ZADRO Solutions

Sending mail in PHP - avoid sending to junk folder

Dario Zadro — Mon, 24 May 2010 13:59:16 +0000

We all know that PHP is great for back-end development. However, some functions can be tricky to fine tune for the best web development possible. The mail() function has a high probability of sending mail to user’s “junk” or spam folders because the connection was not authenticated. To avoid that, use the following function below. This assumes you have PEAR setup and working properly.

require_once "Mail.php";
$from = "Sandra Sender "; $to = "Ramona Recipient "; $subject = "Hi!"; $body = "Hi,\n\nHow are you?";
$host = "mail.example.com";
$username = "smtp_username";
$password = "smtp_password";
$headers = array (‘From’ => $from,
‘To’ => $to,
‘Subject’ => $subject);
$smtp = Mail::factory(’smtp’,
array (‘host’ => $host,
‘auth’ => true,
‘username’ => $username,
‘password’ => $password));
$mail = $smtp->send($to, $headers, $body);
if (PEAR::isError($mail)) {
echo("
" . $mail->getMessage() . "
");
} else {
echo("
Message successfully sent!
");
}
?>

jQuery slideUp stops working in 1.3.2

Dario Zadro — Wed, 19 May 2010 22:14:50 +0000

After testing across a couple browsers and having some of them work. I figured there must be a bug in jquery. Turns out I was correct. Here’s the quick fix. Please make sure to backup your .js files before making any changes to them. Use these updates at your own risk. I will post the related jquery references at the end of this post. Make sure to check which version of jquery you’re using first. Generally, there is the normal version and min version. I do not have the fix for the compact version listed.

For the “normal” version:

Find the code:
return elem.offsetWidth === 0 || elem.offsetHeight === 0

Change to:
return elem.offsetWidth === 0 && elem.offsetHeight === 0

For the “min” version:

Find the code:
return T.offsetWidth===0||T.offsetHeight===0

Change to:
return T.offsetWidth===0&&T.offsetHeight===0

This is the ticket regarding the issue:
http://dev.jquery.com/ticket/4374

And here’s the fix for it:
http://dev.jquery.com/changeset/6282

That’s it!

What is Social Media?

Dario Zadro — Wed, 05 May 2010 20:07:40 +0000

I attended a conference yesterday where one of the topics was, “What is Social Media?”. I have to mention up front that all the audience members were business owners or representing their business. There was a panel of 4 “experts” that, quite honestly, didn’t do the topic justice. They completely left out the most important part of social media when running a business. We will get to that in a little bit.

Their first question to the audience was to define social media. I thought this was an excellent way to open the segment. And, people in the audience rambled off all the buzzwords: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, and the rest. The second question was to define the use of social media. Almost the entire audience thought social media was nothing more than a “networking” tool!

Even worse, more people in the audience are networking via LinkedIn rather than Facebook. With 435 million subscribers on Facebook and only 65 million on LinkedIn…well, you do the math. One might argue that LinkedIn is more “professional” than Facebook. This might be a valid argument, but we still didn’t get to the 1 and only point to social media for business.

Ok, I won’t keep you waiting any longer. The ONLY reason you should be leveraging Social Media in your business plan is to drive traffic to your website! Period. You can have a thousand friends following you on Twitter, but if you’re not directing them to useful information on your website, it’s all pointless. All the social media outlets should be used and treated like the rest of your marketing material. Actually, this is the new way to market. Print media has been dead for a while. TV ads are great for Coke and Pepsi, but most companies can’t compete at that level.

It doesn’t matter where the traffic is coming from. As long as your name is out there. The larger the reach, the more traffic you drive to your website. Simple, right? LinkedIn isn’t even in the top 20 when it comes to site ranking. For site ranking, check out Alexa.

Once you leverage social media to drive traffic to your website with useful content, you will gain Page Rank on your website. Gaining page rank on your website means better results in Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Bottom line is that Social Media is a powerful tool to increase your SEO efforts by driving traffic to your website. That’s it!

If you would like to setup a proactive plan to increase traffic to your website through proper Search Engine Optimization, please click on contact and reach out. There is no obligation and the benefit could easily double your leads and call volume when done correctly.

noindex and nofollow explained

Dario Zadro — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:16:01 +0000

There are a lot of people who throw around these search engine optimization terms as if they know what they’re talking about. I’m going to try and break it down in layman’s terms so that you can talk intelligently about them to others.

