Codes Pack

Copying a MySQL row to another table

2010-04-07T22:37:00.000-07:00

My suggestion is to do the following three steps when you need to change
an account name:

1. Use UPDATE to change the account name in settings_a, even if though
changes the first letter so the account doesn't belong in that table
anymore.

UPDATE settings_a SET account = 'bishop' WHERE account = 'ash';

2. Copy the record to the correct table, according to the first letter.
Use INSERT without specifying the columns, and SELECT * without
specifying the columns. If the number, type, and order of the columns
in both tables match, it _should_ work.

INSERT INTO settings_b
SELECT * FROM settings_a WHERE account = 'bishop';

3. Remove the old record from the old table.

DELETE FROM settings_a WHERE account = 'bishop';

Export from MySQL to CSV

2010-04-07T22:34:00.001-07:00

Using command line tools to export data from a MySQL database into a CSV file is quite easy. Here's how:
mysql -uexampleuser -pletmein exampledb -B -e "select * from \`person\`;" | sed 's/\t/","/g;s/^/"/;s/$/"/;s/\n//g' > filename.csv
Here is some sample output of the above:
"id","username","group","password"
"1","tux","admin","5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99"
"2","tlugian","admin","5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99"
"3","saiyuki","admin","5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99"
"4","fred","staff","5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99"
"5","barney","staff","5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99"
"6","wilma","admin","5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99"
And now for the explanation:
Starting with the MySQL command. I wont explain the -u and -p options they are straight forward (if in doubt man mysql). The -B option will delimit the data using tabs and each row will appear on a new line. The -e option denotes the command to run once you have logged into the database. In this case we are using a simple SELECT statement.
Onto sed. The command used here contains three seperate sed scripts:
s/\t/","/g;s/^/"/        <--- this will search and replace all occurences of 'tabs' and replace them with a ",".
;s/$/"/;    <--- This will place a " at the start of the line.
s/\n//g    <---- This will place a " at the end of the line.
After running the result set through sed we redirect the output to a file with a .csv extension.
Regards, Bawdo2001

Installing rar and unrar programs in Linux or Unix

2010-02-15T22:10:00.000-08:00

I recently notice that I got some visitors bump in this coder's talk blog, searching for How to create and extract rar files in linux and I do remember that I didn't put on how to install rar and unrar program in other distributions of linux. I'm so sorry, my mistake.

However, I am a linux supporter and I don't want to make you upset while bumping into this blog and didn't really get what you need. So, here is how to install rar and unrar on other linux distributions...

Under Debian Linux, you can use the same apt-get method as follows to install unrar program:

$ apt-get install unrar

If you are using Fedora core Linux then use yum command as follows:

$ yum install unrar

If you are using FreeBSD, you can use:

$ pkg_add -v -r unrar

If any of above, methods is not working, you can download binary package from official rarlab site and choose the right package for your machine... for example, i chose the latest (by the time i write this post):

$ cd /tmp

$ wget http://www.rarlab.com/rar/rarlinux-3.7.1.tar.gz

then untar the file:

$ tar -zxvf rarlinux-3.7.1.tar.gz

Both rar and unrar commands are located in rar sub-directory. Just go to rar directory:

$ cd rar

$ ./unrar

Now copy rar and unrar to /bin directory:

$ cp rar unrar /bin

Then you can use the same method on creating and extracting rar files in linux in my previous post.

Another thing to add, you can also test the integrity of archive, with this command:

$ unrar t filename.rar

or list the files inside the rar file using this command:

$ unrar l filename.rar

that's it... hope it helps...

communicating-with-threads-in-php

2009-12-30T01:14:00.001-08:00

Earlier this week, I suggested PHP could be multithreaded. The sample I provided was very simple and at least one reader quickly wondered how to communicate with threads.
If you haven’t already, take a look at part 1 to get some basic information about threads in PHP.
It took a bit longer to get that part working that simple threads, but as of now, I have a functional prototype of an HVAC thread.

HVAC.php

require "ThreadInstance.php";
class HVAC extends ThreadInstance {
        var $currentTemp;
        var $heaterOn;
        var $acOn;
        var $toggleOn;
        function HVAC () {
                $this->setup();
                $this->currentTemp = 32;
                $this->heaterOn = false;
                $this->acOn = false;
                $this->toggleOn = 70;
        }
        function runHeater() {
                $this->heaterOn = true;
                $this->acOn = false;
        }
        function runAc() {
                $this->heaterOn = false;
                $this->acOn = true;
        }
        function process() {
                switch (true) {
                        case ($this->heaterOn):
                                return $this->processHeater();
                        case ($this->acOn):
                                return $this->processAc();
                }
        }
        function processHeater() {
                if ($this->currentTemp < $this->toggleOn) {
                        $this->currentTemp++;
                }
        }
        function processAc() {
                if ($this->currentTemp > $this->toggleOn) {
                        $this->currentTemp–;
                }
        }
        function apploop($command) {
                $this->process();
                switch ($command) {
                        case “”:
                                // noop
                                return;
                        case “start heater”:
                                $this->runHeater();
                                $this->response (”ok”, NULL);
                                return;
                        case “start ac”:
                                $this->runAc();
                                $this->response(”ok”, NULL);
                                return;
                        case “get current temp”:
                                $this->response (”ok”, $this->currentTemp);
                                return;
                        case “set temp”:
                                $temp = intval($this->getLine(true));
                                if ($temp) {
                                        $this->toggleOn = $temp;
                                        $this->response (”ok”, NULL);
                                } else {
                                        $this->response (”err”, “not a number”);
                                }
                                return;
                        case “quit”:
                                exit;
                        default:
                                $this->response (”err”, “bad request - $command”);
                                return;
                }
        }
}
$hvac = new HVAC();
do {
        sleep (1);
        $hvac->apploop($hvac->getCommand());
} while (true);

ThreadInstance.php

set_time_limit (0);
require "ThreadUtility.php";
class ThreadInstance {
        var $stdin;
        var $commandbuffer;
        var $stdout;
        function setup() {
                $this->stdin = fopen ("php://stdin", "r");
                $this->stderr = fopen ("php://stderr", "w");
                stream_set_blocking ($this->stdin, false);
                $this->commandbuffer = (array)NULL;
                $this->outbuffer = "";
        }
        function getCommand() {
                $command = fgets ($this->stdin, 1024);
                $this->commandbuffer[] = $command;

                $command = array_shift ($this->commandbuffer);
                return trim($command);
        }
        function response ($status, $data) {
                response ($status, $data);
        }
        function getLine ($wait = false) {
                if ($wait) {
                        $buffer = "";
                        while (!strlen($buffer)) {
                                $buffer .= fgets ($this->stdin, 1024);
                        }
                } else {
                        $buffer = fgets ($this->stdin, 1024);
                }
                return trim($buffer);
        }
        function debug ($text) {
                fwrite ($this->stderr, $text);
        }
}

ThreadUtility.php

function response ($status, $response) {
        echo $status . "\n";
        echo base64_encode(serialize($response)), "\n";
}
function processresponse ($string) {
        $parts = explode ("\n", $string);
        $status = $parts[0];
        $data = unserialize (base64_decode ($parts[1]));
        return array ("status" => $status, "data" => $data);
}

