To randomise an array in PHP use the shuffle() function like this.
It is widely known that the data that Alexa offers on visitor numbers is far from accurate, but it is possible to obtain an XML feed from Alexa that allows you to find out all of the data that Alexa offers, which is more than just their visitor numbers. Passing the correct parameters to this feed you can find out related links, contact and domain information, the Alexa rank, associated keywords and Dmoz listings.
As an example here is a feed URL for getting information about the bbc.co.uk page.
The str_word_count() function in PHP does exactly what is says it does. The default of this function is to simply count the number of words present. Take the following string.
$str = "This is a 'string' containing m0re than one word. This is a 'string' containing m0re than one word.";
If we pass this to the str_word_count() function with no other parameters we get the number of words.
Using a simple .htpasswd to password protect a directory or website is fine if you only have a few users, and they don't change very much. However, this quickly becomes impossible to maintain if you have lots of users. For example, if you wanted to secure access to the company Intranet you might spend quite some time trying to update your .htpasswd file. The best way to do this is to transfer all of the user administration over to an LDAP server and then get Apache to communicate with this directly.
If you have programmed in PHP for any amount of time then you will be farmiliar with the if statement. The syntax is as follows:
Sometimes in PHP you will have to do some things that might take a little time. You will therefore have a little trouble with users closing the browser or moving to another page before the script has finished. In this case you will want to either continue to execute the script just shut it down depending on what the user has done.
Letting the user now that something in the background is working is an essential part of website usability. If nothing at all happens then the user will more than likely either try again or go elsewhere. A good way of doing this is to have a little bit of text that says "Working" and animate dots behind it. Here is a function that will do this.
PHP keeps certain variables to do with server and networking in an associative array called SERVER. To find out the remote address of a user you can use the array identifier REMOTE_ADDR. This is used in the following manner.
After installing PHP on Apache you can use the php.ini file to set various different options to do with PHP. When Apache starts it uses what is contained in this file to set up and run PHP.
On both Windows, Unix and Linux systems Apache will look in a number of default locations for the php.ini file before giving up. You can explicitly tell Apache 2.x where to look for the file by using the PHPIniDir directive in the http.conf file.
All of the maths functions in JavaScript are kept in a handy object called Math, which contains a number of different functions.
To get the absolute value of a number use the abs() function.
Math.abs(3.14159265) // returns 3.14159265
Rounding a number is done by either the round() function to round to the nearest integer, the ceil() function to round up to the nearest integer and the floor() function to round down to the nearest integer.