Website Designers and Webmasters

I have a PHP script that I run locally (on my Windows XP Machine) that accesses a MSSQL server using the mssql_connect() function. I used xampp to get PHP on my machine.

Today I finished getting this to work on my second computer. The first time I did this, I also ran into a million problem – but didn’t note any of them. So here I am rectifying my previous mistakes in the hope of not having to search for the same solution next time.

The error I was getting was:

mssql_connect(): unable to connect to server: ‘www.ashtonsanders.com’

(Domain changed for security purposes.)

I handled it by replacing ntwdblib.dll with this ntwdblib.dll.zip in these two folders:

xampp/php
xampp/apache/bin

Enjoy!
-Ashton Sanders
(Note: algorytmy.pl was the final website that helped me handle my problem.)

I have already done a lot of ranting and raving about Blogger and Wordpress.

Although I consider these two to be the leaders of the blogging pack (by a large margin), I did run across a blog using Simple PHP Blog, and was impressed. It doesn’t have all the crazy features like the other two, but it does have a feature which really attracted my attention. On the bottom of every post there are five dots, and you can rate the post 1 to 5. This way, people can interact with your posts and website without actually having to write a comment.

Don’t get me wrong, the comment function is still intact, but the percent of comments compared to visitors is tiny, while the percent of “ratings” to visitors is much higher.

Another note: Simple PHP Blog isn’t database driven. You can run it on a server without needing a database!

If anyone ends up using this system, please let me know how it goes.
-Ashton Sanders

Knowing the width, height, Image type or attributes of an image can be extremely useful.

I’ve used this once to make a line of images all line up on the bottom. I found out the height of the image and then added a margin to the top of the image to make the bottom of the image always be 300 px from the to. So if the height of the image was 140, I would make the margin on top of the image = 300-140.

Here’s the code to find the height or width of an Image:

<?php

list($width, $height, $type, $attr) = getimagesize(”image_name.jpg”);

echo “Image width ” .$width;
echo ”
“;
echo “Image height ” .$height;
echo ”
“;
echo “Image type ” .$type;
echo ”
“;
echo “Attribute ” .$attr;

?>

Enjoy,
Ashton Sanders

When I first started this blog, I did a little bit of research about blogs, and chose Blogger. Now that I’ve been using Blogger for almost a year, I’ve started another blog, about Mordheim, with Wordpress, and here are my thoughts:

Blogger

Overview

Blogger is very simple and user-friendly. There is a reason they are the most popular: it’s extremely easy to set up a blog and write posts. They also have a lot of functionality.

Wordpress

Overview

Wordpress is a little more complicated, and it seems like you can do more with the additional complication. They also have a very user-friendly interface and simple layout. Wordpress has a larger base of fans who have created many blog layouts that are free to download. Because of this, Wordpress’s Free Layouts are much nicer, stylish, better.

Blogger

Remote Blog

Unfortunately, if you want to put your website on a remote server (any other website besides “*.blogspot.com”), you lose almost all of your functionality. You don’t even get a Category Roll. The Categories listed on the right side of this blog is done manually. (The post count is also done manually).

Wordpress

Remote Blog

Fortunately, Wordpress.org supplies you with a free download of Wordpress, and easy installation instructions. In 5 minutes, you have a new, stylish and functional blog hosted on your PHP website. They have a lot of functionality, and each free blog layout has different amount of functionality. You could probably spend the rest of your life trying out different blog layouts. If you are a PHP programmer, it is very easy to sink into the code and make lots of changes to the functionality. From making the categories display alphabetically, by ID, etc.

I would definitely recommend Wordpress over Blogger for advanced users who are looking to host their blog on their website.

Blogging For Life,
-Ashton Sanders

From my years of working on the internet, I have come to realize that the one thing that almost all of my clients desire, is the ability to manage their own website. This way, they never have to wait on their web guy to change a phone number on their website. If they have a new product, they have the ability to add it to their own website.

Because of this huge demand for a CMS for websites, we have developed one that I call “Database in a Flash.” This Content Management System is a very user-friendly program that uses MySQL and PHP. It allows anyone who knows a little bit about the internet to communicate with their MySQL database to update their website.

It really is an amazing program. For more information, feel free to contact us.

-Let me know if you have any questions,
-Ashton Sanders