Domain Squatters Suck [Cybersquatting]

I’ve been toying around with an idea to create a different, user-driven, blog and searching for a good domain name to go with it. I’ve found a couple of “okay” ideas, but so far everything else I have searched comes up registered, but when I view the site, it’s just a parked paged! I mean, these are good names, catchy, too. But these Internet low-lifes just squat on them, hoping someone with big bucks will come along and want to buy. (The domain in the image isn’t one of my ideas, but rather an ironic find.)

It’s said that it’s nearly impossible to get a good one or two word domain name because they’re all gone, for all TLDs. In my experience, it isn’t that the best domain names aren’t all gone, they’re squatted on.

More information at the always-resourceful, but not always accurate Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting (Note that “Cybersquatting” refers more to the squatting on domain names that are related to a registered trademark of another company, not necessarily just being a bastard to Netizens like me, but it’s a good read nevertheless.)

Update: However, I do appreciate that the model that appears on all these landing pages is really attractive.

Speeding Up Web Sites with Flushing [PHP Speed Tweak]

Though, you should be careful when using it because it may or may not be helpful, depending on your application.

When a client requests a php (or any other server-side page) the server parses the whole page, then sends the resulting code to the client when it’s finished. Once the client receives the page, it can begin fetching images, or whatever media is on the page.

Using the following flush code could speed up the process for the client:

< ?php flush(); ?>

Be sure to remove the space between the right angled bracket “<” and the question mark “?”.

When the server encounters this tag, it will immediately send everything it’s already processed to the client before continuing on the rest of the page. For example, I use this code on another site right after the 3 codes for the 3 random header images are processed. This way, the client can begin fetching the images while the server processes and sends the rest of the page, which is mostly text.

Ultimately, we’re talking about milliseconds here, but its hundreds of milliseconds we might be shaving off. Again, with the site I mentioned above, it seems that by time the header images have loaded, the rest of the web site has completed it’s load. Not only did this save time for the user, but it gives the appearance that everything loaded at once rather than the page appearing with the header images appearing a few moments later.

Code responsibly.

Google’s New Blue Fav Icon [Favicon.ico]

So… A new blue fav icon adorned my Firefox location bar this afternoon when I fired up my iGoogle homepage.

New Google Fav icon:

Old Google Fav icon:

Is Google redesigning their logo or was someone at Google just having a slow Friday?

Perhaps it’ll just change back on Monday and the world will never know!! No. No. Never. I refuse to believe it!

Maybe changing the Fav icon was just a little nugget of nothing for the blogging community to chew on and create buzz… simply a clever ruse…

EDIT: Apparently the new icon isn’t yet appearing on localized versions of Google, but this is normal of anything Google rolls out anyway.

Quick and Easy CSS Menus

This one took a little effort to find as most web sites want you to download software or subscribe to their website:

Webmaster Toolkit has a quick and easy generator to give you the CSS and HTML coding for good looking CSS-based navigation menus.

How to Change File Permissions With Dreamweaver [CHMOD]

After using Dreamweaver for 6 or 7 years, I’ve always thought it was ludicrous that it didn’t include a function to change file permissions! Dreamweaver is a fairly powerful WYSIWYG editor with an equally powerful FTP client built in, how hard could it be to offer a simple context-menu option for changing the file permissions!? Previous web searches turned up forum after forum, page after page of people lamenting the same thing.

But, ALAS! LIGHT!

I finally stumbled upon a help page from hosting company that – in couple lines – solved the mystery.

Once connected via FTP, (pre MX I believe) open the FTP log from the Window menu of the Site Window. In newer versions this can be done with the site menu in the side bar or in “dual pane” mode by going to View then Site FTP Log.

In the command line, type:

chmod ### /path/to/filename

Where ### is the numerical equivalent of the permissions you wish to assign.

Where path/to/filename is the relative path to the filename.

For example, the change permissions of a file named readme.txt location in your root folder should be:

chmod ### ./readme.txt
-or-
chmod ### public/html/readme.txt

The path depends a lot on your server’s or hosting company’s setup.

Once your realize (as I did) that the FTP log allows you to send any FTP commands, you’ll be able to do anything your heart desires. Though, that still doesn’t explain why in heck Macromedia hasn’t provided some kind of GUI solution for file permissions.

Note: The methods described above apply to Linux / Unix server systems.

UPDATE: Thanks to an astute reader, Danny, it was brough to my attention that Dreamweaver 8 and above provides the ability to change file permissions with a GUI interface by right-clicking on the desired file and hitting “Set Permissions.” So, those of you with Dreamweaver version 8 and above (Dreamweaver CS versions) can ignore the instructions in the post unless, of course, you like doing things the hard way!

UPDATE, May 1, 2009: Head over here for an updated post with all the above and below tips for CHMODing the heck out of your files.

Live Web Site Stats: Whos.Amung.Us

If you run your own web site or blog as a hobby, reading the stats from that site can be pretty exciting, almost to point where your friends (those without web sites) pretend to get phone calls while you’re gushing over the recent surge in traffic you’ve seen coming from Ireland. Where are these people coming from? Where do they live? How did they find my site? How many people actually read my stuff!? All these questions run through your head as you sift through the numbers provided by your tracking program of choice (I use Google Analytics). Unless, of course, you simply continually refresh your own web site to artificially increase your page hits in which case, I’m sorry…

Another potentially exciting thing would be knowing exactly how many people are viewing your web site at any moment. Who’s.Amung.Us [sic] can answer your question with ease. When you visit the site, a unique code is generated for you that you can place on your site. The resulting image (like the one in this post) shows the number of people who are viewing any part of your site at that moment. Clicking on the image will bring you to a stats page that shows historical data of concurrent users.

Lastly, for those looking for instant gratification, you can install a Firefox plugin that will display the number of visitors on your site in the status bar.

How Margins Work for the IMG Element

I usually use a WYSIWYG editor for getting code out in a hurry, but I’m fairly proficient when it comes to HTML. Today, however, I wanted to force a margin around an image for a buffer but I incorrectly used a parameter of “margin” and assigned a pixel value. What one is supposed to do is use HSPACE and VSPACE.

HSPACE will create a margin of the specified pixel size on the left and right of the image.
VSPACE will create a margin of the specified pixel size on the to and bottom of the image.

For example:
<img src=”http://www.365discoveries.com/images/image.jpg” hspace=”5″ vspace=”3″ />
Will create a 5 pixel margin on the left and right of the image and a 3 pixel margin on the top and bottom of the image.