₦airaland Forum

This thing would be a breeze if you stored your text in a db.  But, here's some help nevertheless..

Every one of those files has a unique filename, based on the path.
Therefore, store the filenames in a db, or a flat file with the date of last view next to it.

I have a similar feature on my website where each day somebody logs in, he/she earns 1 point within a 24 hour period.  If the user logs in twice within 24 hours, some date comparison is done, and no point is given the second time.

If you want a new file displayed when someone has seen the first file, then you need a sequential naming scheme for your files.  E.g. file1, file2, file3. That way you can call file2 if file1 has been seen.

To find out if it's been 24 hours since last click, you can issue a query like this:

$query = "SELECT (TO_DAYS(CURRENT_DATE)-TO_DAYS(lastviewdate)) ";
$query .= "as due FROM userstats WHERE username='$username' && filename='.....' ";

$row = mysql_fetch_object($result);

if($row->due>1) { // it's been more than a day since last view

   use your file functions here: fopen(), fread(), etc
   See http://us2.php.net/fopen, http://ffa.oasisoflove.com/fopen.html
}
else { // last view was less than 24 hours ago.

   show next file in the sequence...
}

Of course, each time a user views a file, you have to issue the query:

UPDATE userstats, SET lastviewdate=now() WHERE ...

The above is just a sketch to get you thinking.  You must provide some code if you want specific help.

there is nothing wrong with being a naija web designer as long as you're good. at least we have indian coders, russian scientists, etc

You're missing the point.

Yes, there are Indian coders, but by geolocation only, not by the output of their work.  Can you imagine if evey Indian chose colors based on their flag?  Which is what most Nigerians are doing today.

Green is Glo's traditional colour. But if people also use green it shows their Naijaness.

That's the problem.  Unless you're buiding a government website, why limit your creativity to one color? 

Flash creates some effizzyness for people, hence the usage. Simple GIF animations will do better in most of those places, some people are just designing without the basic know-how.

effizzyness?  What is that?

In any event, green is the color of money, dollar being green.  So most green sites are related to finance.

Basically, Nigerian designers ought to separate themselves from the green syndrome, and begin thinking as a web designer, not as a naija web designer.

1. Overhead surveilance cameras may help a bit.

2. Unconditional dismissal of an employee for the slightest infringement may deter some.

3. Place magnetic barcodes on items you're selling.  Then have a scanner at the exit.

4. Have somebody at the door to check people as they leave.  For this to work, you must also test the guy at the door for dishonesty from time to time.  Otherwise, he may collude with friends of his and look the other way when they leave.

In general, there's no foolproof way to prevent stealing from a store.  Even major outlets in the most advanced nations can't handle it. 

There are people who make a living stealing from stores.  When I say people, I mean a whole gang who'd descend on a store at the same time.  Each gang member has a role.  For example, one person may try to distract the security guard, another may block the camera's view, another may be watching the door, etc.

If possible, think of establishing a business online.  Preferably a business that does not involve carrying inventory.

What foreign programs are currently running on Nigerian TV stations?

Some past programs have been:

Different Strokes
Lassie
Little House on the Praire
Dynasty
Good Times
etc.

Some that I would like shown in Nigeria are:

Andy Griffith Show
Seinfeld
Punk'd
Girls Behaving Badly
Lost

I don't think Nigerians would understand "All in the Family".  It'd racist be considered racist.  Even though it's a show that helped bring racism in America into open discussion.

I find Nigerians to be  generally one-track-minded.  I've noticed that most of our websites are green.  What's up with that? 

Out of a possible 16 million colors, green is the one we're stuck on.  C'mon guys!

Also, so many are caught in the flash craze. When are we going to realise the flash sites do not do well in search engines? You can create good sites without flash. Just learn Photoshop.

What's your beef with the Hausas? This comment is racist to me. Due you have documented facts to back up your claim or it's just your perception of the Hausa people

Actually, the question is, can you prove otherwise?

