Due to the relative simplicity of PHP, more and more young webmasters are getting their hooks into scripting. This can be a good thing — it increases the range of functionality and fun that we can add to our websites without the need to learn how to code ourselves — the problem is, a lot […]
Tag: scripts
CAPTCHAs
A CAPTCHA is “a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human” (source). More specifically this little rant is aimed at the variety of images containing letters and/or numbers which may be distorted, placed on a background or otherwise messed with to supposedly prevent non-humans from getting […]
Comment Filtering and Other Goo
A couple of “legitimate people” (and a few trolls) have mentioned having yet more trouble getting through my far-too-strict comment blacklists, and yet frustratingly certain spammers are getting through by posting normal comments with links that simply redirect to dodgy porn/drug sites. I don’t want to ban URLs or comments altogether so I’m going to […]
Beginner’s Guide to PHP – Part One
First things first, we might as well get out of the what PHP is not: PHP is not a replacement for HTML. PHP is not a synonym for MySQL. Although they work well together, they’re not the same thing. PHP is not all about layout-based includes. PHP is not magically going to make your website […]
New BellaBuffs blanklinefix Function
I’ve modified the BellaBuffs (and as such, BellaBook) function which removes whitespace from the end of lines so that it now removes empty lines too (which it didn’t properly before). This solves the problem caused by members that have been approved all at once causing blank lines and thus undefined offset errors. Until I can […]
People Annoy Me
It amazes me how frickin’ stupid some people are. You’ve been “hacked” before because of someone else’s lack of interest in updating their own script. You get your website back online and you’re at a forum and people are discussing how insecure another script is right in front of your eyes. Do you: a) continue […]
Unsafe PHP Scripts and the Safe Equivalents
I haven’t had time of late to do a detailed analysis of scripts that I’ve found to be unsafe for whatever reason, so I’m going to do a quick flick through of my list with basic reasons why. I’ll also try and provide links to “safe” alternatives where possible. Skip links: Simpbook, XueBook, PHPFanBase, Enthusiast3, […]
More BellaBuffs updates
Made some new changes to BellaBuffs this week thanks to feedback and bug reports from Téa P. They are as follows: Fixed XHTML validity issue in form textareas in: join.php, update.php and contact.php Changed value of submit button in contact.php (copy&paste error!) Included footer.php in join.php error messages Added fixEmail() to “Reply-To: ” in e-mail […]
First Day at Work
I think I did well today. Excusing the fact that when my boss asked me to e-mail my colleagues I ended up typing in my personal e-mail address (force of habit) instead of my work address. Then, when I went to upgrade a client’s forum because it was about 10 versions out of date, Transmit […]
Some General Updates
I have made some changes to the file that controls comment processing over the past two days — this should allow me to be a bit less strict with the ‘bad word’ list which means no more errors for you genuine commenters. Hopefully. Please let me know if you have any issues adding a comment. […]