How not to build a Web site

Like so many cities’ infrastructures, this Web site is in a state of disrepair. But hey—at least (I think) it’s getting better.

Since February I’ve made serious progress overhauling the visuals. Now, people don’t need negatives to read the articles I post. Also, I’ve switched to Helvetica for the body text, which I shrank to a size less reminiscent of AARP.org (10 point), and cleaned up some of the icons and other graphics using GIMP, which I have come to love and appreciate.

I am, however, still getting used to Inkscape, a vector graphics solution. After finally switching to openSUSE 11.1 (w/ KDE 4.2) from Windows XP in December, I’m starting to miss my good old Macromedia Fireworks. I can’t count the number of things I’ve gotten out of that software gem. Here’s an oldie but goody.

Also, if you have a half-decent open source GNU/Linux-compatible Flash/ActionScript editor, please do lemme know about it. Right now my Flash menu sticks out like Michael Ignatieff at a gun show, or anywhere else in Canada for that matter.

Dreamweaver vs. Quanta Plus

I do not miss Dreamweaver. Quanta Plus has been doing me just fine, thank you very much, since I figured out how to get the ftp upload part working. The only thing Dreamweaver had that I can say I miss is the side-by-side comparison of the remote server and local folder panels, but I get the feeling there’s a way of making the highly customizable Quanta do that, too.

Schematic of a Comment Spam War

Finally, I think I have comment spam licked (knock on wood). At one point I had over 3000 spamulous comments on recent pages. (Can you guess for which penis enlargement drugs?) I started with a filter using PHP’s strchr() function. It cut out posts with titles and author’s names that began with ‘<’. Went something like this:

$test = substr($comment,0,2);

if ($test[0] == "<" && $test[1] == "a")

{

DON’T ADD ENTRY!!!

etc.

I figure there are other tests I can add, like if there are more than, say, 3 urls, kill it. Hopefully, no more comment spam assholes. Now, it’s just a pitying David Giambusso.

UPDATE: That idea can now be declared stupid since I discovered the PHP method strip_tags();. It gets rid of any tags in a string except the ones you like. Things you probably learn in computer science class.

UPDATE II: Flash MX works absolutely flawlessly using Wine, the Windows emulator that doesn’t like to be called an emulator. Awesomeness. End.