Web Cash

Although Google Adsense is easy and convenient, it isn’t always the best choice for monetization. My click-through rate and eCPM is relatively low - but there are other methods to turn traffic into cash.

One method is to sell text link ads. A major ad group on this front is Text-Link-Ads. However, while I’m building up my pagerank, I decided to test out a different provider - TNX.
(more…)

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a short article about how to create a multi-page form.

The simple solution I suggested involved a foreach loop that cycled through the $_POST array and sent every value along in a hidden input element. After a bit of reflection (and some useful comments), I realized there’s a teeny tiny security hole in that approach - so I’ve slightly modified it to close the loophole.
(more…)

While browsing some forums the other day, I came across this question - “How do I find a random date in PHP?”

This is a pretty simple operation, if we make use of a few built-in PHP functions - time(), strtotime(), and date(). In this article, we’ll see how these three can work together to find a random date within a given range.
(more…)

This question comes up a lot in forums - how do you send e-mail in PHP?

There are plenty of reasons you’d want to do this. Perhaps you want to send a newsletter to your users. Or you want people to be able to leave feedback through e-mail. Or you just want your users to be able to e-mail the page (or a link to it) to a friend.

How do we do this? The mail() function.
(more…)

Something I struggled with recently was assigning individual style sheets to posts on this Wordpress blog. For example, if I was writing a CSS tutorial I didn’t want to muck up my general stylesheet with a bunch of styles - it’d be nice to write a small stylesheet and attach it only to the specific post that needs it.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a built in function of Wordpress. Fortunately, you can add this functionality with a plugin.
(more…)

While browsing through dZone the other day, I stumbled on this article - 40 signs you really are a lousy PHP programmer.

While I don’t agree with all of the author’s points, it’s an interesting list of php coding habits to avoid - but that most of us tend to pick up anyway. Here’s a list of my five biggest pet peeves.
(more…)

While reading some forums this morning, I came upon an interesting question. Where is the category information stored in the Wordpress database?

I opened up phpmyadmin, expecting to see a “categories” table. No dice. After a few minutes I figured it out - and I decided it might be a good idea to explain how the Wordpress database is structured.
(more…)

Ahh, the never ending quest for backlinks.

There are plenty of places to look for free backlinks - some of better quality than others. One trick you can use to build up a decent collection of backlinks is to regularly post on forums in your niche.
(more…)

If you’re working with a user-management system in PHP (or any scripting language), than you’re likely using either the md5() or crypt() function to encode and store the user’s password.

An oft-asked question - and oft-misunderstood - is what is the difference? Is one better than the other?
(more…)

If you write tutorials on your website or blog, then niche tutorial directories are a great source of traffic. I list most of my php tutorials with good-tutorials and get a nice burst of traffic with each new listing.

Another site I’ve found useful is Gimp Tutorials. They’re a great place to list any graphics tutorials that you write for the GIMP graphic design program.
(more…)