I have been looking over several new, starting up, social websites. It’s no secret that the best way to get noticed, and the best way to promote oneself is using social networking these days. We all have a facebook, many of us have a facebook GROUP or a FANPAGE made for our blog/company/product and it works well to an extent. I’ve seen blog posts on web promotion recommending the use of stumbleupon, digg, and other popular bookmarking sites.

Here is an interesting new site. Formspring.me has made itself known to me a few months ago when my friends on facebook started posting links to their accounts.

What is it?

Formspring.me is a site wherein you create an account which can be addressed with questions either anonymously, or by another account. As the holder of an account, you can answer or delete questions. When you answer, your “stream” gets updated with the question and answer as well as the author (anonymous or otherwise).

There is an option to ask yourself a random question (those questions are obvious in the stream). There are several settings that allow twitter, tumblr, and facebook integration which adds to the general use.


Under the Hood:

From what I can tell, formspring.me is a really simple database-based website. The whole site works a lot like the comments section in most blogs. You add a comment (ie. the question), the comment shows up in the queue (ie. inbox) awaiting approval. And you can either accept (answer) or reject (delete) the comment (question).

The only difference here is that along with the question, you have to provide an answer. Once again, nothing too hard to program. The site, however, offers a ton of features that are not so easy to program. I’ll include the question stream (where you see your friends) and the various integrations as the hardest part of creating the site.

The design is remarkable. It uses a lot of CSS3, especially for the rounded corners, and it is rather simple. Each user can upload their own background so that takes care of that.

Business Use:

Well, this is the best part. You know how so many companies have twitter accounts and you can @ twitter them and they will answer your questions publicly? Well, this is even better because now, this idea has sort of a “filter”. No more advertisements, straight answers only!
Here is a widget, so YOU can ask ME anything.

Here is the account: formspring.me/wajanus.

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We will be opening up a portfolio site soon, and for that, we’ll have to build up a portfolio (thus the busy-ness).

Well here are some of our projects:

• LivingSMARTgreen Theme
• Student Loans Theme
• iPad News
• And many others

We’ll publish about each once it’s launched!

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Rainy Mood is a great, and relaxing website. What does it do? It plays a fifteen minute loop of rain OVER and OVER again. That’s it! How simple.

Why am I even bringing this page up? DESIGN!

Let’s look at this page. It has a great background that fits into the 500kb category, a simple image header that tells you exactly what the site is about, and then a BIG play button with sharing capabilities on the left and right.

If you scroll down, you’ll find a single add and some other stuff.

What I see

The beauty of the design here is simplicity. Just the background of a wet window gives the user the feel of really being there when it rains. The simple interface is amazing, because you know what? It doesn’t give you a million extra options that you wouldn’t use anyways, plus it auto-plays so that whenever you get on the sight, it’ll start up automatically.

It has a facebook fanpage on the left, great for PR, advertising, and all around marketing of the site. Facebook allowed the website to get 6000+ fans that visit the site regularly plus more as people try the site out. On the right is the “tweet” button, that will tell all your followers what a great site it is. I did that.

The big button has only one problem, its hover effect. It has an annoying greenish glow, I wish they would have soften that up and created more stylish buttons. It takes away from the all around “blue” experience.

Under the Hood

I took a look at the source code, the music is played through a javascript player made by voormedia.com and it has been hash encoded so that the ordinary users can’t just look through the code (it looks so illegible!). Of course, you can easily decode it but that’s not the point.

Next, the site uses no DIVs at all, nor a stylesheet. It’s all built into one file (except for the images) and uses tables. Now, people warn against using tables in webdesign but it does not matter too much here, it works well.

PROBLEMS: It’s not XHTML compliant. It has no true <html> header that specifies the usual stuff. It is also not SEO optimized, it has a couple of keywords, no description (other than “rainymood.com”) and it does not have really descriptive alt tags.