Thread.php

require "ThreadUtility.php";
class Thread {
        var $pref ;
        var $pipes;
        var $pid;
        var $stdout;
        function Thread() {
                $this->pref = 0;
                $this->stdout = "";
                $this->pipes = (array)NULL;
        }
        function Create ($url) {
                $t = new Thread;
                $descriptor = array (0 => array ("pipe", "r"), 1 => array ("pipe", "w"), 2 => array ("pipe", "w"));
                $t->pref = proc_open ("php -q $url ", $descriptor, $t->pipes);
                stream_set_blocking ($t->pipes[1], 0);
                stream_set_blocking ($t->pipes[2], 0);
                usleep (10);
                return $t;
        }
        function isActive () {
                $this->stdout .= $this->listen();
                $f = stream_get_meta_data ($this->pipes[1]);
                return !$f["eof"];
        }
        function close () {
                $this->tell("quit");
                $r = proc_close ($this->pref);
                $this->pref = NULL;
                return $r;
        }
        function tell ($thought) {
                fwrite ($this->pipes[0], $thought . "\n");
                $response = "";
                do {
                        $response = $this->listen();
                } while ($response == "");
                return processresponse ($response);
        }
        function listen () {
                $buffer = $this->stdout;
                $this->stdout = "";
                while ($r = fgets ($this->pipes[1], 1024)) {
                        $buffer .= $r;
                }
                return $buffer;
        }
        function getError () {
                $buffer = "";
                while ($r = fgets ($this->pipes[2], 1024)) {
                        $buffer .= $r;
                }
                return $buffer;
        }
}

hvac.php

set_time_limit(0);
include "Thread.php";
$tHVAC = Thread::create("HVAC.php");
$r = $tHVAC->tell("start heater");
echo "Start heater: ", $r["status"], "\n";
if ($r["status"] == "err") {
        $tHVAC->close();
        exit;
}
$tHVAC->tell("set temp\n50");
$goingUp = true;
while ($tHVAC->isActive()) {
        echo $tHVAC->getError();
        $r = $tHVAC->tell("get current temp");
        if ($r["status"] == "ok") {
                echo "Current Temperature: ", $r["data"], "\n";
        }
        if ($r["data"] == 50 && $goingUp) {
                $tHVAC->tell("set temp\n35");
                $tHVAC->tell("start ac");
                $goingUp = false;
        } else if ($r["data"] == 35 && !$goingUp) {
                echo "Main Thread donenWaiting for HVAC Thread to end... ";
                $tHVAC->close();
                echo "ok";
                exit;
        }
}

Yes, it’s a lot of code for a sample.
In the original example, I assumed a file would have a given task. If you needed to generate a report while running a lengthy query, generate.php and analyze.php would make good threads. But real life is not that simple. So what I’ve now done is made a REPL loop in HVAC.php (the thread). This loop is what facilitates communications. It constantly polls for commands.
To understand this, let’s first ignore Thread.php, ThreadUtility.php and ThreadInstance.php. hvac.php is the stub application and HVAC.php is the HVAC unit and what we want threaded. REPL functionality is easily accomplished:

$hvac = new HVAC(); do { sleep (1); $hvac->apploop($hvac->getCommand()); } while (true);

sleep(1) is not strictly neccessary. It’s there to prevent real-time continuous polling. An initial delay is useful, but it doesn’t really need to be in the loop nor need it be so long. apploop is the controller for this thread. getCommand retrieves the oldest unprocessed command (typically, the only command) for to be executed.
Inside of apploop, logic is carried out like normal. In place of a clean exit, though, commands return response. This is an array comprised of a status and data. Status has two established values, err and ok. Data is a field allowing whatever data is useful to be passed back. It can be an object, however, the class must be defined in both contexts for it to be usable.
On the stub side, the thread is set up the same way as before. The first difference is that calls to tell return results. You will quickly know whether an operation succeeded without entering a listen poll loop.
One quirky statement is $tHVAC->tell("set temp\n50"); Commands are only one line. The set temp command is defined to prompt for a temperature, and it happens that the command issuing stream is the stream on which the temperature is polled. Therefore, we prime the command stream with a second statement (50) before it’s polled. This is not an ideal way to operate, but at this time, there is no more formalized architecture.
Finally, there’s a loop to set the temperature. With the heater turned on, the temperature is set to 50Âº. Once 50Âº is reached, the air conditioner is switched on and the temperature is lowered to 35Âº. Then the application exits.
isActive is not as accurate under this model. Since the thread is in a continuous loop, executon never truly stops. isActive will only stop if some error has taken down the thread. Therefore, one of the commands this thread supports is quit. Also, the general thread class has been altered to dispatch a quit instruction before it pulls the plug on the process.
The main application will not exit until all spawned threads exit. Therefore, it’s important that you’ve set up some remote-controllable mechanism to end it.

Building an Animated Cartoon Robot with jQuery

2009-12-15T03:30:00.001-08:00

Why?

Aside from being a fun exercise, what purpose does something like this have? None that’s plainly obvious. Its about as useful as a miniature ship in a bottle. Yet it does have an underlying purpose. It could inspire someone to look beyond the perceived constraints of web designers and developers.
View Demo

Overview

This project was created by layering several empty divs over each other with transparent PNGs as background images.
The backgrounds were animated at different speeds using a jQuery plug-in by Alexander Farkas. This effect simulates a faux 3-D animated background dubbed the “parallax effect” originating from old-school side scrolling video games.
The robot is comprised similarly to the background animation scene by layering several DIVs together to create the different robot pieces. The final step, was animating the robot with some jQuery.

The Markup


Robot Head.
Robot Chest.

Robot Pelvis.

Robot Legs.

The structure of the divs closely resembles our diagram. None of the DIVs has the width attribute specified so they will expand to fill the size of any browser window they are displayed on. NOTE: All the images that make the background scenery parallax effect are 9999px wide. Well beyond the width of any computer display or television in common use. We’ll use CSS to place the background images exactly where we want within each particular div.

The Style

The CSS for this project is just as simple as the markup.

h1, p { position: absolute; left: -9999px; }

div {position: relative;}

#wrapper { background: #bedfe4 url(../images/sun.png) no-repeat left -30px; border: 5px solid #402309;}

#cloud-01 { background: url(../images/clouds-01.png) no-repeat left -100px; }                                                         

#cloud-02 { background: url(../images/clouds-02.png) no-repeat left top; }

#mountains-03 { background: url(../images/mountain-03.png) no-repeat left bottom; }

#ground { background: url(../images/ground-05.png) no-repeat left bottom; }

#full-robot { width: 271px; }

#branding {
 background: url(../images/robot-head.png) no-repeat center top;
 width: 271px;
 height: 253px;
 z-index: 4;
 }

#content {
 background: url(../images/robot-torso.png) no-repeat center top;
 width: 271px;
 height: 164px;
 z-index: 3;
 margin-top: -65px;
 }

#sec-content {
 background: url(../images/robot-hips.png) no-repeat center top;
 width: 271px;
 height: 124px;
 z-index: 2;
 margin-top: -90px;
 }

#footer {
 background: url('../images/robot-legs.png') no-repeat center top;
 width: 271px;
 height: 244px;
 z-index: 1;
 margin-top: -90px;
 }

Absolute positioning is used to pull any header or paragraph text 9999px to the left of the screen. Then we declare every DIV in the page position: relative. By making all the DIVs position: relative;, we now have the ability to the use the z-index property to reverse the natural stacking order of the robot DIVs.

The jQuery JavaScript

Disclaimer: The original script to animate the robot was horrid. The good folks at coding cyborg were kind enough to clean it up and re-write it.

$(document).ready(function(){
$('#cloud-01').css({backgroundPosition: '0 -80px'});
$('#cloud-02').css({backgroundPosition: '0 -30px'});
$('#mountains-03').css({backgroundPosition: '0 50px'});
$('#trees-04').css({backgroundPosition: '0 50px'});
$('#ground').css({backgroundPosition: 'left bottom'});
$('#branding').css({backgroundPosition: 'center 0'});
$('#content').css({backgroundPosition: 'center 0'});
$('#sec-content').css({backgroundPosition: 'center 0'});
$('#footer').css({backgroundPosition: 'center 0'});
$('#wrapper').css({overflow: "hidden"});

 $('#klicker').click(function(){
  $('#cloud-01').animate({backgroundPosition: '(-500px -80px)'}, 20000);
  $('#cloud-02').animate({backgroundPosition: '(-625px -30px)'}, 20000);
  $('#mountains-03').animate({backgroundPosition: '(-2500px 50px)'}, 20000);
  $('#ground').animate({backgroundPosition: '(-5000px bottom)'}, 20000);

 startHim();

 $("#full-robot").animate({left:"50%",marginLeft:"-150px"}, 2000);
 setTimeout("leaveScreen()",15000);
 });

});

var num = 1;

function startHim(){
 num++;
 $("#sec-content").animate({top:"-=5px"},150).animate({top:"+=5px"},150);
 $("#content,#branding").animate({top:"-="+num+"px"},150).animate({top:"+="+num+"px"},150);
 if(num<4){
  setTimeout("startHim()",300);
 } else {
  setTimeout("bounceHim()",300);
 }
}

function bounceHim(){
 $("#sec-content,#branding").animate({top:"-=4px"},150).animate({top:"+=4px"},150);
  $("#content").animate({top:"-=8px"},150).animate({top:"+=8px"},150);
 setTimeout("bounceHim()",300);
}

function leaveScreen(){
 $("#full-robot").animate({left:"100%",marginLeft:"0px"}, 2000);
}

