jpeters8889

Hi all, I'm planning on getting a new VPS set up with my current host, my current set up is a Windows server based VPS, this is because when the VPS was created a couple of years ago my Fiancee's website was written in asp.net and was very slow, around 18 months ago I rewrote it in PHP and the at the moment only the admin side is in asp.net, and I'm currently completely rewriting the website from scratch, including the admin side. The plan for the future is to launch the new version of my fiancee's website on a Linux based VPS, but I'm looking for opinions on the best set up to use. The website averages at 40k-50k unique visitors per month, but sometimes every now and then we can get a very big day where we can get 7-10k in one day if something very popular has been added. Anyway, has anyone got any opinions on... Linux Distro: I'm leaning towards Ubuntu, because its more well known, has more support and more tutorials if I get stuck, but I've heard good things about CentOS too. VPS Specs: My host offer two VPS plans at the same price I am currently playing, which is the price we want to stick with, - A quad core plan (4 CPU Cores, 4 IP Addresses, 4gb Ram, 100gb HDD) (This is what I've currently got on Windows) - A high memory plan (2 CPU Cores, 2 IP Addresses, 4gb Ram, 250gb HDD) What would be best for the website, the higher quad core CPU set up, or the more HDD space, I'm leaning to the quadcore, as 100gb is more than enough for the setup we currently have, and thats with a windows OS taking up a lot of room! Apache/nginx - Again, Apache is the more well known, but I've also heard good things about nginx, so again, just looking for opinions on what would be best.

Thanks BlueDreamer, I've got a couple of customers I could use for references, one is the from the biggest project I've done, and still to this day asking for additional work on top, the other is family friend and was the first web site I did through self employment, and he knows me in both professional and unprofessional contexts. I will obviously ask them both first before passing on their details.

Hi all, I have been self employed now for almost three years, and while I love it, and I have learnt a lot from it, it just isn't earning enough to fully support myself, me and my fiancee are planning on moving into our own place rather than living with her parents, so we need the extra money, we're both self employed, but in different businesses, and of the two, mine earns less than hers. I have been looking at a few job websites and a few adverts around the local area this past week or two and I meet most, if not all the criteria for the job, so I am hopeful I will easily be able to get an interview if nothing else, the last time I was looking for work 4-5 years ago I was stuck in a rut, I was years out of date, didn't know about responsive web design, didn't know any javascript, jquery or any modern coding practices etc, running my own business and building more websites again has helped me learn a lot of new things, I have been into web design since I was 12 back in 2001, and started learning HTML and CSS a couple of years later and started learning PHP when I was 16, so I have been in this game a long time now, but because of personal problems, depression etc a few years ago I fell out with it, and in this fast moving industry I got left behind. Anyway, enough of my life story, as I said in the topic title I am planning on switching to full time employment, I will need to update my CV as it hasn't been touched for a few years, I have also bought a personal domain of my name, and I was thinking of using that as an expansion of my CV where a potential employer can get more information and look at examples of previous work, and even have myname@domain.co.uk email address, rather than my Gmail address. However, the website is where I am having difficulty, I am perfectly capable of making the website, but I can't come up with a layout for it, or even a colour scheme or anything, I was wondering anyone had any experience in making something similar for themselves, what to include etc, or any examples I could look at. My second question/potential problem is about references, when I was last applying for work my references were my old College tutor, but I left College in 2009 and my tutor has retired, so the referee would no longer be relevant, and my other referee was my manager in my previous job, but that company shut down in 2011 and I have no idea where they are now, so again, I can't use them, which only leaves me with the clients I have done work for while being self employed, but I don't know if I'd be able to use them as they don't know the industry, so couldn't answer any industry related questions, and I also don't know if it'd be 'proper' to ask them for references, since they are in essence my customers. Also, with regards to my customers, if I do get a full time job I plan on still keeping my business on the side, but not actively seeking clients, I will be just keeping it going to maintain the websites I have done, hosting, domains etc, and proving support. Finally, with regards to the type of work I will be looking for, I am undecided, I love both front-end and back-end equally, give me a layout and I'll happily sit there and code the HTML, S/CSS, Javascript etc and get lost in the zone, but on the flip side, give me challenge/project to do in PHP and again I can sit there for hours working on it and completely loose track of time. Sorry for the long post, and if you made it this far, thanks for reading!