The Point

It’s an easily navigatable website that has one simple feature that makes me go back to it over and over again. It has simple coding, though non-compliant, and it seems to work out quite well.

Visit it!

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Kuler is a great tool for all designers. It’s really similar to the Color Scheme Designer in the aspect that it composes several colors for you to use in your design.

It has several other features that make it even BETTER than CSD but there are tons of features missing too. Let’s start with the good stuff

What’s good

• pre-made themes including “random”, “newest”, “most popular”, and “highest rated” categories
• RSS feed for the “highest rated”
• Ability to create theme from an image (upload an image, or choose an image from flickr and select colors)
• community
• Presets for uploading an image (called “moods”)
• Ability to register and sign in to save and share themes

What’s not so good

• there are some reservations about the interface
• rather confusing color picking interface

What’s missing

• export features (you can’t export to PSD, CSS, or HTML as you can in CSD)
• no example sites (CSD allows you to look at example coloring)
• VERY limited color options
• no permalink

“What’s missing” seems not to be such a big deal, but it actually is. The “example site” feature on CSD is amazing and very useful. It can kick-start your imagination and it’s just really cool.

I don’t use the export features but it’s nice to know they’re available. Also, the color options in CSD are virtually LIMITLESS. There are TONS of presets while Kuler does not really have any of those great presets.

Kuler is great if you’re looking for pre-made color schemes and themes but it’s nothing compared to the Color Scheme Designer.

One feature though, that could win me over, is the “Create From An Image” ability that lets you use an image for the scheme. I will definitely try that out and report on it.

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Well, we’ve all been there, many times. If you’re a web-developer, it’s a natural part of your life. It’s a natural part of mine too. Let me tell you my story.

What happened?

Well, recently, I was working on two project. The first was a bust, the second was scrapped. The first was Only A Quote and the second was an independent blogging system.

How was Only A Quote a bust? Well, it was not ENTIRELY a bust. It receives good traffic, there’s great Ad Sense yields. The design is wonderful and the PHP is amazing It gets good ratings Google-wise but it’s nothing to be REALLY excited over. It was an important project to me because I spent COUNTLESS hours perfecting the script, learning PHP, CSS, and HTML. Basically, I spent my holiday break sweating over this project. I expected to sell the website for close to a thousand dollars but after a month of auctioning, it all ended with a hundred dollar bid.

Terrible.

The next project was a blogging system for a customer. I created a custom design, interface. Really intuitive too! Let’s just say, it was a jewel to me. It wasn’t perfect, but let’s just say I spent A TON of time figuring it out. There were no directions as to what the project should look like but that’s okay. I made an administration secure from any threats. Well, the whole deal. Imagine a simple wordpress-like blogging system. But, the client didn’t like it so I scrapped it and created a wordpress theme instead.

There is one more “failure”. Well, this one was not so bad because I was never counting on it in the first place, but it was damn annoying that nothing came out of it.

My “Age Tester”. My first PHP application. Well, the problem was that I had no way to advertise it well, I had no good domain name. And let’s just say, I suck at designing stuff like this haha. It’s still fun or whatever, and I send a link to my friends once in a while when they ask me if their partner is too old or too young for them. But that’s it.

How to deal with it?

It’s always hard to deal with failure, especially when you’re failing and you think it’s entirely unfair. I can admit that the only project -I- relied on was OnlyAQuote but I’m sure you have had your own experiences where you had to rely on multiple projects that went bust.

So, there is no easy way to say this other than, Just SCAVENGE the project. Strip it clean! It sounds silly, but think of every website you work on as a beautiful creation full of priceless parts. When that beautiful creation becomes a horrendous ugly thing, take it apart.

Let me use my Bodyshop project as an example:

The website has 57 files and 18 folders. Most of which is code and pictures. Well, all of it. There must be something worth it in there.

First of all, I took apart the whole admin area of the site and salvaged the scripts for my own script library. I have an authentication script there, add to database scripts, blogging scripts, well, a bunch of stuff. I even have an upload form (and those come in handy) as well as a mailing script. All of this work, better not go to waste. I can use ALL of these for my next projects.

