"/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lltdl"

This seems to be due to a missing development library with the obscure name of libtool-ltdl-devel to fix this simply use:

yum install libtool-ltdl-devel

Which should include the package along with several dependencies.

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3. Decor Scene

phpGSB Main Version – 0.1 (ALPHA)

phpGSB is a PHP implementation using the Google Safe Browsing API. At current it does allow the following:

• Updating of GSB lists to a MySQL database
• Basic checking of URL’s against lists and then full-hash checks against the full GSB database

At current it does not allow the following:

• Requests using MAC keys (integrity checks)
• It does not check sub tables when performing a lookup (it will still work but means it may ping GSB more often than needed).
• It does not cache full-hash prefixes (required by GSB), this is also lowers performance and is being worked on.

The main class is definitely not as efficient as it could be and has developed very quickly to meet the basic GSB specification; any contributions, bug fixes etc are very welcome!

If you have any problems please post in the Issues section, give as much information as you can, the more information given, the easier it is to find any problems you may be having.

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*.uk

!parliament.uk

!nhs.uk

The updater then serializes the array for easy access via PHP at a later date. You may be wondering what the * and !’s mean. To put it simply it means that there could be anything just before the .uk and it should be counted as the domain such as .co.uk, .gov.uk. The ! before means that its an exception to the * (wildcard) rule, so in the case of parliament.uk, the parliament part should not be counted as part of the domain. A full explanation of this can be found at http://publicsuffix.org/format/

Please find below the actual code for the updater. I decided against just posting the serialized list as the list will change over time where as this post may not.

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<?php
//TLD List Updater (Formats to Serialized PHP)
//Created by Beaver6813 (Beaver6813.com). Big thanks to the Mozilla community!
$tldlist = file("http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/netwerk/dns/effective_tld_names.dat?raw=1");
$toplist = array();
foreach($tldlist as $key=>$value)
	{
	$value = trim($value);
	if(substr_count($value,"//")==0&&!empty($value))
		{
		if(substr_count($value,".")==0)
			$sublist[$value] = array();
		else
			{
			$dotxplode = explode(".",$value);
			$dotxplode = array_reverse($dotxplode);
			$sublist[$dotxplode[0]][] = $value;
			}
		}
	}
file_put_contents("effective_tld_sublist.dat",serialize($sublist));
?>

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2. Email to SMS / Email to Mobile, Free Database
3. Jokepants

Decor Scene was a smaller, simpler project I worked on. Mike from Decor Scene tasked me with creating a simple, user-friendly website that gave Decor Scene, a family run DIY store, a web presence. For the main design I approached a company I had recently worked with Webslash to design a simple, elegant and modern website that made an impact on any user who visited. After a few drafts we were there and it was down to me to slice the design and code it. As the site itself is rather simple I wanted to use the most efficient methods available and so split the website into three parts:

• Header – Template
• Content – Custom for each page
• Footer – Template

By making the header and footer both templates it saved greatly on development times and served to make the website easier to update in the future.

A problem I encountered with this however arrived when it came to adding Google Maps to make it easier for potential customers to find the shop. Google Maps code is usually added to the head parts of the HTML and then an onload function is added to the body, so when the body is fully loaded Google Maps loads. It would be very inefficient to include the code on each page and could potentially generate errors so I simply included a check to see if it exists. I could then create this function just on the “Find Us” page and then use a small bit of javascript that checks if “runjavascript()” is defined, if it is, it runs it:

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if(typeof window.runjavascript == 'function') {
runjavascript();
}

I think this is the more efficient or at least simplest way to do this, if anyone has a better way then let me know!

Some SEO work was also done on the website to ensure it hit page 1 on Google on some terms such as “DIY Store Rickmansworth”, “Decor Scene”, “Decor Scene Rickmansworth”, “DIY Shop Rickmansworth”; part of this was adding the business to Google Maps which benefits both customers and the business.

On final presentation to the client the response was very positive and whilst the website is fairly simple at the moment it certainly has left room for expansion in the future!

Related posts:

1. City Coupons
2. Jokepants
3. phpGSB – PHP Google Safe Browsing

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<?php
$stringsearch = "texttosearchfor";
$dir = "./";
echo "Starting search for $stringsearch within directory $dir
";
        $listDir = array();
        if($handler = opendir($dir)) {
            while (($sub = readdir($handler)) !== FALSE) {
                if ($sub != "." &amp;&amp; $sub != ".." &amp;&amp; $sub != "Thumb.db") {
                    if(is_file($dir."/".$sub)) {
                        if(substr_count($sub,'.php'))
                            {
                            $getfilecontents = file_get_contents($dir."/".$sub);
                            if(substr_count($getfilecontents,$stringsearch)&gt;0)
                            {
                            $replacer = str_replace($stringsearch,$stringreplace,$getfilecontents);
                            // Let's make sure the file exists and is writable first.
                              if (is_writable($dir."/".$sub)) {
                                  if (!$handle = fopen($dir."/".$sub, 'w')) {
                                       echo "Cannot open file (".$dir."/".$sub.")";
                                       exit;
                                  }
                                  // Write $somecontent to our opened file.
                                  if (fwrite($handle, $replacer) === FALSE) {
                                      echo "Cannot write to file (".$dir."/".$sub.")";
                                      exit;
                                  }
                                  echo "Success, removed searched content from:"$dir."/".$sub."
";
                                  fclose($handle);
                              } else {
                                  echo "The file ".$dir."/".$sub" is not writable
";
                              }
                            }
                            }
                        $listDir[] = $sub;
                    }elseif(is_dir($dir."/".$sub)){
                        $listDir[$sub] = SearchandReplace($dir."/".$sub,$stringsearch,$stringreplace);
                    }
                }
            }
            closedir($handler);
        }
        return $listDir;
    }
?>