Just like the Yoruba Google page, the fad is not really going to catch up. 100% of people that have access to a PC can read and write basic English that can help them to navigate their way through, so i see no reason for all these languages.

I think the effort is laudable, since it puts Nigeria's name next to something other than 419. But as far as people actually adopting wazobia linux, I just don't see it happening.

Nice work.

More info here http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wazobia

I've always questioned the need for all these linux distributions popping up all over the place though. Some of them are just a waste of energy. I say this because I won't spend time on something, unless I have something new to offer, or there is a demand for it.

So, the question becomes, what is wazobia offering, or what demand is it trying to fill?

The Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo deal is cool. At the end of the day, would somebody working on wazobia be employable globally, since it's most likely to be in a native Nigerian language?

There is no shortage of places to advertise if you've got the money.

If you don't have the money to spend, then you have to work hard to get the word out, especially if you're in a competitive market.

Here are some ways to do it:

1. SEO.  No blackhat seo, or you'd get banned in the search engines.

2. Write keyword-rich articles, with links back to your website.  Submit them to hundreds of article directories.

3. Grab free reprint articles and post them on your website.  Just search for "free articles" in google.  Having many articles on your site increases the content, which in turn boosts your ranking.

4. If you're smart enough, do traffic bait.  This is where you write controvertial stuff that would spark spirited discussions across the web.  Before you know it, everybody is linking to your article to reference it.  Lots of inbound links to your site will shoot you up in rankings on google and other search engines.

5. Create RSS feed and distribute it to rss aggregator sites.

6. Contact other webmasters and ask for reciprocal links.

7. Create wireless access to your content using WML.

8. Add your site to your email signature.

9. Become a blogger and write frequently.  Include links to your website on those blogs.

10. Don't forget the newsgroups.

11. Get yourself an IRC channel.

@Kokscity

You did a good job with your writeup.

The author of the topic asked a simple clear-cut question about how to be safe while in Nigeria. But rather than get answers, all I hear are defenses. In reality though, everybody knows that Nigeria can be problematic for a visitor who isn't familiar with the system, or who has been away a while.

I'm so impressed with your response I give you a 10 on a scale of 10.

Isn't it true that the Nigerian embassy requires that you're endorsed by somebody in a high position such as a doctor before your passport can be renewed?

You're doing the right thing by asking. Most Nigerians make assumptions about things, then later find themselves in a quandary when reality hits.

Alhaji Kris the comedian.

See https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-6036.0.html and learn.

Anything flashing or scrolling on a webpage is very distracting to me.

Do not visit www.glowingskin.cashhosters.com/acne

My virus scanner found a virus on it.

Is there a Content Management System already written that you guys could use? Why re-invent the wheel?

Direct your energy toward building something that hasn't already been done.

For example, think of building an Internet communication system using voiceXML.
How about building a TV gateway that'll bring Nigerian Radio/TV stations online? I'm just thinking aloud here.

I know there's something out there worth spending valuable time on that'd be more beneficial than a CMS.

Guys, every programming language has bugs.  Just type "cold fusion vulnerability" into google and see what comes up.

It's wrong to say because a site that happens to be built in php was hacked, therefore php is bad.  The hacker could have used an Ms Windows weakness to get in.  It could have been a weakness in ftp, ssh, etc, or just plain admin carelessness.  You'd be surprised how stupid some admins are out there when it comes to assigning passwords to admin accounts.  Some of my account passwords are as much as 56 characters long.  Good luck guessing that.

We've arrived at an impasse here.  So let me just say that large companies like yahoo wouldn't adopt php if it isn't solid.

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/1491221

Also, don't forget that yahoo does billions of dollars worth of business online daily through e-commerce.

All the php sceptics often operate on knowledge that is several years old.  Once they update their knowledge and find out where php is today, they'd all change their minds and embrace it.

what did you expect?

I expect independent account, rather than a marketing ploy.

