Kerygma Keeps Inspiring Me

After attending the KERYGMA CONFERENCE 2010, my life now has become more meaningful than before. Ask me "why?".

Time to time, I'm always thinking of what can I do make my life more meaningful and then "The Feast" come to me and then Kerygma Conference was introduced. If you want to change your life also and want to have this very good feeling of me right now then I adviced you to attend "The Feast Cebu" every Monday at CAP Building. There are 2 sessions now, its from 6:00pm - 8:00pm and will have 30-minute break for the next session at 8:30pm - 10:30pm. It's really great if you feel it for yourself personally.

Kerygma Conference 2010 was a SUCCESS

Dec. 4, 2010 - A day of success because I received God's blessings. Wait a minute, is this true? Do I really received God's blessings? Yes it is. Now, ask me "why?"...

I said this it's because I just knew the most important thing in my whole life - "I am an ambassador of God!", and I believe you are too. Aren't you blessed? Now tell this to youself : "I am blessed because I am an ambassador of God!". Say it again, "I am blessed because I am an ambassador of God!".

James Cuerpo Figues joined Multi Level Marketing

Hi guys, I know it's been a while that I haven't post something about the web or anything. I just been very busy because I am now trying my skills on another industry (maybe my IT skill will also be applicable but this is totally different field) - and this is the BUSINESS side of me. Recently, I just joined an MLM (Multi Level Marketing) company and everything goes fine and so far so good. Now, why did I do this? I'm an IT professional (Senior Web Developer) and now become an Independent Executive of a Networking company. I have a couple of reasons but the main reason is that : I see a very big potential income here (not being hypocrite).

SEO Link Building for the Success of your Website

One of the most important tasks in SEO is link building. I know you read and heard about this all over the internet and SEO masters are talking how important is this over again and again. If you don't have successful link building program for your web page, you will not gain high search engine rankings or traffic.

Sortables, Draggables and Droppables

Have you ever thought of having a web page elements that can be sorted, dragged and dropped? Well, thanks to Interface for giving a free plugin for this functionalities. What is Interface then? From Interface website, it is composed of rich interface components utilizing the use of the jQuery - a javascript library. With this collections of components, building web applications and interfaces is as easy as writing javascript with jQuery. Interface has two licenses : MIT license and the GPL, which means that you can use it for both commercial and non-commercial usage all for free as long as you keep the copyright notice in each of Interface's javascript source file.

Sviluppo Applicazioni Iphone

IRL Solutions - Sviluppo Applicazioni Iphone is a European based company, specializing a range of apple iphone and ipad applications (sviluppo applicazioni iphone e sviluppo applicazioni ipad) Application Development iPhone and Application Development iPad. You can rely on them on application development iPhone and iPad (sviluppo applicazioni iphone e ipad). As their website says - "Apple gives you 70 percent of earnings, besides notable advertising commissions as ensured by the company."

Free Website Templates at WEBSITE PLANET

Hi everyone! I'm sorry if I haven't post any topic in my blog lately. It's because I've been very busy on my other site. This new site is all about Free Website Templates. For now, I jhad just made a few web templates for you to download for free. But don't you worry, I will be updating the site from time to time and making a new website templates. So, want to see the site?

PHP Customized Tweeting for Twitter.com

Here is a php script which will let tweet on twitter.com providing your username, password and the message you want to tweet! Since this is a function, you can customize the code anyway you want to.

<?php

function tweet($message, $username, $password)
{
    $context = stream_context_create(array(
        'http' => array(
        'method'  => 'POST',
        'header'  => sprintf("Authorization: Basic %s\r\n", base64_encode($username.':'.$password)).
                   "Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n",
        'content' => http_build_query(array('status' => $message)),
        'timeout' => 5,
    ),
    ));
    $ret = file_get_contents('http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml', false, $context);
    return false !== $ret;
}

?>

Here is a simple code on using the tweeting function.

