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Using a MySQL Full-Text Search

Friday, January 18th, 2008

A full-text search allows a search of multiple text columns. If you are setting up a search of a series of articles or a site with lots of product-related content, a MySQL FULLTEXT search can make it very easy to find articles or products related to the keywords used by a searcher. This search method does exactly what its name implies–it allows a full search of large text fields. A FULLTEXT search is easy to set up if you just follow these simple instructions.
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Using MySQL Data Types

Sunday, December 9th, 2007

Learning how to use the MySQL database properly can take quite a bit of time. It is not uncommon to select a less than optimal data type when setting up a new table. Multiple data types are available for each value that you wish to store. This MySQL data type tutorial is intended to help take some of the mystery out of the proper type selections for database columns.
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Populating a Select Box With PHP and MySQL - PHP Tutorial

Thursday, November 22nd, 2007

This is a simple PHP script that takes data from a MySQL table and uses it to generate a drop-down select box for an HTML form. This can be used for a list of states on a credit card or user data form, or for a category selection or something where you need to pull the selections from a MySQL table. The script uses PHP to generate the HTML that is sent to the user’s browser.
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How to Use the PHP Ternary Operator

Sunday, November 11th, 2007

The ternary operator is a shortcut comparison operator that replaces an if-else statement in a PHP script. If you use a lot of comparison statements in your scripts, this can greatly reduce the number of lines of code. The ternary operator is really very simple to use, but it does tend to confuse newbie PHP programmers.
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Preventing SQL Injection with MySQL and PHP

Monday, November 5th, 2007

Most new web developers have heard of SQL injection attacks, but not very many know that it is fairly easy to prevent an attacker from gaining access to your data by filtering out the vulnerabilities using MySQL extensions found in PHP. An SQL injection attack occurs when a hacker or cracker (a malicious hacker) attempts to dump the data in a database table in a database-driven web site. In an unprotected and vulnerable site, this is pretty easy to do.
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Using External CSS Style Sheets

Saturday, November 3rd, 2007

External CSS style sheets offer numerous benefits to web site design. First, they centralize CSS rules, which means that making a change in one file affects the entire web site; therefore, site maintenance is much simpler. Second, an external style sheet reduces the amount of web page code, which makes it easier for spiders to dissect the code and get at the content. Third, most browsers cache this file, which speeds up the loading and rendering of a web page.
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Form Validation using JavaScript

Monday, October 15th, 2007

When using an HTML form on a web page, it is important to make sure that all of the information that you request is filled in. It is also important to make sure that the correct information is entered. JavaScript is a client-side web language that can be used to validate the information you request before the form is submitted to your web server for processing.
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A Fix for Missing or Broken Images

Saturday, September 15th, 2007

Here is a simple fix for problems with missing images in situations when you cannot predict when an image might be missing. Why not just fix the missing image problem? Well, sometimes a site relies on images from another source, such as those provided by affiliate marketing merchants. The fact is that there are situations where you just do not have control over the images that display on your site and broken image links make a site look unprofessional.
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Simple PHP Banner Ad Rotator Script

Friday, August 3rd, 2007

Banner ad rotators can range in complexity from simple systems that randomly display banner or sidebar ads, to very complex systems that track every click on each ad and display different ads based upon preset percentages for each ad display. This snippet of PHP code is the simple version. As many ads as you want can be loaded into an array and the code will randomly select an ad to display every time the page is loaded.
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FileZilla Tips and FAQs

Sunday, July 15th, 2007

By now you have probably installed FileZilla, the very powerful and free FTP file transfer utility. Once it is installed, it is time to start digging into its many features. We’ve collected a few tips that you may find to be useful.
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