www.statbrain.com

StatBrain.com is one of interesting site which has been popular recently with it’s free service to calculate visitor stats of any website. Although any sites on the web can’t provide exact visitor stats without accessing the website logs, I personally like the calculation of StatBrain.com which seems to be close for most of the websites. StatBrain.com use different technologies and calculation methods for showing the visitors stats.

In their own words “It is incredible what a bit of research on the Internet can do. Actually I’m pretty good at it. I usually say: ‘If its out there I can find it’ and most of the time it is true. I’m also a very curious person, some might say a bit too curious. When I see a new site I have to know one thing; how many daily visits does it have? Unfortunately nobody wants to tell you how many visits a site has. So you have to guess and that is kind of difficult. So I built Statbrain.com to help me and everybody else guess.”

At this time you may be thinking to use similar techniques on your own website or perhaps want to re-use the data from StatBrain.com on your website to serve your visitors. So below I have provided a PHP Tutorial on how to get data from StatBrain.com and re-use it on your website.

First of all we create a function that will extract a data from StatBrain.com

function getStatBrainVisit($value) {
	$var=file_get_contents("http://www.statbrain.com/".$value);
 
	$find1="Estimated number of visits for";
	$pos1 = strpos($var, $find1);
 
	$find2="visits per day";
	$pos2 = strpos($var, $find2);
 
	$coundDiff=$pos2-$pos1;
 
	$rawData1=strip_tags(substr($var, $pos1, $coundDiff));
 
	$rawData2=str_replace("Estimated number of visits for", "", $rawData1);
	$rawData3=str_replace("Less than", "", $rawData2);
	$finalData=str_replace($value, "", $rawData3);
 
	return trim($finalData);
}

The above function will first extract the raw data from StatBrain.com as you get while visiting the stat page by using following code:

$var=file_get_contents("http://www.statbrain.com/".$value);

The data we require from StatBrain.com is located between “Estimated number of visits for” and “visits per day”, so we first locate the position of both phrases and keep the require data with the two phrases.

$find1="Estimated number of visits for";
$pos1 = strpos($var, $find1);
 
$find2="visits per day";
$pos2 = strpos($var, $find2);
 
$coundDiff=$pos2-$pos1;
 
$rawData1=strip_tags(substr($var, $pos1, $coundDiff));

Our next process is cleaning up the data we hold till now and finally getting the numeric value, which we made via this additional code:

$rawData2=str_replace("Estimated number of visits for", "", $rawData1);
$rawData3=str_replace("Less than", "", $rawData2);
$finalData=str_replace($value, "", $rawData3);

The variable $finalData now holds the Estimated Visitors Data of any website that we want to look after. We now return the output of the variable $finalData inside the function. I have used trim() to remove any whitespaces that may be included along with final data.

return trim($finalData);

So our re-usable function for getting Estimated Visitors Data from StatBrain.com is complete. We can now use the function we just created by providing the domain name for which we want to have Estimated Visitors Data as following:

print getStatBrainVisit("www.facebook.com");

ALL CODES AT ONCE

function getStatBrainVisit($value) {
	$var=file_get_contents("http://www.statbrain.com/".$value);
 
	$find1="Estimated number of visits for";
	$pos1 = strpos($var, $find1);
 
	$find2="visits per day";
	$pos2 = strpos($var, $find2);
 
	$coundDiff=$pos2-$pos1;
 
	$rawData1=strip_tags(substr($var, $pos1, $coundDiff));
 
	$rawData2=str_replace("Estimated number of visits for", "", $rawData1);
	$rawData3=str_replace("Less than", "", $rawData2);
	$finalData=str_replace($value, "", $rawData3);
 
	return trim($finalData);
}
print getStatBrainVisit("www.facebook.com");

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

Server2Go - a portable Webserver

Server2Go is a Webserver that runs out of the box without any installation and on write protected media. This means that web applications based on Server2Go can be used directly from cdrom, a usb stick or from any folder on a hard disk without the hassle of configuring Apache, PHP or MySQL.

Server2Go allows you to create a standalone working web site or PHP application on a CD-ROM. There are many examples of its possible useses such as catalogue software, calculation programmes, image campaigns (CMS-based), computer based training lessons or other applicatons. Most PHP-Software such as the content management system Joomla or the computer based training software Moodle can be used from CD-ROM with the help of Server2Go.