Streamlined, secure authentication takes time to create, and here I have it, already done. I have a login form as well, so that’s done. Admin scripts and the blog script are the most important parts to me but there is more.

I can also use some of the images for the future. I created my own texture (as seen in the snapshot way above) that I can use for other project (involving metal and such). I also have a pretty decent car cut-out silhouette which I won’t have to work on next time I do something involving cars.Oh, and I have a pretty button to use

I couldn’t do the same for Only A Quote since I was selling the script, but I did bookmark all the scripts that were used from other programmers. (ie. web redirection)

All this takes is a bit of time, and tears that come along with stripping your project of its meat.

Did you learn something?

Making mistakes, and failure, it’s a process of learning! Did you learn something while making this project? I’m sure you have!

Now go write about it!

I’ve gotten some good traffic from the posts I based on the scripts I’ve written. Just check out this list:

• Blogging system part 1
• Blogging system part 2
• Mobile Site tips
• Shortlink API

So, you’ve a lot of material you can write about. Plus, It’s rather nice if you share your secrets! Haha, I know I did. Some of this stuff took me a while to figure out, but, I got it down and now you can reap from my benefits, too.

Also, it sent a lot of traffic my way when I submitted these tutorials online. Double win!

Conclusion

Failures will teach you important lessons and can be salvagable, perhaps not to the original intent of goal, but good enough. Just, learn from your mistakes, okay? I know I did, and I’m sure you will too, over and over and over and over…again.

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WP to Twitter | Joe Dolson Accessible Web Design.

I’ve just discovered the craziest, awesomest plugin for Wordpress. This little fella allows your WP blog to automatically update your Twitter with the the blog title, a shortlink URL (cli.gs or bit.ly), and even an excerpt!

It has a lot of customizable options, so you can do a ton of things with it. You can use the custom fields in your blog (they’re under the posting options when you’re writing your post) and add them there. One great thing is that there’s an option which lets this plugin add all of the tags you add to the post, as hashtags.

For those of you not literate with twitter a hashtag is a sort of tag that you’d normally use on your blog posts, deviantart submissions (for you crazy art people), and other places. It is preceded by a hash (#) and followed by the tag word. Look at the trends, most of them are hashtags. It makes searching twitter much easier.

Anyways, here’s what’s happening. The sample twitter update should read something like this:

New Post: WP to Twitter Plugin (http://bit.ly/whatever) #twitter #web #social #etc

I think that’s reasonable, no? You can, of course customize this! EVEN FOR SEPARATE AUTHORS AND THEIR RESPECTIVE TWITTER ACCOUNTS!

Anyways Enjoy!

P.S. It also notifies you if the tweet could not be update and saves all options just in case you want to re-tweet

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Adobe Photoshop Tutorials – HV-Designs.co.uk – Tutorials, Resources and Photoshop Freebies.

This article here is a great intro to all you blogger beginners with Wordpress. It talks about all the different options you can use while posting on your blog. Including, how to manage your categories, how to use “post slugs”, the “Press This” feature (which I am now using!), and many other features.

Look the site over, they have great tutorials and they are very thorough. I recommend you subscribe to them via RSS because every day, they have great and powerful articles to read.

Anyways, look forward to more short articles on other websites and short recommendations!

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I’m running Mozilla 3.6 right now, so let me tell you what I think about it:

The Good Stuff

• Themes have been eliminated and replaced with “personas” that do not require installation. Also, you can preview before committing to the change of design
• neater design: the top of the browser does not take as much space.
• download menu on bottom right. Click and you get a menu of all the items downloading/downloaded plus options
• better CSS3 support and other support
• considerably faster loading (idk how they do THAT)

All that sounds great but…that’s not the whole story.

