php, coldfusion and general web development waffle

[faceless]

if you did a resize on any images as they are uploaded that would solve that from the start, but that does require a server script.

It's something I should have done here ages ago

[luke]

i do that, when images are uploaded i resize them to what are needed, create a thumbnail, and usually delete the original ( people tend to upload stupid multi megabyte digital camera pics! )

for the flickr thing, there must be like minimum/maximum height they resize thumbnails to. then when they display them, depending on the width of allowable space to display each row, they work out the best width and height of the images per row to best display them. like i said each row has a different height, because of the different widths of the images contained in each row. so there must be like a formula to work it all out.

i disabled javascript on flickr to see what happend, and it displays everything fine to start - so that initial sizing is done server side. but without javascript, you loose the resizing/responsiveness.

edit - i noticed the screenshot i posted didn't show that the number of images per row can vary, depending on the dimensions of the images, there can be 2 images per row, there can be 5 - usually its 4

[luke]

what do you guys do in terms of search engine optimisation?

i don't really do anything special! i mean, i code things right, but other than that i don't do anything.

i was watching the apprentice last night, and some company on there was paying £3000 a month for seo!

i see a lot of web companies offering seo services, some are like £150, some are crazy ongoing prices - but i don't really understand what they're doing. one site i did the guy got some supposed seo experts in, and alls they did is make some landing pages with the same text that was on main site. i can't see how that helps.

another site i did they was paying quite a bit of money for these seo services, and they rewrote some text, added in google analytics, but that was it!

[faceless]

getting a google sitemap is important - that way you can set when it checks specific pages for updates

[Brown Sauce]

Everything you wanted to know about SEO but were afraid to ask ..

https://mega.co.nz/#!WQN2CZTb!HbRSCG_RLbVcUOYneNEMdZ0kJ_jaFWv4tFgDUxEGHUs

[luke]

damn, thats a lot of pages! thanks sauce

cheers for the google sitemap tip faceless

[faceless]

There's really nothing other than quality content that ensures coverage. And if you target your audience directly they will respond, as long as you're offering something useful. You do that through the relevant means according to that audience.

If that audience is huge, then getting coverage from already existing critics/proponents is a shortcut, but if it's not then it shouldn't take more than a few weeks of posting (well) on a subject, in the right niches, to create enough movement to get the snowball rolling.

I rarely promote anything on this site to that level because I can't be arsed with thousands of people giving me gyp.

[Brown Sauce]

With so many agencies all promising the same thing, i.e. to get your site top of the list, for a relatively small fee, it seems to me like the cheap ones are definitely a scam.

To put the effort in and make a site deliver quality regularly takes skill and time. Maybe 3000 beer tokens a month is about the right price, you couldn't get it properly done for 150.

[luke]

anyone have any experience with apache spam assassin?

i'm trying to get it to modify the subject ( as well as the headers which it currently does ) of emails it has identified as spam to include something like ***possible spam***

i've read its possible, but i can't get it working, and the server people are doing my head in and i'm not getting anywhere

[luke]

i think i've found a way of protecting against spam automatically filled in on forms ...

what i do is save the time the form is loaded, and then check when its been submitted to see how long it took to fill in - i've set it as anything less than 5 seconds and its spam. at the moment i'm still saving any potential spam to the database ( but not emailing as i do legitimate submissions ) but marked as spam - just in case

in addition i have a normal text field - but i've hidden it in css. if the text field is filled in, you know its spam! some spam bots fill it, some don't.

i've been running it for a while now, and it hasn't incorrectly marked any legitimate email as spam, and everything thats been marked as spam was spam

[faceless]

that's a good idea for sure - I'm surprised it's not a standard thing now that I think. But if it was then the spammers would adjust their methods too

[luke]

yeah i'm pretty pleased its working, but i'll keep an eye on it, and i'm going to keep logging possible spam to the database just in case, because i'm sure one day the spammers will adjust their methods! but for now, i'm rolling it out to all my sites.

another good anti spam measure i found is for where you put email addresses on pages, if you convert the address to unicode the email harvesters don't see it as an email, but it displays - and you can click on it and email - like normal!

so couch@couch.com would be couch@couch.com ( if you view source you'll see the unicode - otherwise you'll just see the email, but notice the forum didn't recognise it as an email so didn't link it! )