<?php

tweet('Php code tweeting!', 'username', 'password');

?>

Important Factors to Get High Google Page Rankings

Doing the right things in search engine optimization is the best way to succeed in acheiving high rankings on Google and other search engines. There are lots of factors that you have to work on to make your website performs better than your competitor's sites.

1. Accessibility of web pages

Search engines needs to access your web pages so make sure that the pages of your website are accessible. Search engines may ignore your site and won't get good rankings.

Points to make web pages accessible to search engines.

- Web servers must not return an error code when search engine spiders visit your web pages. Search engines won't index your site if this happens.

- Web pages contents must make sense to search engines. Avoid using Flash movies or images to present the main content of your web pages.

- Check the HTML code of your web pages. Some of HTML errors can prevent search engines from indexing your site. The fewer HTML errors your web pages

have, the better. You can check errors of your web page with HTML validator.

- The robots.txt file must allow search engines to index your web pages. Search engines won't list your website if you accidentally blocked all bots or all directories of your website (this can happen with a simply typo in the robots.txt file).

2. Right Choice of Keywords

The most important thing that determines whether your SEO campaign is a success or not is choosing the right keywords. It's best to focus on longer keywords for search engine optimization. One word keyword are much more competitive so this is not advisable for websites that are newly published.

3. Good Backlinks

It is impossible to get high rankings on major search engines like Google for Websites Without good backlinks. The links that point to your website have a major impact on the position of your web pages in Google's search results. Get as many good links as possible from related web sites.

4. Unique Website Content

Create unique and trustworthy content that separates your web site from the others. Websites that contains articles that can be found in most of other websites will have a hard time to get good search engine rankings. You can write on things that you know best. If you're an expert in a special field, write as much as possible about that field to make sure that your web pages becomes the best resource for that certain topic.

5. Meaningful Site and Information Architecture

Show search engines which pages of your website are related by using folders and logical linking. Search engines should figure out that a group of web pages on your site relates to a certain topic. A good site architecture shows search engines that your website is more than just a collection of random web pages.

Note : Search Engine Optimization is very tricky so be careful in optimizing your web pages because a small error in one element can pull your page ranking down.

Tips to get quality links for SEO

One of the important points about SEO is having right links. There are lots of ways to gained quality links.

1. Be involved in a community related to your topic

You can interact to web pages that has common interest to your site. You can contribute on forums or blogs that are related to your website. If you can build good reputation on these people in the community,there will be a great chance that they will link to your site.

2. Offer long-term, unique and compelling content

If your website is unique and compelling, more people would likely link to it. You can post unique articles or offer useful tools for people who used the internet regularly.

3. Solve problems of a targeted group of people

Publish tutorials like videos and articles on your website or offer practical tools for solutions to any prblems or answers to any questions. Most people now used the web whenever people needed help or some information. You can also attract good links through this mehod.

4. Humor and Entertainment

Contents that are humorous and entertaining is mostly shared more than ever before. If your the contents of your web pages offers something funny, chances are more people would like to link to your site.

5. Directories and link building

There are great directories that add value to the Internet. But be careful upon submitting your site because there are also a lot of low quality directories. Make sure that the directory is on topic, moderated, credible and well structured. Be sure also that your website will be added to the right category.

6. Consider social networking sites

Nowadays, more people spend a lot of their time on social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter. You can spread the contents of your site here to draw attention and build linking to your site easier for users that are less tech savvy.

Five Important Points About SEO

Most of the people thought that being listed on the first page in Google results upon searching a specific keyword will bring them more sales and visitors. However, there are lots of people who don't know the real concepts SEO (search engine optimization) and they expect something wrong about it. In fact, there are some webmasters that are still expecting that their website will be listed first on Google by just submitting their site to Google. Maybe it worked a long time ago but not nowadays.

1. SEO takes time

Search engine optimization needs time to take the results. Do not expect the results tomorrow or next week after you optimized your website today. Search engines have to update their index therefore they will find new pages that are optimized and new links to your website to improve your ranking score.

