westworld: a webmasters best friend » a note to self

Cleaning up after an emailing

westworld — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:48:23 +0000

As a web master, I often send out mass mailings. After the mailing is done, the bounced emails are returned to my Outlook. I go through them manually. The real bouncers are put in a “Bounced” folder and, Out of office messages in the “Trash”. The rest of the emails are addresses I need to update in my database or people that wish to unsubscribe. Since sorting through 2000 bouncers can take up a lot of time, I did some research on how to automate this.

PHP offers a set of functions to connect to a mail server (IMAP/POP3). The plan was to let my web server connect to the mail server and sort out the bouncers for me. Below is a little script to give you some ideas of what I came up with.

<?php
// fill in your SERVER, LOG and PAS!
$mbox = imap_open("{SERVER:143}", "LOG", "PAS");

echo "<h1>Mailboxes</h1>\n";
$folders = imap_listmailbox($mbox, "{SERVER:143}", "*");
if($folders == false) {echo "Call failed<br />\n";}
else{
	foreach ($folders as $val) { echo $val . "<br />\n";  }
}

$list = array(); // array will store all bounced email adresses
$result = imap_search($mbox,'SUBJECT "failure notice"'); // find all with subject 'failure notice'
if(!empty($result)){
foreach($result as $msgno) {
    $body = imap_fetchbody($mbox, $msgno,1); // fetch the body of the message
	$find= "To: "; // look for the 'To' part
	$foundatloc= strpos($body,$find); //remember the location
	if ($foundatloc > 1){ // test if a mail adres was found
		$findend = "\n"; 
		$foundendloc = strpos($body,$findend,$foundatloc); // find  the location of EOL
		$foundendloc = $foundendloc -($foundatloc + 5);
		$adres = substr($body,$foundatloc+5,$foundendloc); 
		$adres = str_replace("<","",$adres); // strip <, > and spaces
		$adres = str_replace(">","",$adres);
		$adres = trim($adres);
		array_push($list,$adres); // put the adres is $list
		imap_mail_move($mbox,$msgno,"INBOX.Trash"); // flag as  "move to trash"
		imap_expunge($mbox); // execute move to trash folder
	}
}
unset ($result);
}
// put function to process bouncers/$list here		 
imap_close($mbox); // close connection
?>

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__autoload function

westworld — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:05:07 +0000

Some info,snippets on PHP5 autoload function:

function __autoload($className) { include_once __autoloadFilename($className); } function __autoloadFilename($className) { return str_replace('_','/',$className).".php"; } $class = new myclass();

When a Class is not found, php will pass the classname to the __autoload function.
You can name your class like Folder1_Folder1a_Myclass and this function will look for it in Folder1/Folder1a/Myclass.php

You can put multiple classes in one folder and still make this work by creating a link to the correct file.
On Unix, Linux machines use the command “ln -s targetfile.php nonexistingclassfile.php”

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Prototype: submit multiple select with ajax call

westworld — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:45:37 +0000

Beware when posting data from a multiple select through ajax. You can’t send an array with a Prototype ajax call.

expl.

This won’t work. Your php page will not get an array.

Solution

replace the parameter part with:
parameters: {selectdata: $F(’myselect’).join(”,”)}, // this will send a comma seperated string
In your php code use:
$myselect = = explode(’,',$_POST['selectdata']);

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Pdo get column names

Google analytics api – no PHP

westworld — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 08:54:21 +0000

Google finally released an api for Analytics this month. The example code includes code for java and javascript but no PHP. Fortunatly The electric toolbox hosts some example data of how it can be used with Curl.

Prototype: submit multiple select with ajax call

usersniffing: visitors from a dogs point of view

westworld — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:36:44 +0000

Companys put a lot of time and effort in creating compelling websites. Tons of resources are spend to ensure sites add to sales. But is all this money well spend? Thats what analytics software should clarify. Tools like Google Analytics, AWstats,… give a wide overview of visitors, time on site, conversions and other usefull information. But what if this is not enough? What if you want to target your visitors in a more personal way. What follows are some of the options that I found and that could help you change your content on a page per page level.

