Below are some tips and ideas based on what Google looks for with its robots to help when you upgrade and or optimize your web pages.

First off, where does Google pull text from your page that is considered relevant? I have read from others and noticed that Google gets it’s text from a combination of places such as:

1. Keyword phrase found in body text 2. META description tag 3. ALT text found on the page, most particularly the first Alt text. 4. Heading tags, once again most particularly the first Heading tag. 5. Additional heading tags on the page. 6. Additional body text found on the page. 7. Additional ALT text on the page. 8. Navigation bars 9. General body text 10. Copyright information (usually towards bottom of page).

Now that you know what Google is looking for, you need to know what to put into these areas. As it stands, I have found out the hard way that it is a must for you to use alt text and heading tags.

The text you need to insert into these areas would be the most relevant search terms that surfers are typing into the search engines that relate to that particular page. It’s that easy! Not really but if you have not set your pages in this manner or if you are missing any one of the combinations you might be loosing points from Google and other search engines page ranking system. There are plenty of tools on the market that can help with page optimization. One of my favorites is Web Position Gold. Web Position Gold will generate pages that are automatically optimized. The program also has a tool called Page Critic which will analyze your existing pages and offer suggestions for better optimization. You can try the program for free at http://www.nadmedia.net/store. If you have any questions about page optimization just give me an email, or read some of my other articles on page optimization at nadmedia.net. Happy page building!

About the Author

Rob Wiley has spent the last 14 years serving the media industry in fields involving graphic design, marketing, website design and development. His experience has been shared with numerous businesses that have profited from his advice and skills.

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Take any HTML file you have and rename it to a PHP extension. (So for example, if your HTML file is named sales.html, rename it to sales.php).

Put sales.php on your web server and run it in your browser. You get the exact same result as you did with the HTML page. Now, for the good part.

Say you wanted to personalize one of your sales pages. Let’s call that sales.php. Now, if you had a newsletter or wanted to give this “personalized link” to someone, your visitor’s name could be added on-the-fly to your sales page.

Your link should look something like this:

http://www.your.host/sales.php?firstname=Big&lastname=Bird

Let’s try it out:

http://www.jumpx.com utorials/1/example.php?f=Myfirstname

Click that link and your name should be near the top of the page.)

In this example, yourdomain.com represents your domain name and sales.php your HTML file turned PHP script. This would be the link you could give Big Bird when you ask him to visit your sales page.

Now, edit sales.php and find where you want Big Bird’s name to appear. The first and last names are given to the script separately so you could have anything from “Hi Big Bird!” to “Dear Mr. Bird…” For simplicity let’s just stick with showing both the first and last names for now.

Insert this anywhere into your “script”:

Now try that sample link I gave you earlier on that sales page of yours. You should see the phrase “Big Bird” anywhere on your page.

Remember that you can stick this in anywhere on the page. So for example if you wanted it to say “Dear Big Bird,” you would just do this (with the comma at the end):

Dear ,

If you wanted to show only the first name, use
instead. The same applies to the last name.

If you want to go ahead and shorten the URL even further, you can even use the letters “F” and “L” instead of firstname and lastname.

For example, try this in your page:

And then use this URL (substituting with your correct URL, of course):

http://www.your.host/sales.php?f=Oscar&l=Grouch

The result is the same. I think we want our URLs to look a little better, though.

The format I used in that above example was:

http://www.your.host/sales.php?f=Big&l=Bird

Now, the problem with this is that this link looks really ugly. Another setback with this format is that anything to the right of the “?” won’t be indexed by some of the smaller search engines.

Here’s a way to change this:

http://www.your.host/sales.php?f=Firstname&l=Lastname

To this:

http://www.your.host/sales.php/f=Firstname/l=Lastname

It’s really easy. Just change your script to this:

$myvars = explode(”/”,$REQUEST_URI);
for ($i=0;$i
$holder = explode(”=”,$myvars[$i]);
${$holder[0]} = $holder[1];
}

echo “$f $l”;

?>

And in just a few lines of code, your personalized PHP script’s URL just looked a whole lot better.

I won’t bore you with the details of what that script does, but it basically chops up the URL you gave it and picks out the pieces it wants using array exploding and variable-variables.

This snippet can also be used on almost any PHP script as well. (I used this method when I coded Brian Garvin’s Lightning Track ad tracker… if you ever see a URL anywhere with “go.php/etc” in it, that’s my script.)

Hopefully we all learned something today. This mini-tutorial was brought to you by the letters “P-H-P.”

About the Author

Article by Robert Plank

Subscribe to the free opt-in newsletter “JumpX E-Magazine” for lots more PHP help.

http://www.jumpx.com/newsletter

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Developing State-enabled Applications With PHP

When a user is browsing through a website and is surfing from one web page to another, sometimes the website needs to remember the actions (e.g. choices) performed by the user. For example, in a website that sells DVDs, the user typically browses through a list of DVDs and selects individual DVDs for check out at the end of the shopping session. The website needs to remember which DVDs the user has selected because the selected items needs to be presented again to the user when the user checks out. In other words, the website needs to remember the State - i.e. the selected items - of the user’s browsing activities.

