Entries from 2014
Duplicate Log Entries Caused by the AddThis Widget
A search engine I develop was showing some odd behavior a few weeks ago. While making a few back-end enhancements, I noticed that many of the log entries were being duplicated. And they weren't the typical duplicates caused by a programming error. These entries were being entered after a 20 to 30 minute delay. Plus, the duplicates originated from a completely different IP address. Well, it turns out that the AddThis code I installed on the website was the culprit. [Continue reading]
Remove Unnecessary Code by Rethinking Your Default Setting
Over the past few years, I've spent a lot of time revamping my old code. I've been doing what I can to simplify, simply, simplify. While going through the code, I started noticing a pattern when it came to setting defaults. Let's take a look at a quick example and see how I was able to remove the unnecessary code. [Continue reading]
Uncover Your Browser’s Secret Back Button Functionality
While developing PHP applications, I occasionally find myself pressing the browser's back button over and over during the testing phase. Using keyboard shortcuts can speed up the process, but it turns out that there's another, possibly faster, way. [Continue reading]
Check for Broken Links with PHP Part 3: Targeted Search
Over the past few weeks we discussed a broken-link checker which leverages PHP's cURL library and DOMDocument. As the code stands, the script checks every link within a given page. That's great if we want to check every link, but what if we want to target a specific section of a page? Let's take a look at how this can be accomplished. [Continue reading]
Check for Broken Links with PHP Part 2: Capture Redirected Links
The link checker discussed previously was designed to report obviously broken links. There is, however, another type of broken link that isn't reported. When a web page is renamed or moved, a redirect may be created so visitors of the old page are automatically sent to the new location. To detect these types of broken links, we'll need to make a few minor modifications. [Continue reading]
Check for Broken Links with PHP Part 1
One aspect of managing a website that I want to streamline is the process of checking for broken links. Clicking on all of those links manually can be tedious. Especially if you have a page dedicated to posting external links. Now I know there are link-checking services available, but I've been looking for an excuse to experiment with cURL which is available through PHP. For those interested, I wanted to share what I have so far. [Continue reading]
