evolt.org - Backend

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.

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.

AJAX Login System using XMLHttpRequest

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 09:45:07 -0600

The new buzzword Ajax, barely out of infancy, has turned a lot of heads lately. See what the fuss is about with a demonstration of a secure login system that doesn't require any page refresh or form submittals.

PHP coding guidelines

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 08:15:31 -0500

The guidelines that I follow when writing my PHP scripts; can be helpful to have something like this if you're working on a joint project.

Tracking your users in the access logs

Tue, 25 Nov 2003 02:03:15 -0600

Server logs, ubiquitous and humble as they are, deserve a second look. They are most web sites' only source for statistically relevant information about user behaviour and with a little creativity you can get much more out of them than your preconfigured log analysis application might lead you to believe.

Storing form array data to MySQL using PHP

Wed, 10 Sep 2003 03:05:55 -0500

Got an array from a form? Need to store it to a database? Here's how.

Add Geography to your Web Site for a Better View

Wed, 23 Jul 2003 22:10:52 -0500

How can a science that studies the features and characteristics of a space (e.g. the Earth) improve our websites? In this article I will introduce examples of methods we can use involving geography to improve site usability by adding unique visualization to our sites.

Mask Your Web Server for Enhanced Security

Sun, 01 Jun 2003 04:23:26 -0500

Masking or anonymizing a Web server involves removing identifying details that intruders could use to detect your OS and Web server vendor and version. This information, while providing little or no utility to legitimate users, is often the starting place for crackers, blackhat hackers and "script kiddies". This article explores some ways you can minimize the risk of such detection.

Password encryption: rationale and Java example

Tue, 20 May 2003 13:10:43 -0500

Most of the web sites today have some sort of a registration module where a user is asked to choose a username/password combination. You might wonder if the password you provide will be kept well-protected (read encrypted). In case you are the person designing such backend registration component, why not give your users peace of mind by encrypting their passwords?

Using PEAR's mimeDecode module

Mon, 14 Apr 2003 01:55:48 -0500

In this article, we will explore the mimeDecode module of PEAR to see how we can easily decode MIME email.

Simple Localization with PHP

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:42:03 -0500

On PHP DevCenter, Adam Trachtenberg and Joao Prado Maia have described interesting ways to localize web sites with PHP. I'm offering another alternative, which should be easy for non-programmers to use.

An Introduction to generating sequences with SQL

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:27:05 -0500

Did mama say that "while" and "for" loops were the only ways to generate patterned sequences? Well, mama was wrong! The plain old SQL SELECT statement will do just fine.

Evaluating a Database

Sat, 23 Nov 2002 06:43:25 -0600

An overview of factors to consider when deciding to use database technology.

Ten Things to Do with IIS

Fri, 25 Oct 2002 08:38:13 -0500

It would be nice if everything ran in a vacuum so that when something goes wrong you know what caused it, but in the real world most software is dependent on other software. ASP, ASP.NET, ColdFusion, JSP, Perl are no different... they run on top of IIS. Here's a list of ten ways to make IIS the best it can be.

Using XML with PHP without any apache changes

Tue, 13 Aug 2002 06:39:13 -0500

XML is sexy, PHP and XML is a cheap and good way to create and syndicate your website. Now, when you have your own server, you can set up all the necessary apache add-ons to explore the PHP-XML relationship to the full extend. When you own a virtual server at an ISP, you can't do that. Still, there is a way to use XML with PHP without doing any changes to the server, the answer is a small but fine PHP script.