The Bad Stuff

• Glitches, tons of them. I’m running a W7 Ultimate and I cannot open two windows simultaneously anymore
• Cannot open “Downloads” windows, actually any new window at all (not even java console, and other stuff like that)
• Downloads seem to freeze up and cease to work completely. I cannot even remove them from the drop down (“up?”) menu on the bottom right.
• While “personas” are great, I miss my transparent theme which doesn’t work anymore

That’s about it. It’s really damn annoying though. I hope they come up with a fix soon or I’ll have to start using Chrome more extensively. It might be a W7 64-bit thing, and even if it is, that’s a huge setback for the guys at Mozilla.

I hope you enjoy the new browser!

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In this tutorial, I’ll teach you how to parse the data out for your audience and how to edit your entries.

/* LET'S GET STARTED! */

Show off your stuff!

Haha, let’s get into how to show your blog posts to your readers. First, we need some pagination. Search for some scripts or tutorials on google and see if you can find anything. We all like different styles of pagination, and I’m not particularly awesome in custom paginating. If you can’t find anything good, use the code I use, just don’t use the styles, you can create your own.

If you’re using the script I do, or some other one that’s similar, you won’t have any trouble following this tutorial. Actually, you won’t have any trouble doing that anyways. Just make sure that the last MySQL query before the while() loop looks something like this:

$sql = "SELECT * FROM $tbl_name ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT $start, $limit";

The important part of the query that we’re looking for is that “ORDER BY id DESC” part, it tells mysql to place the highest id in the front and the lowest in the back ie. the most recent posts will show at the beginning. The rest is up to the actual pagination script. If it doesn’t use limits, don’t worry about it. If you’re experiencing MySQL errors because of this, place the command elsewhere in the query, it should be close to the table_name selector.

Let’s move onto the while() loop. Every paginating script should ask you for the while loop, so let’s show them what we’ve got:

	while($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {
		$content = stripslashes($row[3]);
		echo "<h1>$row[1]</h1>";
		echo "<h2>$row[2]</h2>";
		echo "<p>.".$content."</p>";
		echo "<br />";

	}

Simple enough? Let me explain it. The stuff inside the {} curly braces will repeat WHILE the stuff inside the () is true. Basically as long as there’s data present, what happens inside the curly braces will loop over and over. The insides of () basically mean that we’re storing data in the $row variable that corresponds to the $result from the previous $sql query. The function mysql_fetch_row just fetches the data and in the process puts it in the $row variable.

Do you remember our install script? This is what it looked like for our blog table:

$query = "CREATE TABLE blog
(
id int NOT NULL auto_increment primary key,
title blob NOT NULL,
date blob NOT NULL ,
content text NOT NULL
)";

Now, since in the computer language we start counting with 0 and not 1, it makes things a bit confusing. So column zero is id, column one is title etc. The inside of the while loop tells us to put column one as a title between <h1> tags, column two is the date and goes into <h2>tags, and column three is the content and goes into the <p> tags.

Now, I’ll assume that in my previous tutorial, you used the function mysql_real_escape_string() for escaping dangerous characters with the “\” backslash. Here’s where a problem arises. If you didn’t use the stripslashes() function you’d end up with something like this (example):

Here\’s the title

18-01-2010

Here\’s the content of the blog. Aren\’t you excited? \:\)

Okay, I don’t really think the smiley would be escaped like that but it could be! I don’t even bother with the rules anymore because it’s a lot easier to get it escaped with the function. The stripslashes() function is the opposite of the mysql_real_escape_string() function because all it does is take out the backslashes so the content looks proper. Remember that! It’s really important because you’ll be escaping A TON of strings!

But that’s it, give it some styling and you’ll have a lovely blog!

Editing your Entries

So, you can write and post blogs. Now what? Well, it’d be nice if you could edit those blogs just in case you made mistake, right?
Well, let’s get on that. First, you’ll need to use the pagination script you used above in the SAME WAY, except with a different while() loop and some html before the loop. You can add this to the previous blog admin page where you added entries to the blog. It’s what I did.

