Blank Google Voice Gadget

To make it work (at least for now), just add an “s” to “http://www.google.com/ig” on the Address Bar of your browser, like this: “https://www.google.com/ig”

Google Voice Gadget

One of the best ways to redirect search engines and Website visitors to a new Webpage location is by using 301 redirects. You can configure Apache with the Redirect directive to redirect traffic from an old url to a new one. The Redirect directive takes several arguments

• redirect code
• original URL location
• destination URL

You can set the status as a numeric HTTP code. HTTP code 301 represents a permanent change.

By using 301 Redirects you will let the search engines know that this is a new, permanent location and you might keep your search engine ranking. Keep in mind that any changes to your Website navigation structure can negatively influence your search engine rankings.

Create a new .htaccess or in your current .htaccess file.

To redirect a specific URL to a new URL

Redirect 301 /news/iphone http://mynewdomain.com/tech-news/iphone

To redirect everything from your original domain name to a new domain name.

Redirect 301 / http://mynewdomain.com

Upload the .htaccess file to your server. Make sure do include the dot on the filename “.htaccess”

The mysqldump command is simple. I never forgot it’s basic syntax.

mysqldump -u username -p dbname > dbbackup.sql

The reason why I never did is because the first time I tried it on a Windows XP machine, I logged in to MySQL prompt and tried to run the mysqldump command. It took me a couple hours to find out that I didn’t need to login to MySQL before running the command. I was just supposed to go to the MySQL bin directory and run the executable command.

Anyways, I suppose you are not making the same mistake because you are already getting the frustrating “Access is denied” error. Why?

Well, one of the differences between XP and Windows Vista you may have noticed first is that Vista keeps on asking for your permission when you try to do certain tasks. “Windows needs your permission to continue”.

Seems that Vista doesn’t let you create new files using the Command Prompt. So it’s a Windows error rather than a MySQL error.

So here is what you do: specify you are an Administrator for Vista by right-clicking the Command Prompt icon and select “Run as administrator” from the menu. That’s it. Navigate to the MySQL bin directory, run the mysqldump command and it should work.

Click the following link to see a live example of a PHP cookies-enabled check.

We will check if cookies are enabled by following these steps:

• Define a cookie
• Reload the page
• Check if the cookie we just defined is still there

Sounds plain and simple, right? It is! So, how do we express these 3 steps in code?

Steps 1 and 2: Define a cookie and reload the page

I’m going to explain steps 1 and 2 together so you understand how we use the $_GET['redirected'] variable included in the script.

if(!isset($_GET['redirected'])) {
    setcookie ('mycookie', 'test', time() + 60);
    header('location:'.$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'?redirected=1');
}

First, confirm that the page hasn’t been redirected already by checking if the $_GET['redirected'] variable is set. If the $_GET['redirected'] variable hasn’t been set, then the page will reload and set the $_GET['redirected'] variable on the query string. Just be careful not to create an endless loop of page redirection.

Before you output anything from your script, you should define the cookie. setcookie() defines a cookie named “mycookie” with value of “test” and the cookie is set to expire in sixty seconds or one minute. We set the cookie to expire in one minute because after we check if cookies are enabled or not we won’t longer need the cookie.

Step 3: Check if the cookie we just defined is still there

$cookie_message = '';
if(isset($_GET['redirected']) and $_GET['redirected']==1) {
    if(!isset($_COOKIE['mycookie'])) {
        $cookie_message = '
Cookies are NOT enabled on your browser. In order for us to process your request, we require cookies to be enabled. Please configure your browser to allow cookies.

';
    }
    else {
        $cookie_message = '
Cookies are enabled on your browser.

';
    }
}

Initialize the $cookie_message variable, which will be echoed later to let the user know if his/her browser accepts cookies.

Then, an if statement tests the $_GET['redirected'] variable to verify if the page has been reloaded. If the page has been reloaded, the next if/else statement checks if the $_COOKIE['mycookie'] variable exists and assigns a value to $cookie_message accordingly to be echoed later in the script.

This tutorial should help you get an overall idea of how to check if cookies are enabled. Customize the code to meet your needs. Don’t forget to include a cookies test script in all Web applications that handle cookies or sessions in some way.

Sams Teach Yourself Apache 2 in 24 Hours convers a wide range of topics about Apache but, in my opinion, half of the book would be hard for begginers to understand.

PROS

Hour 1, Apache and the Web, introduces the reader to basic concepts such as DNS, SSL, URL, HTTP status codes and more.

Hour 5, Using Apache to Server Static Content, contains information and easy configuration tasks for URL Redirection, MIME types, Icons for Bookmarks and others.