You can write bad code in any language (Java, C++ etc) thats why you have coding standards.

True.  But the point is, cf is more susceptible.

Same applies to Oracle, Microsoft products, Sun etc.

And if you look around, all those companies are scared of the open source community.  So the point still stands, if a MM goes, your cf goes.

says who? you can always write your own

Is it at the C/perl level?  Several people confirmed that CF is weak in regex, but you seem to be a CF nazi who hates to admit it.

there's a large CF support group that has been around since the late 90s. PHP developers are a dime a dozen around here and it reflects in their contract rates. CF is a niche market and commands a higher premium.

Yep, a dime a dozen.  Therefore tons of on-the-minute help.  That's a positive, not the negative you're trying to spin it into.

Boils down to your hardware configuration, you'll have to run similar sized apps in PHP and CF side by side to actually confirm that.

I'm sure you don't think people just sit around and eat Cheetos all day.  Of course similar apps were used for benchmarking.  It's been confirmed.  All you have to do is seach the web for those facts.

OOP is actually very limited in PHP, can't have private or protected objects, only public .
The current versions of CF (CFMX) now runs on Java and allows you to leverage development across the two platforms.

When was the last time you checked php's OO capability?

Not really true, most ISPs will still charge for its use as its normally included in the overall cost.

Untrue.  LAMP is the standard.  Anything else, like Windows, CF, etc attract extra cost. If you say no, we'd dig up some prices for comparison.

which is also its weakness as who do you hold responsible if there's a security hole. It is widely used and it means hackers target it a lot. for instance phpBB has experienced a series of security problems.
No surprise then that a lot of major institutions and banks don't use it, they feel more comfortable dealing with a software company than open sourced software.

How can you say for sure what a major institution like banks use?
You could use php and conceal it to appear as .exe, .asp, .html, .cf, .jsp.  Basically whatever you want.

As far as hackers, how many php sites have been broken into that you know of?  As ubiquitous as php is, we should be hearing daily horror stories.  But are we?

If a hole is discovered, it's fixed very quickly, because the whole world is working on it by virtue of it's open source. If a hole is discovered in cf, you have to wait for MM to get to it. If a hole is discovered in Ms Windows, it takes much longer to issue patches, than say in Linux.

same with CF, in addition it also allows you to plug in modules and cfx tags built in Java, ASP and JSP

Numbers don't lie.  PHP has way more scripts out there than any other programming language, period.

At the basic level it is similar to HTML but by the time you become more experienced, you start to write your own scripts, functions, cfcs and custom tags and this requires programming knowledge.

Which therefore defeats your initial argument that CF is easier than PHP.  Case closed.

Perfect.  I ask for clarification, and you give me an article from the creators of CF.  How quaint. 

I can see that CF would be much friendlier to a beginning web developer who is just getting into using database content in web pages.

A seasoned php programmer doesn't have all those looping/emailing/coding problems mentioned.

For example, I don't use php's mail() function to send email.  Instead, I have a pre-written function that I include() in any page where mail is to be sent.

Here are points I scrapped off the web...

CF:

Expensive license cost vs $0 for php.

Because everything is handled internally in cf, it's very easy to write BAD code.

Owned by macromedia. If Macromedia dies, CF dies along with it.

Cold fusion is extremely weak at regular expressions.

Coldfusion has striking similarity with HTML. For a new programmer, Coldfusion can be learned in couple of weeks time.  Cold Fusion has a good IDE and is generally easier to get started with, whereas PHP initially requires more programming knowledge. Cold Fusion is designed with non-programmers in mind, while PHP is focused on programmers.


PHP:

Free licensing.

Blazing fast.  PHP can serve pages under 1 second (CF 3-5 seconds), server load ratio  of cf/php is about 2 to .2.  You can serve MORE page views with php than you could with CF.  Some say PHP is up to 5 times faster than CF, and less resource intensive.

So much free support available.  Tons of developers use PHP so there's always someone out there that can help you.

