Prevent WordPress Pages from appearing in Search Results

wp-search

Michael Harvey of New York, USA, asks: “I’ve set up private WordPress pages that I’m only giving to friends and family. However, when people use the WordPress search function, these private pages appear in search results. Do you know a fix?” I use the same functionality on my own site(s). I have countless private pages [...]

Calculate and highlight the differences between strings of text with PHP

php-differences

I was updating a CMS recently to archive various versions of data. If you’ve ever dealt with quality and version management you would appreciate the need to record all changes to specific text for the purpose of quality assurance. In my case, I needed to accomplish four tasks: Record specific changes to the published version [...]

Determine the Relationship between two Twitter Users

twitter-relationships

If you want to test the relationship between any two Twitter users (i.e. do they follow each other or don’t they), you can do so via a simple call to the following URL: http://twitter.com/friendships/exists.xml?user_a=martykhoury&user_b=kenpascoe This will return a XML file as follows: Alternatively, you could generate a JSON file that will simply render as either [...]

Include Twitter Data on your Website

twitter-data-website

Every application I build now is littered with various types of functionality that links them into different social network. If you’re reading this post it’s unlikely I’ll have to educate you on the merits of plugging your website into the social lives of your readers. What follows is some code that will help you integrate [...]

Randomly select rows from a LARGE database with MySQL

database

I have a particular database with over one million rows and was required to extract 10 random rows for inclusion on a page that featured products indiscriminately. My initial query looked a little something like this: SELECT id FROM table WHERE something = something ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 10; The problem with a large table [...]

Force the Download of a File with PHP

force-download

I’ve recently created a large number of websites where I aggregate podcasts and provide a detailed backend subscription and collaboration platform for both publishers and content consumers. I’ll no doubt post details on what I’ve done (and how I’ve done it) another time, but the project(s) forced me to consider a number of issues that [...]

Zip a file or files with PHP

zip

I provided a simple function a few days ago that would unzip a file using PHP. As is usually always the case, it was followed up by a few emails asking for the best method of zipping a file or files. As it turns out, I’ve worked through some ZIP classes over the last few [...]

Generate a Word Cloud from database values or array using PHP

twitter-word-cloud

A Word Cloud is a visual representation of elements or information depicted by the size or colour of a word. Popularised in social media circles, they’ve gained popularity over tables and graphs because they immediately and visually illustrate the weight or value of information in a way that can give people an immediate appreciation of [...]

Unzip a file with PHP

unzip

I received an email yesterday from a gentleman that had some issues related to yesterday’s post, “Working with CSV text files & PHP“. He had a situation where he would – literally, every single morning – download a zipped CSV file containing daily financial data from a remote server. He would then extract the contents [...]

Working with CSV text files & PHP

csv-icon

I’ve spent the last couple of days writing a parser for flight crew and cabin attendant rosters that will be used by staff I work with at my day job. At the moment, we have access to a Sabre system that outputs rostered duty details… but won’t let us export it into any usable format. [...]

Count the number of times your page is Tweeted via the TweetMeme API

tweetmeme

TweetMeme is an excellent site that offers various types of Twitter-based social integration to your website. They’re particularly relevant when it comes to finding current news of interest because they measure the number of times a certain website has had their story published or tweeted to Twitter. Those stories that have the most tweets are [...]