However, HTTP is a Stateless protocol and is ill-equipped to handle States. A standard HTML website basically provides information to the user and a series of links that simply directs the user to other related web pages. This Stateless nature of HTTP allows the website to be replicated across many servers for load balancing purposes. A major drawback is that while browsing from one page to another, the website does not remember the State of the browsing session. This make interactivity almost impossible.

In order to increase interactivity, the developer can use the session handling features of PHP to augment the features of HTTP in order to remember the State of the browsing session. The are basically 2 ways PHP does this:
1. Using cookies
2. Using Sessions

The next installment discusses how to manage sessions using cookies…

Installment 2

Cookies

Cookies are used to store State-information in the browser. Browsers are allowed to keep up to 20 cookies for each domain and the values stored in the cookie cannot exceed 4 KB. If more than 20 cookies are created by the website, only the latest 20 are stored. Cookies are only suitable in instances that do not require complex session communications and are not favoured by some developers because of privacy issues. Furthermore, some users disable support for cookies at their browsers.

The following is a typical server-browser sequence of events that occur when a cookie is used:
1. The server knows that it needs to remember the State of browsing session
2. The server creates a cookie and uses the Set-Cookie header field in the HTTP response to pass the cookie to the browser
3. The browser reads the cookie field in the HTTP response and stores the cookie
4. This cookie information is passed along future browser-server communications and can be used in the PHP scripts as a variable

PHP provides a function called setcookie() to allow easy creation of cookies. The syntax for setcookie is:
int setcookie(string name, [string val], [int expiration_date], [string path], string domain, [int secure])

The parameters are:
1. name - this is a mandatory parameter and is used subsequently to identify the cookie
2. value - the value of the cookie - e.g. if the cookie is used to store the name of the user, the value parameter will store the actual name - e.g. John
3. expiration_date - the lifetime of the cookie. After this date, the cookie expires and is unusable
4. path - the path refers to the URL from which the cookie is valid and allowed
5. domain - the domain the created the cookie and is allowed to read the contents of the cookie
6. secure - specifies if the cookie can be sent only through a secure connection - e.g. SSL enable sessions

The following is an example that displays to the user how many times a specific web page has been displayed to the user. Copy the code below (both the php and the html) into a file with the .php extension and test it out.

[?php
//check if the $count variable has been associated with the count cookie
if (!isset($count)) {
$count = 0;
} else {
$count++;
}
setcookie(”count”, $count, time()+600, “/”, “”, 0);
?]

[html]
[head]
[title]Session Handling Using Cookies[/title]
[/head]
[body]
This page has been displayed: [?=$count ?] times.
[/body]
[/html]

The next installment discusses how to manage sessions using PHP session handling functions with cookies enabled…

Installment 3

PHP Session Handling - Cookies Enabled

Instead of storing session information at the browser through the use of cookies, the information can instead be stored at the server in session files. One session file is created and maintained for each user session. For example, if there are three concurrent users browsing the website, three session files will be created and maintained - one for each user. The session files are deleted if the session is explicitly closed by the PHP script or by a daemon garbage collection process provided by PHP. Good programming practice would call for sessions to be closed explicitly in the script.

The following is a typical server-browser sequence of events that occur when a PHP session handling is used:
1. The server knows that it needs to remember the State of browsing session
2. PHP generates a sssion ID and creates a session file to store future information as required by subsequent pages
3. A cookie is generated wih the session ID at the browser
4. This cookie that stores the session ID is transparently and automatically sent to the server for all subsequent requests to the server

The following PHP session-handling example accomplishes the same outcome as the previous cookie example. Copy the code below (both the php and the html) into a file with the .php extension and test it out.

[?php
//starts a session
session_start();

//informs PHP that count information needs to be remembered in the session file
if (!session_is_registered(”count”)) {
session_register(”count”);
$count = 0;
}
else {
$count++;
}

$session_id = session_id();
?]

[html]
[head]
[title]PHP Session Handling - Cookie-Enabled[/title]
[/head]
[body]
The current session id is: [?=$session_id ?]
This page has been displayed: [?=$count ?] times.
[/body]
[/html]

A summary of the functions that PHP provides for session handling are:
1. boolean start_session() - initializes a session
2. string session_id([string id]) - either returns the current session id or specify the session id to be used when the session is created
3. boolean session_register(mixed name [, mixed …]) - registers variables to be stored in the session file. Each parameter passed in the function is a separate variable
4. boolean session_is_registered(string variable_name) - checks if a variable has been previously registered to be stored in the session file
5. session_unregister(string varriable_name) - unregisters a variable from the session file. Unregistered variables are no longer valid for reference in the session.
6. session_unset() - unsets all session variables. It is important to note that all the variables remain registered.
7. boolean session_destroy() - destroys the session. This is opposite of the start_session function.