Also, you might have heard people mention “dofollow’ links. I just want to make you aware that no such link exists in the source code. It is only a term to describe the opposite of a “nofollow” link. Ok, let’s get started…

I’m sure you’re more than aware that “robots” crawl websites. This is how the big dogs such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing store or index your page in their database servers. There are a lot of other crawlers or spiders out there doing the same thing. They all act a little differently. Just know that “indexing” a page is nothing more than the search engine company adding it to their database.

The “nofollow” tag is used to disallow the page rank of linking site to affect your site. If you’re just getting your site off the ground, you probably wouldn’t want to “nofollow” any links in hopes to gain the page rank (PR) of the link. The robots don’t crawl what we humans see in the browser, but rather the source code behind the scenes. If you ever want to look at the “source” of a website, just right-click on the page and choose “view source code”.

Once you get into the source code, you will see a lot of stuff going on in there. For this topic, we are only concerned with the stuff between the “head” tags or on an anchor tag. Let’s start with the “head” tag.

In the “head” tag, you can apply the “noindex” and “nofollow” tag to the entire page like so:

"robot" content="noindex,nofollow">

Doing this at the page level of your site is very dangerous to YOUR page. Once Google gets a “noindex” directive on a page/link, it will remove it from their servers. If you have a custom footer with links to your site, you are hurting all YOUR links! On the flip side, if you have a family photo album or private landing pages, this is a great idea to keep them private. Again, make sure you don’t have any links on the page that you WANT to be indexed. The “nofollow” attribute will not give any rank back to all the links on the page.

The other way to apply these attributes is in the link like so:

"http://www.example.com/" rel="nofollow">anchor text

Just know that the “noindex” link can only be applied in the meta tag like in the first example. This second example is showing how to protect your page by not allow the specific link(s) to affect your rank. If you don’t use the “nofollow” attribute on links or pages, you will be passing your valuable rank to them. If they don’t reciprocate a link back to you, I would “nofollow” all links. Most blog sites will apply the “nofollow” attribute to all their comments.

Hope this helps in your quest to climb the ranks of SEO!

Avaya IP Office 4.2 Direct Voicemail Transfer

Dario Zadro — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:46:16 +0000

Most clients want a “transfer to voicmail” button. I don’t know why Avaya doesn’t just make this a simple feature. Regardless, I could not get this to work. I’ve done it a 100 times, but still no luck. It seems that there might be something wrong with 4.2 and specifically build 4. More than likely, your IP Office 406v2 already has build 5 ready to upgrade. You can check by:

File -> advanced -> upgrade

You will see any available builds. BUT WAIT: before you do the upgrade, make sure your phones are prepared for the firmware upgrade. Your phones, in my case usually a 5410, will get it’s directive from the NoUser profile. Simply go in this profile and add a new source number:

ALLOW_5410_UPGRADES

Now you can go back to the system upgrade in the first step above. After that is complete, you can add the short code:

Code: #XXX
Feature: Voicemail Collect
Tel Number: “#”N

That should do it.

Windows Command Line and Shortcuts

Dario Zadro — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 22:11:33 +0000

Everyone can use a handy little cheat sheet for all the Windows shortcuts and command line references. The first part of this list are commands you can type directly into the “run” box of Windows XP. For Windows Vista and Windows 7, just click the circle start button and type in the part before the dash for quick access to that service. The second part of this list are useful Windows shortcuts that everyone can use daily. Hope this saves you some time when on Windows.