Okay, so add the pagination script and this is what the while loop and the surrounding area looks like:

<?php
	echo "<table cellpadding=10 border=1>";
	echo "<tr>";
	echo "<td>Id </td>";
	echo "<td>Title</td>";
	echo "<td>Date</td>";
	echo "<td>Delete</td>";
	echo "<td>Edit</td>";
	echo "</tr>";

	while($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {
		$id = $row[0];
		echo "<tr>";
        echo "<td>$row[0]</td>";
        echo "<td>$row[1]</td>";
        echo "<td>$row[2]</td>";
		echo "<td><a href=\"".$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']."?cmd=delete&id=".$id."\">Delete</a></td>";
		echo "<td><a href=\"blogedit.php?id=".$id."\">Edit</a></td>";
		echo "</tr>";

	}
	echo "</table>";
?>

Alright, what this basically does is create a table with the headings: id, title, date, delete, and edit. To that correspond the correct rows. Notice that I did not use stripslashes() on the entries, why? Because I honestly don’t care. You can use them, but for me, I just need to know the correct blog title, date, etc.

Onto, delete. Notice the URL, you’ll be adding “cmd=delete&id=$id” to your original URL. What that is is basically manually adding GET information. Why do I do it this way? It’s easier than creating a complicated form with hidden values just for a pretty “delete” submit button. Next, you’ll notice that I’m doing the same thing with the GET but this time I am redirecting my page to a separate blogedit.php with the id information.

Let’s see how we can use that delete link first. I’m going to add a script at the beginning of the file that will DELETE this specific entry from the database.

if ($_GET['cmd'] == "delete")
{
	$id = $_GET['id'];
	$sql = "DELETE FROM blog WHERE id=".$id;
    $result = mysql_query($sql);
    echo "Blog ".$id." deleted!";
}

What this says is basically that if the “cmd” $_GET variable is equal to “delete” then execute the loop. Inside the loop I defined the $id variable and used an SQL query that delete the entry. Notice that I did not mysql_real_escape_string() the $id variable. Once again, I am hoping that you know what you’re doing and that you won’t be purposely SQL injecting and messing up your database.

If you want more assurance that this got done (ie. the blog post got delete), you can make a separate if statement inside:

if (isset($result)) {
     echo "Blog ".$id." deleted!";
}
else {
   echo "Blog post: ".$id." not deleted!";
}

Let’s move onto blogedit.php. Don’t forget to include the connection.php file.

This part should be pretty easy. Let’s start with a loop asking if you’re even on the right page (with the right information) and processing the data.

if (isset($_GET['id'])){
		$id = mysql_real_escape_string($_GET['id']);
		$sql = "SELECT * FROM blog WHERE id = '$id'";
		$result = mysql_query($sql) or die ("Error in query: $query. ".mysql_error());
		$row = mysql_fetch_row($result);
		}

This bit takes care of all the information. So yay! We’ve already executed the SQL to get the data and fetched it and stored inside the $row variable. I’ve mysql_real_escape_string() this one, but once again, it’s all up to you as to what you escape and what you don’t.With this done, we can move on to parse out the information in an editable form.

I want to be able to edit the blog the same way I edit in wordpress, or the way I add the blog. I just want the information to show up inside the appropriate fields!

Well, here’s how you do it:

   <h2>ID = <?php echo $row[0];?></h2>
    <h2>DATE = <?php echo $row[2];?></h2>
    <form method="post" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];?>">
    <input type="text" name="title" value="<?php echo $row[1]; ?>" size="100" / ><br />
    <textarea rows="25" cols="125" name="content"><?php echo stripslashes($row[3]);?></textarea>
    <input type="hidden" name="id" value="<?php echo $row[0];?>" />
    <br />
    <input type="submit" name="update" value="Update" />
    </form>

Okay, first things first. I want the blog ID and Date. Echo it out, done! Next, we’ll create a form with a self action and with the post method (just like in the first tutorial, we don’t want long URLs because of GET requests). Next, we’ll use the same form we did for the blog entry form but, we add the corresponding values. Notice that I used stripslashes() for the content again. You don’t want to get everything double slashed in the end, you’d have to double stripslashes() for your readers. Anyways, i think the rest is self-explanatory. The data will show up in the appropriate fields, you can add it and press “update” to get everything done.