Server2Go was developed in the first instance for use on CD-ROM but there is no problem in using it from other drives too. Using a web browser, a user can run php programs as well as view html files on the CD-ROM. He only needs to insert a CD with Server2Go. The server software starts automatically and a browser is opened with the Website of the CD-ROM.
Server2Go was built in the first place to replace other CD-ROM webservers such as WampOnCD or Microweb that lacked some important features or are not being actively developed.

Features

• Free! No royalties
• Complete WAMPP Server-Stack
• Runs directly from CD-ROM, USB Stick or Hard disk without installation
• Full featured webserver (based on apache)
• PHP 5.x support with many extensions installed (e.g. gd)
• Supports SQLite databases
• Runs on all versions of Windows from Win 98 and above, MAC OSX support is coming
• Support for MySQL 5 Databases
• Supports many PHP extensions (GD-Lib, PDO…) by default
• Support for Perl 5.8

Licence
Server2Go is Donationware. This means that you can download and use it for free and you don’t have to pay any royalty charges when distributing an application on CD-ROM that uses Server2Go. But if you use it commercially or just want to say “thank you” you should donate to the project to help its further development. How to donate? Just take a look at the donation page. There are a lot of inexpensive ways of helping.

Download
See the download page for details.

Source
www.server2go-web.de

Please notice that all images can be clicked. Enjoy It…

Halloween Wallpapers

Halloween Icons

Halloween Art

As you may know Great Wordpress themes which are free were very hard to find. In this post I have tried to present 5 Most Beautiful, Fresh and Clean Wordpress Themes which may be useful if you are starting a new Blog or have a blog already.

Smashing Theme [ Demo ]

Blogging Pro Theme [ Demo ]

Elixir

Gossip City [ Demo ]

Firebug [ Demo ]

The computer industry has its own different cycle just like any other industries. In the early days of 50s to the mid 70s mainframes computers from IBM and DEC was in use as a corporate-machines which was used mainly by the specialists of large organizations. On those days each large corporation used to have one corporate machine (i.e. mainframes computer) as large as a room which were used for critical applications, bulk data processing and statistics. Later on when Personal Computers were developed with a new approach “a stand-alone computer on a desk, used by an individual” the market begin to grow. MS-DOS was developed by Bill gates with his colleague. With these development and new possibilities, new companies were born. More jobs have been created.

The release of Windows 95 with largest media coverage, commercial usages of Internet, and the huge interest & demand on computers and internet based services between 1995 leads on creating a totally new market which is meant for internationally. Investors wanted to implement big ideas with big investments so that they can use the new market and can get big profits without taking care of solid business plan. Networking, Information Technology, Internet, Web and similar buzzwords begin to be featured on media which makes investors much more hunger for the investment on those businesses. Venture Capitalists begin to invest billions of dollars per month blindly on every new issue without even looking at a business plan.

The technology-heavy NASDAQ Composite index peaked at 5,048 (intra-day peak 5,132.52) in March 10 2000, reflecting the high point of the dot-com bubble.

By the mid 1998 almost every MBA Graduates at America either worked at .com Company or was thinking to start their own company because of the unbelievable growth on the field. Venture Capitalists had seen thousands of new business ideas every day. Dot-Com business was growing rapidly. Millions of commercial sites were developed. There were dozens and more identical competitors for the same business idea (pets.com, petsmart.com, petfood.com, petstuff.com, petopia.com, and so on.) and the fast increase in stock value makes Investors decide to buy in expectation of further rises, rather than because the shares are undervalued. And due to that many company become grossly overvalued. The technology-heavy NASDAQ Composite index peaked at 5,048 (intra-day peak 5,132.52) in March 10 2000, reflecting the high point of the dot-com bubble.

The investment without taking care of the business plan is obviously a big problem and the result came from the companies themselves resulting on huge losses. Most of the dotcoms were closed and most become bankruptcy. That leads on heavy fall down on NASDAQ and all dotcoms. This hadn’t only affected the dotcoms business but it also destroyed the businesses that support the dotcoms (web design, ad agencies, photographers, graphics designers etc), personal services and tertiary economy.

Notes:
NASDAQ (Acronym of National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations): An American stock exchange.

Windows and errors
Windows XP is far less susceptible to errors than Windows 9x, it seems there are still some errors that remind me of that old operating system. One of them is an error you usually get when you uninstall a program.

You install a small program for a random purpose, you like it or not and for some reason you uninstall it. You don’t notice anything suspicious and after a couple of days (or perhaps the very next moment) you try to open a help file and notice a weird error message.