2. Web pages must be up to date

Keywords must appear on your web pages to get high rankings for that certain keywords. But there's an exception, if there are lots of other websites that link to your website with that keyword, you can also get high rankings for that certain keyword even if that is not listed on your website.

The keywords you want to be on top in search engines must appear in the right elements on your web pages. So from now and then, you have to update the HTML code of your web pages to make the search engine spiders or robots easily parse or crawl your site.

3. Choose the right keywords

Optimizing your website needs the right keywords. SEO is not about getting a high Google Pagerank. It is about having high listing for the right keywords therefore the right people searching for the them would come to your site. You just have to optimize your website for keywords that can attract the right kind of visitors to your web pages.

4. You need right links

The key to high rankings on Google are good backlinks. Usually, a lot of people create backlinks automatically but this won't help the rankings of your site instead they might get you banned from Google's and other search engines' index.

Right links come from related websites which contains the right keywords in the link text. To get good links from other websites, make your web pages attractive and have contents that are worthy to link with so that other people can talk about and share to other people.

5. You must be realistic

Search engines like Google have more trust on old and established websites that have a lot of backlinks. Getting on the first result page for a highly competitive keyword is very difficult so start optimizing on less competitive keywords and then proceed to the more competitive terms. Search engines must have to build trust to your website before they give your web pages good rankings for highly competitive keywords.

Add Facebook Like Button on Blog Post

Facebook has developed a lot of Social plugins which can easily be embeded and connected to other web applications such as blogs. I 've been posting about creating facebook official page amd promoting facebook page with like box plugin before and now, what I will post is to add a Facebook Like button in every post of your blog. This will let your readers to share your posts to their facebook accounts which will also let you know how many people liked your post. For the demo, notice the like button after every title of my posts. To have this on your blog, just follow the simple instructions below.

1. Login to your Blogger Account. Click on Design and then Edit HTML.

2. Check box beside the statement “Expand Widget Templates”.

3. You can actually place the like button anywhwere you want. In my case I place it after my Post Title. To do this, look for

and below this place the code below. You can also place it after your blog post and in this case place the following code after .

<iframe allowTransparency='true' expr:src='"http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=" + data:post.url + "&layout=standard&show_faces=false&width=100&action=like&font=arial&colorscheme=light"' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:40px;'/>

4. Click on SAVE TEMPLATE button and reload your blog to view the changes you have made. The like button must now appear in each of your post.

CSS Transparency Effect for All Browsers

Another interesting property of CSS or Cascading Style Sheets is transparency. Like the border radius property, which you can see on my post about CSS rounded corners with no images, this is treated differently in all browsers. It will take a four statements to completely make transparency effect in all browsers. But you don't have to worry on this statements because they will not interfere with each other. Below is the CSS statements for a class to make a 50% transparency effect.

.transparent_class {
    opacity: 0.5; /* standard CSS */
    filter:alpha(opacity=50); /* Internet Explorer */
    -moz-opacity:0.5; /* Mozilla Firefox */
    -khtml-opacity: 0.5; /* Safari */
}

Javascript Floating Images on a Web Page

Here is a javascript code which will make images floating and moving in any direction on your web page. You can see the demo of this functionality at SEMAJ - The Officail Site of James Cuerpo Figues. Notice the two animated butterflies looks like flying around my web page. If you want this on your website, I provided the download link below. Just open the index.html on your browser and you can see the sample page containing floating images. You can copy the codes easily and apply it to your web page if you want.

Download the source code of floating images in zip file by clicking here.

PHP Check if Javascipt is Enabled in Browser

Do you want to check in php if javascript is enabled or not? Now, here is a simple trick in php to check if you have javascript enabled in your browser. The trick is that you have a form with a hidden value which will be set as on if it is submitted by a javascript code. Of course, if the form was not submitted, javascript is disabled in your browser. Please read the comments carefully so that you will be guided with the code.