NEXT! The loop that will make ALL of this happen:

if (isset($_POST['update'])) {
		$id = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['id']);
		$title = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['title']);
		$content = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['content']);
		$sql = "UPDATE blog SET title = '$title', content = '$content' WHERE id = '$id'";
		$result = mysql_query($sql) or die ("Error in query: $query. ".mysql_error());

		if ($result) {
			echo "Blog id = $id updated";
		}

}

Yep, whenever you press that pretty “update” button, this will take place. The blog gets update with everything escaped as it should be. And, look! I finally have that $result loop there! It looks like even I learned something from this tutorial

What’s up next?

Well, in my next tutorial. I will FINALLY cover the login system and authorization stuff. It’s pretty easy but I want everyone to digest this info and ask away if you need anything!

STUFF TO REMEMBER

• Put include(connection.php); at the beginning of every SQL using file!
• The while() loop puts all that data from your database to use!
• MySQL columns are marked starting with ZERO, NOT ONE!
• Use the stripslashes() function to counteract mysql_real_escape_string() function!
• The ?id=23&cmd=edit blah blah stuff is manually inserted GET variable information
• Put all of the loops that do the hard work at the BEGINNING of the page!

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You have an entry for the id, date, the content, and miscellaneous other information such as tags, and description. In this tutorial, I’d like to teach you how to do all that.

/* LET'S GET STARTED!*/

Creating The Table

For this tutorial, you’ll have to have your own database, and username. Set up a home server, with WAMP, XAMPP or whatever else. Once you have that done, create that database, I’ll call mine “blog”.

I’m not going to get into how to do that, because if you’re doing this on a server online, you’ll need special instructions. Google it and set it up.

So, let’s create an INSTALL script. Make sure that when you use this script, delete it right after:

<?php

if (!isset($_POST['submit'])) {
?>
<form method="post" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>">
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Install">
</form>

<?php
}

This creates an installing button. This is only for convenience. I don’t like scripts that automatically add new tables and such without control.

else {
include ('connection.php');

This little bit will connect you to the database. Here’s what my connection.php looks like:

<?php
// MySQL variables
$host = 'localhost';
$user = 'username';
$pass = 'password';
$db = 'blog';

//connect
$connection = mysql_connect($host, $user, $pass) or die ("Unable to connect!");
//database select
mysql_select_db($db) or die ("Unable to select database!");
?>

Great, now you’re in the system (btw, you’ll have to make your own username, password, database, and all that, just like I said you’d have to do. Let’s move on to creating your administration for your site:

//creating a user table
$query = "CREATE TABLE users
(
name varchar(15),
pass varchar(255)
)";

$result = mysql_query($query) or die ("Error in query: $query. ".mysql_error());

//making the user name
$password = md5('password you want to use');
$query="INSERT INTO users (name, pass)
VALUES
('admin', '$password')";

//query
$result = mysql_query($query) or die ("Error in query: $query. ".mysql_error());

Great, now you have a database entry for your user (that’s you!), I won’t get into having multiple users, right now. So bear with me. I’m using a md5 hash to make the password a bit harder to crack. Also, I’m using the usual “admin” for username. Let’s move on to the blog table:

//creating a blog table
 $query = "CREATE TABLE blog
(
id int NOT NULL auto_increment primary key,
title blob NOT NULL,
date blob NOT NULL ,
content text NOT NULL
)";
    // execute query
    $result = mysql_query($query) or die ("Error in query: $query. ".mysql_error());

