Posts by chrishea

I guess that the first question to ask is why you want to do this. Are you doing it because you have a business need that you can't find an app for; or, is it because you believe that there is a market for whatever it is that you will develop?

If it is because you have a business need, then you should define your requirement in some detail and then try to find an existing app that does most of what you need. You may need some help to do the research. Developing something from scratch should be the last resort.

If you think that there is a business opportunity then you should still start with the first step because you need to understand the market and the competition. You may find that someone has already developed something that is pretty close to what you are thinking of. If so, what is the edge that your app would have? If you truly came up with something innovative, how much time and effort would it take for the competition to add the same feature(s)? It seems that it would be foolhardy to jump into a business that you know nothing about and expect that you can get it right and compete with experienced people/companies who do know what they are doing.

Development isn't cheap, not just because of the hourly rate but because of the significant number of hours that it takes to develop anything meaningful. Your first challenge would …

Cobol and RPG.

If you are using a Linux server, you can set the access to the folder to 400 to limit it to reading by the system.

The previous post shows how many programs handle translation between different languages but it is still basically assuming the standard character set. In this case, you need to be able to encode the web page to display Hindi characters. That is beyond the normal translation approach.

Have a look at the link below as a starting point:
Click Here

You can also look at a page that has Hindi characters and see how the text is encoded. Here is an example:
Click Here

You want to hire the best people you can find and that could result in having many people who are technically stronger than you are. If you are used to being the leader of the pack based on being the best developer, that may make you pretty uncomfortable. Strong technical people may not provide a lot of respect to others above them in the chain in the command that they consider to be their technical inferiors (at least initially). People are usually not good at everything so it is usually a case of complementary skills between the manager and the employee. The manager / team leader (in this case you) needs to bring strong people and process skills to the table. Strong technical people are often weaker in these areas. You need to be smart enough and wise enough to know when the technical people need to be challenged on what they are doing and when they should be left alone to get it done.

I've been in that situation and it isn't easy. If your skills are more technical than managerial, the issue won't be so much the people you are hiring as your ability to rise to the demanads of the managerial position. Getting some management training and having an experienced manager that you can go to for advice will probably help.

You can do that using the standard PHP mail function as well. It's up to you to act ethically. PHP won't force you to do it.

"But I have a doubt, is there any illegal or unethical in the method that you have provided?"

Why would it be illegal or unethical. It's open source code.

You can build your own PHP site on a multi-domain linux server as well. You can use the standard PHP mail function or you can use a library module that makes it even easier. If you have a specific question or concern, then you need to clarify what it is. Otherwise, you need to develop some code and come back if you are having trouble making it work.

I use a module called Libmail to send emails. There are probably more sophisticated mail modules but this one works for me. You can find it here.

I used HTML2PDF (Click Here) quite successfully in the past. The main limitation is that you need to have properly constructed HTML. I don't know if what you provided above was intentionally just a series of fragments but it doesn't have <head> or <body> statements and that would probably give it a problem.

If it is just a set sequence, why not save the page name each time in a session variable and check that variable on entry to the next page.

Not all of the flip books require images. This one will take text:

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You can generate the jquery code and insert the text in your PHP module. Using a PDF for the input complicates it. The simple approach would be to use text files instead (convert to text from PDF on your local machine if necessary). If automating the extraction of text from the PDF is a requirement then you'll have to look into facilities that can do that. I'd start with Zend as they have some PDF conversion modules.

If this is an innocent question "...My friend suggested that I should try parcelbound.com" then why do you show a link to this company in your signature. Looks like spam.

I wrote a similar type of licensing module to use in a PC application. It (remotely) executed a php module on my server every time it started up. It passed various info about the PC on which the program was running as well as the license info. The PHP program recorded the info in a database. I made it possible to mark a particular copy of a the program as not authorized, in which case it would return an appropriate code to the program and the program would then terminate with a message. I did some testing but it has not yet been implemented in any programs that are being distrinuted / sold.

You could do something similar to do license checking for a php system. You can get various info using $_SERVER(...). The program that is to be licensed needs to be converted to byte-code (ie using Ioncube or Zend). Otherwise, anyone with even limited knowledge of php could disable it. The license code needs to have a timer so if it doesn't get a response from the licensing program on your server, it can carry on anyway. I suggest that the code be very conservative and avoid cutting anyone off arbitrarily. That would be a sure way to make your customers unhappy if something went wrong and it disabled a licensed copy.

My code isn't available at this time but it isn't difficult to develop. Best of luck.

Far from upholding the rights of the citizens, as it claims to do, the NRA are quashing public debate and research. How's that for irony?

