Unfortunately, this effect can’t be achieved without knowing and entering the width and height of an image – making it kind of tedious to implement. After deciding that I’d like to use it with wordpress posts, it was decided that a tool should be built. And then The Lovely Caption Maker was born. Here’s an example of Lovely Caption Maker’s glory:

This Is How We Party

Expressing ourselves on the last day of year twelve in 2006. Very sexy stuff.

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Setting Up Apache’s “mod_rewrite” Modul

To implement these URLs with Apache, you will need to have the mod_rewrite module enabled. Here’s how to enable mod_rewrite:

1. Open the httpd.conf file from the …apache/conf/ directory
2. Uncomment the line “LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so” (by removing preceding #)

If you have more than one virtual server or directory set up, you might have to add something like this as well:

<Directory "PATHOFDIRECTORY">
    AllowOverride all
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

Next, you need to create a file named “.htaccess” at the website’s root directory (if you haven’t got one already)

In your .htaccess file, add the following rules:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

This will redirect all requests that don’t point to an existing file or directory to ‘index.php’.

You might (or might not) be thinking “How does that help implement clean URLs?” The next part will answer that question, but before proceeding – test your new Apache config and .htaccess file – restart Apache if necessary and try loading a directory that doesn’t exist (ie. http://yourwebsitehost/page/5/your-information/). If it loads your index.php page – we’re ready to continue.

Getting PHP to Interpret The URLs

Ok, the hard part is done. Now I’ll explain what we want when a user requests a page:

1. User requests “/page/5/your-information/”
2. Apache redirects the request to “index.php” without changing the user’s URL
3. index.php breaks up the requet URI and loads page.php instructing it to load page ’5′

This might seem a bit difficult (or, if you’re experienced, very easy) – it honestly is rather easy. Once you understand how it works, you might decide to do it differently, but here is a really simple example of a website that contains information ‘pages’ and information about the ‘authors’ of those pages.

In our example, we have three php files:

• index.php
• page.php
• author.php

“index.php”

<?php
//$urlVariables is an array that contains the different bits of information in the request.
$urlVariables = explode("/",$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
//If the user requested '/page/6/about-elephans/' then $urlVariables[1] would be 'page', $urlVariables[2] would be '6' and so on.

if ($urlVariables[1] == "page") {
//the user is requesting an information page
    include "page.php";
} elseif $urlVariables[2] == "author" {
    //the user is requesting author information
    include "author.php";
} else {
    //load the home page
    include "default.php";
}?>

“page.php”

<?php//load an object that deals with pages (to keep the tutorial simple)
include "classes/page.php";
$page = new page;
//$urlVariables will contain the page id as the 2nd array element (ie. /page/pageid/page-name-here/)$page_id = $urlVariables[2];
//the page name part of the URL is ignored when loading because we only use ID to load pages - it's just good for search engines and people.

//get the page class to load the page
if ($page->load_page($page_id)) {?>

<h1><?php echo $page->page_name(); ?></h1>
<p><?php echo $page->page_content(); ?></p>
<p>Written by <a href="<?php echo $page->author_url(); ?>"> <?php echo $page->author_name(); ?> </a></p><?php

} else {

    //error!
    include "error.php";
}>

“about.php”

<?php

//load an object that deals with authors (again, to keep the tutorial simple)
include "classes/author.php";
$author = new author;
//$urlVariables will contain the page id as the 2nd array element (ie. /author/authorid/author-name-here/)
$author_id = $urlVariables[2];
//again, the author name part of the URL is ignored when loading because we also only use ID to load authors - it is just good for search engines and people.

//get the author class to load the page
if ($author->load_author($author_id)) {?>
<h1><?php echo $author->author_name(); ?></h1>
<h2>Bio</h2><p><?php echo $author->author_information(); ?></p>
<h2>All pages by <?php echo $author->author_name; ?></h2>
<$php echo $author->page_list; 

} else {
    //error!
    include "error.php";
}
?>

Now that example was probably a bit excessive. Here’s a basic overview of how it works:

1. The index.php page is loaded, and ‘explodes’ the request part of the URL into an array ($urlVariables in the example)
2. You then interpret the array elements to decide what to show to the user. ($urlVariables[1] determined whether to show a page or an author profile and $urlVariables[2] was an ID for either the page or the author in our example)

It’s that simple. This method is SUPER flexible if you build a strong framework around it.

Good luck!

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I personally developed the original WizzComb website in 2004, being only the second website I had ever developed it was pretty abysmal when it came to standards, accessibility and even good markup form. The website became out of date so after some tinkering, the WizzComb website is now fresh, valid, accessible, SE-Friendly and better looking.

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Web Traffic Increases After New Blog Post

“So what, I knew that. Everybody knows that!”, you say? Well that may be true, but there’s more to it. After suspecting that search engines prioritise new content and seing some proof of this, I found that same pattern on this blog…

While looking at some statistics, I noticed that the number of daily search engine visitors correlated with that of non-search engine visitors when new content had arrived on the site. Check out this graph:

More Search Engine Traffic After Adding New Content

This indicates that search engines heavily favour new content, especially on a trusted website. One very weird time I’ve seen this is with the FRR Cinel Nominees website ( a company that does Civil Contruction in Victoria. ) Even with very few backlinks, FRR Cinel ranked #1 for the search term “Civil Contractors Victoria” (which is marginally competitive) for two days after I published the FRR Cinel Civil Contractors Victoria profile in the the logon2 portfolio.

While on the subject of traffic, logon2′s traffic has improve immensely since launching the blog as you might have seen. Thanks to all of you readers! And since this is the first blog of 2008 – happy new year!

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The reason that being able to tell Google where most visitors will be coming from is so useful is because it generally improves the position of search results for pages that are more relevant because they are closer. This is just another great step forward in improving the web for users and webmasters alike.

Thank you, Google!

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