Calc - Calculator
Cfgwiz32 - ISDN Configuration Wizard
Charmap - Character Map
Chkdisk - Repair damaged files
Cleanmgr - Cleans up hard drives
Clipbrd - Windows Clipboard viewer
Cmd - Opens a new Command Window (cmd.exe)
Control - Displays Control Panel
Dcomcnfg - DCOM user security
Debug - Assembly language programming tool
Defrag - Defragmentation tool
Drwatson - Records programs crash & snapshots
Dxdiag - DirectX Diagnostic Utility
Explorer - Windows Explorer
Fontview - Graphical font viewer
Ftp - ftp.exe program
Hostname - Returns Computer’s name
Ipconfig - Displays IP configuration for all network adapters
Jview - Microsoft Command-line Loader for Java classes
MMC - Microsoft Management Console
Msconfig - Configuration to edit startup files
Msinfo32 - Microsoft System Information Utility
Nbtstat - Displays stats and current connections using NetBios over TCP/IP
Netstat - Displays all active network connections
Nslookup- Returns your local DNS server
Ping - Sends data to a specified host/IP
Regedit - egistry Editor
Regsvr32 - egister/de-register DLL/OCX/ActiveX
Regwiz - Reistration wizard
Sfc /scannow - Sytem File Checker
Sndrec32 - Sound Recorder
Sndvol32 - Volume control for soundcard
Sysedit - Edit system startup files (config.sys, autoexec.bat, win.ini, etc.)
Taskmgr - Task manager
Telnet - Telnet program
Tracert - Traces and displays all paths required to reach an internet host
Winipcfg - Displays IP configuration
certmgr.msc - Certificate Manager
ciadv.msc - Indexing Service
compmgmt.msc - Computer management
devmgmt.msc - Device Manager
dfrg.msc - Defragment
diskmgmt.msc - Disk Management
fsmgmt.msc - Folder Sharing Management
eventvwr.msc - Event Viewer
gpedit.msc - Group Policy -XP Pro only
iis.msc - Internet Information Services
lusrmgr.msc - Local Users and Groups
mscorcfg.msc - Net configurations
ntmsmgr.msc - Removable Storage
perfmon.msc - Performance Manager
secpol.msc - Local Security Policy
services.msc - System Services
wmimgmt.msc - Windows Management
access.cpl - Accessibility Options
hdwwiz.cpl - Add New Hardware Wizard
appwiz.cpl - dd/Remove Programs
timedate.cpl - Date and Time Properties
desk.cpl - Display Properties
inetcpl.cpl - Internet Properties
joy.cpl - Joystick Properties
main.cpl keboard - Keyboard Properties
main.cpl - Mouse Properties
ncpa.cpl - Network Connections
ncpl.cpl - Network Properties
telephon.cpl - Phone and Modem options
powercfg.cpl - Power Management
intl.cpl - Regional settings
mmsys.cpl sounds - Sound Properties
mmsys.cpl - Sounds and Audio Device Properties
sysdm.cpl - System Properties
nusrmgr.cpl - User settings
firewall.cpl - Firewall Settings (sp2)
wscui.cpl - Security Center (sp2)

%ALLUSERSPROFILE% - Open the All User’s Profile
%HomeDrive% - Opens your home drive e.g. C:\
%UserProfile% - Opens you User’s Profile
%temp% Opens - temporary file Folder
%systemroot% - Opens Windows folder

CTRL+C(Copy)
CTRL+X (Cut)
CTRL+Z (Undo)
DELETE (Delete)
SHIFT+DELETE (Delete the selected item permanently without placing the item in the Recycle Bin)
CTRL while dragging an item (Copy the selected item)
CTRL+SHIFT while dragging an item (Create a shortcut to the selected item)
F2 key (Rename the selected item)
CTRL+RIGHT ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next word)
CTRL+LEFT ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous word)
CTRL+DOWN ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next paragraph)
CTRL+SHIFT with any of the arrow keys (Highlight a block of text)
CTRL+UP ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous paragraph)
SHIFT with any of the arrow keys (Select more than one item in a window or on the desktop, or select text in a document)
CTRL+A (Select all)
F3 key (Search for a file or a folder)
ALT+ENTER (View the properties for the selected item)
ALT+F4 (Close the active item, or quit the active program)
ALT+ENTER (Display the properties of the selected object)
ALT+SPACEBAR (Open the shortcut menu for the active window)
CTRL+F4 (Close the active document in programs that enable you to have multiple documents open simultaneously)
ALT+TAB (Switch between the open items)
ALT+ESC (Cycle through items in the order that they had been opened)
F6 key (Cycle through the screen elements in a window or on the desktop)
F4 key (Display the Address bar list in My Computer or Windows Explorer)
SHIFT+F10 (Display the shortcut menu for the selected item)
ALT+SPACEBAR (Display the System menu for the active window)
CTRL+ESC (Display the Start menu)
ALT+Underlined letter in a menu name (Display the corresponding menu)
Underlined letter in a command name on an open menu (Perform the corresponding command)
F10 key (Activate the menu bar in the active program)
RIGHT ARROW (Open the next menu to the right, or open a submenu)
LEFT ARROW (Open the next menu to the left, or close a submenu)
F5 key (Update the active window)
BACKSPACE (View the folder one level up in My Computer or Windows Explorer)
ESC (Cancel the current task)
SHIFT when you insert a CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive (Prevent the CD-ROM from automatically playing)
CTRL+SHIFT+ESC (Open Task Manager

Disable Windows Genuine Advantage for MS Office

Dario Zadro — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:52:04 +0000

You might come across some clients that have VALID volume license keys for office, but Windows is still flagging the Office application as not genuine. This could happen if the user might have installed a version in the past that wasn’t licensed properly. Here’s a solution to remove the message. Again, this is only to be done if the VLK is VALID.

