₦airaland Forum

In addition to registering your sites at google site maps and google webmasters, you can also visit: http://www.andreas.com/ - he is google adwords certified.

He has a lot of white papers that can give you some ideas. That's where I go for mine

cygital:

As a humble corper, you don't expect me to work beyond my N10,000 monthly allowee. Not even enough transportation in Abuja talk more of accomodation.

Bad work attitude. If you felt this badly, then you shouldn't have done it. Sometimes you don't do things for the immediate money but for the long-term. Regardless, you should always be professional in your work

Is only meant for vehicle recovery.

If it is, may I suggest one of the following?
1) Removing the initial landing page
2) Replacing the yellow text "ICT Resource Centre" with "Vehicle Recovery"

My point here is that, I couldn't tell up front what the site is about. Obviously you coded it so you know but we all can't have your brains now, can we?

Vast improvement (as in total 180 degree change). Kudos!

A few issues/concerns/questions:

1) What is the login section for?

2) Contact form: I see you are using jquery. Why not go ahead and use a jquery form? I think it is bad architecture to take ppl filling out the form to a white page with a layout that is not consistent with the main site.

3) Get rid of the Naija flag animation - I find it distracting

4) Animation on home page - IMHO, this is the site for the embassy in rome. If true, I think you should put a photo of the embassy. That animation you have there should perhaps go under "about Nigeria"

5) News Links: Is this going to be updated regularly? If so, are the necessary people trained to know what to do, or are you paid to do it? If the latter, even better. If not, I would take it off. I hate seeing stale news

6) I was once approached to redo the website for the Embassy in New York. One issue I raised was that it would be nice for all Nigerian embassies to run off a subdomain (e.g. rome.nigerianembassy.gov.ng or whatver) and that for uniformity (ala the US model), all subdomains would look alike, only differing in content. I am wondering if you could see to pulling similar strings over there. I didn't get the job but if I do, 3 things I would push for, for sure are the use of a CMS, sub-domains (at least for the US embassies/consulates) and a uniform layout. 'Something to think about.

Overall, this site reminds me of a song that was sang during the opening of a popular game show on NTA, back in the day, "I am proud to be a Nigeriaaaaaan" Good job! I just hope the clients have appreciated the effort in cash and kind.

largerwhenindoubt:

You wrong for that

LWKMD!

flexi:
Since you are just passing by, I bid thee God's speed

i want to purchase a product online with my paypal account and i was asked to put my credit card number.
What should i do?

Uhhhmmm, put your credit card number?

Seriously though, this has got to be the quote of the year

Here are some possible reasons why you are asked that, as opposed to paying with your actual paypal account:
1) You have no money in your paypal account and your bank account hasn't been verified

2) You probably missed the section that says, "you have a zero balance. pay with your bank account" and clicked the "pay with credit card" button instead.

Make sense?

Its easier for programmers to design than designers to program.

I don't agree with this - Programming and designing use different sides of the brain. Besides, with effort on the person's part, it doesn't matter which way the traffic goes. At the end of the day, the destination will be reached. It might just be a matter of how long it takes the driver to get there.

being the slow babe that i am, i typed "quick money" and your site came nowhere close. Obviously, if your url = your search term(s), chances are that you will be #1.

SEO is a continuous process. Keep at it and always refine. And as with all things in life, even when you get to #1, never get lax cos as they say, tis the nail that sticks out that gets hammered.

good luck!

he he, smart: I don't know and I don't want to know either

I am glad I could be of help.  I wrote a css book which I gave out for free (no strings attached) last year on the webmaster board.   I called it, "let's learn something" but thinking about it again, I think I will rename it, "CSS - the good parts".  No more than 30 pages, it covers all you need to know to be an expert in CSS.

Should you want it, send me an email (myNairalandUserName(no dashes)@yahoo.com)

1) again, this isn't a joomla issue so jbox or jwhatever doesn't apply
2) if it is what I am thinking, you need to code your file like so (of course move styles to a css file):

<div id="container">
<div style="float: right;">stuff</div>
<div style="float: right;">stuff</div>
<br style="clear: both;" />
</div>
<div id="footer">stuff herre</div>

Note that the clear:both is directly below the last floated div and not part of the footer.

It probbly wd b better if you pasted the url here so i can use firebug to help debug

1) stop triple posting
2) you install it the same way you install html - ftp or click "upload" in ur cpanel. There is nothing special about "script". A file is a file is a guess what? you got it - a file

good luck!

smart:
I think he is talking about developers not clients

Granted I am not saying I know the official website, I am sure you all will understand when I say that I can't just take anyone's word for it what the true website is.

