Articles
WordPress: Excluding yourself from Google Analytics reports
I hate it when I’m working hard on a site, going from page to page, and my clicks and such distort the Google Analytics reports. The clicks and page views themselves don’t do a whole lot but when you look at average time on site and average page views per visitor it will be completely out of whack. We need to exclude ourselves from the reports and we’ll use WordPress as an example. Excluding via [...]
WordPress Plugin Does Not Have a Valid Header
Ran into a problem with installing a plugin today that returned a “Plugin does not have a valid header” message in WordPress. I guessed the problem almost instantly but I figured I would share the solution for anyone that might be searching for it. Apparently there have been problems in at least one version of WordPress where an automatic update caused this error but in most cases the error is probably due to the folder [...]
Speeding Up Your WordPress Site
WordPress is, in my opinion, one of the finest blogging and content management solutions there is. It is loaded with cutting edge features that are very important in giving your blog or site the flexibility that users have come to expect these days. WordPress has somehow managed to package it’s super awesomeness in a way that is both accessible to the average user and, in my opinion, great fun for a developer to work on. [...]
What to Look For in a Shared Hosting Provider
Shared hosting is a phrase used to describe hosting many web sites on a single server. Finding the right shared web hosting provider can be crucial to your web site. Features, reliability and price will all be important factors in your eventual decision. Haphazardly grabbing the cheapest hosting plan you find without taking time to do proper research may cost you more hair than you originally intended. It really is all fun and games until [...]
What is Web Hosting and How is it Used?
The definition of web hosting in it’s most basic sense is simple a service provided by a hosting company that allows you to make web pages available to the internet as a whole. Without web hosting you could have pages of HTML ready and lack a way for users on the net to access the pages. To summarize…HTML pages ready to view and no hosting are HTML pages not viewable via the internet while hosted [...]
PHP Basic Loops and Conditional Structures
Basic PHP Control Structures This article continues from PHP Variables Primer. At this point we will add something that will actually allow you to use what you know to make simple, useful PHP scripts. I’m going to call them control structures. There are quite a few handy control structurs in PHP but we will only cover the FOR loop and IF along with ELSEIF and ELSE as this tutorial is supposed to be just the [...]
PHP Variables Primer
This article continues from PHP 101-Learn the Very Basics of PHP. What in the world is a variable?! Think algebra. The wacky x + 5 = 15 stuff. In PHP it would be something like echo $x + 5;. “$x” would be the variable. If “$x” is nothing then PHP would echo 5. If “$x” were ten then PHP would echo 15. A variable is just a named chunk of memory for you to store [...]
Legitimate Ways to Make Money Online
I work from home full time. It has literally been years since I’ve clocked into a day to day job and I’ve come to the point where it’s increasingly hard for me to remember waking up at 4:20AM because the boss wants an extra hour of overtime. I try not to brag and I’m certainly not rich but I realize that I definitely am fortunate. I’m not a guru and I’m not selling a get-rich-quick [...]
How do I enable Javascript on my computer?
All modern browsers usually have Javascript enabled by default. Click here to check if javascript is enabled on your current browser. There should be a small popup box that says “Javascript is on”. If not then you may have Javascript disabled. Turn on Javascript here What is javascript? Javascript is a cross platform, cross browser scripting language that runs on your computer and allows web sites and other media to add some extra fancy effects [...]
Add to Bookmarks Javascript Code
In this article our mission is to build a very light and simple script that will allow your users to add a page of your website to their browser bookmarks. Click here to bookmark this page! You’ll see this type of thing on many sites and if you have good content on your website your users might appreciate the extra ease in bookmarking your pages. The Javascript Our bookmark script will be totally self-contained to [...]
PHP 101-Learn the Very Basics of PHP
The Big Prologue The whole purpose of this little tutorial is simply to get you started with PHP. I am assuming a lot of things. For one, I assume you are familiar with building web pages in HTML and using some kind of FTP client. These things are pretty much necessary if you want to tackle a serverside scripting language. If you do know HTML and can wield an FTP editor and even notepad you [...]
Problems with mysql_real_escape_string()?
Mysql_real_escape_string() Syntax First let’s take a quick look at how the manual says that mysql_real_escape_string() is supposed to be used. Check out the prototype below and notice the “resource link_identified” that is given as the second argument. This resource link_indentifier is actually the id that is returned from a call to mysql_connect(). What this means is that, for whatever reason, mysql_real_escape_string() actually uses your connection to a database to function. The protoype lists the resource [...]
Cannot Modify Header Information Error
What’s a Header and What’s Wrong With It? No this isn’t a soccer tutorial. We are talking about a common error in PHP scripts. The header we are talking about is a piece of data that precedes a larger chunk and carries information about how to handle the larger chunk of data. Note that this “header information” must precede the actual data. An example would be the header of any file on your computer. There [...]
Quick and Easy RSS Feed Reader
Quick and Easy RSS Feed Reader RSS feeds can really be quite handy in keeping your users up to date with what’s going on in the world. Many large sites with RSS feeds offer javascript code that allows users to display a list of current content on their website. This makes it easy for people with little knowlede of XML and server side scripting. Some add RSS content to their sites for users while others [...]
Manage Content With PHP Includes
PHP Includes Basics Have you ever had to makes changes on a site that uses no includes and no external CSS file? What about a site with several thousand pages? Do you fully understand what this can do to a developers mental sanity? If not then you probably really don’t want to know. It’s not pretty. There is a way to alleviate this drive for mental breakdown though. Server side includes allow you to reuse [...]