Today our partner site finalwebsites.com has announced an important update for the Access_user class. The update is a security update to make the script more safe against computer hacker. While there is not really a problem for existing, working applications, it’s advised to update applications very soon.

The release information:

This is an important (security related) update, in previous versions hackers can guess common and repeating passwords from user. While the “forgotten password” function was based on the password and the user id, it could be possible to change the password for some user (if the hacker knows the users id and the right password). The risk is not very high for most installations but could be work out some trouble. The new version doesn’t use the password for validation anymore. The login name (encrypted) is used together with some “secret” secret string. AU class user can replace the class file but need to update the method calls in the activate password script. You need to add the constant variable SECRET_STRING to the db_config.php file.

Download the updated version from the PHP class here.

For further questions about the class post them to the official support forum.

Setup a quick Yahoo Search page within a few minutes!

A few days ago the “old” Google web search API has stopped working for the web public. Not a big surprise after the release of the AJAX web search API. A customer of mine is using search results in his mini sites to give them a little more body. This is why I needed to look for some alternative. During the Zend PHP conference earlier this year, I got in touch with the Zend framework and learned that there is already a class to obtain results from the Yahoo search engine. The class has features to search the Yahoo API for web sites, image, news and the local search results.

Installing the library

I decided some time before to use the classes from the Zend framework for future projects because the classes are well written in PHP5. If you like to do the same you should install the lib on a central place on your web server to get access to the framework from all your websites. After uploading the files I added this row to .htaccess file for the website I’m working on:

php_value include_path ".:/home/mylocation_for_zend_framework/"

This way you’re able to access the classes without to think about the class paths. Of course you are free to add this include path to the php.ini file or to your apache configuration. (more…)

If you plan to sell physical products, digital products or even a large number of services from your website, you might be considering setting up a shopping cart. Many large eTailers offer checkout solutions for their websites, and as the internet has grown more “mature”, there are an increasing number of shopping cart solutions available.

However, before outright buying a shopping cart system for your website, there is something that you should consider. Mainly, whether you will run the shopping cart from your website or whether you will purchase, or “rent”, a shopping cart system from a third party website.

Remotely hosted shopping cart solution

Usually a hosted shopping cart solution requires little technical knowhow and less setup time than a shopping cart that you would run from your own website. Other than adding products, defining prices and setting up the shopping cart template, if this is an option, you’ll be up and running in a few days to as little as a few hours.

Some hosted shopping cart solutions offer optional marketing packages which may (or may not) help you drive targeted traffic to your shopping website. While these all-in-one shopping cart packages are normally pricey, they can certainly help the new online shop to get the most out of their new website right away without having to take the time to learn how to market on their own. (more…)