<?php

// this would not work if no html tags
// you can comment the line after this if you already have a open html and body tag
echo '<html><body>';
// stores the value of js if the form is submitted otherwise off
$js = array_key_exists('js', $_POST) ? $_POST['js'] : '';
// if $js is on, the form was submitted by the javascript submit()
if ($js=="on"){
    echo "Javascript is enabled.";
}
// otherwise display the form and try to submit the form with javascript
else{
    echo '<form name="js_form" method="post"><input type="hidden" name="js" value="on"></form>';
    echo '<script type="text/javascript">document.js_form.submit()</script>';
    echo "Javascript is disabled.";
}
// you can comment the line after this if you already have a close body and html tag
echo '</body></html>';

?>

Dynamic Multiple File Uploads in PHP

I have a PHP script here which will let you specify the folder name and the number of files to be uploaded. Here is the preview.

This program has basic form validation and notifications on entering the data for the file uploads. You are free to copy the code and customize it the way you want it to be. I also provided comments in every lines of code for your guide in tracing or debugging.

<?php

// display open div wrapper
echo "<div class='wrapper'>";
// form for folder name and number of files
$num_form = "<form method=post>
    <table border='0' width='400' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='3' align=center>
    <tr><td>Folder Name</td><td>
    <input type=text name='fname' class='bginput'></td></tr>
    <tr><td>Number of Files</td><td>
    <input type=text name='num_imgs' class='bginput'></td></tr>
    <tr><td><input type=submit name='go' value='GO »' /></td></tr>
    </form>";


// check if the form for folder name and number of files was submitted
if(isset($_POST['go'])){
    //check if both fields were provided data
    if($_POST['fname']=='' || $_POST['num_imgs']==''){
       // notify the data error
       echo "<div class='notify'>Please provide data on both fields.</div>" . $num_form;
    }
    // check if the number of files is valid
    else if(number_format((int) $_POST['num_imgs']) == 0){
       // notify invalid number errors
       echo "<div class='notify'>Invalid number of images inputted.</div>" . $num_form;
    }
    else{
       // get the current directory path
       $thisdir = getcwd();
       // check if the directory already exists
       if(!is_dir($_POST['fname'])){
          // create the directory and change the file permissions
          mkdir(($thisdir.'/'.$_POST['fname']) , 0777);
}
       // form for file uploads
       $form = "<form method=post enctype='multipart/form-data'>";
       $form .= "<table border='0' width='400' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='0' align=center>";
       // input fields depending on the number of files entered
       for($i=1; $i<=$_POST['num_imgs']; $i++){
          $form .= "<tr><td>Image $i</td><td>
          <input type=file name='images[]' class='bginput'></td></tr>";
       }
       $form .= "<tr><td colspan=2 align=center><input type=submit name='add_image' value='Upload Files'></td></tr>";
       $form .= "<input type='hidden' name='fname' value=".$_POST['fname']." />";
       $form .= "</form> </table>";
       // display form file uploads
      echo $form;
    }
}
// check if form file uploads was submitted
else if(isset($_POST['add_image'])){
    // check file name was set
    if(isset($_FILES['images']['name'])){
       // counter for files uploaded
       $ctr = 0;
       // loop through all files to be uploaded
       while(list($key,$value) = each($_FILES['images']['name'])){
          // check if any blank field is entered
          if(!empty($value)){
             // increment counter
             $ctr++;
             // filename stores the value
             $filename = $value;
             // replace blank space with _
             $filename=str_replace(" ","_",$filename);
             //folder name
             $foldername = $_POST['fname'];
             // set upload directory path
             $add = "$foldername/$filename";
             // upload the file to the server
             copy($_FILES['images']['tmp_name'][$key], $add);
          }
       }
       // notify successful uploads
       echo "<div class='notify'>You have successfully uploaded $ctr file(s).</div>";
       echo "<br/><a href='multiple-uploads.php'><button>Upload more files »</button></a>";
    }
}
else{
    // display form for folder name and number of files
    echo $num_form;
}
// display close div wrapper
echo "</div";

?>

I have also here the CSS code for basic formatting of the program.

