Category: Technology

There is an option for users on a PHPBB forum to receive an email notification when there has been a reply posted to a specific thread. I usually switch off the option for my own account, because all the extra emails annoy me. So I didn’t know when one of the forums I help administer started having a problem with this.

The users who reported it claimed the notifications had stopped a few days ago. The last change made to the forum was a few weeks ago when I installed an upgrade patch. There didn’t seem to be any explanation for it.

I did a search on Google and there were a couple of reported instances, which all seemed to have something to do with the host server implementing anti-spam measures. It is very likely to be what has occurred in this case. To find a solution I had to find a different way for our forum to send the mail.

It was quite easy in the end. I enabled the option for users to send email to each other from the forum (I’m not sure why this had to be done, but it wouldn’t work otherwise). I changed the mail sending config from ‘mail’ to ‘smpt’ and specified the hosting account username and password. For the mail server I specified ‘localhost’. Did the trick!

I’ve been offered an opportunity to work on a civic web site project by a joint venture group based in Melbourne. The job came up by chance and is on a tight schedule – would normally be subject to a formal tendering process. It is a basic web site, requiring strict attention to web accessibility standards and utilising the open source Drupal content management system.

I am familiar with Drupal, having run test installations of it although I’ve never done any extensive work with it – never really had the right project. Looks like I’ll be doing some light reading – the Drupal handbook this weekend.

Project specs include:
Calendar – http://drupal.org/project/calendar/
WYSIWYG editor – http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/tinymce

This is the final Enetica script I’m working on – having finished the register and manage scripts, I am now working on the hosting order script.

Only 10 templates to work on:

UPDATE: compared to the other two, this was a snap. Skin updated in a couple of hours.

Following on from Part 1 where I re-skinned the domain registration script I am now working on the domain management script, where the client updates their contact details and manages their domain name.

There are 23 HTML templates for this script:

UPDATE: compared to the register script this one was painless. About 5 hours to re-skin the domain management interface and no alterations/bugs to deal with in the script.

This is a project I’m undertaking for my web design business. The reseller client code from Enetica incorporates an interface with their RWI with a suite of Perl scripts based on OpenSRS. The HTML is a bit messy and non-standards compliant, so I’m tidying it up to incorporate XHTML and a stylesheet.

There are three sets of scripts in the suite that I intend to use – the domain registration, the domain management, and the hosting order.

PART ONE: Domain registration templates

27 template files referenced in the register.cgi script. That’s an improvement on the 60 odd template files that are still included in the download. At one stage they seem to have had domain registration and domain manage in one script, but they have now split it into two without tidying up the obsolete template files. At least, that’s what I think has happened. I wont go deleting any of the template files just yet.

One of the problems I’ve encountered in the register.cgi script is a couple of issues with the ‘domain extras’ – url forwarding, email forwarding, email forwarding with spam/virus filtering and dns hosting. Firstly the programming doesn’t provide for anything but free url forwarding, so it is a problem if you intend to charge for the service. Secondly the script allows a multiple number of domains to be registered, but doesn’t tally all the extras per domain correctly. Thirdly there is no notification to reseller of domain extras ordered other than dns hosting.

UPDATE: To address the issues I removed the multiple domain ordering options (although I left the shopping cart functionality there just in case). In the config I created a value for the url forwarding cost and replaced the email forwarding array with a single value (since WWD is only offering one email forwarding package, it removed a few complications). I changed the extras template to offer these as checkbox rather than radio options. The code is not elegant but it seems to be working the way I want now, and the new skin looks good.

I notice that the extras options do not write to Enetica’s ordering system, you must still create this manually in the RWI – but at least the options show up on the email notifications now. I estimate spending about 20 hours on this, hopefully my next step of re-skinning the domain management interface will be easier.

Previously I was using Ryan Duff’s anti-header injection WP-ContactForm, but this seems to have gone the way of the dodo – for the last few months there have been only blank pages where ryanduff.net used to be.

Those irrepressible spammers seemed to have worked their way around Ryan’s coding, creating the need for extra measures to counter the junk. I’ve noticed a couple of mods such as Douglas Karr’s which adds a challenge question to the form, and Blogging Expertise’s Akismet Edition.

In the middle of looking at all this I discovered an entirely different contact form which I immediately fell in love with, it is more configurable than WP-ContactForm and even includes a suite of different stylesheets based on the most popular WordPress themes. It was developed by Mike Cherim and Mike Jolley, and incorporates principles of web accessibility which make it very easy to use.

Go to Mike Cherim’s WordPress-Ready Contact Form v.2.0WP page to download the plugin. Thanks guys!