Error Message

Although this is not very common, it has happened twice to myself and I’ve seen at least hundreds of complains about it over the Internet.

Some people would just reinstall the operating system and eventually get rid of this problem, yet there is also a much easier solution.

The hhctrl.ocx file
The problem is caused by the file hhctrl.ocx located in your System32 folder (or just System on some OS) and most likely has been overwritten by an application with an incompatible version.

So, all you need to do is either look for it on the cabinet file from your Windows CD-ROM or download/copy a working version from an outside source (or even from a backup you might have made yourself). You can for example download a working version from: http://freeware.it-mate.co.uk/?Cat=OCX_Files

When you have it on your computer, just copy it into your c:\windows\system32\ folder (well, if your Windows directory is called otherwise, change it accordingly) and overwrite the old version.

Then, go to your start Menu and select Run:

regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\hhctrl.ocx

Fixing Error

After that you should see a message that the file was registered successfully. Open a help file to see if it worked. If it didn’t, try a different version of that file.

Related links:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;312456

So obviously as with everything else, there is a theory behind making this plugin. The plugin uses a file, which contains all the data needed. The file is a .src and you will learn more about that soon. In the .src you will find information such as, the site name, the site URL, the search method, the input fields and lots more. This may sound confusing, but it will make more sense later! To edit the .src file I recommend you use Notepad. I am going to explain how to make a search plugin for one of my site then I will tell you how to adapt it. If you are looking to make a plugin for PHPBB, MyBB or another script you will need to have an advanced knowledge of how to make a plugin. Obviously I can’t tell you how to make a plugin for every single forum software, blog software etc. I am teaching you how to do this, not how to copy and paste my code.

This tutorial is going to be based around creating a domain whois search plugin for whatismyip.com.np site. Now I have already created this plugin before, Here, but am going to be showing you how to do it!

Step 1
First of all, you need to open up Notepad or another kind of editor that accepts .src file extensions. Now create a new document and name it firefox_search.src

Step 2
Now we have the file created, lets start adding some content that will make up our Firefox Search Plugin.

So now put this text into the file:

<search
version=”1.0″
name=”Check Domain & Whois”
description=”Find your IP address, check Domain availability and Whois information”

Now the explanation…

<search means we are obviously starting a new search bar. So this must be placed at the beginning of every Search Plugin you make.

The next 3 lines are pretty self explanatory..

version is the version of the plugin not the version of FireFox. This can be anything number wise, it really doesn’t matter what it is. As long as it is numerical.

name is the name of this plugin. For this case, we are searching Check Domain & Whois so that’s what we are going to call it. Again, you can call it anything you want it really doesn’t matter.

description is a small description of the plugin. Again very self explanatory. Just type a small description about the plugin. In this case, I have just put Find your IP address, check Domain availability and Whois information because that is basically what it does.

Now we are going to add a bit more content and information into the file.

method=”get”
action=”http://www.whatismyip.com.np/whois.php”

This time we have added method and action. Again, both are really easy to understand so I will explain quickly…

method is the method of the search engine. Does the search engine use post or get? That’s all you enter here.. post or get. WhatIsMyIP.com.np uses post so that’s what I have used here.

action is the location of the search form or file. In this case the search form / file is in the same location so we enter the URL. For this plugin I have used This URL because that is the location of the search form.

Now add the following lines.

searchForm=”http://www.whatismyip.com.np”
queryEncoding=’UTF-8′
queryCharset=’UTF-8′
>

As you can see, we have added.. searchForm, queryEncoding and queryCharset. These 3 things may sound complicated but there actually real simple.

searchForm I’m not 100% sure about but I always enter the site url in and it always works fine.

queryEncoding is the encoding of the query. The query is what is entered into the search box.

queryCharset is the character set of the query.

As you will see, we have ended the <search></search> tag with a >. That’s the first part done.

Next we make the input boxes, just like if we were doing it in HTML just a little different.

<input name=”query” />

Now for this plugin I only needed 1 inputs where we enter the term to search.
As you can see on the first input, we have the word user at the end. That means it’s the input that will show. It will not always be named query, with different software or coding it will probably be different. If you want hidden field on your search plugins then simply don’t use attribute user in the above code.

That’s all the inputs you need to make a search plugin for WhatIsMyIP.com.np.

