Eric's Blog
How to out-smart form bot spam without using a CAPTCHA - Part II
April 22, 2011
In an earlier post about foiling form bot spam without using a CAPTCHA, I introduced an idea to validate your forms to not allow any HTML tags in any of the fields. The theory was that spammers’ main motivation for spamming forms was to get links sent. This method has worked wonderfully for me for quite a while… until yesterday, that is.
How to autoplay play a YouTube video ONLY ONCE by setting a cookie
January 17, 2011
I was building a website out that I wanted to autoplay a YouTube video, but I didn’t want the video to autoplay every single time the viewer hit the home page. I knew the answer was in setting a cookie, and here’s some tasty javascript that does just that.
Use PHP’s date function to keep your Copyright date current
January 07, 2011
Nothing screams “THIS WEBSITE HASN’T BEEN UPDATED IN A WHILE” like an out-of-date copyright notice in your footer.
Several years ago, I decided to code a little smarter, and on every website that I’m responsible for, I insert a PHP snippet that displays the current year. So now I never have to go back at the beginning of each year and update my copyright notices!
New idea for foiling form spam bots
December 30, 2010
I just read a new, clever way of foiling form spam bots today.
New meta tags to show content original source or syndication
December 13, 2010
Google announced the desire for publishers to use a new set of meta tags to indicate whether a post is original or syndicated.
Beware the Google new page “bump”
December 08, 2010
I don’t know what Google calls it, but I call it the “Google bump”. That is when new pages soar straight to the top of the rankings. The problem is that a week or two later, they sink right back into oblivion.
5 Most Important Factors When Redesigning Your Web Site
December 08, 2010
Eventually, every small business should update their website. Maybe you have a new logo, or you finally coordinated all your marketing materials on a single font style and color palate. Maybe you just finally wanted to breathe some new life into your website that was last updated in 1998! Whatever the reason, it’s time to update your site. Here are some quick requirements that you REALLY SHOULD require of your web designer so that you don’t suffer in your SEO efforts.
More CodeIgniter and GoDaddy Hosting Issues
December 08, 2010
I am working on a client’s site who has a GoDaddy DELUXE Hosting account, and I started having problems that my previous post on “GoDaddy + CodeIgniter Issues” did not resolve (shared hosting account… not deluxe).
HostGator and CodeIgniter: How to fix mod_rewrite
December 08, 2010
I came across this problem today. I just purchased a HostGator Baby account. I got everything installed, and CodeIgniter will pull up a home page, but any other page redirects to the home page
CodeIgniter and GoDaddy Hosting Issues
December 08, 2010
I had another snag in deploying a CodeIgniter application the other day. GoDaddy doesn’t allow you to have access outside of the web root. This is kind of a problem for CodeIgniter, because you really should install the system files outside of the web root for security reasons.
PHP Webbug / Clear gif Email Tracking
December 08, 2010
I had to create an email Open-Rate tracking system for a client the other day, so I thought I’d share it. This code hides a 1×1 pixel, also called a Web Bug or Clear GIF, in the email, so that if the person views the email, it “phones home” and adds the incident to a MySQL table.