mrdee

First of all, forgive my ignorance for not knowing the right names for certain objects, but I will try to explain my problem as clearly as I can:I use Windows 7 Ultimate, and this morning when I started up my laptop, all my icons on the right hand side of the taskbar are now displayed in a row in the taskbar, rather than in that handy pop-up list (hope I am saying this correctly) they used to be in.I have tried right-clicking on the taskbar, but that does not make me any wiser as how to solve this problem, under "Toolbars" I do not see anything useful, when i click "New Toolbar", a window pops up promptimg me to load a file, when I click on "Properties", there is so much in the window that pops up that I don't know where to start, I have already Googled for "Windows 7 taskbar", but not found anything satisfactory...The reason I think why this has happened is (not sure whether that is the reason, but it is the only thing I can see that could have made changes to my system) is that, last night, I ran Ashampoo's "WinOptimiser version 6", I did not get to reboot my machine until I switched it off at night (wasn't prompted to do so), if I had rebooted, I might have seen it last night, but anyway, there was that row of icons staring me in the face when I started up my laptop this morning.Is there anyone who knows how I can get things back to the way they were, ie. having the icons pop up in a handy list when I click on an arrow?If anyone could adivise me on how to solve this problem, I would be extremely grateful.

I can see what you are saying, anwii. However, i wish I did not have to smell the coffee and I could keep on dreaming. Then again, is this forum very closely associated with Xisto? Is there any way we can try to find solutions in that direction? Surely, if things like this keep going on, many people are going to turn their backs on Xisto, which, it seems to me will lose Xisto a lot of business, am I right in saying that? I, for one, would do anything, and take part in any action which could give this forum its glory back, and this for a number of reasons: It used to be a place where you could get expert answers to about anything, and even within a very short time Sometimes you did not even have to ask a question, this forum could sometimes be used like a reference book. This place also used to be relatively spam-free And, probably the main reason: the benefits people get from posting, I am very happy with my Xisto hosting and the features it provides, I do not think I could afford paying for a similar service, they already charge extortionate amounts of money for crap hosting in some places. Like I have said in other topics (and, yes, at the risk of repeating myself): contrary to some time ago, I have posted quite a few topics/posts here to which I never received a single answer, this would never have happened in the past.You are also right about the amount of spam that has started creeping onto the forum, I could not believe my eyes when i started noticing some posts. Sometimes, i have also posted questions, to which someone replied very enthusiastically, but when I asked some further questions, the person(s) who answered seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth, all of a sudden (more people turning their back on this place, I assume). It is a real dilemma, I only wish i had the knowledge to run a place like that, but unfortunately, I wouldn't know where to start (I run a few forums myself, but they are much more basic than this one, I'm afraid). So, if you, or anyone else has any ideas, let's stick together (the people with the same dreams as you and me) and try to find a way how we can reverse things back to the way it was (even halfway would already make a heck of a difference). Like I said, maybe go through Xisto itself, if we have to (or if we can), surely they wouldn't want to see a majority of their customers taking their business elsewhere, I assume? Anyway, thank you for replying, but, try not to give up yet.

Come on folks,this is not funny anymore.Is there really nothing at all that can be done to make this forum go a bit faster?There are occasions where i have to wait up to three minutes before this page even begins to load, and about trying to read or post to a forum, well, this is really pathetic.It honestly takes, without any exaggeration, minutes rather than seconds for a single clicked link to open in this place.Since I assume this forum is also hosted with Xisto, I don't think the hosting provider can be at fault.And it is not due to my setup, neither, all most of the other sites I visit load normally and swiftly.You could argue "this is due to the fact there are constantly a lot of visitors on here", but what about eg. Facebook then?There are probably several million people on facebook at the same time every day, but it loads nowhere as slow as this forum does.Like I said, it is tortue trying to read or post something here, and the majority of us need to post in order to maintain their MyCent credits.So, come on ,powers that be, try to put a smile on our faces again and do something about it.Many people would be very much obliged if you do.

And the one thing that I mentioned about the favicon not showing in front of the URL must be a Google Chrome thing.The favicon displays correctly before the URL and on the top tab in Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.Nevertheless, I am very happy with your help.

Exactly my point: Vista panel is useless. Their PHP and MySQL works when it wants to. They have "Safe Mode" switched on on their PHP, so it is sometimes impossible to get the most innocent script to work. And, yes, I had even forgotten about that, if traffic to your website is a bit quiet and you don't reach their quota, they just delete your whole account, some service, I would say. I, personally would NEVER give them a second look again.

Yes, it does work indeed.Never knew it was that simple (If I had only known about the Favicon website before).Thank you ever so much, you are a star.I am really happy with the result, if you wish, see for yourself: http://www.vlaanderen-flanders.org.uk/ Thanks again.