Its to do with the EU cookie law https://www.cookielaw.org/the-cookie-law/

The checkout.js file was direct from PayPal, not self hosted, and was just before the closing body tag just after the jQuery include, it worked in every browser and device I tested it on Sandbox mode, and when I switched it to production and did a test payment from my personal paypal to business paypal it all worked fine, it was only after we went live that users on Apple reported been unable to checkout using PayPal, and not having an Apple device I couldn't test it myself. After a couple of days testing and debugging using Safari on Windows I had the random idea to move the JS files to the <head>, and it worked fine in Safari, and I drove to my local McDonalds to test it on an iPad there (They've got dumbed down kidified iPads on some tables now, but the browser is still there) and it worked fine. Moving the <script> tags was the only change, nothing in the core PHP files that generate the payment information. It's fine now, and we've had lots of succesful orders with it. Robert, I've only been doing Javascript for around a year/18 months now, so I'm still quite new to it (I've been doing PHP for just over 10 years, and basic HTML/CSS for almost 15 years) so I'm constantly learning, I've had thoughts about putting all the Javascript in one file before, and its something I've been wanting to experiment with locally (I learn best by doing) but I've not had chance yet due to working on customers websites, and I'd rather do something I know that works on a customers website rather than mess about and experiment.

That basically sums up the article I read a couple of years ago and the reason I started placing the scripts before the </body>, I've never had a problem with it till yesterday like I said. I think I'll continue to place them at the bottom unless I have to, like with PayPal. Funny thing is PayPal worked fine on every other device and browser, it wasn't until we went live and people using Apple said they had problems that we found out it didn't work, and not having an Apple device myself I had trouble debugging it, in the end I downloaded Safari for windows and saw undefined errors in the console log, I had the random idea to place the code in the head and it worked fine

What is the common practice these days, <script> tags before the closing </body>, or placing them in the <head>? A couple of years ago I read an article saying that its a better idea to put them before the </body> as any DOM manipulation wouldn't start until the HTML and DOM has finished loading, however, I've been reading the last couple of days that in modern browsers this isn't a problem anymore and javascript wouldn't get executed until the DOM is loaded anyway. Since I read the article I've always put all my <script> tags just before the </body> without any problems, however I had a recent problem using PayPal's checkout.js only on Apple devices, which I fixed by placing the <script> tag including PayPal's file in the <head>, which is what got me thinking.

I've spent the past few days working on an eCommerce website for my fiancee using PayPal express checkout, we have tested it extensivly on PayPals Sandbox and it went live earlier today and we've had succesful payments through paypal, however we've had reports from people on iOS devices that they've had trouble purchasing through PayPal, the 'buy with paypal' link basically does nothing. I don't have any apple devices, so I couldn't reproduce it, but we've visited my aunt in law and tried it on her iPhone, and upon clicking the pay with paypal button nothing happens, on my android phone, and on my computer paypal opens asking you to log in as it should, and payment is processed fine, on apple devices all that happens is a blank screen opens, I'm at a complete loss as to whats causing it, the Javascript that initiates the payment is straight from PayPals website, and as I said, i know it works as other people have payed with PayPal Has anyone had anything happen like this? I've searched around and found nothing similar, and I just thought I'd ask on here before asking Paypal or on Stack Overflow. Some notes, as I said the javascript is straight from paypals tutorials for the express checkout and their checkout.js file, and apart from a couple of modifications that happens afterwards behind the scenes. I don't actually use PayPals PHP SDK, but make straight custom built CURL requests to their API, and as said, it fully works, apart from on Apple devices.

My mistake, I wrote it in a rush and forgot the closing " at the end, glad you sorted it though

The browser can't convert the URL to a link automatically, you'll have to echo the var in the HREF attribute, and between the <a> tags for it to display the URL and link to it. <?php echo "<a href=\"".$rs['sitepage']."\">".$rs['sitepage']."</a>; ?>

PHP is Server Side, the onclick event is typically used with Javascript, which is client side, PHP is processed on the server and compiled/converted to HTML which you see in the browser window, your PHP functions and variables are never seen client side. If you want the form to get processed in PHP without using Javascript you'll have to use a form and send the post data to your PHP script for processing. <form method="post" action="myPHPScript.php"> ... <input type="submit" value="Click Here"/> </form>

You could use .slideToggle() http://api.jquery.com/slidetoggle/

I think all that we'll track for the votes in a database table is the restaurant ID, maybe user IP, and a timestamp. There will be an admin backend to the system, where we can delete votes if necessary. All that will be displayed on the public facing page is the total number of people who recommended that place, and a button to vote if they haven't already, As I said in my opening post, both are obviously open to abuse, with a user system its far easier to manage, but we haven't got one lol, I am leaning towards IPs, I think it will be easier to manage than cookies, and as mentioned both are open to abuse by users who know what they're doing, hence the admin back end to monitor and delete if necessary. But I'm open to alternative methods... At the moment all places are listed under town/city, then alphabetically from there, so the thumbs ups will have no impact on how they are ordered on the screen.