Since the NRA gets a lot of funding from the Arms Industry, it isn't surprising that they would support whatever is in the interests of their backers. This (mis)use of Corporate power and money happens to one degree or another in all kinds of industries where the interests of the Companies and the interests of the public may be quite different. This happened with cigarettes, it's happening with GMO foods and it's happening in many other domains. These are like cancers in our society but as long as Companies only have a responsibility to their shareholders and use whatever means is necessary to increase their profits (including the subversion of legislators), it's not likely to change very much. It must be very lonely to be a legislator with integrity who wants to fight some of these abuses but ends up fighting his own collegues (who get funding from the Companies) and the Companies themselves who can spend big bucks to eliminate a threat to their profitability. The same probably applies to journalists who work for newspapers owned by conglomorates and dependent on dwindling advertising from large companies.

Some change is possible but it takes a long time and a lot of effort to make small gains. Cigarettes are gradually becoming more restricted and smoking isn't quite as popular as it once was but …

Yes but people waste their time responding to inane questions. Maybe they are just looking for any way to increase their number of posts.

This seems rather troll-like:
* First Post
* Hopelessly open-ended question with no real connection to Daniweb
* Lists location as "Washington" but shows company with Autralian web site

I tried it on your site and one thing that doesn't make sense to me is that the screen display changes when you click the button to download the xls file. My understanding using a Header like this is that it is all or nothing. You can't display screen output and create an output file in the same execution of a module. When I use a Header like this, the screen doesn't change and the only thing that happens is that the file is downloaded. If you have any output prior to the Header statement you get errors and the Header doesn't work. If it is working in your Wamp environment, then I presume that you don't see any change in the screen display when you execute it there. If that is the case, then the logical conclusion is that Yahoo has some impact on this. It appears that the Header statement isn't being acted on so the output is still going to the screen. 'Header' is a PHP function so there is a possibility that it isn't working or hs been disabled on the Yahoo server. Suggest that you talk to their support people.

Your wording is a bit confusing but it does seem that you're trying to export to a .xls file. The code that I use (that works) is:

        header("Content-type: application/msworks");
        header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$dfw_filename");
        header("Pragma: no-cache");
        header("Expires: 0");
        print "$dfw_header\n$dfw_data";

This is included in my desktop_file_write module that you can download at:
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You have to take online ratings with a grain of salt but I looked at this one and the ratings for Media Temple seemed rather mixed. I have seen a lot of user concerns with GoDaddy. There are many hosting options and probably many that would be better than either of these (including the one that I use).

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Perhaps you have misinterpreted the word "help". Help in this context is mostly advice and sometimes ideas or just comments. The advice may include some code but this isn't a free version of Odesk or Elance. You are basically asking for development resources to do work for you (help with your website, build a licensing system...). A promise of some kind of payment in the future isn't worth much so you are really looking for people with skills and knowledge that you are lacking to spend their time doing work for you for free. People on these forums can come up with their own projects so they aren't highly motivated to build/modify someone else's project for them. They may be willing to provide coding advice to those who post code that isn't working properly but they aren't checking the forums hourly in the hope that someone will ask them to develop something for them.

If you have no money to offer, then the development is probably going to be up to you. If you run into problems, then you can post (a small amount of) code and ask for some help. On the other hand, there are free website templates out there that are quite usable and don't require a lot of custom work. A licensing system probably isn't something that you want to be building yourself anyway (or paying someone else to build). If your code is worth protecting and licensing, then it's worth the investment in a proper …

You could buy a couple of cheap third party cartridges to try it but why bother? The price of a new printer with ink cartidges is often the same or less than you'll pay for a couple of replacement cartridges.

I don't have a specific answer for you but you may want to look at this document about caching (including options and issues). As a general rule, you don't want to force your whole site to be reloaded every time because there are probably significant parts that don't change very often. Caches are used to speed everything up, including the loading of your site. There are strategies available for forcing specific parts to be reloaded, so some version of that may work for you.

I have never used a server that uses Plesk but let's just deal with it logically:

• Plesk is a control panel facility. To install an application, you may not need to use Plesk at all. Installing a PHP application usually involves uploading the code to the right directory on the server (using FTP) and setting up the config file. If you need help to understand how to get an application installed, you should start with your Hosting Service Support people.
• If you want to use PHPList, then you will probably need to adapt to it (not the reverse) unless you have the expertise to make changes and if it is important enough to create a non-standard copy of the system (impacting support and upgrades). Most of these systems provide the ability to upload a 'customer' file (usually from a spreadsheet, csv or text file). You will probably need to dump your existing files to a spreadsheet and you may need to do a bit of reorganizing of the fields.
• If you have a good web host with good quality facilities, you can probably send a lot more than 100 emails per hour. That doesn't change the work you need to do but it does seem like a very low expectation.