Assuming my url is wrong, then the police of all people are not doing a good job of monitoring the 419 sites out there and bringing the owners to justice. If they can't enforce the integrity of their own website, then what kind of force are they? This opens up yet another question which should belong to another thread.

I guess someone needs to report something to the EFCC (it won't be me )

I personally don't understand your post, sorry.

Based on what I think I understand:
1) To get rid of the breadcrumbs, go thru all the manager options (off the top of my head, I don't recall what it is) and click the red "x" in the "enabled" column. That should get rid of the breadcrumbs.

2) CSS issues with overflow: set overflow to auto and the bars will only show if it gets to the set height an/or width. I assume your css is in the template.css in which case you modify your css in the "edit css" portion of the template manager and then you hit "preview" to see if your changes make sense. CSS issues have nothing to do with joomla but with your css code.

good luck!

Who would have thought that my innocent, lowly post would find its way to the home page of NL?

This post is not a case of bad belle. Let's get that straight up front. Most likely, those saying this are not in web dev and so what they see is "police follow get website" as opposed to appreciating good work.

IMHO, they are better off without a website. Even though Ghana's isn't good either and could be better, it is more pleasing to the eye than Nigeria's and let's not forget - for those who are old enough, there was a time that Ghana was the laughing stock of west africa though now, we as Nigerians are sending our kids to get schooled there (I digress, sorry ).

Nigeria, based on those I have met on the webmaster board, has a large pool of *exceptional* talent who could have given the NPF the site it deserves. Unfortunately, do to a combo of cronyism and lack of encouragement/appreciation on the client's part, all we get is crap like this. Unless, like most things Nigerian, we have been conditioned to accept bad/mediocre work and to be surprised when "something good comes out of Nazareth", you have no reason to say we should accept what is there. IT IS TERRIBLE!

You might want to grab some headphones while you are at it. 

http://www.police.gov.ng/

Upon all the bribe they get on the streets, this is all they can boast of. Tufia!!

Anyone want to bet the original bid winner got millions then outsourced it for 10 or 20K? 

www.joomla.org should point you in the right direction.

good luck!

webdezzi interesting. What I would do is grab the url from the latest posts section and email it to Seun so he can figure out why.

Very weird. Sorry I couldn't be of any help.

what I don't get is, as powerful as the spam bot program may be, quality posts get flagged whereas some hardcore porn still manages to get through

kolitos, he he. Take a visit to the Union Bank website and stare at the horse that has been running around since at least 2005 and tell me you wouldn't be hypnotized

I have recently come to the conclusion, and I stand corrected, that the flash serves a hypnotizing effect on the client. In other words, the longer the client stares at the flash, the less likely they are to spot the crap that is on their sites. It might even help the "webmaster" charge more money ("eh, wetin you talk? N1m? whatever I go pay. no disturb me. I dey look this cool animation)

This has happened more than a few times with me to the point that I got turned off from posting.  Typically, it would happen when I am sharing an article I found online.  It seems, though I can't confirm, that whenever you include a url, the post doesn't go through.  If this is the case, I think the webmaster board is losing out on quality posts because of this.

omni, omni, thanks. As I work on more sites, Lord willing, not that I am praying for it but I will more "funny" questions and post here once I find a solution. As you may have noticed, I insist on finding a solution myself, even if it takes days as once I find it, it sticks in my sub conscious.

webdezzi, here is what my code is doing:
1) You go to a registration page where you enter your info (name, email, address and so forth

2) You click "next" and are taken to a confirmation page where I spit out what you entered on the previous page. If you want to correct, you click back else, further down on the page, there is a paypal button.

3) You go to paypal and assuming you don't cancel, you make a payment. You then return to a "thank you" page.

So what I do is:
1) Store the values entered in (1) in session vars on the confirmation page and have a "user_paid" set to N by default

2) Upon successful payment, I check the value of a certain var (email address), do a select to see if it exists in the db. If yes, I update the user_paid column to "Y". If not, customary error message.

3) I destroy all sessions - this way, should someone get to the page directly or refresh for some reason, they get, "you have come to this page in error"

I tried cookies for something like this years ago and it worked up until I did a live demo for a client and they had the browser on longer than I had set the cookies for (stupid me, I trusted the user the register quickly. I nearly piss for my pata that day ). I then decided to switch to sessions from that point onwards.

