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I discovered a cool service named ImpressionShop.com where you can create your own custom products.  I have made a few different oval sticker designs and I am very impressed by the quality of the decal.  Also the selection is impressive.  Hundreds of products like mousepads, hats, jewelery, thumb drives, magnets, watches and all kinds of stuff.  Cheaper than Cafepress, way bigger selection and less expensive than Zazzle too, so I believe they are a great alternative.   I recommend!

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I really want lots of opinions on this.  Is Google SiteMaps really necessary?  Do you use their Sitemap Generator Tool or do you use a thrid party service like XML-SiteMaps.

Hi,

I am looking for a graphic designer to create some ads for a web site.  We have the site made up and have enrolled in ShareBucks Affiliate Network but need a professional-looking ad design.  The site is International Car Stickers.  I will need 2 different designs on the top four standard ad formats (125x125, 468x60, 728x90, and 160x600).  A job well done will get work for other sites as well.

If you are interested, please PM me or email to dan.w(at)dynawebdesigns.com

It seems that we often get the comment from users "My site has been hacked.  My web forum index page was replaced (or erased).  Please make it so that hackers cannot get in."

The kind of problem you are experiencing often happens when you have PHP or ASP scripts on your web space that is insecure.  The server must do what the script calls for and if the script itself is insecure, then it could seriously jeopardize your data.  It is not uncommon for popular web scripts like forums, blogs, CMS scripts and others to contain vulnerabilities that allow malicious users to access or edit or delete files.  If you are using a common web script and believe it is insecure, contact the author of the script for information on applying security patches and/or upgrading to the latest version of the script.

From my experience, the most insucure scripts are:

Subdreamer
PHP Nuke
PHPBB

Although almost any popular GPL web script can be vulnerable, even the most vulnerable can be made secure.  It takes a lot of attention and research.  Again, the most important thing you can do is go to the support site for the script you are using and apply all security patches.  Also find if the script designer recommends if Register_Globals be set to OFF.  If so, disable register globlas using .htaccess file.

[CAFEPRESS REVIEW:]

CAFEPRESS REVIEW:

I have to say, the more I use CafePress the more I like them.  Their products are top-notch. The prining quality is unbeatable.  In my opinion, there is no alternative to CafePress, none of the others come close to the professional solution they have to offer. 

It is really easy to set up a shop for free, and their premium shops are just fabulous... you can even add your own custom HTML!.  It's all just too easy.  CafePress is definitely worth checking out.

[Disllow Directory Browsing]

Most servers are configured so that directory browsing is not allowed.  This means that if a certain web directory does not contain an index (or default) file, then an error message will be displayed in the web browser.

If Directory Browsing is enabled, then the contents of the directory will be shown in the browser and you can click freely on files and folders therein.

Disllow Directory Browsing
If you want to Disallow Directory Browsing on a server that allows it, create an .htaccess file in the web root directory and add the following line:

Code Select Expand

IndexIgnore */*

Allow Directory Browsing
If you want to Allow Directory Browsing on a server that dies nto allow it by default, create an .htaccess file in the web root directory and add the following line:

Code Select Expand

Options +Indexes

Remember that .htaccess files do not work on Windows Servers, so you will have to have your web host set the configuration for you.  Have fun with your server and htaccess!

[As I see it, SPAM comes through in three different ways:]

As I am sure you already know, keeping your email address hidden from Spammers is very important.  Spiders and bots scour the web and find as many email addresses as possible and add them to databases.  Since these addresses are present on the internet, they typically prove much more successful than dictionary attacks.

Having said this, I would like this thread to be an ongoing, cooperative effort to form an article on the subject.

Let's go:

As I see it, SPAM comes through in three different ways:

1) Spiders scour the web and find emails that are in plain text and database them.

2) Bots get through web forms and send SPAM instead of the honest visitor feedback or occasional goofball as expected.

3) Programs send out dictionary attacks on your domain.

Let's go over these individually to see what can be done to protect yourself and your sanity.

1) Spiders scour the web and find emails that are in plain text and database them.

