neylitalo

[quote author=businessman332211 link=topic=109986.msg444505#msg444505 date=1159660467]ober ..., I have always wanted to come up with something that impressed you, but I have yet to succeeded.[/quote] Oh, don't worry one bit about that - every single site ober's looked at, he's found something to fix. :D ober and his Opera... the bane of my existence, way back when.

As my personal forte is definitely not graphics, and it appears it is neither yours, I have one suggestion: Save the logo for last. Get a layout that looks gorgeous, and then concentrate on the logo. And since your personal strength does not happen to be graphic design, don't try to get fancy - it'll only look worse. Keep it simple. And oftentimes, you'll find that the simple approach actually looks really good. As to the question of whether or not you are cut out for the career, I think, personally, that if you have to ask, then you already know the answer. Nobody wants to be stuck doing something they're not good at or something they don't enjoy, and I think you may be starting to think that particular thought. Everything is hard, but it'll be that much harder if you don't enjoy what it is you're doing, or if you're not a natural talent at it. Have you attended college/university? Do you have a degree? If so, what is it? Maybe, if it's nothing like web design or programming, you should try to find something you like that you can put that degree to use in. If you haven't attended college, then you should seriously think about it. A few years of college will teach you a lot, about yourself, the world, and the field you specialize in while at school. In the US, financial aid is extremely easy to get. You may find it worthwhile in the long run. I also suspect you may be getting burned out. You're competing as a freelancer in a very competitive field, and maybe you should consider finding something else. Freelancing is one of the most difficult "occupations" to succeed in, and you may have to try and find an alternative. And the alternative doesn't have to be a different career - maybe find a job in the "corporate" world. You are no longer your own boss, but you'll be making enough money to live on, and you may find that it's better than living from project to project.

Well, if you haven't got the time, money, resources, etc., to create your own, then templates are a good way to go. However, there are downsides. They can be very expensive (so expensive as to justify spending the money to have someone create one for you), and don't usually follow good design techniques. Sure, they look good - but they're usually exclusively tables and images, so they can be rather hard to work with.

[quote author=Jenk link=topic=109962.msg443861#msg443861 date=1159554047] You can store flatfiles without needing direct access. Just put them in a directory that is above the document root. [/quote] Just be aware that with this process, it is very easy to accidentally allow unregulated access to those files. If this route is taken, and you need to control who accesses the files and/or when they're accessed, or anything else, just make sure that you don't allow the clients to directly browse to those files.

[quote author=dragonusthei link=topic=109816.msg442941#msg442941 date=1159436743] Hi, I need to get SSL for my site But do i need to buy SSL from my host or can i buy it from any where and apply it to my domain? How does it work can i easly select whitch parts of my site i want the SSL to apply to? [/quote] Your host needs to have support for SSL installed on their servers - it's usually just an SSL certificate generated and certified by some authority (GeoTrust is the only one I can think of now) and shared on that server. However, an SSL certificate is only valid for a certain domain and that gets rather messy. Possible, but not preferable. You can also purchase SSL certificates from a certificate authority, and put them on your server, but I'm really not sure how you would go about doing this on a shared server. Another way they may do it is to generate certificates on the server, which will work just beautifully when it comes to encryption, but the client's browser may say "Certificate from unknown authority" or something. At any rate, you're going to have to talk to your host about it. [quote author=businessman332211 link=topic=109816.msg443325#msg443325 date=1159480877] ssl means https "Hyper text transferr protocol secure"[/quote] Well... kinda, but not quite. SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. HTTPS is simply the HTTP protocol over an SSL'ed connection. To make a short story shorter, SSL != HTTPS, nor does SSL imply the use of HTTPS. SSL is used by several protocols and programs, the great majority of which are not HTTPS.

I can personally vouch for http://www.high-logic.com/fontcreator.html . I don't have much experience creating fonts, but that one worked beautifully.

