM and ICMS think's it's 5:45.
• You have a fadeOut on some alerts (I'm seeing the 'create page'), which fade the element so it isn't visible, but doesn't actually delete the alert (so its still clickable) or move the content up.
• A 100x100 icon is very large for each page/post? Would look pretty cluttered on a site with lots of pages.
• Should "Blog Name" be the heading for a post title field?
• Do I have to rename the site if I wan't to upload a logo? You're supposedly storing them in the DB as two seperate columns "site" and "blog"??? Guessing you've not got to this bit yet ;)

I really like the look of your single blog post! I'll take the time to look at it more later, maybe I will end up giving you a hand on it ;P

Good luck, looks great so …

You have the header div inside the head tag: you can't do this. It will mess up the way your page looks.

Take a look here. <head> doesn't mean the header of your page, it's something completely different.

You need your style tag inside the head tag (bad practice to have it anywhere else).

You need all divs/layout elements inside the body tag.

Does that make sense at all?

dumbo question moment

So was it something stupid like guessing her passwords to get into only her accounts on both networks? or is there a more complicated way they can break in?

Your link is to the wrong location, working link here

Why on earth did you post your code in the first place if you're not allowed?

You need to flag it to a moderator, but as far as I'm aware it's not common practice at all to be deleting stuff.

No, MySQL does not create new rows unless you tell it to.

Either you are using the wrong query to get your data or something is seriously wrong with your installation (unlikely).

Can you show an example of a query you're using and how it affects the db?

This is because you've got your head and body tags in a muddle:

<html>
<head>

    Page information goes in the head, like a title, favicon and styles

    <style type="text/css">
        ...
    </style>    
</head>
<body>

    All visible page content. All div tags (or any HTML that the user is going to physically see) should be in here, for instance

    <div class="header">
        ...
    </div>
    ...
</body>
</html>

Put your style tag in the <head> and your divs/headers in the <body> and it should solve your problem.

I downloaded it and renamed the directory, and ran the program. I got exactly the same error as @diafol, so after I thought if it try to set the db up manually, I might at least get to look at everything else.

I agree though, it makes things unnecessarily complicated. What if I wanted to rename it to something of my choice? or extract it all into a root directry? There's no way you could limit what the root folder should be called.

It's personal choice.

You can go to facebook.com/index.php and to google.co.uk/imghp. Both respectable sites that obviously rank very highly on search engines. To be honest, the world would've taken a nasty turn if bots were going to penalise you for something so small. Social media interaction, quality of code/content, up-to-date contact, number of visitors, advertising, webmaster tools (like robots.txt & sitemap.xml) all matter much MUCH more.

I doubt you will be removed off the top spot for not sorting out your extensions, as it is soo common to remove them.

As I say, it's you deciding if they look nicer (which I think they do), and if they're easy for people to remember. To a complete tech noob, "yoursite.com/offers" is undoubtedly easier than "yoursite.com/offers.html". It's one of these cosmetic things, and hardly ever have any practical pros/cons either way.

Really I think it's up to you to decide if it's worth the time fiddling about to make some of your URLs a little easier to remember.

I've taken a quick look at the github .zip file, and I thought I'd have a play.

I never got the one-click install, instead all I got was a database error (wanting me to setup the DB config files). Even if I pointed it to a database, it runs streight to "installer/login" and spits out an error when it can't find the users table. So that's as far as I got with it really...

Hopefully you're aware of this?

Unfortunately I have a few professional projects at the moment, so that is a bit of a bummer...
With any luck I'll be able to help out later on :)

If you don't want to open the persons email client, the only way is serverside scripting (PHP/ASP) once the form is submitted.

In php, you just use the mail function: http://php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php

You can get this information in the javascript screen object.

Then you can apply CSS classes from there.

I am not invincible. I cannot reply to everyone instantly, because I have an extremely busy social life. Sorry that I couldn't respond to this within 24 hours.

Joke over, I'll stop lying.

If it's urgent, you're in the wrong place. If not, learn patience.

You haven't even asked a question: what is your problem? I assume you want a dropdown which changes the value of a cell in the db. So what's not working for you? Error messages?

Looks really good I have to say, and I'll follow the development closely.

Have you thought yet about the business element yet? I really don't wan't to knock your project because it's awesome - but you are entering a very tough area. Wordpress for instance, it loaded with features and has a very powerful platform for developers to customise however they want. Have you thought ways you're gonna kick their butts yet?

And btw, I have often found wordpress lacks user management controls - so if you could look at permissions for users and involving a logged-in community (even with pages/content permissions) you're on to something. Almost like phpBB/IPB usergroups, with certain pages/posts/forums allocated to certain users/groups.

If you're planning on releasing all those features, it may heavier/more complex than existing apps, so what about a customiseable download, like a simplified version of the Bootstrap customiser?