We begin by re-affirming the original background position of all the images.
Upon clicking the ‘#klicker’ div, a function tells jQuery to animate the backgrounds from their current position all the way to the coordinates specified for each div. By separating all the different image layers into different DIVs we can animate the background elements at different speeds. Moving the elements at different speeds gives an illusion of a 3rd dimension. We move the elements in the background at a much slower rate than the elements in the foreground. Notice on this animation that the speed of the clouds in the background is slower than the speed of the mountains. And the mountains are slower than the ground which is the fastest of all. Finally after firing off all these commands to get the background moving the ‘#klicker’ function calls on the ‘startHim()’ function.
The ‘startHim()’ function, you guessed it right, starts our robot. It begins his little bounce and gets him moving to the center of the #wrapper div. The ‘startHim()’ function calls on the ‘bounceHim()’ function. And then it keeps looping.
We need to make the robot seem like it was bouncing on a rough desert rode. To achieve that bouncy irregular effect we’ll use the ‘bounceHim()’ function. It targets the separate robot DIVs and ‘bounces’ them 5px up and then 5px down. That wont be enough though, all the different pieces of the robot bouncing at the same rate looks too stiff. We need to make it look a bit more random and interesting. So we’ll take the div that makes the chest portion of the robot and move it at a different rate than the head and pelvis pieces. We’ll ‘bounce’ the chest part at 8px up and 8px down. This gives the robot a nice off-beat bouncy effect.
The ‘leaveScreen()’ function is the last function called. After 15 seconds (15000) it moves the robot 100% percent to the left of the screen which consequently moves the robot off to the right of the screen.

Color Fading Menu with jQuery

2009-12-15T03:26:00.000-08:00

Editor’s note: When I first pushed out this latest redesign for CSS-Tricks, it featured a simple color fading animation in the main navigation. Liam quickly noticed a flaw in the code I was using to do it, where if you very quickly moused back and forth over the menu items some of the transitional color would “stick”. Liam generously rewrote the code to be a bit smarter for me, and I asked him to write this tutorial. Thanks Liam!

Hello, I am Liam Goodacre, and Chris has asked me to write a short jQuery tutorial on how to achieve fading hover effects. I will demonstrate how to perform colour and image merging. We will be using jQuery and the jQuery Colour plugin.
When I first wrote something like this, I set a background div to fade in on mouse hover, and fade out on mouse leave. I found that if I quickly moved my mouse over and out of the link, then the background kept flashing the same number of times as my mouse. I then told the animation to stop before I set new animations, this solved the problem, but produced a new one.
The new problem: if I did the same test (repeated mouse hovering), then the link’s mouse out state, would slowly look the same as the hover state, therefore the background stopped fading out after a few times. I noticed that Chris had this same problem on his site.
I then had an idea; on mouse hover, if I stopped the current animation, and reset the background to be invisible, then fade it in, rather than starting it fading from its current state. This seems to have solved the problem.

View Example Download Files

Ok then, let’s get started…

What we need is a div containing two things; an anchor element and another div, which I will refer to as the subDiv. The subDiv will display the image that will fade in on mouse hover. The Anchor will overlap the subDiv and have a transparent background.

The HTML

We will add the subDiv to the div dynamically using jQuery, to reduce the ammount of html we need to write. This is helpful, when having multiple links like this.
This is our html code so far…



Go to CSS-Tricks

We have a div with a class of hoverBtn containing and a link to CSS-Tricks.

The CSS

div.hoverBtn {
 position:   relative;
 width:    100px;
 height:   30px;
 background:  #000 url(your_background_image.png) repeat-x 0 0 scroll;
}
div.hoverBtn a {
 position:   relative;
 z-index:   2;
 display:   block;
 width:    100px;
 height:   30px;
 line-height:   30px;
 text-align:   center;
 color:   #000;
 background:  transparent none repeat-x 0 0 scroll;
}
div.hoverBtn div {
 display:  none;
 position:   relative;
 z-index:   1;
 width:    100px;
 height:   30px;
 margin-top:   -30px;
 background:  #FFF url(your_hover_image.png) none repeat-x 0 0 scroll;
}

The subDiv is now positioned underneath the anchor, and I have applied background graphics to the div and the subDiv.

The JavaScript

I am going to assume you have a basic understanding of how to use jQuery, although, even if you don’t, the code is pretty much self explanatory.
Here is our starting point…

//when the dom has loaded
$(function(){

});

I’m sure most of you are all fully aware, any code written within these two lines, will run as soon as the DOM has finished loading.
We now need to add the subDiv. Which we an accomplish by using the ‘append’ method of jQuery objects.

//when the dom has loaded
$(function(){
 //display the hover div
 $("div.hoverBtn").show("fast", function() {
  //append the background div
  $(this).append("

");
 });
});

I have wrapped the ‘append’ within the call-back of the show method, so that we can use ‘this’ to reference each div.hoverBtn element.
Now we need to code the link’s hover event. We will fade the font colour, therefore we should specify a hover colour. We can also use the ‘rel’ attribute to store the initial colour of each anchor. This is useful for different coloured links.

var hoverColour = "#FFF";
//when the dom has loaded
$(function(){
 //display the hover div
 $("div.hoverBtn").show("fast", function() {
  //append the background div
  $(this).append("

");
  //on link hover
  $(this).children("a").hover(function(){
   //store initial link colour
   if ($(this).attr("rel") == "") {
    $(this).attr("rel", $(this).css("color"));
   }
   //fade in the background
   $(this).parent().children("div")
    .stop()
    .css({"display": "none", "opacity": "1"})
    .fadeIn("fast");
   //fade the colour
   $(this) .stop()
    .css({"color": $(this).attr("rel")})
    .animate({"color": hoverColour}, 350);
  },function(){
   //fade out the background
   $(this).parent().children("div")
    .stop()
    .fadeOut("slow");
   //fade the colour
   $(this) .stop()
    .animate({"color": $(this).attr("rel")}, 250);
  });
 });
});

So basically, what happens is;

A hover colour is declared
When the DOM has loaded…
A subDiv is appended to the hoverBtn div
On the hover event of the link:
The initial colour is stored within the link’s rel attribute
The subDiv’s animation is stopped
It is hidden and then set to fade in
The link’s animation is stopped
It’s colour reset and set to fade to the hover colour
On the hover event’s call-back:
The subDiv’s animation is stopped
It is then set to fade out
The link’s animation is stopped
It is then set to fade to it’s initial colour

Further developments

You could try to improve this by dynamically loading the containing div. Which might also involve setting the containing div’s size to that of the anchor element.

Fully Executing jQuery Animations Without Queuing

2009-12-15T03:21:00.000-08:00

It is pretty common when using jQuery’s .animate() function that it is triggered by a mouseEnter or hover event. That’s all well and good, but it means that we need account for those events being triggered multiple times. If the element with the hover event attached is hovered over multiple times, that means the animation will be fired of several times, which is typically undesirable. The standard way to deal with this is using the .stop() function, like:

$(this).stop().animate({ width: "200px" });

This is definitely not the cure-all solution though. So let’s explore.

We already know that not using .stop() is problematic, because then the animations queue up and it is kind of awkward with multiple quick hovers. But not using .stop() is also kind of perfect in a way, because the mouseEnter animation and mouseLeave animation execute completely and sequentially. It is that smoothness that I am after here, only without the queuing.

Using .stop() prevents the queuing, but it also prevents the animations from completing a full cycle. Mouse off, the stop function fires, and stops the animation that triggered on mouseEnter and begins the animation resetting things.