My Fiancee runs a fairly popular website for people with Coeliac (Gluten Intolerance), it gets on average 25,000 - 30,000 unique visitors per month, one of the more popular sections is the 'Where to Eat' guide, which currently lists almost 2000 independent places accross the UK that serve Gluten Free food. She has asked me to build a thumbs up system for the Where to Eat guide, where if a visitor likes the place they can press a litte button and it will say 'X people recommend this place'. I've been thinking through the logic in my head and its easy enough to build, however, none of visitors are registered users, the website doesn't have a user system, which then leaves the thumbs up button open to abuse, which leads me to my question; What would be the best way to prevent abuse of a thumbs up button, I know its almost imposible to prevent it, and someone determined enough will find a way round it, but the two methods I've thought about are logging IPs with the vote in the database, and if the person on that IP has already voted on the place with this ID, don't show the button, or using a Cookie to say this person has voted for this place, but if a person votes for 10 places, that could be 10 cookies. I'm currently leaning towards the IP tracking method, but I wondered what other peoples thoughts are on the subject?

I've got my own question about Microdata, but didn't want to start a new thread! I've just finished adding microdata to the reviews and recipies section on my fiancee's website, I've tested them all in Google's Structured Language checkign tool and all pass, I was just wondering if anyone know how long it would take before they appear in the Structured Data section on Google Webmaster Tools, and more importantly, in the results themselves? Thanks

I don't build for a specific width in mind, but rather create everything at the smallest size possible, usually 280px, and then widen the browser window until things start to look strange, font to small, to many characters etc, and then add a media query break point, and repeat, it sometimes means I can have a lot of media queries, or ones at strange widths, but it works for me

I wouldn't think of myself as a nerd, but more of a geek, yes. I love Web Development, I turned 27 earlier this month and have been making websites since I was 12, I spent a few years where I didn't when I went through depression and lost touch with all my hobbies, but in the 3 years since then I've increased my skillset tenfold, started learning Javascript and jQuery, not to a high standard yet, but enough to manipuate the DOM, silently submit forms and get information etc, learnt how to make responsive websites, learnt SCSS, improved my PHP coding, started learning OOP, plus lots more, and even went selff employed and it is now my primary source of income, I have also learnt asp.net so I could help my fiancee with her websites. The way I learnt all those is by trying, I can't learn from books, or videos, I might look at the occasional tutorial, but I prefer learning by doing, if I get stuck, I google it, look on Stack Overflow etc, if I can't find a solution to my problem, I stop, go back a step, and think of it from a different point of view and find a different way to do what I was attempting, and I always find a solution eventually. It might not be the best solution, and a few months later I might go back and think the code is a mess, but thats the beauty of this profession, you're always learning, its always changing, and thats why I love it so much! Web Dev takes up a lot of my time, and it is my main hobby, plus my employment too, but outside of it I play guitar, I attend a lot of Rock Concerts, I've followed my favourite Pop Punk band round the UK a few times, I love to travel, I'm currently on holiday in mid wales, I love photography, I've got all my favourite photos on Flickr, I play a lot of board games with my fiancee, I read a lot of books, and I play the occasional game on the xbox (Though I'm not a fan of online gaming, never have been, more just single player games) I don't have much of a social life, I have a handful of friends, but I don't get to see them regularly anymore, I've never been one for going out drinking, I tried it when I was in college, and honestly, I hated it, I found it so boring just sitting in a pub drinking, these days I don't drink alcohol at all, prefer water lol.

I've never made my websites fit to specific widths/devices, instead I design it mobile first, then when I'm happy I slowly start making the browser window wider until things start to look less neat, the text is too long etc, then I add a breakpoint in, that way any resolution should be covered.