Are you thinking of privately licencing it or using one of the open source licences?

I have to say I'm not as much use as others with the PHP, but I can help with the marketing/business/design/CSSy jQuery stuff if you ever need :)

Good luck guys, I'm sure this will work very very well if you get it right!

I've cleared the cache folder and set those values to 0 in the db - still the same

Well for a start you need to specify the WHERE bit in youur query:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM wp_uvmj_participants_database WHERE zip='abcd123' AND specialty='abc123'", $db);

You will also need to put quote marks here:

echo $row['company']."";

While we're here, there are slightly neater ways of writing this:

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
    echo "<h2>".$row['company']."</h2>";
    echo "<p>".$row['first_name']." - ".$row['specialty']."</p>";
    echo "<p>".$row['sub_category']."</p>";
    echo "<p>".$row['area']."</p>";
    echo "<p>".$row['photo']."</p>";
    echo "<p>".$row['bio']."</p>";
}

Even still you should use OOP/classes and probably PDO/mysqli - but as a beginner it doesn't make too much difference ;)

Hi All,

I am working with a Magento (v1.8.1) site, which until a week or so ago, was working perfectly. I am using the SM_AMAZ theme, and have no plugins which could interfeare with performance.

Everything will be fine, then something in the admin panel will get changed, and the entire site will go down. By 'go down', I mean Magento serves no HTML output whatsoever. Just a blank file. I have pestered the hosting firm to provide me with a stable backup, and within an hour the site was facing the same problem. So I compared cool with broken and found all of the file changes were in the 'cache' folder.

Being clever, I wrote a PHP class that would copy+replace the cache files from the working directory to the broken one - which worked like a dream. Upon closer inspection, Magento seems to be caching the wrong files or overwriting the working chache every time it gets refreshed (every time I change a setting). I can keep solving this by running my little patch every time I change something and that works, but solves nothing.

So then I tried to disable caching layout files (as these seem to be causing the problem), but when I try to disable it, it refreshes AS it disables it. So I use my patch, which makes the cache 'Invalid', so it must re-cache again.

Is there a way to plant the old files in and disable the cache from refreshing in the …

So let me get this streight:

You have a wordpress site (using a theme) that is hosted with GoDaddy. You have Dreamweaver on your PC, and you want to edit the template files locally and have them sync'd with the ones online? or edit the ones online directly?

It sounds like you're basically describing FTP. I'm gonna guess this is what you mean, but shout if not. If you use something like FileZilla, you can have a local directory (on your PC) linked with the one online. Any changes to the local one and everything on the online one gets changed. It's really easy to setup and there will definitely be good tutorials for that online.

HOWEVER. If you do anything where you're casually editing files that are linked in any way to the live ones (on your WP site), there is every change you might bust something - problem. Personally, I would advise using a XAMPP or suchlike and develop your system locally. This is an 'isolated development environment', so if you bugger everything up the only person that gets peed off is you (and not your entire user audience).

In short, if I understand correctly what you want out of dreamweaver, FileZilla can handle it. But I would advise local testing and just upload the lot when you're done.

Managing your own email server is understandably a nightmare, but have you ever looked at MS Exchange Server? It's about £2.50/user/month+ VAT, so it's much cheaper. They also boast the following:

Work smarter, anywhere, with hosted email for business.
* Get business email, calendar, and contacts on your PC, phone, and web browser.
* Run email on Microsoft globally redundant servers.
* Stay protected by anti-malware and anti-spam filters and supported by 24/7, IT-level phone support.

Honestly it comes with a sheadload of features and full support, and even their pro version (with unlimited storage, voice mail and data loss protection) is £5/month/user.

Not a bad shout I dont think...

Personally I'd go with a web based system if you're on a budget or if it's short term. However, if you have 30 employees in a growing IT company - it might be worth the cost - far more sustainable and cheaper in the long run. Other than MS/Google, notable providers are Zoho (particularly good) & Rackspace.

It really comes down to, is it worth pushing the boat out to meet your needs long term (and go for plesk/own email server/Full MS Exchange Server) or stick to a much cheaper web based client (i.e. Exchange/Gmail/Zoho/Rackspace).

Hope this helps :)

Yup, you need a wrapper and some CSS magic.

Try something like this:

<style>
    .google-maps {
        position: relative;
        padding-bottom: 75%; // This is the aspect ratio
        height: 0;
        overflow: hidden;
    }
    .google-maps iframe {
        position: absolute;
        top: 0;
        left: 0;
        width: 100% !important;
        height: 100% !important;
    }
</style>

<div class="google-maps">
    <iframe src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m14!1m12!1m3!1d7098.94326104394!2d78.0430654485247!3d27.172909818538997!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!5e0!3m2!1sen!2s!4v1385710909804" width="600" height="450" frameborder="0" style="border:0"></iframe>
</div>

(jsFiddle demo)