The next installment discusses how to manage sessions using PHP session handling functions when cookies are disabled…

Installment 4

PHP Session Handling - Without Cookies

If cookies are disabled at the browser, the above example cannot work. This is because although the session file that stores all the variables is kept at the server, a cookie is still needed at the browser to store the session ID that is used to identify the session and its associated session file. The most common way around this would be to explicitly pass the session ID back to the server from the browser as a query parameter in the URL.

For example, the PHP script generates requests subsequent to the start_session call in the following format:
http://www.yourhost.com/yourphpfile.php?PHPSESSID=[actual session ID]

The following are excerpts that illustrate the discussion:

Manually building the URL:
$url = “http://www.yoursite.com/yourphppage.php?PHPSESSID=” . session_id();
[a href=”[?=$url ?]”]Anchor Text[/a]

Building the URL using SID:
[a href=”http://www.yoursite.com/yourphppage.php?[?=SID ?]”]Anchor Text[/a]

About the Author

This PHP scripting article is written by John L. John L is the Webmaster of The Ultimate BMW Blog! (http://www.bimmercenter.com).

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Flat files are only feasible in very low to low volume websites as flat files have 3 inherent weaknesses:
1.The inability to index the data. This makes it necessary to potentially read ALL the data sequentially. This is a major problem if there are a lot of records in the flat file because the time required to read the flat file is proportionate to the number of records in the flat file.
2.The inability to efficiently control access by users to the data
3.The inefficient storage of the data. In most cases, the data would not be encrypted or compressed as this would exacerbate the problem no. 1 above

The alternative which is, in my opinion, the only feasible method, is to store the data in a database. One of the most prevalent databases in use is MySQL. Data that is stored in a database can easily be indexed, managed and stored efficiently. Besides that, most databases also provide a suite of accompanying utilities that allow the database administrator to maintain the database – for example, backup and restore, etc.

Websites scripted using PHP are very well suited for the MySQL database as PHP has a custom and integrated MySQL module that communicates very efficiently with MySQL. PHP can also communicate with MySQL through the standard ODBC as MySQL is ODBC-compliant, However, this will not be as efficient as using the custom MySQL module for PHP.

The rest of this article is a tutorial on how to use PHP to:
1.Connect to a MySQL database
2.Execute standard SQL statements against the MySQL database

Starting a Session with MySQL

Before the PHP script can communicate with the database to query, insert or update the database, the PHP script will first need to connect to the MySQL server and specify which database in the MySQL server to operate on.

The mysql_connect() and mysql_select_db() functions are provided for this purpose. In order to connect to the MySQL server, the server name/address; a username; and a valid password is required. Once a connection is successful, the database needs to be specified.

The following 2 code excerpts illustrate how to perform the server connection and database selection:
@mysql_connect(”[servername]”, “[username]”, “[password]”) or die(”Cannot connect to DB!”);
@mysql_select_db(”[databasename]”) or die(”Cannot select DB!”);

The @ operator is used to suppress any error messages that mysql_connect() and mysql_select_db() functions may produce if an error occurred. The die() function is used to end the script execution and display a custom error message.

Executing SQL Statements against a MySQL database

Once the connection and database selection is successfully performed, the PHP script can now proceed to operate on the database using standard SQL statements. The mysql_query() function is used for executing standard SQL statements against the database. In the following example, the PHP script queries a table called tbl_login in the previously selected database to determine if a username/password pair provided by the user is valid.

Assumption:
The tbl_login table has 3 columns named login, password, last_logged_in. The last_logged_in column stores the time that the user last logged into the system.

// The $username and $passwd variable should rightly be set by the login form
// through the POST method. For the purpose of this example, we’re manually coding it.
$username = “john”;
$passwd = “mypassword”;

// We generate a SELECT SQL statement for execution.
$sql=”SELECT * FROM tbl_login WHERE login = ‘”.$username.”‘ AND password = ‘”.$passwd.”‘”;

// Execute the SQL statement against the currently selected database.
// The results will be stored in the $r variable.
$r = mysql_query($sql);

// After the mysql_query() command executes, the $r variable is examined to
// determine of the mysql_query() was successfully executed.
if(!$r) {
$err=mysql_error();
print $err;
exit();
}

// If everything went well, check if the query returned a result – i.e. if the username/password
// pair was found in the database. The mysql_affected_rows() function is used for this purpose.
// mysql_affected_rows() will return the number of rows in the database table that was affected
// by the last query
if(mysql_affected_rows()==0){
print “Username/password pair is invalid. Please try again.”;
}
else {

// If successful, read out the last logged in time into a $last variable for display to the user
$row=mysql_fetch_array($r);
$last=$row[”last_logged_in”];
print “Login successful. You last logged in at ”.$last.”.”;

}

The above example demonstrated how a SELECT SQL statement is executed against the selected database. The same method is used to execute other SQL statements (e.g. UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE, etc.) against the database using the mysql_query() and mysql_affected_rows() functions.

About the Author

This PHP scripting article is written by John L. John L is the Webmaster of The Ultimate BMW Blog! (http://www.bimmercenter.com).

The Ultimate BMW Blog!

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