CONS

In some sections, it tries to cover a lot of information in a few pages and lacks easy-to-follow, practical examples. For a Sams Teach Yourself book, it needs more step-by-step instructions on how to accomplish certain tasks.

For example, I found some concepts in Hour 7, Restricting Access, hard to grasp such as File-Based Authentication, Database File-Based Access Control and Digest-Based Authentication.

Also, Hour 22, Dynamic URI Resolution with mod_rewrite, would be difficult for a begginner to comprehend and customize the examples to his/her own server.

To find out your current magic quotes configuration simply create a PHP file with the following code:

if(get_magic_quotes_gpc()) {
    echo 'Magic Quotes is On';
}
else {
    echo 'Magic Quotes if Off';
}

Magic quotes is a feature intended to help prevent security breaches in scripts written by PHP beginners. Read the article Protect your script from hackers: Protect your script from hackers: SQL injection attack prevention to find out why you should turn magic quotes off.

If you don’t have access to the PHP configuration file, you can also disable magic quotes using an .htaccess file. You just have to add the following line:

php_flag magic_quotes_gpc Off

Magic quotes is a feature intended to help code written by beginners from being dangerous. Read the article Protect your script from hackers: SQL injection attack prevention to find out why you should turn magic quotes off.

Open your PHP configuration file (php.ini) and look for the magic_quotes_gpc line. If the setting is equal to On just change it to Off.

magic_quotes_gpc = Off

Excellent book for people with absolutely no knowledge of PHP and MySQL.

I’m a self-taught programmer. After learning HTML, CSS and some Javascript, I found out I also had to learn a server-side programming language. Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL was the first PHP/MySQL book I grabbed and it really got me started into the subject.

PROS

This book uses a hands-on approach. The code and examples it contains are well-explained.

It guides you throught the PHP and MySQL installation in Windows, Linux and Mac. I followed the instructions and installed PHP and MySQL in Windows and Linux, but I haven’t tried Mac.

It does a very good job at teaching you the MySQL basics in chapter 2, teaching you the PHP basics in chapter 3 and then working with both PHP and MySQL in chapter 4. Learning how to integrate PHP and MySQL together feels effortless.

This book also walks you through programming a content management system that administers jokes, categories and authors.

Chapter 5, Relational Database Design, discusses a subject which is difficult to grasp for some beginners, but it’s very well explained in this book.

Chapter 7, Content Formatting and Submission, briefly explains Regular Expressions and illustrates it by examples.

The last chapters cover more advanced topics such as granting database priviledges, locking tables, grouping select results, file uploads and cookies.

CONS

Any PHP/MySQL beginner should learn how to prevent MySQL injection attacks as soon as possible and this book doesn’t cover the subject.

There is almost no form submission validation in the PHP code examples.

As defined at php.net, $_GET is “an associative array of variables passed to the current script via the HTTP GET method.”

To grasp an idea of what we are trying to do, let’s create a PHP file named querystrings.php. We can examine the contents of the $_GET array by using the print_r function. Type the following code in our querystrings.php file

print_r($_GET);

Enter the following on your browser:

http://myhost/path/querystrings.php?name=Leo&location=Texas

Of course, replace “myhost/path” according to your server’s settings.

Your browser should display something like this:

Array ( [username] => Leo [location] => Texas )

There is two $_GET variables: $_GET['username'] and $_GET['location']. You could easily echo the data inside each variable. But how about allowing only certain $_GET variable names?

Compile a list of the $_GET variable names you use and make sure only those are processed

Let’s say you only use 3 different $_GET variables names throughtout your whole Website. The variables names are pageid, sectionid and articleid. You use those variables to display the pages’ content. You don’t want any user messing with the URL. So let’s restrict what they can input on as the URL.

You could throw the following code at an include file and include it at the top of every page on your Website. Since $_GET is an array, we use a foreach loop to find out the array keys being passed and confirm they are one of the three accepted array keys. If they are not, the user will be redirected to an error page.

foreach($_GET as $key => $value) {
    if($key != 'pageid' and $key != 'sectionid' and $key! = 'articleid') {
        header('location:errorpage.php');
        exit();
    }
}

What if you have developed a Website or Web application that uses dozens of $_GET variables names? You could create an array or even a MySQL table with the allowed $_GET variable names and use it to validate them.

$allow = array('pageid', 'sectionid', 'articleid');

foreach($_GET as $key => $value) {
    $valid = false;
    foreach($allow as $key_allow => $value_allow) {
        if($key==$value_allow) {
            $valid = true;
        }
    }

    if($valid==false) {
        header('location:errorpage.php');
        exit();
    }
}