C is the father of all programming languages.  PHP is closer in syntax to C and perl.  You can do true OO programming in php.

Lots of pre-written code widely available.

PHP is here to stay.  No company red tape anywhere.

Supported by nearly all ISP's for no extra cost.

PHP runs on almost every platform there is. Cold Fusion is only available on Win32, Solaris, Linux and HP/UX.


So those are the facts. 
You decide for yourselves.  CF or PHP?

I'm detecting a PHP bias here   Why PHP ? Is it because its free.

I don't know cold fusion, but there are definite advantages to using PHP.  Large support community for one.  Post a php question, and somebody would answer it within minutes.  I don't care what anybody says, LAMP is going to wax stronger with time.

CGI used to be king.  Then the new kid on the block (php) came in and knocked everything off its axis.  That is phenomenal for a programming language that is just over a decade old.

Cold Fusion is a lot better, development turn around is definitely faster than any other language out there.

Can you substantiate that claim?  Like I said, I don't know CF, but I doubt the statement you just made above is correct.  Perhaps if you shed more light, we could better understand the advantages of CF over php.

For The Up And Coming Designers

For those of you focused on web page design, as opposed to lightweight pages backed by css, take a look at my list of good tutorials below, and set your sights toward being that good.

Recommended steps to design expertise:

1. Learn to medidate. That'll help you relax. If you're impatient, you can't learn graphic design.

2. Enrol in a Photoshop class.

3. Practice, practice, practice.

4. Post your designs for us to see once you get good.

http://www.n-sane.net/tutorials.php
http://www.photoshoptower.com/tutorials/full-tech-site/index.php
http://www.phong.com/tutorials/
http://www.absolutecross.com/tutorials/photoshop/

From microsoft:

http://office.microsoft.com/clipart/default.aspx?lc=en-us

Well, I'm not one big on debating politics but I must say that you have sparked a little something inside of me to want to be more expressive on the subject

I'm not a political buff myself, but I do engage in rational debates now and again.

I agree with the first part of your statement; however, I have to disagree with the second part.  Keep terrorist at bay...........you really think this is possible?

Terrorists need money to operate.  Track their assets around the globe and freeze it.  That hinders them quite a bit.  Also, stringent scrutiny of their movement around the world renders them ineffective.  That is why most of the terrorist acts we've seen since 911 have been for the most part, geographically limited to the middle east.

You mentioned earlier that you don't trust any polician.  Neither do I.  The statement "honest politician" is an oxymoron.  So like you, I don't trust anything a politician says.  He'd say just about anything to pander to your votes. 

You're also correct about the bloodshed part.  But look at it this way: if Bush hadn't gone into Iraq, Saddam would've slaughtered just as many people.  Don't forget what a brutal dictator he was.  He was a man who lived in opulence, while his citizens starved.  He employed torture against his enemies, and chopped them into pieces when he felt any kind of threat looming.

Speaking of WMD, why did Saddam keep living under the veil of having WMD?  For years on end he would invite weapons inspectors in, just to send them packing at a moment's notice.  So whether or not WMD was found by Bush is a moot point.   Any rational person knows Saddam provoked it by breaking International laws.  Had he opened his doors to unfettered inspection, there'd never have been any excuse to overthrow him.  Iran is next in line if it doesn't end its current nuclear program.

So, be it as it may that Bush's policy on Iraq has cost so many lives, I feel the world at large is safer today without Saddam Hussein.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not a Bush apologist.  God knows I hate a lot of his policies, especially the way he's turned a blind eye to latino invasion of America.  But when it comes to taking tangible action against terrorism, nobody can accuse him of sleeping behind the wheel.

Am very very optimistic about Ajax.

Nobody said don't use it.  Just make sure you test it with older browsers before deployment.  That is if you care about people using older browsers being able to use your website.

I've created tons of applications myself using ajax.  Sometimes that is the only technology possible.  Go ahead and try the browser-based chat application on my website.  Without ajax, it'd be impossible to update messages without refreshing the chat window.

