Excerpt: One of the members on Irish WebMaster Forums asked for help in creating a simple dependent select menu and the most obvious option is by using Ajax, so I decided to put up this post with step-by-step instructions. First, create a new PHP page (as we are going to use php for this) and name it "page1.php". On this page we are going to add the following javascript code, which will take care of our XMLHTTP request. <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript"> var ewd_domain = 'http://www.eire-webdesign.ie/'; //set domain var ewd_loading_img = ewd_domain + 'images/loading.gif';//set image path var ewd_loading_msg = 'Loading Data…';//set loading message var xmlhttp_obj = false; //create the XMLHttpRequest function ewd_xmlhttp(){  if (window.XMLHttpRequest){ // if Mozilla, Safari etc   xmlhttp_obj = new XMLHttpRequest();  }else if (window.ActiveXObject){ // if IE   try{    xmlhttp_obj = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");   }catch (e){    try{     xmlhttp_obj = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");    }catch (e){    }   }  }else{   xmlhttp_obj = false;  }  return xmlhttp_obj; }   //get content via GET function ewd_getcontent(url, containerid){  var xmlhttp_obj = ewd_xmlhttp();  document.getElementById(containerid).innerHTML = '<img src="' + ewd_loading_img + '" />' + ewd_load
... read more » ...

Excerpt: Ajax technology, everyone is talking about it, but it has it's own drawback. Few advantages for using Ajax on your website: 1. Better and more responsive website and web applications. 2. It uses existing technology that are available in most browsers. 3. It can be use with any server-side language (ASP, PHP) + JavaScript, already in use by many web developers. 4. Ajax integrates perfectly with existing designs and website functionality. 5. Enables immediate tasks like server-side form validation without refreshing the page. 6. Creating simple suggest functionality like Google Suggest. plus a lot more... Some of the disadvantages using Ajax: 1. Because pages does not change while it still brings new content or checking a form, can not be easily bookmarked. 2. Search engines may not be able to index all pages available on your website. 3. Back button in browsers doesn't work as with a normal page. 4. Javascript can be disabled in some browsers client-side making your application non-functional. Today we will be discussing the solution for creating friendly URLs, using Ajax technology while keeping the functionality for users that have Javascript disabled, and also allow search engines to index your page content as well. So lets go ahead. A standard link to another page normally looks like this: text while an Ajax link is formatted as below: text The problem with the Ajax formated link is that search engine can not follow it and if javascript i
... read more » ...

Excerpt: One of the first steps in search engines optimization is keywords research. Say you have the website ready, it is probably already listed in search engines (type in Google search box "site:www.website_name.com"), but it doesn't rank very well at the moment, so you start looking on the web for a solution then, you come across the SEO term which stands for search engines optimization or optimisation. There are many tools available at the present for example: http://inventory.overture.com/  now owned by Yahoo or Google Keyword Tool, but myself, I  don't find them very useful for a website that targets the Irish market. A better approach for the moment, until new tools are made available is to sit down and write on a piece of paper a few sentences that would describe your business. At the end of the day, nobody knows your business better than you do. Now sit back and read them over and over again, until it sinks in, then try to get the meaning of one sentence at a time in just 3-4 words and write them down. Why 3-4 words? Because if you are in a tight competitions, 1 (never recommended) or 2 words ranking are a lot harder to achieve, and more than 50% chances are that you will never get the results you are looking for. E.g. - trying to optimise your website for just "insurance", would be a mistake and you will have a very slim chance of making it into the first 10 results out of 414,000,000 found (default number of results Google returns per
... read more » ...

Excerpt: Last week I was getting an error using Google Analytics which is available trough the Webmaster Tools, and it seems to be fixed now but wait, today a different error came up that happens after changing the dates range:
... read more » ...

Excerpt: Very often a  website developers has to deal with user input, and if not sanitized properly could break the code or insert malicious code into your database. By creating customised functions, a website developer's job, could be made a lot easier and it's very handy for doing updates to your code. This function is something I designed, and will allow you to sanitize your input either coming from a form on your website or a database table before doing anything with it like send an email, display it on the website or do an update / insert to a db table. //function to sanitise user input //preventing sql errors and code breaking // [1] = numbers // [2] = small letters // [3] = caps letters // [4] = other characters that are included between the [4 ] brackets (e.g. [4.,@-_ ]) //notice last gap for spaces // ' " \ / needs a \ in front like : \' and \" and \\ and \/ function ewd_sanitize($input, $format){  if($input == ""){   return;  }else{   //prepare characters to be kept   $ewd_keep = '#[^';   $ewd_keep .= stristr($format,'[1]') ? '0-9' : '';//allow digits   $ewd_keep .= stristr($format,'[2]') ? 'a-z' : '';//allow small letters   $ewd_keep .= stristr($format,'[3]') ? 'A-Z' : '';//allow caps letters   //other   if(stristr($format,'[4')){    $pattern = "/(\[4)(.*?)(\])/"; //match the 4th bracket and get the characters    pr
... read more » ...