GeoIP:
This tool allows you to check the visitors ip adres and make an estimated guess as to where he/she is from. Maxmind offers a free and a licensed version for GeoIP Country and GeoIP City.
I tried out the free version and it gave me:

country code
city
Postal code
latitude – longitude

Device

Handsetdetection.com has a big list of hardware it can detect. Even Kindle 2 is included.

PHP

With php you have a few tools to analyse your visitors. Just like GeoIP, you cannot be 100% sure. Some of the data that gets send to the server can be manipulated. Here are some of the things that I use.

$_SERVER referer. What is the page that the visitor was on before he came to the current.
get_browser A php function that uses an ini file to detect browserinfo.

CSS, HTML and Javascript

css history: a css-javascript trick to check visited sites from a list. This is a very old bug but noone seems to be fixing it. Spajax is a good example of this. [Blackhat]
conditional comments Test if a visitor uses Internet Explorer, Microsoft office [*]
estimate gender: build ontop of the css history hack. Script to guess visitors gender.
socialhistory: uses the css history hack to track your bookmark sites.
privacy leaks
Amazon wishlist
detect private browsing
clickjacking [this is pure evil and should not be used in marketing, yuk]

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performance checklist AS3

westworld — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 10:59:42 +0000

cach bitmaps when possible
use correct object types: int and unit instead of Number if possible
set mouseEnabled and mouseChildren to fals for items that don’t use mouseevents
keep only the objects that you use and when you use them. Assign null when nolonger needed
Bitwise math

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unchecked checkbox not in $_POST

westworld — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:34:11 +0000

Iamcam posted a good hack on his blog. It makes your unchecked checkboxes show up in the $_POST on the server.
It’s very simple and doesn’t need javascript.

If the checkbox is not checked then the value of the hidden input is submited, else the value of the checkbox.

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scraping your pc for mp3 files

westworld — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:37:39 +0000

The following is a simple dos trick to create a playlist of all your mp3’s.

go to the start menu
click run
enter cmd => this opens a black dos window
type dir /b/s *.mp3 > c:\mp3list.m3u

When this command finishes, a file will be created under c: with a list of all your mp3 files.
The m3u file is a plain text file with links to all your music. Some audio applications us this format for playlists.

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Travian.nl

westworld — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 12:32:24 +0000

Some tools to help play Travian

http://asite.110mb.com/cropfinder.php
Graandorpen zoeken

http://www.travianmap.nl/
http://travian.drvdijk.nl/
http://traviantool2.ww7.be/ mensen die niet actief zijn
http://www.traviantoolbox.com/combat_simulator
http://travian.ws/analyser.pl Speler analiseren
http://traviantoolbox.com/index.php

travian FAQ:http://help.travian.nl/index.php?type=start&mod=100
wiki travian(Eng):http://dhost.info/travian2005/Wiki/index.php/Main_Page
travian wiki v3 (Eng): http://travianwiki.uni.cc/index.php?title=Main_Page
Travian guide: http://tg.dutchtraviantools.nl/
DutchTravianTools: http://dutchtraviantools.nl/
help: http://help.travian.nl/
gebouwen stamboom: http://img107.imageshack.us/img107/7140/gebouwenenunitsv37zo.jpg

troepen vergelijker: http://n00bz.biz/travianstuff/troops.html

travian troepen tabel: http://forum.travian.nl/showthread.php?t=14297

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scraping the web

westworld — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 08:22:19 +0000

I’ve been working on a tool to scrape urls. The idea is to have a tool that checks my sites for invalid code, urls and images.

Below some tools and ideas that I might consider using

Wget can be used to spider a website (list url’s, not download) with the following command: wget -r –spider -o logfile.txt http://www.myurl.com
ruby: open-uri & hapricot.
php is not a good idea since scripts can only run for a certain time. (php on commandline is ok)
put the results in a mysql database so I can link it with other data

check for:

Valid html
404
sitespeed
image compression (jpegsnoop for photoshop compression, Smush it)
readability
pagerank
internal links (links on my domain to pages on my domain)
external links (links on my domain to external domains)
received links (who links to me and what alt text is used, page rank)
keywords

Try to :

curl into Google analytics and import the results in mysql

[update]should read[/update]

Prototype: submit multiple select with ajax call