You have the option of building your own program to generate emails. If your requirements are relatively simple, it isn't all that difficult (and you can incorporate your exisitng database). You need to decide if that makes more …

First of all, if you are new to programming / scripting, you will need to take some (significant) time to do some learning before you'll be able to put together a solution. There are many sites that have tutorials (w3schools.com is one) but first you will need to figure out what the solution requires (so you know what to learn). If you were going to do this manually, then changing the html for the site to include the data may make sense. Automating the generation of the html to include the data is possible but probably isn't the best way to do it. You could use Autoit to do it if you are really determined to do it that way. Using PHP and MySQL to store the data into a database and then display it from there makes more sense. In that case, you would probably be interested in http://phpexcel.codeplex.com/. That approach may be overkill if all you really want is to implement something relatively quickly to take care of this (without spending a lot of time learning to program).

Another approach would be to look for some open-source software that provides the functions that you need. That would be a lot better than trying to build something from scratch, if you can find something appropriate. sourceforge.net and hotscripts.com are two places that you could look.

Good luck.

First you should provide a bit of detail on how you are trying to run it. To run PHP code, you need a server. Do you have a local test server (like WAMP) that you are using. If not, there are many available that you can download and install.

The first step is to become a little less clueless and read the recent post on
"Read This Before Posting a Question"

If you had done that, you would know how to get the answer to your own question. You could have done a web search and found pages like this one that provide a basic outline of what you need to do. That might lead to further questions and you can probably find the answers to those by doing an online search as well.

I had many years of programming experience (but no real web experience) and it probably took me about a year before I started to feel reasonably comfortable working with PHP and everything that goes with it. I spent quite a bit of time working on it (but not full time). I wasn't an expert by any means at the end of the first year.

I think that you still need to consider your direction. I have provided examples below of a few open source systems (ie free) that provide order entry (and in two out of the three, a lot more). If you do a bit of searching, you'll probably find others as well. Once you get enough skill and experience, then you would have to build something as good or better than these and find a market for it in competition with free options. Unless all of the existing options are really deficient, does the world need another order entry system? You can have these systems (and others) for free today. That's more of an opportunity than a problem since you can save yourself the extended time it would take to build one of these and start flogging it to potential customers almost immediately. Not only does that save you (most of) the learning and development time but it also allows you to find out relatively quickly if there really is really a business opportunity doing this or not. Obviously, there would still be some start-up time to learn …

Before you put your family's future on the line, you need to take a very hard look at the software business, your competition and the potential for success.

The reality is that there are many, many, many developers (in the millions) and many of them are experienced and very good. Quite a few have developed some sort of software product but I doubt that a high percentage are making a living from their product. Many of these products are open source. Developers have tried to make money on open source products by selling support and other add-ons but other than a small % at the top end, I don't think many are making money on open source. On the web side of the business, many people have come up with ideas for web services, some have had some successes, found venture capital and/or managed to sell the business for big $. For every person who has achieved this, there are many who have tried and failed. The other thing to consider is that the software business is now relatively mature. There are applications available for almost every conceivable need and in most cases, there are many choices. The buzz around Silicon Valley and the release of new exciting applications is mostly in the past. There is still some buzz around some new web services and some Iphone or Android apps but again the number that become successful and make good money is still a small percentage.

Thus, I don't think …

If I interpret what you're saying, you want to run a successful web development business but to do that you feel that you need more hands-on technical knowledge. You feel that you can't successfully hire and manage others to do the work without it. Even though you might enjoy doing this sort of work yourself, managing it successfully is your primary goal, not doing it. That's my interpretation so if that's not what you meant, please clarify.

It would seem that you are now dependent on this business to make a living so unless you have a large bank account that can keep you afloat for an extended period, you have to put some priority on getting work and somehow getting projects completed. That makes the learning a part-time activity at best. With IT projects, everyone wants it yesterday so that can result in long hours and pretty intensive work so it may not leave that much time to learn. The learning part itself takes time even in the best of circumstances. It's measured in months and years so it depends to some degree on the level of expertise that you need to acquire. If you want to be the lead designer and developer then it's a long path to have the expertise to do major projects.

The first thing that came to mind when I read your post is that you need a partner/employee who already has the technical knowledge but maybe not the business expertise. That would kill …

You haven't provided a lot of detail but maybe they should be using a content management system (e.g. Wordpress) instead of building with Dreamweaver. If they are committed to using Dreamweaver then they should probably get some training. I don't think that they need programming skills to use Dreamweaver but they do need to understand how to use it. Even for a content management system, some initial training may be required if they aren't very technically literate.

I do windows desktop development as well as web development. At one time I worked on IBM mainframes. If you enjoy designing and programming then the essentials are the same no matter where you apply them. If you really enjoy programming then you'll probably be doing it on your own time not just when someone is paying you to do it. I'm sure that there are programmers out there who strictly do it as a job and once they go home they don't want anything to do with it. That probably works for a lot of people but those who really love to program don't draw that line.