No, don't create a table for each test. Tables should be very static, and tasks such as adding a new test should not warrant the creation of another table. Use Daniel0's suggestion - you can pretend 'article' is 'test'. I'll elaborate a bit further, in hopes that something will click. I'm going to teach a very small bit of object oriented design here. Your idea would indeed work, but it's rather poor design. Your design completely ignores one of the most important concepts of designing a data structure: abstraction. Abstraction, in this case, means that you're keeping related data together, and unrelated data separate. (You can see this [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_abstraction]Wikipedia article[/url] for more info.) I use the terms "related" and "unrelated" in the absolute strictest sense. Yes, the questions for the tests are "related" to the test itself, but the level of relativity we're talking about is expressed by these questions: Is a question the same as a test, and is a test the same as a question? If those conditions are [b]always[/b] true, then they are indeed related, and you can put them into the same database tables. However, in this case, those conditions are not always true, thus they are not related. So we're going to want to separate them in the data structure, to simplify the structure and make it easier for you to work with. One little bit of advice for you, to understand this next part: Think of these objects simply as ideas. Don't think of them as what they'll be in the end, don't think of them as concrete objects. Think of them as [u]ideas[/u]. Use your imagination - it's very powerful. :) Anything can happen in your imagination; not so, in the real world. Now we're going to figure out the level of abstraction we're going to need for this. [b]Step 1:[/b] Figure out the object we're working with. In this case, we're working with "tests". Remember, this "test" is just an idea. [b]Step 2:[/b] Figure out the core components of a "test". I think that would consist of: A) The questions, and B) The test itself. The test is just a wrapper for all the questions, simply a container. [b]Step 3:[/b] For each core component, you need an object. Remember, these objects are ideas in your head. If you have an idea, you can apply it to anything. In this case, these objects (ideas) are going to be applied to database tables. [b]Step 4:[/b] Now, we usually record these objects (paper has a purpose again!), but in this case, I think that you can remember the objects we came up with: "tests" and "questions". [b]Step 5:[/b] For each of those objects, we need to go back to step 1 and figure out if these new objects can be abstracted at all. "Tests" are good the way they are, but there's another level of abstraction when it comes to "questions". So we hop back up to Step 1 and plug in "questions" as the object we're working with. The objects that we come up with this time around should be "questions" and "answers". I determined that by figuring that each question has an answer or multiple answers. [b]Step 6:[/b] And, if applicable, repeat again with the results of the second round of abstraction. However, in this case, it's unnecessary - we've broken it down into all the elements that we're worried about. [b]Step 7:[/b] You know all the different objects that you need to make something out of, and you know what their relationships are. Now all it takes is to put it into place. In this case, we're concerned with database tables. Figure out what tables you're going to need, what fields you're going to need for each object, and how you're going to relate the tables to one another. This is where foreign keys are going to be used. A foreign key is just a field in one table that references a field in another table (usually an ID), so as to "link" one row in a table to a row in another table. See this [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_key]Wikipedia article[/url] for more info. Don't worry, after a while, this entire process will become second nature, and you'll be able to do it for very complex systems in a matter of seconds or minutes. And again, don't worry about your database server and its speed - it knows what it's doing, and I [b]assure[/b] you that a few tables is not going to bog it down. Our database at work is over 100 tables, and they probably average [i]x[/i] thousands of rows. And that's a small database, relative to some. Don't worry one bit. [quote author=roopurt18 link=topic=109742.msg443328#msg443328 date=1159481173] Make sure that whatever you do, the final test is javascript and has all of the answers embedded within the HTML. Those are my favorite online tests. [/quote] Woohoo!

[quote author=redbullmarky link=topic=109724.msg443132#msg443132 date=1159456515] agreed with obsidian, although the support in IE for PNGs is a bit rubbish. JPG would be the safest bet [/quote] Well, the only real problem is if the PNG has transparencies. In which case, it'll replace the transparent area with some specific color that I can't recall. (I think it's white, but I'm not sure.) They say that IE 7 is going to fully support PNG, transparencies and all, but I have yet to try it out.

[quote author=effigy link=topic=106377.msg425555#msg425555 date=1157052183] We're all "in effigy" on the web and we [i]should[/i] represent ourselves. I don't like it when people abuse the anonymity of the web and decide to be someone, or something else--often satisfying the first definition of effigy. [/quote] I prefer to maintain a certain amount of anonymity on the internet, but I try hard to not pretend to be someone I'm not. This brings to mind a quote I saw in IRC: [quote]Welcome to the internet. Where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are FBI agents.[/quote] ;D

I wouldn't say option 2 is the absolute best, although it is certainly the best of the options you've picked, and very close to what I would suggest. I think a database layout as follows would be optimal: [u]question[/u] (database table) question_id int4 not null question_wording text (varchar(255) may not be enough, here) [u]answer[/u] (database table, again) answer_id int4 answer_question_id int4 answer_value varchar(255) answer_is_correct boolean And then, when you create the question, you also pull the associated rows from answer to build your question -> answers relationships. cmmcully: You can save yourself a heartache and not worry about your database server. :) Something so small as this will surely be an easy task for any database engine. Databases are designed to handle data and to handle a lot of it, so you're well in the clear on this one.

oh, goodie... muchas gracias.

ouch. Someone was looking for a new job by the end of the day. Maybe multiple someones. And someone in another company got a massive raise.