The first thing I started messing with was in using .stop() prior to only one or the other of the animations, but that doesn’t help much. The .stop() function also has some parameters you can pass, the second of which dictates if the animation should be forced to complete first. If set to true, the animation will indeed finish, but it doesn’t do so smoothly, it jerks to it’s final state, which I find generally undesirable.
The solution lies in not beginning a new animation until the state of the element is not being animated. In that way, you don’t even need to worry about queuing, because only one animation can be running at a time anyway. There are a couple of ways to get there, but this I found the cleanest:

$("div").hover(function(){
    $(this).filter(':not(:animated)').animate({ width: "200px" });
}, function() {
    $(this).animate({ width: "100px" });
});

There was plenty of ideas on the journey here. Check out the demo below to see all the different options I went through, as well as an additional method that also works

http://css-tricks.com/examples/jQueryStop/

Know The Right Approach To PR For You

2009-12-08T12:24:00.000-08:00

Public relations is a volatile subject.As an entrepreneur you have to take great pains to ensure that you always maintain and uphold a good image. You have to ensure that your reputation as a good business is always preserved as that singularly determines the fate of your business. Nowadays the competition has gotten so fierce that you cannot rely on your own amateur skills to help you with your Public Relations activities. You need to enlist the help of professionals to chart a good PR strategy for you. You have to be absolutely clear as to what approach you want to take,regarding your PR. Here are a few things to keep in mind while selecting your PRF firm :
1) Know what you want : First, gather a clear picture of what you want in terms of publicity and public relations. Don’t leave any aspect vague.Every little detail should be absolutely clear in your mind. Now,do some research and see which other firm will be best suited to your needs.
2) Be realsitic : Keep in mind that a PR firm can only help you maintain you image or strive towards building a better one for yourself. It cannot erase a bad name or magically repair your reputation. Also,you can’t hope to cover up your mistakes etc. by enlisting a PR firm.
3) Geographical consideration : If you are lookin for nation wide publicity or a wider reach then you can select whichever firm you prefer.It’s geographical location need not matter.However,if you want to focus only on local publicity it is definitely more advisable to hire a firm based in the same area as your business.

4) Make your PR team a part of your core team : Include your PR team in your core team.Your PR firm should have a clear understanding of your business and should be in constant communication with you.Also,you should consider the suggestions made the PR team regarding any strategic decisions.This will lead to a healthy relationship between your business and the PR firm and this is instrumental in helping the business grow.
You should aim at creating a certain image of your business in the public eye and with the help of your PR firm,work towards realising that image.You image and reputation together will help your customers to feel secure about working with you and inspire trust and faith.This way you will retain all your old customers and develop a loyal following and also be able to attract new ones,thus spurring your business forward.

Why PR Is Good For You

2009-12-08T12:22:00.000-08:00

Public relations,as the name suggests means the relationship you share with the public.In toady’s times, I’d say that PR is one of the most important areas for anyone to concentrate on, especially if you have a certain image in society in the market as a business owner and I’m sure you recognize this need well but for the unconvinced, here are some strong,powerful reasons that tell you why PR is good for you:

1) Your image: Public relations is not something you can afford to neglect. Infact, try and use your PR skills to promote any special events such as openings etc. and try to establish an image of your business in the public eye.

2) Community service: As a responsible, mature business it is your duty to give back to the community. Join networks or charities associated with your industry or business and try to always stay in the loop.

3) Use the news: By implementing a good media policy you can earn third party credibility by sending the media new releases etc. However, make sure you have something definite to say and keep your news release short and sweet.

4) Sponsorship: You could sponsor some kind of a public service announcement for a charity in your area or maybe even financially aid students. There are several other ways though, to earn some recognition and to consolidate your reputation. try and be creative and come up with some new, innovative ideas to serve society.

If you feel that your PR skills are not upto the mark, do not hesitate to rope in professionals. You will get expert services and have a well-constructed PR strategy customized for your company, keeping all your goals, ideals, principles etc. in mind. A good PR strategy, in my opinion, is like a long-term investment. A good reputation takes a long time to build but once it’s done, it makes it all worth it. Adopt a good PR strategy and learn to please everybody to improve your own sales.

CSS Builder - Brand New Meta Titan Tool

2009-12-08T12:19:00.001-08:00

You’ve seen it done in programs like Adobe Dreamweaver, but believe it or not, there aren’t a whole lot of decent CSS generators in the flavor of my new tool (that I could find with a thorough Google search at least).

The Meta Titan CSS Builder provides a human readable interface for generating your selector (class/id/tag) code with valid syntax on the fly. Fill out the form, press build, copy the code, paste it into your stylesheet. I believe it will improve your productivity, especially if you’re a beginner / intermediate user and haven’t memorized all of the property names and appropriate values.

Give it a try, and a bookmark - click here!

This is the product of about 1 weeks worth of casual coding. I’m planning a version 2 that cleans up the interface a bit, and I’ll be taking suggestions on what I can approve.

Show/Hide Content With CSS & Javascript

2009-12-08T12:09:00.001-08:00

My apologies for the recent lack of updates and the briefness of this post, things have been (and still are) really busy on my end. Anyway, when building websites for my clients a popular request is to have content that can be toggled by the user. Today I’ll show you have to have this effect done really quickly. Although this method does not support persistence (saving cookies to the users browser to remember what they have hidden/shown), I’m sure there are some who will find it useful.

Place this code in your tags.

Now you can effectively show/hide content by placing id=”elementname” style=”display:none;” inside the element tag you wish to be toggle-able, and onclick=”shToggle(’elementname‘); return false;” inside the link code of the image or text the user clicks to toggle it. You can see a live example of it on this page, or simply look at the example code snippet below.
What’s the name of Calgary’s NHL Team?
show/hide answer

The Calgary Flames

Classes vs IDs, CSS Practice

2009-12-08T12:07:00.001-08:00
A good use of classes and IDs can save you a lot of time. You’ll end up with a site that’s easy to maintain, and frankly, your code will look a lot cleaner. There are certain rules and practices when using classes and IDs, the following guide looks over them.

First off, what defines an ID and a class? Simply put, an ID is a unique identifier and should only be used once in your document. It’s good practice to use ID on structural blocks of your site such as a wrapper, header, footer, navigation bar, etc. A class can be used more broadly to define objects that can appear multiple times in your document, such as link styling, tables, etc.

Example usage of an ID:

In your html code:
content

In your stylesheet:
div#mainWrapper { margin: 10px 30px; }

Example usage of a Class:

In your html code:
Hello, World

In your stylesheet:
span.test { color: #003366; font-weight: 900; }

When naming your classes and IDs, try and use generic and easy to identify names. For example, instead of calling something “yellowBar” try “topSidebar”. Who knows what color that bar will be 6 months from now! Also, pick a naming style that you’re comfortable with and stick to it - either lowercase (#helloworld) or camel case (#helloWorld) - you should never use spacing in names.

How to Tar / Untar From the Command Line

2009-12-08T11:57:00.001-08:00
A simple guide for those who are as helpless on the Linux command line as I am. When managing websites, you’ll often need to compact, move and extract a large number of files, here’s how to do it on your Linux box.

Initial Steps
First SSH into your web server and move to the directory of the files you wish to tar up, since tarring an absolute path will save the folder structure as well which is bad (ie: /home/yoursite/public_html/backupthis/ will save the folders home -> yoursite -> public_html -> backupthis). You can get to the folder you need to by typing:
cd /path/to/your/stuff

Creating a Tar
Now that we’re at the directory we want to tar, or the sub-directory, you can do one of two commands depending on what you need.

If you want to save every file / folder in your current location into a file called backup.tar.
tar -cvf backup.tar *

If you want to save a tar named backup.tar with the folder “somefolder” and its contents.
tar -cvf backup.tar somefolder/

You can test/view your tars with the following command:
tar -tvf backup.tar

Extracting the Tar
When you need to extract that tar, the following command will be suffice:
tar -xvf backup.tar

How to Display Server Load in PHP

2009-12-08T11:55:00.002-08:00
As the inaugural post on my new blog, I figured I’d start with something I put to good use today. When developing a PHP application or monitoring a web server, it’s important to know what your server load is to properly identify that there is a problem. This can be achieved through most control panel software (like WHM) or by typing in “uptime” in your SSH command prompt.

For those interested, there is a very easy way to output your load in PHP using the exec function. See the code below.
$load = exec(”uptime”);
$load = split(”load average:”, $load);
$load = split(”, “, $load[1]);
$load = $load[0];
echo “Current Load: $load”;

Place that snippet wherever you want in your PHP application to output the current server load. If you want to display something like “03:55:48 up 49 days, 13:36, 0 users, load average: 0.04, 0.12, 0.10″ instead of just “0.04″, you can delete lines 2-4 of the code.

Of course, since “uptime” is a Unix command this won’t work on Windows servers, and from what I understand, there’s no easy solution for those users.

How to Protect Your PHP Code With EncryptionHow to Protect Your PHP Code With Encryption

2009-12-08T11:55:00.000-08:00
This was an article I wrote for Web Hosting Talk back in April 2004. I’ve made a few revisions to it and felt it would be worthwhile to share here as well.

This guide is intended for programmers who frequently take on freelance projects, those contracted over the internet by strangers to make a PHP script. Due to the nature of the web, it’s very easy to get scammed in this exchange, and there usually isn’t much you can do about it if it happens. Luckily for you, you’re 1 step ahead of the scammers by reading this guide before you sent them your script (hopefully).