I once played with not doing the insert on the confirmation page and doing a mass insert on the "thank you" page but it didn't make sense to me. The way I see it, and I could be wrong, it is more efficient to update one column than to insert an entire row.

I hope it makes sense. If my approach is wrong, I am willing to learn a better approach

yep, webdezzi hit the spot 1000%  The solution is to move my mysql.inc.php include statement to right below the session_start() statement

I guess one of my points with this question is the importance of striving to seek answers ourselves before we bring it to the forum.  If I were to come here first, it probably would have taken me days to get the answer whereas my client is looking for his site much sooner.  Another point would be patience: had I not decided to check every result on google to the 2nd page, I probably would still have the problem.

webdezzi:
You said something about using sessions not being a good idea.   You mind expatiating?  I have done this on quite a few sites and it worked out well.  I look forward to your reason(s) why.  I once used cookies but it didn't work out well due to its ability to expire.  I try not to use sessions for anything, in particular because of server "taxation" issues though you are probably coming at it from a security perspective.

Please expatiate. I am all ears

2Legit:
I am afraid that isn't the answer.  For starters, I am not using IIS.  Nice try though.

askphantom:
You probably are not aware of the fact that NL replaces 2 or more dots with a comma, which explains that.  Regardless, no one is above mistakes.  Whether you start coding today or have been doing it since 1800, makes no difference.  In fact, I challenge anyone to write a program the first time with no bugs 

To give you an answer to your solution: yes, the db and table exists and the host, username and password are all set right and the include is pointing to the right path.  Though your solution isn't correct, I will say you are getting there.  You have partially answered (1).  Put back on your thinking hat and go at it again.

More answers please.  You will be amazed at the solution

So here I am coding into the wee hours of the morning.  I was basically like butter.  Why? cos I was on a roll (how many of you get that?  ).  I had 2 more sections to go and these 2 required some database interaction.  Basically, the first page is a form.  You fill it out and click "next" where you are asked to confirm your entry.  If you like what you see, you click a paypal button to pay some money.  On the same 2nd page, I insert the values into a db and create session vars for the entries.  One of the columns, "paid" is defaulted to "N".  Upon a successful paypal payment, the "thank you" page checks for the session vars and if found, updates the "paid" column to "Y".

Here are snippets of the code I used on the confirmation page:

session_start();

$contactfirstname = $_REQUEST['contactfirstname'];
$contactfirstname = trim($contactfirstname);
$contactfirstname = mysql_real_escape_string($contactfirstname);
$_SESSION['contactfirstname'] = $contactfirstname;

require(', /inc/new-header.inc'); //html header stuff so yes, I have my session vars in the right place
        (more code here)
        require_once(', /inc/mysql.inc.php'); //set host, username, password andall that good stuff
        $q = "INSERT INTO tbl_registration (table columns) VALUES (values to insert)";

$r = mysql_query($q, $dbc);

if(mysql_affected_rows($dbc) == 1)
        (more code here)

I would say it's pretty straightforward stuff.  So I go to my browser, fill in values and click "next" only to see the following mysql errors:

a link to the server could not be established
function: mysql_real_escape_string($contactfirstname); Access denied to user on table (table name) password: NO

After battling with this for some time, I contact the web host, who tells me "there is some active server uptime on your account.  Our guys are looking into the problem.  Try back in an hour".

I then go to sleep for 4 hours, try it again, same problem.  I contact web host again.  still, same problem.  I google for what seems like eternity and nothing came up.  Then on the 2nd page of the results, I see one obscure link that gave me the solution and I was astonished - see, I pretty much work on the same kind of sites so my code is heavily templatized (there goes that dirty word again  ) so I took certain things for granted.  This particular site though is doing things a little differently.

Questions:
1) Why do I get the errors above?
2) How do I solve them?

This was pretty tricky for me.  I wonder if any of you have seen this before.  Oya, as always, I dey wait

www.w3schools.com should b enouh to get your feet wet.

good luck!

but you know it is said that you can easily forget if you don't practise,

kolitos, if you read my post carefully, you would have noticed that I had that covered.  For your convenience

Then on the side, just to make sure you don't lose what you don't use, you keep up with your php.

Again, good luck to you as you pursue your career

c.whyte:
How about a few hours with php?

he he, glad to know that it works. We are all here to learn and be taught. Now you have something added to your arsenal for when it happens to you again and/or someone approaches you with the same issue