http://www.metatitan.com Knowledge to help you build good websites Sun, 12 Apr 2009 07:29:44 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Use the following knowledge at your own risk, scraping content is a pretty gray area. For this guide you will need FireFox and the Firebug extension. You'll also need PHP installed with the cURL module. For this example we'll be grabbing the counters for "bloggers, new posts and words today" from ... http://www.metatitan.com/php/27/how-to-build-a-scraper-using-php-curl.html Webmasters who create sites that grow beyond the capabilities of a Shared host are often faced with the daunting task of choosing a dedicated hosting provider. I've been all across town; hosting with ev1servers (now ThePlanet), iWeb Technologies, Mediatemple, and more who I dare not name as their respective levels ... http://www.metatitan.com/hosting/25/best-dedicated-web-host-meet-softlayer.html I can't believe it's been well over a year since I last updated Meta Titan. I've been extremely busy with personal & work projects and just haven't had time to write new and interesting things for the site. That's all about to change, as I've dusted off the ol' WordPress, cleaned ... http://www.metatitan.com/misc/24/rising-from-the-ashes.html A good use of classes and IDs can save you a lot of time. You'll end up with a site that's easy to maintain, and frankly, your code will look a lot cleaner. There are certain rules and practices when using classes and IDs, the following guide looks over them. First ... http://www.metatitan.com/css/22/classes-vs-ids-css-practice.html Here's a popular request amongst those who are learning PHP. When developing PHP applications, it's good practice to benchmark your pages to see if you need to further optimize your code. The following snippet will show you how much time it took your server to process your PHP document. Insert this ... http://www.metatitan.com/php/21/how-to-calculate-php-load-times.html It sure has been awhile since I've updated, things have been pretty busy and I just haven't had time. Anyway, the most important and often overlooked part of running a dynamic MySQL website is backing up your data often. Losing your file system often doesn't hurt as much as losing ... http://www.metatitan.com/mysql/20/backing-up-a-mysql-database-using-cron.html It felt unfitting for a blog that teaches and discusses web development tips & tricks to use a generic widely used WordPress theme. I've launched a new custom look for Meta Titan and I'm just working out the kinks and making adjustments. I have a couple entries planned for this week ... http://www.metatitan.com/misc/19/new-look.html My apologies for the recent lack of updates and the briefness of this post, things have been (and still are) really busy on my end. Anyway, when building websites for my clients a popular request is to have content that can be toggled by the user. Today I'll show you ... http://www.metatitan.com/css/18/showhide-content-with-css-javascript.html If you work in Adobe Photoshop regularly, you'll often find yourself engaged in repetitive loops that have a tendency to drain on your stamina and attention span. Today I'll teach you how to use, and embrace the Action menu, a tool that will change the way you approach boring, monotonous ... http://www.metatitan.com/photoshop/17/automating-photoshop-actions-and-batching-explained.html SQL injection is a serious concern for webmasters, as an experienced attacker can use this hacking technique to gain access to sensitive data and/or potentially cripple your database. If you haven't secured your applications, I implore you to get yourself familiar with the following method and grind it into your ... http://www.metatitan.com/php/16/protecting-your-phpmysql-queries-from-sql-injection.html