Scenario: You are paid $1,500 to write a PHP script for Joe Montana. Joe pays you, you send him the script, all is well, until Joe reverses the charges, leaves you out in the cold while you just wasted several weeks and he gets a free script. Now you have to stress yourself with tracking him down to press charges, which most of the time never happens. Debating intangibles over the internet is a sticky situation for the seller, aka service provider, aka you. I just read the same story on another forum, which is all too common, and this prompted me to share this with hopes of protecting your time and profit.

Step 1
Open the file that is critical to the script’s operation and won’t require modifications by the client at any point in time. You’ll want to pick a file that if you take it out of the picture, it will cripple the operation of his script.

Step 2
Paste this snippet at the top of the file, before the script’s operations are run.

$lines = file('http://www.example.com/joemontana.txt');
foreach ($lines as $line_num => $line) {
$license = htmlspecialchars($line);
if ($license == "invalid") {
exit("License Invalid - Please contact THECOMPANY");
}
}

Now do the following:
- Create a .txt file, call it something unique, preferably the name of the project/client.
- Upload the .txt file somewhere accessible from the web, preferably on your server where only you can write to it.
- On Line 1 of the code above: Change example.com/joemontana.txt to your website and path to the text file you uploaded.
- On Line 5 of the code above: Change YOURCOMPANY to its respective variable. You can edit this message to say whatever you want.

Now if at any time you have a reason to disable his script, all you need to do is open that text file, and type the word: invalid

After you save that file, his script will not function. This method is safe for your client; if your server is down, the file doesn’t exist, or anything other than the word “invalid” is in the document, it will function properly.

Step 3
Now you’re thinking, “That’s good Matt, but what if the client isn’t an idiot and he goes in and deletes my protection”. This is where encoding comes into play. Pick your favorite one, if you don’t have one in mind, I suggest IonCube. Encrypting a file with them through their Online Encoder costs 50 cents, which is peanuts when you consider the sheer satisfaction you’ll receive if a client does scam you and you’re able to pull the rug from under them.

After your file is encrypted, open it up in a text editor, you should see a bunch of nonsensical data in there. Pack it up and ship it to your client! It’s important to remember that you’re not safe from being scammed, always exercise caution when doing business over the Internet. You’ll at least have a lot more control over the situation using these methods.

I suggest that you inform your client that you will be encrypting the file. Include instructions and offer to install the IonCube loaders on their server. Make sure to tell them to upload the encrypted file in BINARY mode, as it will not work otherwise. You should send them the unencrypted file after a couple months from their payment (or whenever you feel it has fully cleared and you’re safe) for their convenience, people don’t like being under the gun forever.

These instructions are provided without warranty. Any damage or loss, yadda yadda yadda *insert long disclaimer here*, is your own fault.

How to Check Link Popularity in Google & Yahoo With PHP

2009-12-08T11:52:00.000-08:00
Everyone knows that the best traffic you can get is organic, meaning people who come to your site naturally with genuine interest. Search engines like Google & Yahoo are notorious for placing a high value on the amount of websites that are linking to you. While their algorithms haven’t been completely unraveled yet, SEO specialists have a pretty good idea of how to make your site rank higher, and it usually starts with link building (assuming you have quality content first of course!).
The amount of links your site has indexed in Google & Yahoo can change often, so checking can be an arduous task. Luckily there are a ton of tools out there for this, but you’re not here for that, are you? You’re here because you want the code to run your own service, or maybe you want your own local copy of it, or maybe you just want to see how it works. The script below will check your backlinks in Google and Yahoo, as well as your Alexa rating. Feel free to modify and redistribute (non-commercially) as you see fit.
Live Demo | View Source Online
// Setting the URL variable
$link = $_GET['url'];
// Google Backlinks
function fetch_google($uri) {
$uri = trim(eregi_replace('http://', '', $uri)); $uri = trim(eregi_replace('http', '', $uri));
$url = 'http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=link:'.$uri;
$v = file_get_contents($url);
preg_match('/of about \(.*?)\<\/b\>/si',$v,$r);
return ($r[1]) ? $r[1] : '0';
}
// Yahoo Inlinks
function fetch_yahoo($uri) {
$uri = trim(eregi_replace('http://', '', $uri)); $uri = trim(eregi_replace('http', '', $uri));
$url = 'http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http://'.$uri.'&bwm=i&bwmf=s&bwmo=&fr2=seo-rd-se';
$v = file_get_contents($url);
preg_match('/of about \(.*?) \<\/strong\>/si',$v,$r);
return ($r[1]) ? $r[1] : '0';
}
// Alexa Rating
function fetch_alexa($uri){
$uri = trim(eregi_replace('http://', '', $uri)); $uri = trim(eregi_replace('http', '', $uri));
$url = 'http://data.alexa.com/data?cli=10&dat=snbamz&url=' . urlencode($uri);
$v = file_get_contents($url);
preg_match('/\/si', $v, $r);
return ($r[2]) ? $r[2] : '0';
}
// Page Header
echo "
Search Engine Popularity
"; // Display Links and Information
if (isset($link)) {
echo "URL: " . $link . "
";
echo "Google Backlinks: " . fetch_google($link) . "
";
echo "Yahoo Backlinks: " . fetch_yahoo($link) . "
";
echo "Alexa Rating: " . fetch_alexa($link) . "
";
}
// Search Form
echo "

"; ?>

How to Calculate PHP Load Times

2009-12-08T11:50:00.000-08:00

Here’s a popular request amongst those who are learning PHP. When developing PHP applications, it’s good practice to benchmark your pages to see if you need to further optimize your code. The following snippet will show you how much time it took your server to process your PHP document.

Insert this at or near the top of your PHP file.

$m_time = explode(" ",microtime());
$m_time = $m_time[0] + $m_time[1];
$loadstart = $m_time;

Now place this snippet at or near the bottom of your file for the best results.

$m_time = explode(" ",microtime());
$m_time = $m_time[0] + $m_time[1];
$loadend = $m_time;
$loadtotal = ($loadend - $loadstart);
echo "Generated page in ". round($loadtotal,3) ." seconds";

That’s it! I suggest adding this while you develop any PHP application, and include it even after the launch, so that you can see how well your scripts scale with the traffic you receive.

How to Build a Scraper Using PHP & cURL

2009-12-08T11:48:00.000-08:00

Use the following knowledge at your own risk, scraping content is a pretty gray area. For this guide you will need FireFox and the Firebug extension. You’ll also need PHP installed with the cURL module.
For this example we’ll be grabbing the counters for “bloggers, new posts and words today” from WordPress.com. Let’s start off by creating a function to fetch the html contents of a webpage using cURL.

function getDocument($url)
{
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, ‘Googlebot/2.1 (http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)’);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 10);
$html = curl_exec($ch);

return $html;
}

We’ll be disguising ourselves as Googlebot. You can find a list of user agents to use at http://www.user-agents.org/. Next we’ll create a DOM object out of the raw html code.

$html = $this->getDocument(‘http://wordpress.com’);
$dom = new DOMDocument();
@$dom->loadHtml($html);

Note the @, this eliminates any errors that might (and most likely will) get output due to the website not following html coding standards. Next, we will use FireBug to find the XPath of what you want to scrape. Right click on what you want to scrape and click “Inspect Element”. FireBug will pop up with the code highlighted. At the time of this blog post this is what pops up:

204,045
bloggers,
133,640
new posts,
34,374,943
words today.

h6 is the container of the content we want to scrape, thus the xpath of the h6 tag is what we want. Right click on the h6 tag inside FireBug and click “Copy XPath”. This saves something like “/html/body/div/div[2]/div[2]/h6″ to our clipboard. So we’ll add the following to our code:

$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);
$content = $xpath->query("/html/body/div/div[2]/div[2]/h6");

Note: If your xpath contains any ‘tbody’, remove them from the path.
The span tags with our desired content is now accessible through $content->item(0)->childNodes - You can chose to iterate through this if the list, or for simple uses like our example you can call the child item directly like so:

echo ‘Bloggers: ‘ . $content->item(0)->childNodes->item(0)->nodeValue . ‘
’;
echo ‘New Posts: ‘ . $content->item(0)->childNodes->item(2)->nodeValue . ‘
’;
echo ‘Words Today: ‘ . $content->item(0)->childNodes->item(4)->nodeValue;

To get the most out of this technique you should brush up your knowledge of the Document Object Model.