Just a quick comment on the quoted text above, you can use the Developer Tools in modern web browsers to visualise small changes on the fly, it doesn't save the changes, but it gives you a visual representation of it. To get to it, right click, and then press insepct element, or press F12 on the keyboard, then find your element in the DOM and play with the styles, for example padding, change the value, if it doesn't look right, change it again, when your happy, make note of the value, or the changes you've made, and copy them into your editor and save the file.

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/> <title>...</title> <!-- Metas --> <meta name="description" content="..."> <meta name="keywords" content="..."> <meta name="author" content="..."> <link rel="author" href="..."/> <!-- Google Plus Profile URL --> <link rel="publisher" href="..."/> <!-- Google Plus Profile URL --> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" /> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="..."/> <!-- Geo --> <meta name="geo.region" content="..." /> <meta name="geo.placename" content="..." /> <meta name="geo.position" content="..." /> <meta name="ICBM" content="..." /> <!-- Responsive --> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, user-scalable=no"/> <!-- Facebook OG --> <meta property="og:description" content="..." /> <meta property="og:title" content="..." /> <meta property="og:image" content="..." /> <meta property="og:image:type" content="image/jpeg" /> <meta property="og:url" content=".../"/>

Yes you're correct, I've not lost anything from her, but it is annoying, but I still find it unusual that after paying for everything she has paid for she hasn't got back to me. I sent her another email yesterday, just saying its been a month with no contact, but I'm going to leave it at that and just keep the design and notes stored away for if/when she gets back to me.

Hi all, I'm having an usual problem with a customer, this customer first contacted me in february about a logo, which was completed within a couple of weeks and paid for, shortly after that the customer got back in touch about wanting a website, so we sat down and discussed her requirements, she wanted a holding page up while the website was been constructed, and paid for 12 months hosting in advance, after I'd done the holding page I went away and did some rough sketches for the main website, she approved the rough design and then I gave her a full quote which she approved, and I started desiging the concept art of the website from the sketches. I sent her the concept art, which she loved, and she paid the 10% deposit for the final cost, I then sent her a contract which she needed to sign, and I haven't heard anything from her since, the contract was sent on 23rd march, I've sent her several emails, tried phoning her, even sent her letters through the post, short of going to her address and knocking on her door I don't know what to do next... The customer has paid me for a logo, paid for 12 months hosting in advance, and paid 10% deposit for her website, so I don't think she's the type to mess me about, anything could have happened for her, she could be in hospital, or have family problems, but I don't know how to proceed in this situation... Has anyone else had any experiences similar to this?

My fiancee runs a Coeliac (gluten intolerance) website (Which I help out on where I can) with a blog, recipes, product directory and reviews, and a large directory of places in the UK where you can eat out and get a gluten free meal, which is becoming quite popular, it will be 2 years old in August, and she had over 22,000 hits in March, and averages around 10-15k a month depending on any new updates she posts. We are in the future hoping to get some gluten free manufacturers to advertise on the website, even if its a banner, a blog about them, or getting their product, or business bumped to the top in the directory, but at the moment she is on disability benefits and can't do anything that would earn her money without it affecting the benefits. As others have mentioned above you need to be getting a regular, decent amount of hits every month, we once did a bit of research online and read that most businesses won't even consider it unless you're getting at least 10k month, and its always helpful to be in regular contact with the big hitters in your industry, so you're not just contacting them out of the blue, a lot of the larger gluten free manufacturers (Not including supermarket own brands) are in regular commincations with us already, we have done Q and A sessions with some for blogs, and others have donated products for competitions (last summer one company donated almost £50 worth of products for a competition for the websites first birthday) and a lot even send us samples of new products to be reviewed on the website, and we've even had members of their marketing department come up to us at Free From Food Fairs we've visted as guests. We're confident that when the time comes we'll be able to get advertisers, but only because of the monthly hits, and already been in regular contact with the big hitters in the industry.

I haven't built a website by slicing it in years! I still do first design it in Photoshop, but I've got any assets I need (photos, backgrounds etc) saved seperatley so I can include them in CSS, I just use the Photoshop design as a guide and to show a client what the site will look like when its finished.

I've actually did a bit of research on using QR codes on business cards last night (I should have maybe have done that before posting the thread!) and in the end I decided against it, one of the arguments I read was that how many people do you know that actually do scan QR codes, I might have scanned 1 or 2 years ago, but other than that, I don't, and no one I know does either, so if it doesn't get used, its a waste of valuable space. And like you said, the two most popular phone Operating Systems don't have a native app for scanning them, so there's little point in having them on there.