Anyone who is interested in becoming a professional (paid) programmer has all kinds of opportunities to develop their skills on their own using all of the free resources available through the internet. You can do good work on some open source software (on your own or by joining a team) and that can go on your resume as well. If you don't want to do web development and you want to work on the desktop or on Android or iPhones or something else, it's all out there and the tools are generally available for free. You don't need to wait for someone to hire you to do it. If you have an immediate opportunity as a technical writer, then that could give you an entry point into a company and it puts food on the table. Good luck.

You seem to have some internal conflict on whether you want to program or not. First you say "...persue my old dream, programming..." and then later you say "...I don't really like web development...". Is programming the dream or is the dream to get a stable, well-paying job (ie a career). If you spent the last five years not programming, then I suspect that it isn't something that you love to do and never will be. If that is the case, then you'll probably never be really good at it and you'll end up wishing that you had done something else.

There are other computer-related careers besides programming. There are lots of people in Testing, Operations, Networks, Facilities and other related fields. It may be that one of those would appeal to you more than programming. If you really want to work in something that is computer-related, then you may want to investigate the other possibilities. Your first challenge (as mentioned in the previous response) is to get an entry point into a company. You might need to take a job as a computer operator or help desk person just to get in the door. That would probably give you the opportunity to get a closer look at the other jobs available and talk to people doing them. After putting in sufficient time at the "starting point" you could potentially apply internally for jobs in other areas that interest you.

Ideally, you want to do something that you love to …

The tel: protocol isn't always installed. Another alternative is callto: On my system, this connects to Skype to handle the call. For a business installation, you may want to use another service provider instead of Skype. Whatever you do, you will have to pay for the service.

I find that USB sometimes stops recognizing new devices after my machine has been running for a while. I don't think that it has ever been a problem after a fresh reboot. This isn't normal behaviour but it hasn't bothered me enough yet to try to resolve it. In your case, I suggest that you try it after a reboot and see what happens. If that consistently works then it provides more info and a way to get around it until you get a better resolution.

[I am using Win 7 on a 64 bit machine.]

Apparently, you can trademark a color even though it is difficult.
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Cadbury Purple (Pantone 2865c) Click Here

Darker than Dani-Purple.

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This may be helpful with respect to the problem of aligning it correctly.
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You probably need some javascript but even then, you won't be printing directly. You'll need to respond to a print dialog box:
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Click and learn!

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Have a look at:
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html2PDF generally works well, except when your html isn't completely valid (ie when you've taken a short cut with closing tags missing). That is what "les balises ne sont pas fermes" means (ie tags are not closed). Go through the html and add closing tags where they are missing and it should work ok.

les balises ne sont pas ferm

Access is mostly a local (PC) database but it is apparently possible to use it online. I have never done that myself but this post talks to it:
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It isn't easy to find good concise info on this topic so I really appreciate your feedback. Your suggested approach worked fine. I learned something useful! Thanks.

I'm not very familiar with Javascript or Regex but I built a script that is working well with one small flaw in the Regex part. What I want to do is to find commas following alpa-numeric characters (actually almost anything other than a double quote) and then replace the comma with a ~. There are other commas that need to stay as they are so it isn't a simple matter of replacing all commas.

The Regex string that I have at this point is:
/[a-z|0-9]\,/g,"~"

The problem with it is that it replaces the last character in the string as well as the comma. Is there way to change this so it will find the alpha-numeric character followed by the comma but only replace the comma? If not, do I need a loop to find the match and then do a selective replacement (sample code would help if you have some).

From the MySSQL documentation:
The Access denied error message tells you who you are trying to log in as, the client host from which you are trying to connect, and whether you were using a password. Normally, you should have one row in the user table that exactly matches the host name and user name that were given in the error message. For example, if you get an error message that contains using password: NO, it means that you tried to log in without a password.

Servers are normally named "localhost" (including, but not limited to your local test server).

You could try removing the quotes around the variables on line 18. This may cause a problem with your other mysql statements as well.

Your question led me to download a copy and try it. Easy to set up and use. Seems like a plaything for math and physics students.

For PDF output, I prefer to get it right on the screen and then use HTML2PDF to produce the file. It uses TCPDF behind the scenes but the interface is very simple. The main requirement is that the html to produce the output has to be proper (i.e. closing tags for everything) with no shortcuts.

I presume in your post you meant 3-up labels (not 30).

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I use this for importing. With respect to modifying it in PHP, that's just some standard code that you'll have to write. If the modifications are on a record-by-record basis, then you just populate the form with values from the DB and save the result. If you want to display multiple records in a spreadsheet-like grid, then you should look into JQuery code that can do that.

I don't intend to debug your code but I can tell you that the code that I sent you the link for will sort a two-dimensional array. When I originially put it together, I spent a lot of time researching how to do it. This solution was based on what I found. If you don't find it helpful then I obviously don't understand your problem. That's all I have for you so good luck.