You’re probably wondering what I’m talking about here, but to clarify it’s database speak and a DBA is a database administrator :-) So why do you need to concern yourself with such jargon? Well if you’ve deployed a PHP/MySQL (or other scripting language or database) web application, then you need a basic understanding of this stuff.
You need to keep in mind when installing anything on your website or blog that you are working in a secured environment and must be vigilant.
I regularly develop and also install PHP/MySQL scripts for clients, which perform a wide range of functions and I am often asked to “clean up the mess”. I want to share a mistake that I regularly see because it’s very important and could threaten your website or blog’s security.
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Have you got an insurance policy for your Wordpress blog?
No, I’m not referring to something sold to you by some pushy insurance agent 
I regularly see posts on forums which sadden me, from desperate people who have lost their sites due to malicious activity such as hackers or database corruption. People rely too often on their hosting company to provide them with a restore when this occurs and in my opinion, this is a dangerous practice. Read the rest of this entry
Paypal provides easy tools for websites or blogs to accept payment for goods or services. For me it has been an excellent tool and what I really like is that you only pay fees when you sell something! No monthly or annual fees here.
You can upgrade your Paypal account free of charge which enables you to accept credit card payments etc. from purchasers.
If you want your order fulfillment to be automated, e.g. you are selling downloadable content such as an ebook or video, then the basic Paypal payment button is not sufficient for your needs. Why?
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When I develop websites or blogs, I always test my work on a number of different browsers and resolutions. Currently I load them in Internet Explorer 7.0, Firefox 2, Google Chrome and Apple Safari. This has always seemed a good selection and to date has served me well.
Recently I discovered Browsershots an excellent free service which makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers, enabling you to test your website or blog in almost 50 different browsers (less for Unix or Apple platform) and no that’s not a typo!
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I regularly tidy up web pages containing html errors and one of the most common is the lack of doctype information, which is supposed to be the first element on the page, prior to the opening tag. It’s the stuff that looks like this …
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd“>
<html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml“>
So what is this for and do you need it?
Well the good news is that leaving out this information will not cause your page to fail to load or fall apart in a heap, but the bad news is that you are likely to get unpredictable results with different browsers.
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