Unfortunately, not all of my users can use the chat app, because their browser doesn't support it.  For those people, I've also provided a chat app they can install on their computer.

In a few years, most people would have updgraded to better browsers.  Then it'd be safe to use ajax to your heart's content. 

Not too long ago, few people used css.  Why?  Because of browser incompatibilities.  But today, everybody uses css without thinking twice, because most browsers now respect the standards and support css.

Am I making any sense to you guys, or you just don't get the point am trying to make?

When compiling a report card for a given administration, it's hard not to find proponents and antagonists of any particular policy.

Clinton was soft on terrorism.  During his administration, terrorism was commonplace.  But with Bush, it's the terrorists who are running and hidding for their lives.  Terrorism has not been eradicated, but it sure has been curtailed.

So what have we learned?  We've learned that no matter what you do, you're never going to get rid of religious zealots whose sole aim is to advanced the twisted interpretations of their Holy book.  However, with enough action, you can keep terrorists at bay.

France just announced that it'd nuclear bomb any body that attacks it.  That's the kind of action that terrorists understand.  Fire for fire.  Perhaps that's why Bush has been so tough.  That's the way I choose to see it, rather than attribute it to some vendetta he's been harboring from the days of his father's presidency.

What do you think?

How come nobody is posting any prices?

This is a straight forward enough thread.

Post something. Anything at all.

In this age of broadband internet i wonder if someone will still be tie down with obsolete apps.

Backward compatibilty will always make someone backward in any project.  These days 90% of web users have the latest apps on their systems.

Yes, but I'd rather be backward than lose 10% of the visitors that come to my site.  You did say yourself that 10% of users don't have modern browsers.

Anyway it's left for every developer to determine the technology and tools that will be suitable for him. No one can force anyone to use anything.

That's correct.   The truth though is, most web developers are self-taught.  So they know little about the semantics of what is out there and when not to use them.  Most web developers have never read one RFC.  Yet they claim to be developers.  How can you be a developer if you don't know the recommended standard practices in your industry?

We must all know the backend matter most. A clasical example is the WAEC and NECO online registration websites. Although the NECO site is more appealing to the eyes, but the back end is not that so good.

WE MUST ALL DO THINGS THAT WILL MAKE THE CLIENT NOT TO REGRET INVESTING IN WEB TECHNOLOGY.

Mallam, now you're talking! 

Assuming you build a website for a client that is not search engine friendly, and hence, the site gets no traffic.  Would your client be happy to spend more money on another website?

Tech people love using new terminology, even though they may not have fully considered its ramifications.

b_e_b_e, what comments do you have about Bush's administration?

Seun,

Here are things to be prepared for:

1. Increased load on the database.
2. Increased traffic in general.
3. Increased need for moderation.
4. Increased pressure for a redesign of the phorum.

I don't know how tech savvy you are, but as this forum grows, tech-knowhow is inevitable.  Here are my suggestions:


1. Increased load on the database:

The most important thing with databases is the design.  You can run some tests on your queries using the EXPLAIN command to find out where performance needs to be improved.  If your db tables are structured and Normalised properly, it'd still be very fast, no matter how many billions of records it contains.

Make sure your keyword search queries are properly written.  I'm referring to queries such as
WHERE description LIKE '$keyword%'
or
WHERE description REGEXP $keyword

Such queries are server killers if not properly written.

Next, as your load grows, you can create replication in your database server for parallel processing.  http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/replication.html

Here's the cheapest method I know:

A. You buy several accounts on cheap but reliable hosting companies like http://www.globat.com/, http://www.powweb.com, etc for around $5 a month each.

B. You then setup the mysql servers on them as slave servers.

C. Setup your own primary database as the master.

Now all Writes will go to master server, and Reads would be load balanced between all the servers.  
The slaves will periodically get updates from the master.
As your traffic grows, you can easily add another account (database server) elsewhere (another $5 a month).