Protecting Your PHP/MySQL Queries from SQL Injection

2009-12-08T11:46:00.000-08:00
SQL injection is a serious concern for webmasters, as an experienced attacker can use this hacking technique to gain access to sensitive data and/or potentially cripple your database. If you haven’t secured your applications, I implore you to get yourself familiar with the following method and grind it into your coding routine. One unsafe query can result in a nightmare for you or your client.
I’ve read through a lot of guides, and they tend to over complicate this, so I’ll be as straight forward as possible. In PHP the easiest way is to pass your data through the mysql_real_escape_string function. By escaping special characters on fields where the user can manipulate the database, you will avoid being vulnerable. Take a look below at the example of what to do and what not to do.

// This is a vulnerable query.
$query = "SELECT * FROM products WHERE name=’$productname’";
mysql_query($query); // This query is more secure
$query = sprintf("SELECT * FROM products WHERE name=’%s’",
mysql_real_escape_string($productname));
mysql_query($query);

Since I primarily code in PHP, I can’t confidently provide techniques for other programming languages. The most important part of protecting yourself is stopping users from being able to pass unaltered database manipulative special characters, like single quotes.

Backing up a MySQL Database Using Cron

2009-12-08T11:45:00.000-08:00

It sure has been awhile since I’ve updated, things have been pretty busy and I just haven’t had time. Anyway, the most important and often overlooked part of running a dynamic MySQL website is backing up your data often. Losing your file system often doesn’t hurt as much as losing all of your content, especially when running a script that’s easily replaceable like vBulletin, Wordpress, etc. Backing up your data can be a chore, so this is the simple method I use for an automated backup of my databases.
1) SSH in your box
2) Open up your crontab, to do this type:
crontab -e
3) Add the job to your crontab, this is what I use:
30 0 * * * date=`date -I` ; mysqldump -a -uuser -ppassword dbname > /path/to/dump_$date.sql
I’ll break down what’s going on in the above line and what you need to edit
30 0 * * * - This specifies the interval in which it will backup your data. Minutes, hours, days of the month, months, days of the week, respectively. In my case, I’m going to be running this every day at 12:30 AM. Asterisk out values which you do not need to limit.
user - Enter your mysql username here
password - Enter your mysql password here
It’s important to note that -uuser is not a typo, you need to prefix -u on your username, so if it’s jsmith, you will enter -ujsmith. Same goes for your password.
dbname - Enter the mysql database name which you want to backup
/path/to/dump_$date.sql - Enter the directory you wish to back up your data to, include $date if you want a datestamp on your backup names. Don’t back this up to a web accessible directory as anyone would be able to access your database information and view potentially sensitive data.
Once your cron job is up and running you can then use a 3rd party backup service to automatically pull those backups across onto secure networks at set intervals (ie: every day at 12:40 AM). Talk to your hosting provider as many already provide backup services like this. You can also choose to manually download them onto your hard drive if you prefer a most cost effective approach. Just remember to go in weekly or monthly to delete older backups if necessary - those with large databases may eventually max out their hard drive space if left unattended.

How to Backup and Restore Large Databases in MySQL

2009-12-08T11:42:00.000-08:00

Most who use MySQL have a nifty program called PhpMyAdmin. There is a good chance that if you are a user of that program, you’re here because you tried to backup or restore a large database through the web based interface and failed. This is a common situation, lucky for us there’s a very easy, fast, and reliable way to do this through the command line! If you’re a Linux user who has SSH access, follow the steps below.

Backing up the Database
Fire up SSH and type the following. Replace USER with your MySQL username, DBNAME with the name of the database you want to back up, and /path/to/backupname.sql to where you want the database backup file to be saved (directory must exist).

mysqldump -a -u USER -p DBNAME > /path/to/backupname.sql

You’ll be prompted for your MySQL password. It’ll get to work after you type that in and press enter, it may take a few moments (or longer if your database is really large).

When you’re returned to the command line you now have a backup file where you specified above. This file is a complete copy of the database at the time you ran the command, the second your MySQL table is updated your backup will be out of date. I suggest you take backups at regular intervals depending on your situation (I will write a guide on how to automatically do backups one day).

Restoring Your Database Backup

Follow these 3 commands to restore your database easily.
First we need to drop your current database so there are no conflicts when we’re restoring

mysqladmin -u USER -p drop DBNAME

Now we’ll remake the database, because it doesn’t exist anymore

mysqladmin -u USER -p create DBNAME

And finally, we’ll populate the fresh new database with your backup file.

mysql -u USER -p DBNAME < /path/to/backup.sql

The variables you should change above are pretty straight forward. If you get errors importing your data, it’s most commonly because your max_allowed_packet isn’t set high enough in /etc/my.cnf - if you have root access, you can go in and make that variable higher. If you don’t have root access, seek support from your web host.

Five Freelance Branding Tips You Can Use Right Now

2009-12-08T10:02:00.000-08:00

Can you control what others think of your freelancing business? Do you know how to motivate potential buyers? Have you built customer loyalty?

While these tasks may seem daunting or even impossible, by properly branding your freelance business you can accomplish all of the objectives listed above and more. Good branding effectively communicates what your business is about, motivates buyers, and builds customer loyalty.

In this post, we will introduce you to the concept of branding. We will also identify five quick methods that you can apply right away to improve your brand. Finally, we’ll share some thoughts about branding that you might not have realized before.

What is Branding?

Many freelancers associate branding with having an attractive logo, a catchy slogan, or a popular website. There’s much more to branding, though.

Strictly speaking, branding refers to how others perceive your freelancing business. Branding helps your customers and prospective customers realize how your freelancing business is different from every other business that offers similar products or services.

To find your brand message, ask yourself this question — “what is my business really all about?” Chances are, when you answer this question you will also have a good idea of how to brand your freelancing business.

Now that we understand what branding is, let’s take a look at how a freelancer can build his or her brand.

Five Branding Tips for Freelancers

There is so much information available on how to brand a business that branding their freelancing business can seem like an overwhelming task for many freelancers (so much so, that some freelancers who I know don’t bother with branding at all).

It doesn’t have to be that way, though.

Here are five basic steps to help you start branding your freelancing business today:

Homework — Do your homework. Ask the question above so that you can focus your efforts on what your business is really about. Developing a mission or vision statement is also helpful.
Target — Determine who your target market really is and focus your branding efforts primarily towards that group.
Simple — Keep your branding message simple. The simpler the message that you are trying to convey, the better… Long, complex messages tend to confuse customers or get mistranslated.
Consistency — Above all, be consistent with the message that you are sending to the public. Sending an inconsistent message will confuse your audience and dilute your brand.
Presence — In order to brand your freelancing business you first need to have a presence in the marketplace. If you haven’t already done so, establish a website and social media presence.

If this list seems like an awful lot of work, remember that you can tackle these tasks in small pieces over time. Try writing a mission statement one month, determining your target market the next month, building a website the third month, and so on, until all of the branding tasks are complete.

Now that we’ve covered some of the basics of branding, let look at how your behavior impacts your branding. One of the key ways that behavior and branding combine is through social media.

Social Media, Branding, and You

Social media provides an unparalleled opportunity for you to reach your target market with your brand at little or no cost. However, it’s also easy to get carried away with social media and forget that what you do or say there could potentially impact your freelancing brand. It’s important to remember to be careful what you share.

Consider the following scenarios and the possible damaging impact that the freelancer’s behavior could have on that freelancer’s brand:

Freelancer A tweets that they will be late turning in their project because they put it off until the last minute. Unfortunately, they forgot a) to tell their client that the project would be late and b) that this client follows their tweets.
Freelancer B posts funny (to them) pictures from their wild high school days on their Facebook account. However, Freelancer B has allowed several clients, including one very conservative one, to friend them on Facebook.
Freelancer C vents about a difficult client on a publicly accessible message board, giving details about their project as well as sharing proprietary client information in the thread.

Can these social media faux pas affect how a freelancer is perceived (and ultimately damage their brand)?

You bet they can. While in some instances a client is willing to overlook a social media misstep, there are other times when social media carelessness could cost you a client.

The bottom line is that it’s a good idea to be careful about what you tweet and post on social media. If you are unsure about whether you should post something, just don’t do it.

What Do You Think?

We’ve explained what branding is. We’ve also looked at some ways that you can start branding your freelancing business today. Finally, we’ve examined how social media can impact your brand.

Now it’s your turn. Share how branding has affected your freelancing business. Leave your answers in the comments.