I hope there's an option for us to disable this spell-checker when we post... I hate spell checkers.

Locked. newb, if you want to actually ask a question that we can work with, feel free to start a new thread. To give you time to read this, I'll leave it up for a while. And if the next question is anything like this one, it won't last long.

I wouldn't wonder if my name is the most oft misspelled on these forums - it, too, is derived from my actual name. The first two letters of my first name (Neal) and my entire last name (Ylitalo). I'm of completely Finnish heritage (as far as we know), and very proud of it. :)

sounds a lot like the thing in Mac OS X... maybe look for a Mac OS X theme?

oh boy. That's the surest way I've ever seen to not get an answer to your question.

This from the latest ThinkGeek newsletter: [quote]... yesterday, September 19th, was International 'Talk Like A Pirate Day'. It's one of our favorite holidays of the year. Right after 'Quad-damage PayDay'.[/quote] I wish my company celebrated quad-damage payday... :(

[quote author=ober link=topic=109478.msg441941#msg441941 date=1159300347] Wow.. I guess customer service isn't their forte... although, with as big as they are and as much money as they make, I'm sure they can afford to piss off a few customers. [/quote] Yup... unfortunately, there's not really anything we can do, seeing as they control so much stuff. If Google and Wal*Mart ever merge or anything, the world is toast.

oh, come on Barand... it was a joke and you know it. :'( On a similar-but-unrelated topic, I just heard there's candy down the hall.

Mostly with their AdSense program. (do they do any other kind of business?) Look here: https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US Notice the "Prohibited Clicks and Impressions" section: [quote]Any method that artificially generates clicks or impressions is strictly prohibited. These prohibited methods include but are not limited to: repeated manual clicks or impressions[/quote] Notice the "Incentives" section: [quote]For example, your site cannot contain phrases such as "click here," "support us," "visit these links," or other similar language that could apply to any ad, regardless of content.[/quote] Notice the "Site Content" section. This in the list of things the site may not include: [quote]Excessive, repetitive, or irrelevant keywords in the content or code of web pages[/quote] In the "Site Functionality" section: [quote]Your site must not contain broken links and must be launched, functioning, and easily navigable.[/quote] In the "Site Responsiveness" section: [quote]Sites must respond adequately to support requests and enquiries of their users.[/quote] I think, though, that the majority of those terms are somewhat reasonable, with the exception of "No repeated manual clicks." That one, right there, gives them an escape route the size of US-2. However, when they wait until you rack up a $100 balance (the minimum for payment, I believe) and THEN inform you that your site was in violation of their TOS, void payment, and disqualify you from future AdSense programs, I start to get a little upset. They don't just void those illegal clicks, or give you a chance to fix the problem. They leave no room for argument or grievance claims, it's wham-bam, you're toast. And they got $100 worth of advertising, completely free. See http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-2683676.html for more stories of the same.

[quote author=ober link=topic=109478.msg441849#msg441849 date=1159291160] Umm... I have outlook setup on my laptop, my home PC and my work PC... I get all the mail at all 3 of them and I can check my webmail from other computers.  There's an option you can check to leave the messages on the server when your client checks in. [/quote] And there's always IMAP or MS Exchange. After using those exclusively for a while now, I've gradually gotten more and more tired of Gmail that I abandoned it altogether. That and I don't like some of Google's business practices.

Locked - it was getting out of hand. I also removed the offending posts. Please keep your cool.

care to share your definitions of "Web Programming" and "Real Programming"?

[quote author=ober link=topic=109478.msg441437#msg441437 date=1159236457] Outlook.  (I know... groan, right?)  All you MS haters, jump into the thread now!  I've been using it for years and every company I've ever worked for used it and it's honestly a great tool. [/quote] Yes, it is. It's very powerful, has excellent Exchange support (really?), and is by far one of Microsoft's best products. However, it's just too unstable running it under wine/crossover/cedega for me to pay the price for it. I can't depend on Windows for actual work... I've had too many problems with it. Poor luck, maybe.