.wrapper {
    font-family:Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;
    font-size:12px;
    width:420px;
    margin:0 auto;
    padding: 10px;
    background:#f4f4f4;
}

.notify{
    padding:2px 10px;
    background:#fff;
}

CSS Rounded Corners With No Images

Rounded corners in CSS today is now possible without using images with the border-radius property.

This can be done by the following CSS code in Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari, Google Chrome, iCab and Konqueror.

.rounded-corners {

    border-radius: 20px; /* CSS 3 */
    -o-border-radius: 20px; /* Opera */
    -icab-border-radius: 20px; /* iCab */
    -khtml-border-radius: 20px; /* Konqueror */
    -moz-border-radius: 20px; /* Mozilla Firefox */
    -webkit-border-radius: 20px; /* Safari */

}

But this method does not have the same implementaion in different browsers and not all browsers support this property most especially internet explorer. Even IE8 does not support border radius. But this does not mean that it is not possible to have rounded corners in IE.

I tried googling about css rounded corners for internet explorer, and find this HTML REMIX CSS Curved corner (border-radius) cross browser. They had a detailed instruction and demo on how to make rounded corners possible in all browsers including IE6, IE7 and IE8. They also provide updates so I believe you can easily do this on your own. Just follow the easy steps they provide and you can now possibly made a cross browser rounded corners with no images used.

Promote Facebook Page with Like Box Plugin

This post is actually a continuation on my post about creating a facebook official page. This time, we will create a code to embed in our website to promote the page we had just created. If you don't have a facebook official page yet, you can visit the post about Facebook Official Page for Website.

1. Go to facebook home page or you can click facebook home page. Log in to your account and on the left side below your profile image try to locate "Ads and Pages" and click on it.

If you can not find the "Ads and Pages" link, you can look for your page by typing the page name in the search bar. You will be redirected to your page after clicking on it.

Now, click on "Edit Page" below the image of your page on the left.

 2. On the right part of the page, click on "Promote with a Like Box" under Promote your Page section.

3. You are now on the Social plugins creator for Like Box. There is a default like box on the preview, you can change it by changing Facebook Page ID field by profile_id in the url and the preview will automatically change to your page. You can customize it by changing the remaining fields.

4. After you decided your Like Box would look like, you can now click on the "Get Code" button.

5. You can now see your Like Box plugin code. You can select between iframe or XFBML which you would like to embed to your website.

6. You can now copy the code and paste it on the page you wanted for your website. You can see my facebook official page like box at the right side of my website.

Facebook Official Page for Website

Inside the world wide web, who does not know about Facebook? I think almost everyone has account on this famous social networking site to connect with your friends all over the world. Today, this is not only used as medium of communication but also useful in promoting a business, celebrity, band, product or even organization.

Now, I will teach you how to create your own fan page on facebook. The steps are very easy but I believe it would be much easier if there are thumbnails on the steps.

1. Go to facebook home page. At the bottom of page below the sign up form, you can see the link Create a Page then click on it.

2. You are now on the create page area where in you can see the form. Select between the three radio buttons depending on the page you want to promote. A drop down selection will appear for you to select specifically your interest.

3. Enter the name of your page on the "Page Name" field and check the box before the statement "I'm the official representative of this person..." and then click on the "Create Official Page" button.

4. If you are currently log in to your facebook account, you will skip this step. If not, you have to log in if you already have an existing account otherwise you have to select the statement "I do not have a Facebook account" and create a new one of course for free.

5. Now, you have  successfully created your own official facebook page. You can customize your page as long as you want like :

     - Browse and upload an image or take a picture from your computer if you have the camera.

     - Provide your basic information about you and your page.

     - Post status updates for your page.

     - Promote your page on your website.

     - Set up your mobile phone for your page.

     - Connect with your twitter account to send status to your followers.

Add Paypal Donation Button to Website

Do you want to have a paypal donation button for your web page where in your avid visitors of your website will donate some money for your effort? You can follow the simple steps:

1. Log in to your Paypal account. If you don't have a paypal account, you can visit paypal page and get a Free Paypal account by clicking sign up.