That is basically the plugin created. That is now a working script, but we don’t want to finish there… I will now show you something else.. very special…

Now it isn’t that special so don’t get too excited, but this part is optional. You can make FireFox check for plugin updated every so days. You can define how many ever days to check for updates…

<browser
update=”http://www.whatismyip.com.np/pluggins/firefox_search.src”
updateicon=”http://www.whatismyip.com.np/favicon.ico”
updatecheckdays=”1″
>

Having <browser></browser> starts the browser part of this script. A few things must be defined inside here…

update is the location of the actual src file. If you want FireFox to check for updates on this plugin, the url needs to be pointing to the uploaded src.

updateicon is the location of the icon on the search plugin. Now this can be a favicon from your site or an image. The image icon will be resized to 16 x 16 to fit.

updatecheckdays is pretty obvious, how many days do you want between when FireFox checks for updates.

So now everything is made, obviously it needs to be installed for it to work. It doesn’t just magically appear in your browser.

Now to install a plugin we need to use Javascript. Obviously you will need javascript enabled for it to be able to install. I will give you the script that installs it, you may say its very similar to Mozilla’s version… but actually it is. There is only 1 way to install these plug ins.

create a new file with .js extenstion and place following script

function addEngine(url, img, name, desc) {
if ((typeof window.sidebar == “object”) && (typeof window.sidebar.addSearchEngine == “function”)) {
window.sidebar.addSearchEngine (url, img, name, desc);
} else {
alert(“You need a Mozilla based browser such as firefox to use this.”);
}
}

Now following code needs to go in your page between <head></head> with correct path of the .js file you created above.

<a href=”#” onclick=”addEngine(‘http://www.whatismyip.com.np/pluggins/firefox_search.src’, ‘http://www.whatismyip.com.np/images/favicon.ico’, ‘Check Domain & Whois’, ‘Find your IP address, check Domain availability and Whois information’); return false;”>Install Now</a>

Now place following code anywhere you want to display the link for installing this plugin on user’s side.

And that’s it. Thank you very much for reading and hopefully this tutorial was easier to understand than Mozilla’s guide.

Reference
PIXEL2LIFE – Learning made Simple.

“… Thanks for following up with us. I’ll be happy to provide clarification of our policy regarding adult/mature content.

Our policy regarding adult/mature content may include any material that is not appropriate for all audiences. While this obviously includes full nudity or sexual activity, it may also include textually explicit sexual content, some treatments of topics such as sexual health and sex tips, and image or video content containing lewd or provocative poses, strategically covered nudity, see-through or sheer clothing, and close-ups of breasts, butts, or crotches.

While it’s not a sure test, we sometimes suggest that publishers ask themselves the following questions to determine if content is family- safe:

Would I be comfortable viewing this content with my parents or children in the same room?
Would I feel comfortable viewing this content if my boss walked up behind me while I had this content on my screen?

If the answer to either of these questions is no, then it is likely that some advertisers would not be comfortable showing their ads on such content and we might consider it mature…”

and personally I think the clarification they provide me is quite clear. so from the above info anyone can easily find out, if the contents is adult/mature or not.

Today Microsoft is eager to announce availability of the Go Live release of Microsoft FastCGI Extension for IIS 5.1/6.0 (FastCGI Extension) as a free download. The Go Live release is the last step in the Microsoft beta process and represents the highest level of quality and reliability. For the first time, customers have a license that permits them to deploy the FastCGI Extension on their production Internet Information Services 6.0 (IIS 6) Web servers.
Source: IIS.net

Hopefully this will ease a lot of pain, and well worth checking out to see if this makes PHP running on IIS (which we know of many such installations) will help web masters and programmers not have to deal with the pain of getting PHP to work on IIS. The good part is that the new program is in both 32 and 64-bit versions.

You can download the program here.

When we wrapped this up on an XP developer’s laptop this morning, we did notice a speed increase; we also noticed fewer errors when programming a MySQL connect structure via PHP. There is nothing better than seeing your developer grin and nod his head.

This is also an important part is Microsoft supporting Open Source. PHP used to only work reliably on Linux, and given the investment in technology, people, and training, switching a technology can be very expensive. Moving from PHP to dot net can be difficult, and will get a lot of resistance in a company. The program is well worth checking out if the company has stabilized on Windows and PHP. It might just make a lot of folks days.

1

ignore_user_abort(TRUE);

When finished you may again set the value to FALSE to allow the script to halt on client disconnect.

1

ignore_user_abort(FALSE);