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W ith the launch of the HTC’s new Desire imminent I was hoping to get my hands on one sooner rather than later. Unfortunately it seems that due to the current (but surely not unexpected?!) high level of demand the main release date for the UK has been pushed back to April 12th for standard stores with major carriers getting there hands on it at varying times. I’ve been trying to piece together information on the varying release dates and so have created the chart below:

Number	Retailer	Date
1	T-Mobile	29/03/2010
2	Amazon	06/04/2010
3	Orange	02/04/2010 (may have been pushed back to 10/04/2010)
4	Vodafone	07/04/2010
5	Play	12/04/2010
6	Devicewire	12/04/2010
7	O2	29/04/2010
8	Virgin Mobile	End April to Early May

Update: Vodafone has been announced as 7th April.
Update 2: Updated dates on table, appears to be general delays.

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www.example.com/advertise.php

you could instead type

www.example.com/advertise

And it would return the same file, which is good if for some unknown reason your file doesn’t have the correct extension, but its not exactly.. good..

After trawling Google for a while I found a post by Eric Faerber that solved the problem. The strange redirects were due to Apache MultiViews being enabled, disabling this by entering

Options -MultiViews

into the .htaccess file. Solved the problem, the simplest solutions are always the best!

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Web development firm Webslash approached me with the task of integrating their design for a new joke sharing website, Jokepants, into an existing script called FMyScript. FMyScript is a story sharing script. This was a relatively quick project as the script was already coded and just required modifications to make it suitable for jokes as opposed to stories.

After I had sliced and programmed the design into wc3 valid XHTML and CSS it was simply a task of splitting the page into the seperate parts required for FMyScript’s SMARTY templating engine, i.e. header, footer, sidebar and content boxes.

After the base design was in place some minor definitions in the script had to be modified and a few bugs had to be fixed in the actual script. After this was complete Jokepants was ready for launch!

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City Coupons, a very recent project, in essence is a full content management for coupons. Using the system you are able to add printable, SMS and viewable coupons to your website. In addition to this, the system has a range of other features to offer. Started at the beginning of November ’09 and completed with version 1.0.2 in February ’10 its certainly been a large but exciting project.

Startup

In November I was asked to create a piece of coupon management software that would:

• Allow businesses to sign up and pay automatically.
• Enable businesses to manage their business profiles on the site, including locations, media, descriptions and above all coupons & offers.
• Give the site administrator full control over the site in the simplest way possible.
• To incorporate some sort of events calendar into the site that would gather all invidual business events.

We started with a basic design which was heavily edited to fit with the feel of the site. I then started work on coding the back-end into classes (object orientated) to make upgrading and modifying the site a lot more modular.

Payment System

The site is integrated with the PayPal IPN payment processing which will, after a business has gone through checkout, notify the site and will automatically activate their account. In addition to this it also has an automated billing program that will periodically check to ensure that all businesses are up to date on their payments. If not it will send the business an invoice with three days grace period. After that their account will be suspended until they activate their account. Of course this can always be overridden in the site admin panel.

Business Page & Coupons

An important aspect of the site was enabling businesses to have their own “online presence”, this was achieved by giving each business their own profile page in addition to their various offers appearing site-wide. On this page businesses can display all of their locations alongside Google Maps, uploaded media, events and other exciting items.

Having a list of offers on the website may not be much use to a lot of people, City Coupons enables users to print and send the offer to their cell phone. The printing system used is major improvement over the type used on similar coupon websites. It enables you to specify the quantity of the coupon you wish to print and even place different coupons on the same page if you bookmark them. The SMS service has no operating costs and uses data processing techniques specific to each major carrier in the US.

Administering the Site

In the Vendor Admin Panel (for businesses) you are able to easily modify any aspect of your profile through the various tabs on the page conveniently titled, Offers, Locations, Events, Media, Profile etc. Likewise the Site Admin Panel is arranged similarly but with a wide range of options from full user management to bulk newsletter services and footer modifications.

To make the system even more interactive; it is integrated with the WordPress blog system to provide the blogging and article aspects of the site. WordPress is one of the best systems in the world for this and it would be senseless to reinvent the wheel. It however does include several City Coupons themes and plugins for full integration with the member system and site design.

The default site design is easily customizable and is available in a variety of colours, some different colours used by current owners of the system are shown in the thumbnails below.

Conclusion

Overall the City Coupons project was great fun and as always I developed my programming skills. My knowledge of WordPress has been greatly improved, my coding standards have risen significantly and I now know how to generate PDF’s from pure PHP! The client had a firm vision of what the site should be like and it certainly helped me to create exactly what he envisioned.

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The Horror!

Disgusted at the fact that Absoute Radio’s “Songs of the Decade” includes fifteen, yes, 15 songs by McFly, one of my good friends Daniel Bailey has created an alternative Top 100 songs of the Decade list. If you strongly disagree with any of these then leave a comment. I’ve also attached a link to download this playlist to iTunes

To import the playlist into iTunes:

1. Right click and save as.. the file here: Top 100 Songs of the Decade.
2. Open up iTunes
3. Go to File->Library-Import Playlist…
4. Select the text file it downloaded
5. Enjoy!!

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