How to Monitor Your Brand on Social Media

2009-12-08T09:57:00.000-08:00

Did you know that people are talking about your freelance business?
It’s true. The evolving technologies and transformation of web as a social tool means that people everywhere are talking, and it is critical for you to listen to what they are saying about your business.

The methods we’ll show you for tracking your business on social media are pretty simple, but they can provide a lot of insight as to how you can change your freelance marketing efforts to better suit the needs of your target market.

Let’s take a look at a few ways we can listen to what others are saying by monitoring social media.

A Shift in the Business Environment

There is a major shift in the way we conduct business. It’s not enough to simply create a profile and be active on different social media channels. It is also important to listen to the conversation and think about how the conversation impacts the bottom line of your business.

Who should you be listening to on social media? To start, you should listen to your existing clients or potential clients. You should also be aware of the comments of other freelancers.

Now that we’ve discussed the changing business environment, let’s look at two social media tools that you can use to monitor the conversation:

Twitter Lists
Bookmarking tools

Let’s begin by taking a look at Twitter Lists.

Start By Monitoring Twitter Lists

You may already know that Twitter recently released a new feature called Lists. (To learn more about it read this post on Twitter lists.)

Many of you are probably already mentioned on lists that are created by your friends or Twitter followers. These lists need to be monitored carefully.

For example, if you are a web designer you want others to reference you as a web designer on their list. If you are using Twitter as a marketing tool it is critical that you are known for what your business provides, in this case, web design.

Let’s say that you are mentioned on 30 lists and 25 of them are lists with titles such as “random tweets,” “funny,” “writer,” etc. Do you see how this type of categorization could affect your brand?

If your business is web designing and you are being mentioned on the majority of lists for something other than what your business provides it could hurt you and your business. You may lose out on possible leads.

Remember, lists are seen not only by you and the person who created the list. They are also seen by hundreds and thousands of people who follow the person who created the list and by anyone who lands on your Twitter profile.

Always monitor Twitter Lists. It doesn’t matter how many lists you are mentioned in. It does matter how many lists you are mentioned in for what you do as a freelancer.

Now that we’ve discussed how to listen to the conversation through Twitter Lists, let’s examine bookmarking services.

Use Bookmarking Services to See What’s “Hot”

Numbers matter! Plain and simple. You can be the best web designer, the best writer, or the very best developer, but if no one is landing on your blog or portfolio your business is going nowhere.

This is exactly why you should monitor bookmarking services to see what is working on your niche.

Check sites such as digg, del.icio.us, and stumbleupon. Watch categories and tags that fit your niche. Analyze what people enjoy the most.

Of course, sites that are already popular tend to get swarmed with votes on everything, but keep in mind they weren’t always there. Keep an eye out on these sites.

Monitor what is working well in your niche. Take an idea that worked before, rinse it a little and repeat it with a different angle to it so as to draw attention.

Make sure you use the time feature of the search. You want to see what’s working now, not what worked two years ago. Analyze results that occurred recently. For example, look for results from the past day, week, or a month.

Monitoring bookmarking services is as critical as monitoring conversation. Let’s talk a little about monitoring conversation.

Who’s Looking and What Are They Saying?

If you think that just participating in social media will bring you exposure, you are dead wrong. Listening is more important than participating because it gives you insight on how you should participate in the conversation.

There are countless platforms where people connect. The three big ones are Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Lists, Fanpages, Groups, Updates etc. make these the core platforms for carrying out conversation on the social web.

Don’t just use these services to tweet, update and communicate. Use them as a monitoring tool to see what others are saying about you or the business you are in.

Now, that we’ve examined several ways to monitor the conversation, let’s discuss what to do about what you’ve learned.

Apply What You Learn

Keep participating, but don’t forget that listening is much more important than simply talking. Get out there and use different features to check what others are saying about you and your brand or monitor these channels to find jobs.

The most important reason for listening is so that you can apply what you learn to improve your business.

For example, here are Freelance Folder we are monitoring Twitter and Facebook to make Freelance Folder even better. We are taking suggestions and implementing them slowly, but surely. To make sure that you are heard, be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. We are much stronger as a community.

You can also use these tools to see what others are saying about your competitors. You can find their weaknesses by watching what others say about them. That weakness could become your selling point.

You may also find jobs by listening in social media. If you are a writer, you can check Twitter search to see if there are any writing jobs out there. You can do the same with a Facebook search. You will be surprised how many freelancing gigs you can find just by simply typing a keyword or a phrase.

Your Turn

We’ve explained that if you effectively monitor these channels, you can boost your personal brand, drive a colossal amount of people to your site (which also highlights your services), find work directly, and get leads.

Social media is here to stay and monitoring these different platforms for the benefit of your business is key. It’s all about listening first and making changes to adapt to what your potential clients wants or how you can create awareness by simply looking out and keeping tab on what’s going on.

Now it’s your turn.

Share your ideas about how social media can improve your freelancing business in the comments.

XML/JSON API Code IP Location

2009-11-24T12:14:00.000-08:00

Introduction
We were asked a few times the code of our IP Location APIs so here they are. If you see ways to improve them (especially for speed) please let us know in the forum.
ip_query.php

//connect to db
$con = mysql_connect("localhost", "XXXXXX", "XXXXXX") or die(mysql_error());

if (!$con)
{
die("Could not connect: " . mysql_error());
}

mysql_select_db("XXXXXX", $con);

//get the IP
if ($_GET["ip"]){
$ip = $_GET["ip"];
}else{
$ip = getenv("REMOTE_ADDR");
}

if ($_GET["output"]) $output = $_GET["output"];

if ($_GET["callback"]) $callback = $_GET["callback"];

$sql_query = "SELECT * FROM `ip_group_city` where `ip_start` <= INET_ATON('" . mysql_real_escape_string($ip) . "') order by ip_start desc limit 1;";
$sql = mysql_query($sql_query, $con);
while($data = mysql_fetch_array($sql)){
$code = "OK";
$country_code = $data["country_code"];
$country_name = utf8_encode($data["country_name"]);
$region_name = utf8_encode($data["region_name"]);
$region_code = $data["region_code"];
$city = utf8_encode($data["city"]);
$zipcode = $data["zipcode"];
$latitude = $data["latitude"];
$longitude = $data["longitude"];
$gmtoffset = $data["gmtOffset"];
$dstoffset = $data["dstOffset"];
}

if (!($code)) $code = "IP NOT FOUND IN DATABASE, SORRY!";

if ($_GET["output"]){
switch($output){

case "raw";
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');
echo "$ip,";
echo "$code,";
echo "$country_code,";
echo "$country_name,";
echo "$region_code,";
echo "$region_name,";
echo "$city,";
echo "$zipcode,";
echo "$latitude,";
echo "$longitude,";
echo "$gmtoffset,";
echo "$dstoffset";
break;

case "json";
if ($callback){
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');
echo "$callback(\n";
echo "{\n";
echo "\"Ip\" : \"$ip\",\n";
echo "\"Status\" : \"$code\",\n";
echo "\"CountryCode\" : \"$country_code\",\n";
echo "\"CountryName\" : \"$country_name\",\n";
echo "\"RegionCode\" : \"$region_code\",\n";
echo "\"RegionName\" : \"$region_name\",\n";
echo "\"City\" : \"$city\",\n";
echo "\"ZipPostalCode\" : \"$zipcode\",\n";
echo "\"Latitude\" : \"$latitude\",\n";
echo "\"Longitude\" : \"$longitude\",\n";
echo "\"Gmtoffset\" : \"$gmtoffset\",\n";
echo "\"Dstoffset\" : \"$dstoffset\"\n";
echo "}\n";
echo ")";
}else{
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');
echo "{\n";
echo "\"Ip\" : \"$ip\",\n";
echo "\"Status\" : \"$code\",\n";
echo "\"CountryCode\" : \"$country_code\",\n";
echo "\"CountryName\" : \"$country_name\",\n";
echo "\"RegionCode\" : \"$region_code\",\n";
echo "\"RegionName\" : \"$region_name\",\n";
echo "\"City\" : \"$city\",\n";
echo "\"ZipPostalCode\" : \"$zipcode\",\n";
echo "\"Latitude\" : \"$latitude\",\n";
echo "\"Longitude\" : \"$longitude\",\n";
echo "\"Gmtoffset\" : \"$gmtoffset\",\n";
echo "\"Dstoffset\" : \"$dstoffset\"\n";
echo "}";
}
break;

default;
header('Content-type: text/xml');
echo "\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n";
echo "\n";
echo " $ip\n";
echo " $code\n";
echo " $country_code\n";
echo " $country_name\n";
echo " $region_code\n";
echo " $region_name\n";
echo " $city\n";
echo " $zipcode\n";
echo " $latitude\n";
echo " $longitude\n";
echo " $gmtoffset\n";
echo " $dstoffset\n";
echo "\n";
break;
}
}else{
header('Content-type: text/xml');
echo "\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n";
echo "\n";
echo " $ip\n";
echo " $code\n";
echo " $country_code\n";
echo " $country_name\n";
echo " $region_code\n";
echo " $region_name\n";
echo " $city\n";
echo " $zipcode\n";
echo " $latitude\n";
echo " $longitude\n";
echo " $gmtoffset\n";
echo " $dstoffset\n";
echo "\n";
}
?>

ip_query2.php

//connect to db
$con = mysql_connect("localhost", "XXXXXX", "XXXXXX") or die(mysql_error());

if (!$con)
{
die("Could not connect: " . mysql_error());
}

mysql_select_db("XXXXXX", $con);

