Here’s a very simple PHP function that will parse text and force fully constructed links to open in a new window. If you’re building a comment area (or something similar) for your website it’s likely that you want to retain an open page to minimise your click-through-rate, and this function will assist to serve that [...]

What is BB Code? Bulletin Board Code or BB Code is a lightweight markup language used to format text within posts made on the majority of message board platforms, although it’s now widely used in any application that permits posts, comments or contributions from users. The available BBcode tags (similar to HTML) are usually indicated [...]

WHOIS is a protocol that is widely used for querying databases in order to determine the registrant or assignee of a domain name or IP address (range). In its simplest form, building a small PHP script to query the appropriate WHOIS server and outputting readable information is quite simple, yet complex solutions are usually required [...]

A friend emailed me tonight and asked how I output form errors onto a page once a user has submitted invalid data. Rather than email him back, I’ll post an abbreviated version of my preferred method here. My friend wrote about 50 lines of code to accomplish what we do in about 10 below. I [...]

The process of parsing text and making text links within it clickable is quite challenging, and well beyond the comprehension of my limited brain capacity. Fortunately, there are plenty of people out there who have released their own snippets of code that tend to accomplish the task quite well – particularly if you’re submitting text [...]