2. After the successfull log in, click on the "Merchant Services" tab.

3. Scroll down your browser window and  in the right part of the page under Key Features, click "Donations".

4. You will see some options where "Donations" is the selected, just leave it this way. Fill out the first field (Organization name/service) which is required and all the remaining fields are optional. You can customize your button and preview it. You can now click "Create Button".

5. Now, you will see the page containing the html code for your paypal donation. Copy the code and place it to your web page and your done.

You now have a donation button for your website.

Force Download File Using PHP Header Function

Do you want to have a web page that has a script that can make a force download.

I have an example here using PHP to push the file to the browser. To trigger the download of the file, we will use HTML header statements. In PHP, this is possible using header function in passing raw HTML headers to the browser. In this example we will pass the filename in the url for instance - www.domainname.com/download.php?file=filename.zip. Of course, you can customize the codes according to the functionality of your website.

<?php

//path directory of the file
$dir="downloads/";
//cehck if there is a file passed
if (isset($_REQUEST["file"])) {
    //concatinate the directory and the filename
    $file=$dir.$_REQUEST["file"];
    //set HTML headers that must be sent to the browser.
    header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
    header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
    header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename='.basename($file));
    header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
    header('Expires: 0');
    header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
    header('Pragma: public');
    header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($file));
    ob_clean();
    flush();
    //read the file
    readfile($file);
    exit;
}
else {
    //prompt if no file selected
    echo "No file selected";
}

?>

Click here for the php header manual

WampServer - Install PHP Apache MySQL on Windows

If you are a web developer and want to install php, apache and mysql on Microsoft Windows operating system then I highly recommend you to use Wampserver. WampServer 2 is the new version of WAMP5. You just have to download the latest stable version at Wampserver Download Page. Just Click "DOWNLOAD WampServer" and the download window will appear shortly and then hit "Save File".

After the download is completed, locate the executable file and double click it to start the installation process. Just follow the usual installation steps on windows because everything is automatic. When the installation is finished, run the wampserver executable file. Just click the Wampserver trayicon to manage your server and its settings.

A "www" directory is created (generally c:\wamp\www) when you installed WampServer. Create a directory inside "www" for your project and where you should place your PHP files.
To view all your projects on the browser, click on the link "Localhost" in the WampServer menu or open the http://localhost address.

Now, you are ready to create your projects with php running in apache with mysql for the database.

Create Zip Archive File using PHP ZipArchive

Do you want to place certain files on a zip archive file? In php this is possible using the ZipArchive class - a file archive, compressed with Zip. Below is the sample code program of this functionality.

<?php

//sample files in an array to be compressed
$files = array(
    'images/img1.png',
    'images/img2.png',
    'images/img3.png',
    'images/img4.png',
    'images/img5.png'
);

//returns true if creation succeed and false if zip creation failed
$result = create_zip($files,'my-archive.zip');

//function that creates a compressed zip file
function create_zip($files = array(),$destination = '',$overwrite = false) {
    //if the zip file already exists and overwrite is false, return false
    if(file_exists($destination) && !$overwrite) { return false; }
    //variable declaration
    $valid_files = array();
    //if files are valid
    if(is_array($files)) {
        //loops and check each file
        foreach($files as $file) {
            //check if file exists and store in array
            if(file_exists($file)) {
                $valid_files[] = $file;
            }
        }
    }
    //check if there are valid files
    if(count($valid_files)) {
       //create the zip archive object
       $zip = new ZipArchive();
       if($zip->open($destination,$overwrite ? ZIPARCHIVE::OVERWRITE :     ZIPARCHIVE::CREATE) !== true) {
           return false;
       }
        //add files to the object
        foreach($valid_files as $file) {
          $zip->addFile($file,$file);
        }

       //close the zip after adding the files
        $zip->close();

        //check if the destination file exists
        return file_exists($destination);
    }
    else {
        return false;
    }
}

?>

Click here to view the manual on ZipArchive