What you have to do here is go over your web site and make sure your email address is not presented in plain text.  For example, it may exist in this way

Code Select Expand

your@yourdomain.com
or like this

Code Select Expand

<a href="mailto:your@yourdomain.com">
or in some similar way.  AVOID THIS.  SPAMMERS and their spiders adore this as it leaves your email address wide open for collection into their precious database.

What can be done to avoid exposing your email address in plain text?

a) Use an image of your email address and do not link to the email address in the mailto method.
b) Use a quick and easy "(at)" in place of "@" and "(dot)" in place of "." like this:  me(at)mydomain(dot)com.
c) Use javascript to display the email address (my favorite way).  Here is a sample of the code to use:

Code Select Expand


<script language="JavaScript">
<!-- //Go choke on a chicken wing you spammer bastards!
var name = "me";
var domain = "mydomain.com";
document.write('<a href=\"mailto:' + name + '@' + domain + '\">');
document.write(name + '@' + domain + '</a>');
// --></script>
of course replace me & mydomain.com with your actual information.

2) Bots get through web forms and send SPAM instead of the honest visitor feedback or occasional goofball as expected.

To battle this you need to use the correct scripting in your web forms to combat SPAM.  Older forms do not take this into account.  One such script I recommend is Dynaweb's SFEPS located at http://www.dynawebdesigns.com/scripts.htm
It uses PHP which any HostNed account supports.

3) Programs send out dictionary attacks on your domain.

There are a few things you can do to combat dictioaryattacks.

a) Do not use an email catchall.
b) Name your email account names something that is hard to guess.  For example, instead of using the name contact(at)mydomain(dot)com use this instead, c.o.n.t.a.c.t8745(at)mydomain(dot)com

In regards to email performance on server WIN2 late January. 

We can confirm that from mid to late January we experienced periods of mail failures.  This occured due to one of the DNSBL blacklist databases we use to filter incoming email to our server having troubles.  Although their failure appears to be due to a problem in their service upgrade and not an issue of negligence, mail problems are not acceptable for HostNed customers.  This type of server-wide filtering is industry standard and the failure was experienced by thousands of servers worldwide.  Needless to say we are very disappointed in the failures of the 3rd party service that we have come to rely upon.  Due to the reliability issue, we have unsubscribed from that database service; however we are still maintaining other databases to protect the server from being flooding by incoming SPAM email.  We regret that we have experienced this and I assure you we have taken proper measures to prevent such a failure in the future.

Sincerely,
HostNed Management

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HostNed allows you to override php.ini settings to your preference with an .htaccess file.  For example, if on a linux server, the global setting for register_globals is On and you have a script that recommends it be set to Off, here's how to change it:

1) In the http root of your web space, see if there is already a file there named ".htaccess".  If not, create one.
2) Edit the file and add the following line somewhere on it's own line.
php_flag register_globals off
3) Exit and save the file.

You have now set register_globals to off for your entire domain.  Easy!

This topic has been moved to Just Chat.

http://my.hostned.com/forum/index.php?topic=76.0

[ucwords]

I was working on http://www.wormportal.com and in the Regional section it includes content from MySQL database.  The city names are IN ALL CAPS and looks really bad when including that on the web page (not to mention Google hates that).  I found the way to Capitalize First Letter of Each Word Using PHP.

ucwords
(PHP 3 >= 3.0.3, PHP 4, PHP 5)

ucwords --  Uppercase the first character of each word in a string
Description
string ucwords ( string str )
Returns a string with the first character of each word in str capitalized, if that character is alphabetic.

The definition of a word is any string of characters that is immediately after a whitespace (These are: space, form-feed, newline, carriage return, horizontal tab, and vertical tab).

Example 1. ucwords() example

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<?php
$foo = 'hello world!';
$foo = ucwords($foo);            // Hello World! 

$bar = 'HELLO WORLD!';
$bar = ucwords($bar);            // HELLO WORLD!
$bar = ucwords(strtolower($bar)); // Hello World!
?> 
Note: This function is binary-safe.

NEAT! 

Official man page at http://ca.php.net/manual/en/function.ucwords.php

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