Of course, the whole thing would be easier if you just have your own facility where you can just add more machines as needed. But, that'd create a "single point of failure" problem.

2. Increased traffic in general:

As some point, your web server (let's say apache) would reach it's limit of requests it can handle.  When that happens, the forum will slow down to a crawl, or people would start to get "server busy" error.

A. To deal with this, you need to run several apache servers.  Read up on apache's Reverse Proxy.

B. If you haven't already done so, setup "catching" on your server.  That'd reduce the load on the database significantly.


3. Increased need for moderation:

It's up to you how you handle this.  I'm sure you already have plans to hire somebody.
However, you can study how responsible a member is and propose it to them.   Many won't respond, but don't give up.

4. Increased pressure for redesign:

There is one thing that a redesign means - add graphics/flash.  CSS can only go so far in giving a webpage enough pizzazz.

Adding graphics would significantly increase your traffic/bandwidth requirements.  So why would you want to do that?  Some of the most successful sites on the net are text-based: yahoo, google, craigslist, etc.

I'm happy with the design of the forum.  I come here for information exchange, not pretty graphics.  But that is one man's opinion.

Of course, you could look and see if this forum has other prettier templates that you could apply.  Or you could consider using other forum softwares that sport better interface: http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Programming/Languages/PHP/Scripts/Forums/

Why al these Ajax war. Ajax has come to become the new saviour of the web, take it or leave it Ajax will rule the web in no distant future. Gmail, Kahuna (new Hotmail) and also The new Yahoo Mail they make good use of Ajax. This has shown that Ajax has come to stay. I dey go learn am now now.

You quote gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc.
Yes, those apps are built on ajax.  However, if a browser is used that doesn't support it, they've also provided alternate versions.

My point is that only newer browsers support ajax. If you get careless and start using ajax for every little thing, your site won't be usable for people with older browsers, or those that turn javascript off, unless you have the time to spend in creating two versions of your webpages like yahoo/google does.  Don't make me keep repeating myself - my point if clear.

@oasis. i shouldnt be joining issues with u but i can bet my arse u don't have the foggiest idea about 1/4 of what you're arguing about.

Another one of those who dislikes his views being challenged.
Let's discuss the issues.  Don't get personal.

1, ajax is one of the oldest technology out there and has been in internet explorer/mozilla since good old days. by the way, microsoft invested the technology and adaptive path gave it the name

Microsoft added the function called XMLHttpRequest to IE5.  Would you call that old days?  And don't forget that no other browsers supported it till several years later.

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ajaxhistory

2, ajax gives u more accessibility and usability than traditional web (if u know what you're doing) and since u don't know, as people who know before u advertise your ignorance.

Well, if nothing older than IE5 supports ajax, how can you claim that it gives you more accessibility and usability?

Today, most new browser versions support it.  But is it really a good idea to build a website that requires only the latest browsers to function?  That limits usability and accessibility.

3, what do i know about SEO? hmmm... mo rerin oyinbo! what do u know about SEO? Chief, go and chill.

That was an innocent question from me, not a challenge to you.  Apparently you read too much into it.

So, let me re-iterate:

Only the newest browsers support ajax.
Depending on your target audience, ajax may not be the solution.  So, test your ajax design well on all browsers before you launch it.  Unless I have a compelling reason to use ajax, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

And as far as SEO goes, it's your only salvation on the web, unless you have millions of $$ to throw into advertising your website.

http://abuja.usembassy.gov/wwwhlaurabushmain.html

"I met earlier this morning with President Obasanjo who stood with President Bush and Kofi Annan in the Rose Garden in Washington, D.C., as they announced the Global Fund for AIDS. He has been a partner all along in trying to get treatment to as many people as possible in Nigeria to stop the spread of AIDS and to treat people so people can live a normal life with AIDS... "
—First Lady Laura Bush at a visit to St. Mary's Hospital in Gwagwalada, Nigeria Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2006