Mr Portman: primary school teacher, web developer... school web guru

Transfer mysql database to a new server using phpMyAdmin

Mr Portman — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:39:28 +0000

Assuming you’re inside phpMyAdmin, select the database you want to move.
Hit the’Export’ tab.
‘Select all’ to export every table.
Make sure the ‘Structure’ and ‘Data’ boxes are ticked.
Select ‘Drop table if exists’.
Select ‘Save to file’ at the bottom, and change the name if necessary.
Hit ‘Go’.

Change a CSS style using jQuery

Mr Portman — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:39:29 +0000

Say you’ve got this:

and you hide it in the CSS using:

#divname {display: none;}

To show it using jQuery, simple action this:

$(“#divname).css(“display”,”block”);

Simples!

Check url using Javascript

Mr Portman — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 15:28:31 +0000

Ages ago I commented somewhere and left a link to my site within the comment which included the ID of a div called learning_resources (http://mrportman.co.uk/#learning_resources). Since then the div no longer exists, but I wanted to offer those visitors the download still.

You can’t do anything with PHP because anything with a # isn’t passed to the server, so I had to resort to some Javascript and search the url:

$(document).ready(function() {

$url = $(location).attr(‘href’);
$string = “learning”
if ($url.search($string) == 24) {

}
});

Search an XML file using preg_match

Mr Portman — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 19:37:20 +0000

This excellent Class loads the XML, then the following script will search. It isn’t the most efficient way of doing it, but will do for now.

foreach ($x->data->RSS[0]->CHANNEL[0]->ITEM as $item) {

if (preg_match(“/cloud/”, $item->TITLE[0]->_text)) {
// cloud
echo “Weather in Norwich today: cloud”;
} elseif (preg_match(“/sunny intervals/”, $item->TITLE[0]->_text)) {
// sunny intervals
echo “Weather in Norwich today: sunny intervals”;
} elseif (preg_match(“/sunny/”, $item->TITLE[0]->_text)) {
// sunny
echo “Weather in Norwich today: sunny”;
} elseif (preg_match(“/snow/”, $item->TITLE[0]->_text)) {
// snow
echo “Weather in Norwich today: snow”;
} else {
echo “Weather feed error”;
}
}
?>

This particular script searches a BBC weather feed and will be used on the upcoming Web & Pen site.

Change default index page

Mr Portman — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 19:28:36 +0000

Lob this in the .htaccess file:

DirectoryIndex holding.html

A records / MX records

Mr Portman — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:39:10 +0000

Having just fired off instructions to everyone I work with never to buy a domain name from Fast Hosts, here’s how to set up the A records and MX records:

First, an A record for the root:

Host name: [no name] Points to: xx.xx.xx.xx

Next, an A record for www:

Host name: www Points to: xx.xx.xx.xx

Then, an A record for email:

Host name: mail Points to: xx.xx.xx.xx

Finally, the MX record needs setting:

Points to: mail.domainname.com Priority: 10

Encode email address

Mr Portman — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:20:05 +0000

No need for this with Expression Engine, but with other sites use:

www.mailtoencoder.com

…but use CSS to display a background image. In the < noscript> part, place an img tag to the same image – that way anyone with javascript turned off can still see the image.

Detecting iPads/iPhones using PHP

Mr Portman — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 19:36:18 +0000

Lovely little script:

if (strstr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'iPhone') || strstr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'iPod') || strstr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'iPad')) {

// iPhone video or whatever it is you want to show differently

} else {

// content for everyone else

}
?>

Increase email quota using cPanel

Mr Portman — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 07:25:24 +0000

Had a problem today – for some reason, whenever I went to increase the quota, it would just give an error. A quick Google found the solution: delete the file called maildirsize from the email accounts folder and try again.

Dreamweaver code colouring/coloring

Mr Portman — Sat, 22 May 2010 10:18:56 +0000

The default code colour/color scheme in Dreamweaver can get a bit bright for the eyes, so I like to use a darker one. I originally made my own, which takes ages, and then went and lost it when upgrading to Windows 7.

Fortunately, someone’s kindly done the same but offered a copy of theirs for downloading, here.

If, like me, you are using Windows 7, then your file will go here:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Dreamweaver CS4\en_US\Configuration\CodeColoring\

If the original site ever disappears, get in touch and I’ll send you mine.