$query = "INSERT INTO blog (title, date, content) VALUES ('Welcome', 'May 5th', 'First blog entry! Aren\'t you excited?');
";
	// execute query
    $result = mysql_query($query) or die ("Error in query: $query. ".mysql_error());

mysql_close($connection);
echo "Done";

}

With this, we just created a simple blog table that will have a specific id, date, title, and content. We’ve also added a dummy entry (with a date format I won’t be using by the way).
If you’re wondering about the backslash in the word “Aren’t”, don’t wonder anymore. A backslash is used to “escape” characters that may hold a different meaning in the world of programming languages.
For example, if I did not escape that character, I would probably get an error where the MySQL wonders what the “t you excited?” is about since the entry ended at “aren’”.

Before we go on, I would like to seriously address this. The best way to avoid an error is to use a well-known php function mysql_real_escape_string(). This function will automatically add backslashes to all potentially problematic characters. Also, if you use this function, don’t add extra backslashes because the function will escape those as well. There’s only one problem with that function but I’ll show you the solution later on.

Coding the Entry

Now, you’ll notice that while coding the entry, I’m leaving the system open to vulnerabilities, but that’s okay. Why is it okay? Well, unless you’re logged in, you won’t be able to get into the system. So you should be the only one who gets in there and adds entries.

You can screw up your entries by dropping tables and whatnot if you want to, but I’ll assume you won’t be making any crazy MySQL stuff. Also, you’ll have the above-mentioned function to protect you from any unfortunate mistakes.

First add the connection.php file using the include() function. Second, let’s create the form:

<h2>Add Blog Post</h2>
     <form method="post" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];?>">
    <input type="text" name="title" size="50" / ><br />
    <textarea name="content" cols="150" rows="20"></textarea>
    <br />
    <input type="submit" name="addpost" value="Add Post!" />
    </form>

Place this in the body of your html file, I know it sounds redundant and you should know about this stuff but I’m just making sure. What this form will do is send some information using the “post” method (ie. no URL mumbo jumbo like this: ?dkjw=fsjklwe&fjskl=ewjk) No one wants a three thousand character URL up there (what browser would support that anyways?). You have two separate pieces of information: textarea (where your content goes) and input type=”text” (that’s the title). Anyways, put the next piece of code inside the <head> tag, or at least above the form.

if (isset($_POST['addpost'])) {
		$title = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['title']);
		$content = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['content']);
		$date = mysql_real_escape_string(date('m-d-Y'));
		$sql = "INSERT INTO blog (title, date, content) VALUES ('$title', '$date', '$content')";
		$result = mysql_query($sql) or die ("Error in query: $query. ".mysql_error());

		if ($result) {
			echo "Blog id = ".$id." updated";
		}

}

Well, that’s some good stuff. The submit button in the form sent the post variable name “addpost” with the value “Add Post!”. The loop above goes into motion right when that post variable is submitted. I escaped all the strings just in case. Oh, if you didn’t know, you can use html, css, and all that other stuff in your posts. It won’t screw up anything, I promise

Anyways, you can see I used a date function to specify the date the blog was submitted. Read up more about it if you want to use a different time stamp. This one looks like this “1-13-2010″. We then added all the values we needed into the database. And voila, we just added our first entry!

What’s next?

In my next tutorial, I’ll show you how to correctly show all that data! I’ll also get into how to protect your administration sites and how to create the login site too.

STUFF TO REMEMBER

• MySQL uses a lot of special characters. To avoid an error use the mysql_real_escape_string() which will sanitize your entries to some extent. There’s one small problem with the function, but I’ll address that in the next tutorial
• Use the include() function for your connection.php file for each site that connects to the MySQL database. It’s easier than rewriting the code numerous times (especially if you decide to change the user name and all that)
• Delete the install.php installation script after you’re done. You don’t want anyone messing with your scripts. It also creates a vulnerability if you leave it on the server. If you think you’ll forget, get on PHPmyAdmin and do all the querying manually.
• HAVE FUN!

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