1. Run Registry Editor (RegEdit.exe)
2. Highlight and select “my computer” on the left
3. Press Ctrl-F to open search box, and search for OGAAddin.connect registry key
4. Press F3 until you see LoadBehavior in the right side
5. In the right pane, right click on Load Behavior and select Modify
6. Change the value data from 3 to 0
7. Repeat steps 4-6 for each and every LoadBehavior found

Changes to the registry are at your OWN RISK.

Avaya VM Pro Nights Fallback Different Greeting

Dario Zadro — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 02:24:14 +0000

You might need to have a greeting for the “main” route and one for the “nights” mode. VM Pro doesn’t really operate as you might intuitively think with the help documentation. You would think that the Night Fallback Group would go directly into that auto-attendant, but it doesn’t. So how do you do it?

First, you need to create two groups. The first group can be called Main and the second will be Nights. Next, make a new short code *800 where Feature: VM Collect and Telephone Number: #Nights. You will also create a virtual user called NightUser. A virtual user is nothing more than a user with no extension. Make this virtual user unconditional forward to *800 (the new short code).

For the Main group:

1. Make sure queuing if off
2. Make sure voicemail is on
3. The ring mode should be collective
4. Fallback for the night service will be the Nights group
5. Add your users that should ring in the office

For the Nights group:

1. Make sure queuing is off
2. Make sure vm is on
3. Ring mode has to be sequential
4. for all fallback groups
5. Add ONLY NightUser to this user list

Now, you can build 2 different auto-attendants. One for Main and one for Nights.

Photoshop Rounded Corners

Dario Zadro — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 04:58:57 +0000

The latest buzz is web 2.0, and the web design is usually with lots of rounded corners. To achieve this effect is pretty simple. Open your image in Photoshop and let’s get started.

1. Create a new layer
2. Pick the rounded rectangle shape
3. Choose the “paths” and Set the radius to 7px

4. Draw a rectangle, but don’t worry about getting it all the way into the corners
5. Now, hit Ctrl+T and pull the shape into the corners
6. Make the path a selection
7. hit Ctrl+Shft+I to get the inverse
8. Select your (unlocked) background layer and delete the corners!

Hope that helps save you some time and gets you the web 2.0 rounded corners effect.

Facebook Options Greyed out on BlackBerry

Dario Zadro — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:45:59 +0000

First, you need to have access to your BlackBerry Enterprise Server…or be friends with the IT department. This is a cool feature to have if you use Facebook like I do. All the pictures, phone numbers, and events will have access to your phone. If you don’t like what it does, you always have the option to turn it back off.

The directions are so spread out across multiple BlackBerry forums and BlackBerry’s actual website. I thought I would make one nice set of instructions here.

1. Grab the “Value Added” IT Policy here. At the bottom of the article is a link to a zip file that you will need to download the the BES server. Obviously, extract the contents.

2. Open BES Manager. On the left, highlight BlackBerry Domain then click Global tab. Next, along the right, expand Service Control and Customization. Click the Import IT Policy Definitions link. Navigate and find the XML document you extracted in #1 above.

3. Considering you only have 1 default IT Policy, it’s now time to modify it. While still on the Global tab in BES Manager, click Edit Properties in the tasks menu on the right. A new window will pop up. Now click IT Policy on the left and double-click IT Policies on the right. You will see your default policy listed, double-click it. Scroll down until you see RIM Value Added Applications. Find Disable organizer data access for social networking applications and set it to false.

4. For good measure, restart the Microsoft Exchange System Attendant service, which will also restart all the BB services.

Give your BB about 15 minutes and the Facebook options will no longer be grey. Now you don’t have to remember calendar events or anyone’s birthday; your BlackBerry will do it for you! For corporate setup, click on Chicago IT Consulting Company.