// author archive

Ed

Ed has written 16 posts for edrackham

Awesome Form Validation

I don't know about you, but I always work hard on my form validation (and would never use just JUST JavaScript to validate input locally). It puts a smile on my face when a form is technically valid, yet won't submit:

Simple Web 2.0 Design and CSS Tutorial

This tutorial aims at teaching you how to make a simple "Web 2.0" design.

Setup
To start, let's create a new document in Photoshop, 1024px (width) by 700px (height).

Guides
Now, lets set up predefined areas (for areas like the header, and content) using guides. We will be creating four guides for now.

First Guide: Horizontal, position: 160px
Second Guide: Horizontal, […]

Online .htpasswd Generator

Use the following .htpasswd generator to secure your Apache web directories.
Your browser does not support IFRAMES. Please view the generator at http://edrackham.com/tutorials/online-htpasswd-generator/
Make sure you have a .htaccess and .htpasswd file in the directory you want to secure, then add the entries once you've generated your password.

Online MD5 Hash Generator

Here is a simple MD5 hash generator I created quickly as part of a useful toolset I'm planning to build up.
Your browser doesn't support IFRAMES. You can see the MD5 hash generator here.
The code to generate an MD5 hash using PHP is simple:

md5($string_to_convert);

Top 10 .htaccess Tips and Tricks

Custom Error Documents
Creating custom documents gives your site a more professional look, as not only are you providing a 'net' to catch unsuspecting visitors when they follow a bad link and such like, but they also allow you to customise the style of the page so you can maintain your basic site design by adding […]

Get Random Row with MySQL Without ORDER BY RAND()

This is an update to a previous post of mine which uses the RAND() method. Using the following code, you can retrieve a random row much, much faster (MySQL 4.1.x/5.0.x), with thanks to Jan Kneschke:

SELECT <COLUMN> FROM <TABLE> AS r1
JOIN (SELECT ROUND(
  RAND( ) * (
    SELECT MAX( id ) FROM <TABLE>)
  ) AS […]

Standards Compliant Internet Explorer (IE8)

We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously.
Don your glad rags and party hats, it's time to celebrate! Microsoft have announced that their new interoperable release of Internet Explorer (IE8) will be standards compliant by […]

Guilt Trip Album Release Gig

Wow. This was definately a gig to remember! I've seen these guys a few times, but the amount of effort they've put into the release of their album has been phenomenal. The energy on stage was amazing, the music was spot on and everyone in the venue were on their feet.
I really hope these guys […]

Get Random Row with MySQL

UPDATE: Please see my newer atricle on how to retrieve a random row, faster, without RAND().

This post assumes you know how to create and use a connection to a MySQL database in PHP and have a table named 'quotes' as shown below. In this post, I will aim to teach you how to use PHP […]

PHP Class Tutorial

I’m not sure how to start this one… It can be quite difficult to understand PHP classes at first, but hopefully I’ll make everything seem easy! Let's just get stuck in shall we…
Brief overview…
Ok so you’re actually reading this brief overview? You must be serious…
PHP classes can be used to group together a set of […]

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