evolt.org - Workers of the Web, Evolt!

A Very Simple and Effective Captcha

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 05:09:24 -0500

I have a very simple anti-bot spam technique that works extremely well. It requires no javascript, cookies or complicated server weirdness, is fully accessible, has no hidden fields, has negligible overhead and takes just a moment or two to implement. It requires that the user fill out one field with a number, so it's good for anti-bot but will not prevent human spammers. In three years, I have yet to receive any spam on any of the many sites that I have installed this on. Sites that were being bombarded with hundreds of spams daily suddenly became quiet and good emails get though.

Simulating Apache asis feature with very simple CGI

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 03:57:47 -0500

Apache's asis feature, provided by mod-asis, is a very simple way of sending static HTTP headers along with static content. Many installations of Apache have this disabled (the default) and those of us not on Apache are out of luck. This combination has led to this simple and useful feature being overlooked by most web developers.

Search Engine Friendly URLs with IIS and Classic ASP

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:42:00 -0600

A few years ago, I needed a Content Management System (CMS) for my site Voor Beginners and its English counterpart For Beginners. One of the requirements was, that the CMS should use "search engine friendly" URLs. This is fairly easy to accomplish with Linux and Apache; however, another requirement was that the CMS should run on the Windows platform... In this article, I will show how you can "simulate" the effects of .htaccess and mod_rewrite using Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) and classic ASP.

Google Algorithm Update Analysis

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 06:40:06 -0500

Anybody who monitors their rankings with the same vigor that we in the SEO community do will have noticed some fairly dramatic shifts in the algorithm starting last Thursday (July 5th) and continuing through the weekend. Many sites are rocketing into the top 10 which, of course, means that many sites are being dropped at the same time. We were fortunate not to have any clients on the losing end of that equation however we have called and emailed the clients who saw sudden jumps into the top positions to warn them that further adjustments are coming. After a weekend of analysis there are some curiosities in the results that simply require further tweaks in the ranking system.

Working with hierarchical data in SQL using Ancestor tables

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 07:53:08 -0500

This document describe an approach to SQL queries of hierarchical data using ancestor tables. Multiple inheritance are allowed but cycles are not allowed for this approach to work.

How to Get Listed in the DMOZ Directory

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 08:35:54 -0500

I'm a little confused. As an internet consultant specializing in search engine optimization, I believe that it is a good idea to submit your site to DMOZ (a.k.a. ODP or the Open Directory Project) --in fact, Google even encourages you to do so! However, being an ODP editor myself, I can tell you from personal experience that perhaps only 10-20% of all the site suggestions we receive actually follow our guidelines...

Failover Database Connection with PHP + mySQL

Sun, 20 May 2007 07:04:07 -0500

You want to connect to a mySQL database? Well, then it's likely you already know how. But how about connecting a second database if the first one fails? No? This could be a life saver.

How Visual Design Can Impact your Bottom Line

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 08:35:55 -0500

How do you know if you should invest more time and money into creating a killer design? This case study examines how the look and feel of the site can impact your overall conversion rate which can provide justification for a little more investment. View the old site, compare it to the new site and review the conversion metrics that shows the before and after conversion rates.

Site review: French presidential campaign sites: voynet2007.fr

Fri, 18 May 2007 03:36:16 -0500

Dominique Voynet, a former minister of Environment and Equipment, is standing for the leftist Green party's in the French presidential election coming up at the end of April. Her campaign site, voynet2007.fr, seems to break an exceptionally high number of basic and seemingly well-accepted usability and content design guidelines.

Making websites: what's your target audience ?

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 10:20:00 -0500

If putting your business online means maximising the outreach, and a global audience, then Web Standards just add sense to your sensibility. A browser is never going to buy anything from you. The users should always get your content, no matter what platform they use, what media device they use, or wherever they might be. There should be no reason that a business turns back even one potential customer.

Working With Fractions In CSS and PHP

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 17:17:50 -0500

Most of us are uncomfortable with using fractions when writting programs. If we encounter a fraction, we will first convert it into a floating point number (with decimals) and proceed from there. Most programming languages would prefer to use 0.5 as opposed to 1/2 because the later conflicts with the syntax of the languages. In this article, I will discuss an approach to working with fractions in PHP and CSS in one of the projects that I have done.

Top 10 Lies told by Clients

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 06:47:25 -0600

When you're working commercially, being great at what you do is about 25% of the task. Too many times I see the sad example of someone walking in to a situation with noble intentions and then getting royally screwed, because what they see as an opportunity and a labor of love, the other party sees as something else entirely, not at all romantic or idealized, but raw and simple.

You are going to be dealing with people who are unlike yourself. Their motivations are their own and their attitudes are probably different than yours. When you're in education, you may have tough teachers and think that it can't be worse, but wait until a business person has a hundred grand riding on your work! Then you will know what demanding means.

This list wasn't meant to make anyone crazy or paranoid, but is designed to inject some reality into the fantasy.

Ultimate htaccess Examples

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 10:48:46 -0500

Here's my list of the ultimate htaccess code snippets and examples that I use all the time. I tried to keep them extremely minimalistic.

Quick Calendar Using AJAX and PHP

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 08:14:06 -0500

Online calendars are often used in many web applications. Though popular, the logic behind creating a calendar can be scary especially for those who are new to programming. There are many web calendars in the market but some of them are quite complicated. If we are not able to understand the code, it becomes harder for us to customise the calendar to fit into our existing application. As such, we need to create a calendar that can plug itself into any system seamlessly without problems. Whether we are using wordpress, mambo or drupal, we should only need to insert one line into our code for the calendar to work.

Can WCAG 2.0 be simpler?

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 05:44:32 -0600

The new WCAG 2.0 standard draft sparked a hot discussion around web accessibility and the standard direction. The main issue is how to make it simpler and easier to understand for web developer community. The author investigates some WCAG 2.0 success criteria and explains, why they should be solved by improving technology of user agents.