Protecting sensitive personal data with encryption
It is a common situation to want to store data about a person in a database. For example their name, address, phone number etc. In many countries it is illegal to store this data without some form of protection but even without such a law it is common courtesy to look after this data to the best of your ability. You don’t know how well your hosting company looks after this data so why take the risk. This data should be encrypted.
This tutorial will show you a simple example of a user registration system. It hasn’t been designed as a class you can plug in to your application. Instead it is a tutorial to show you how to use the mcrypt functions within your application.
This is not a complete solution to your security worries! You will almost certainly need to consider other factors to build a secure application but this is a good start. So if your hosting company (or government department!) puts your database on a couple of cds and puts them in the post (mail) you can sleep better at night knowing your data is safe.
htaccess: Stopping “page not found” errors
Stop Page not found errors when you restructure or move your site
Its a problem I come across often. Someone does a complete site redesign and all the filenames and paths have changed. They are really pleased with their new site. It looks good and works well. But what they don’t realise is their users aren’t so happy. Why? Well perhaps they have bookmarked one of your old pages. Or perhaps they type a search phrase into a search engine and it returns a link to your old pages. In both cases they will get “Page not found”.
Candle Flame
In this Candle Tutorial, I’ll show you how you can make a lit candle from shapes. These basic techniques can be applied to many different situations, and the fire technique can be adopted for any image that requires flame.
Quick Emo / Goth Makeover
Whether you’re just trying to see how you’d look in a different style, or you’re messing with a friend (or enemy’s) picture for laughs, changing someone from a “normal” look to a “goth” look is both fun and easy.
In this Photoshop tutorial, I will step you through some easy techniques that will allow you to quickly and easily recreate this effect on your own photographs.
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Quick Anime Avatar
In this tutorial, I’ll step you through how to create an anime avatar in Photoshop CS3.
Paypal IPN: receiving instant payments in your web application.
This paypal ipn tutorial explains how to use Paypals IPN system with a simple single item purchase. Instant Payment Notification allows you to integrate your PayPal payments with your website’s back-end operations, so you get immediate notification and authentication of the PayPal payments you receive. The main use of IPN is where your website needs to know immediately that payment has been made. For example you might have sold something that you will then make available for the user to download.
There is a lot of information on the Paypal website which is worth looking at but the following paypal ipn example will show you in detail a real world example of how to use it.
Create a United States Flag
In this tutorial, I will teach you how to create an American flag in Photoshop, quickly and easily.
hope you like it.
Jimmy Hendrix Signature
There’s nothing like a signature creation to brighten up your day and brush up on your skills.
This is an in depth tutorial made for beginners that will show you step by step how to compose a well structured signature for all of the beginner GFX’rs out there.
This tutorial touches on a range of skills in photoshop, designed to exercise your photoshop skills.