//get the IP
if ($_GET["ip"]){
$ips = $_GET["ip"];
}else{
$ips = getenv("REMOTE_ADDR");
}

if ($_GET["output"]) $output = $_GET["output"];

if ($_GET["callback"]) $callback = $_GET["callback"];

$ip_list = explode(",",$ips);

if ((sizeof($ip_list) <= 25)&&(sizeof($ip_list) > 0)){
for($i = 0; $i < sizeof($ip_list); $i++){

$ip = $ip_list[$i];

if(preg_match("/[a-zA-Z]/",$ip)){
$domain = $ip;
$ip = gethostbyname($domain);
sleep(1);
}

$sql_query = "SELECT * FROM `ip_group_city` where `ip_start` <= INET_ATON('" . mysql_real_escape_string($ip) . "') order by ip_start desc limit 1;";
$sql = mysql_query($sql_query, $con);
if (mysql_num_rows($sql) == 1){
while($data = mysql_fetch_array($sql)){
$ip_geodata[$i] = array( ip => $ip,
code => "OK",
country_code => $data["country_code"],
country_name => utf8_encode($data["country_name"]),
region_code => $data["region_code"],
region_name => utf8_encode($data["region_name"]),
city => utf8_encode($data["city"]),
zipcode => utf8_encode($data["zipcode"]),
latitude => $data["latitude"],
longitude => $data["longitude"],
gmtoffset => $data["gmtOffset"],
dstoffset => $data["dstOffset"]);
}
}else{
$ip_geodata[$i] = array( ip => $ip,
code => "IP NOT FOUND",
country_code => "",
country_name => "",
region_code => "",
region_name => "",
city => "",
zipcode => "",
latitude => "",
longitude => "",
gmtoffset => "",
dstoffset => "");
}
usleep(10000);
}
}

if ($_GET["output"]){
switch($output){

case "raw";
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');
for ($i = 0; $i < sizeof($ip_geodata); $i++){
echo $ip_geodata[$i]["ip"] . ",";
echo $ip_geodata[$i]["code"] . ",";
echo $ip_geodata[$i]["country_code"] . ",";
echo $ip_geodata[$i]["country_name"] . ",";
echo $ip_geodata[$i]["region_code"] . ",";
echo $ip_geodata[$i]["region_name"] . ",";
echo $ip_geodata[$i]["city"] . ",";
echo $ip_geodata[$i]["zipcode"] . ",";
echo $ip_geodata[$i]["latitude"] . ",";
echo $ip_geodata[$i]["longitude"] . ",";
echo $ip_geodata[$i]["gmtoffset"] . ",";
echo $ip_geodata[$i]["dstoffset"];
echo "\n";
}
break;

case "json";
if ($callback){
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');
echo "$callback(\n";
echo " {\n";
echo " \"Locations\": [\n";
for ($i = 0; $i < sizeof($ip_geodata); $i++){
echo " {\n";
echo " \"Id\" : \"$i\",\n";
echo " \"Ip\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["ip"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"Status\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["code"] ."\",\n";
echo " \"CountryCode\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["country_code"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"CountryName\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["country_name"] ."\",\n";
echo " \"RegionCode\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["region_code"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"RegionName\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["region_name"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"City\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["city"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"ZipPostalCode\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["zipcode"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"Latitude\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["latitude"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"Longitude\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["longitude"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"Gmtoffset\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["gmtoffset"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"Dstoffset\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["dstoffset"] . "\"\n";
if ($i == (sizeof($ip_geodata) - 1)) {
echo " }\n";
}else{
echo " },\n";
}
}
echo " ]\n";
echo " }\n";
echo ")";
}else{
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');
echo "{\n";
echo " \"Locations\": [\n";
for ($i = 0; $i < sizeof($ip_geodata); $i++){
echo " {\n";
echo " \"Id\" : \"$i\",\n";
echo " \"Ip\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["ip"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"Status\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["code"] ."\",\n";
echo " \"CountryCode\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["country_code"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"CountryName\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["country_name"] ."\",\n";
echo " \"RegionCode\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["region_code"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"RegionName\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["region_name"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"City\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["city"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"ZipPostalCode\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["zipcode"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"Latitude\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["latitude"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"Longitude\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["longitude"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"Gmtoffset\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["gmtoffset"] . "\",\n";
echo " \"Dstoffset\" : \"" . $ip_geodata[$i]["dstoffset"] . "\"\n";
if ($i == (sizeof($ip_geodata) - 1)) {
echo " }\n";
}else{
echo " },\n";
}
}
echo " ]\n";
echo "}\n";
}
break;

default;
header('Content-type: text/xml');
echo "\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n";
echo "\n";
for ($i = 0; $i < sizeof($ip_geodata); $i++){
echo " \"$i\">\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["ip"] ."\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["code"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["country_code"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["country_name"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["region_code"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["region_name"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["city"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["zipcode"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["latitude"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["longitude"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["gmtoffset"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["dstoffset"] . "\n";
echo " \n";
}
echo "\n";
break;
}
}else{
header('Content-type: text/xml');
echo "\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n";
echo "\n";
for ($i = 0; $i < sizeof($ip_geodata); $i++){
echo " \"$i\">\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["ip"] ."\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["code"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["country_code"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["country_name"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["region_code"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["region_name"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["city"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["zipcode"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["latitude"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["longitude"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["gmtoffset"] . "\n";
echo " " . $ip_geodata[$i]["dstoffset"] . "\n";
echo " \n";
}
echo "\n";
}
?>

Codes Pack

Copying a MySQL row to another table

Export from MySQL to CSV

Installing rar and unrar programs in Linux or Unix

communicating-with-threads-in-php

HVAC.php

ThreadInstance.php

ThreadUtility.php

Thread.php

hvac.php

Building an Animated Cartoon Robot with jQuery

Why?

Overview

The Markup

Robot Head.

The Style

The jQuery JavaScript

Color Fading Menu with jQuery

Ok then, let’s get started…

The HTML

The CSS

The JavaScript

Further developments

Fully Executing jQuery Animations Without Queuing

Know The Right Approach To PR For You

Why PR Is Good For You

CSS Builder - Brand New Meta Titan Tool

Show/Hide Content With CSS & Javascript

Classes vs IDs, CSS Practice

How to Tar / Untar From the Command Line

How to Display Server Load in PHP

How to Protect Your PHP Code With EncryptionHow to Protect Your PHP Code With Encryption

How to Check Link Popularity in Google & Yahoo With PHP

Search Engine Popularity

How to Calculate PHP Load Times

How to Build a Scraper Using PHP & cURL

204,045bloggers,133,640new posts,34,374,943words today.

Protecting Your PHP/MySQL Queries from SQL Injection

Backing up a MySQL Database Using Cron

How to Backup and Restore Large Databases in MySQL

Five Freelance Branding Tips You Can Use Right Now

What is Branding?

Five Branding Tips for Freelancers

Social Media, Branding, and You

What Do You Think?

How to Monitor Your Brand on Social Media

A Shift in the Business Environment

Start By Monitoring Twitter Lists

Use Bookmarking Services to See What’s “Hot”

Who’s Looking and What Are They Saying?

Apply What You Learn

Your Turn

XML/JSON API Code IP Location

Introduction

ip_query.php

ip_query2.php

204,045
bloggers,
133,640
new posts,
34,374,943
words today.