sKunKbad

No, I'm not allowed to use UNION, because it's not part of the Active Record DB class (part of the CodeIgniter framework) that we are using.

I'd like to be able to check a product_categories table and a products table for sub-categories and products of a category, and while my query is working, I'm not allowed to use UNION because supposedly we may have problems if we go with something other than MySQL. (not that we would, but that's the theory) SELECT category_id FROM `product_categories` WHERE parent_id =2 UNION SELECT product_id FROM `products` WHERE category_id =2 My options are: left, right, outer, inner, left outer, and right outer. I'm not a MySQL superstar, so if anyone can suggest a simple query that doesn't use UNION I would appreciate it.

Yours3lf, Did you get it working?

When using file_get_contents, and creating a stream context, the way that the stream context is created is different for servers that have been compiled with/without curl wrappers. Can php check so that I can do if/else?

Yes, but it only takes one person to abuse the voting, and to turn the vote upside-down! I like the idea of having a cookie, but cookies can always be deleted. You should probably try to do both an IP check and the cookie, that way you have about as much protection as possible (which still isn't perfect).

I don't know about the photobucket/flickr/picassa accounts, but I've used one called Plogger which I like. You can easily style the gallery to fit into your site design, and it has a lot to offer. (maybe too much for you) http://www.plogger.org/

Verification of IP for voting is really a bad idea. Some ISPs, like AOL, change the IP on EVERY request!

Sounds like you could do a ajax type interaction with the script so that you don't have to wait.

You shouldn't need to know any code to make a Wordpress menu appear in a certain order. In the admin area for each page is a place where you can set the order of the pages. 0 for left, 1 for the next, 2 for the one after that, and so on...

I don't know why you would use Wordpress, but I don't see a blog with choices of pages. What am I missing?

Photos, javascript, css, or any outside resource that has not been served up through https will cause that error.

What do you get when you var_dump( $arb) ?

The slideshow is probably javascript, right? So you will have to bring in your image locations dynamically to the javascript. The rest is really all javascript. If you want to see a good demo for an image gallery and slideshow, check out Plogger.

The site looks nice and clean, but the banner area on top is too plain. A background image would be nice.

Every time somebody searches, you add that to a database table, perhaps with other info like the IP address. If you want to know what the most popular database searches are, you query the database to return the column, use some function like trim() on each row, also converting all chars to lowercase, and then you'll use a simple function to count all occurrences of each search term or phrase. Put each term or phrase in an array with it's count, and then sort the array by count. Pick off the top 5, 10, or whatever. This might be a lot of work.... so you might cache this and only run it once every half hour or something. Also, since you have a top 5 or 10, you might consider deleting rows that don't seem to have a chance to compete, if you know what I mean. You could probably tweak this to perfection, or with minimal work at least get something usable.

You could always use a CSS hack that targets IE6... * html #some-element { padding-top: 1000em; }

Another thing to consider is that you, or another computer on your network might have one of the password stealing viruses that are very common. Even if your computer is 100% clean, an infected computer on your network could be sniffing network traffic and sending your FTP login to a bot network. 1) Never store your passwords in your FTP program. 2) Always use an encrypted connection when using FTP. 3) Make sure all computers on your network are clean (this should probably be #1). This might explain why files were changed, yet good passwords existed, and directories were named with security in mind.

I've never heard of making a secure connection to MySQL. Are you trying to connect to an external database?

This may be difficult unless the user/member is logged in. If they are logged in, you could have the script populate the form for them. If they are not logged in, you could check the database for a record that matches, but your results may vary based on the sql used. Going back to if they are logged in, it should be easy enough to check that, and then use an if statement to send an email, or send the other email if not logged in.

Notice the age of the article. Every site I build has output as XHTML, and I've never had a problem. Here is my favorite type of DOCTYPE: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

Take a look at http://us3.php.net/cookies. You should easily be able to do what you want with the documentation and samples provided.

My first impression is that your particular Wordpress theme makes your site cluttered. There's too much to look at, and the spacing around the elements that make up the page is too tight. You might take a look at the way other popular blogs are styling their content. Good examples would be http://net.tutsplus.com/ or http://www.smashingmagazine.com/. They have a much cleaner and more inviting look.

I think your images and lack of images don't really reflect a cleaning service. You ought to have some images of a person mopping the floor, cleaning windows, wiping counter tops, making a bed, dusting some furniture, and stuff like that. Have some maid in a uniform with a big smile like she'd clean your toilet with her toothbrush if she had to make you happy. Hire somebody that looks nice to do this if your maids aren't model quality. The contact form isn't big enough, and the orange background of the form is not very nice looking to me. Just a white background and the standard form button would be fine. Make the phone number big, and possibly part of the logo of each page. Also, don't be afraid to put a basic list of prices, or maybe a special offer that grabs attention. "$50 for your first cleaning!", "50% off your first month" or something that will make a person grab the phone and call you. A lot of people don't read anything on a website. They look at the home page and decide if they are going to call you within about 3 seconds. It's like catching a fish. If you use the right lure, you'll get a reaction bite. Put a list of your services on the home page. You need content to get indexed by Google the way you want. Think about what a person would search for if they were searching for a maid on Google. They'd probably search for "maid service bristol" or something like that. The word "Maid", and the city name "Bristol" don't appear anywhere on the home page. You won't get ranked in a search like that unless you include those words. So, with that in mind, you should probably have a list of cities on the home page, and call it your "service area". The actual content of your template is placed very low in the code. Use absolute positioning to change the order of the code, but keep the page looking the way it is now. Include javascript from external files instead of having it in the head section of the page. The closer your content gets to the top of the code the better. I could probably go into more detail, but I think if you implement some of these things, you will do much better.

How about take out the "order by rand()" that's in your first query.

Do you have a sample of the actual XML?