Thank you for your very useful advice. I tried the favicon website and it worked right away. However, it displays the icon on the top tab of the browser, but not in front of the URL, while in Internet Explorer 9, it is not showing anywhere at all. Have I done something wrong? This is the code I put in the <head></head> tags: <link rel="icon" href="Pics/favicon.ico" type="image/ico" /> If you see a mistake anywhere, please let me know. Thank you once again.

I was wondering how you can make a favicon (I hope this is the right name for one of those symbols that appears in front of your URL).I seem to remember there used to be a freeware program called 'Favicon', but I think i tried it and it did not work out that well.So, can anyone point me into the right direction for making and displaying my own favicon (and also put me straight if I am not using the right name for that little icon)?Thank you very much in advance.

I downloaded the Release Candidate of Internet Explorer a while back, because I wanted to test its ability for CSS3 and HTML5.It seems to handle it this time, unlike previous versions.However, Microsoft announced that the Release To Web version was going to be released on March 14th, and a number of sites announced this release too.But, it seems like nothing at all has been released, my version number is still the same as it was and Windows Update has no new updates (has not had any for a few days now), and I assume Internet Eplorer updates are part of Windows Updates too.In other words, it seems like nothing at all has changed.Does anyone have any further information about this?has anything been released at all? If not, why not, in spite of the announcement? Is a final version of Internet Explorer to be released soon?If anyone knows more about any of the above, could you please share your knowledge with us?Thank you in advance.

Thank you for that detailed reply.However, we should not be doing all the things you reply, both Adobe and the companies who make Internet browsers should make sure the software is adequately tested before bringing it out, and, more to the point, should make sure it works.Like I said in my post, I never used to experience this problem in the past, and lately, as soon as any of the browsers detect any multimedia, up comes the message that the Flash plugin has stopped working.I have aleady been on the forums of the various browsers, sent emails to Adobe (not even a reply there, but what sounds interesting is what you mentioned about Open DNS.Could you please post a bit more detail about this?All I can see when I go into my router setup and toolbox is Dynamic DNS.Thanks for the explanations so far.So, if you think that helped to sort the problem, please pass on a few details about what to do and how to do it.Thank you again.

Well, it is terrible to me too, even though I use Google Chrome.On occasions, it takes minutes to open a topic, I also get the error on top after logging in, and the forum always seems to forget me, although the "remember me" box is ticked.Yesterday I recommended Xisto to someone who was looking for hosting, they said the things Xisto offered were great, but they did have their reservations when they saw this forum in action.I wonder if anyone could do something to make this a proper forum again, as, it seems that, when you mention anything about the bad points of this forum, all you get is being laughed at in your face.By the way, I also got an error after posting this reply (not the first time this happens neither).

For months now, I (and I am not alone) have experienced very regularly on web pages that contain multimedia the well known phenomenon:a black square with a white face in the shape of a puzzle piece on it, and on top the message: "The Flash Shockwave plug-in has stopped working".I used to think it was a bug in my browser (Firefox), but i experienced it with Google Chrome and Internet Explorer too.The most annoying thing is, it happens so regularly, practically every time you visit a site which uses some kind of Flash, the crash seems to occur.The funny thing is, this has only been happening for the last few months, it never (or much more rarely) used to happen in the past.I also posted on the various support forums of the browsers I use, but no one seems to know an appropriate answer there.I also looked on Adobe's website to see if there was some information about the problem, and, moreover, a cure, but no satisfaction there either.I am now wondering who is at fault, the browsers, or Adobe itself.Not that I am interested in laying blame on anyone, but I am just trying to find out if we can do anything against that annoying crash at all, and if so, what can we do?Is there anyone who has already found a cure for that regular crash?If so, I would love to hear about it.

An update to the situation:I have now made a table called "lessons" and linked it to the "Student" table.The Primary Key in Students is ID (an auto-incrementing number), and the foreign key in Lessons is ServiceID (a non-auto-incrementing number).So far it works, in that, when a student is selected, there is a link there to the Lessons table, and it shows when clicked.(Remember, I make the pages using PHPRunner).However, I am a bit stuck now in what to add to reach my goal:The table contains: Lesson (a date field where the date of the attended/to be attended lesson is stored), Cost (numeric field,the charge per lesson), Attended (a Yes/No field showing whther or not the student attended the lesson on that day) and Sufficient Notice (another yes/no field to show, if the student did not attend, whether enough notice was given for not attending, and then to take the appropriate action, ie. charge the student or not).I am now a bit stuck on how to set up other fields, such as differentiating between the students who opted to pay every lesson, and the ones who chose for monthly payment, and also how to set up fields to keep track of (in case of monthly payment) when the due date is, and (in case of both options), whether they have paid or not.So, if any further useful advice could be given, I would be very grateful.

First of all, NateP, thank you for your extensive reply, I will study your examples carefully, because, the fact is, I am even a much more novice programmere than you are.But I will nevertheless have a close look at your code and give it all a try too.Then, Iniyila, yes, running 2 copies of QIOS Pelican could be an option, never thought about that, to be quite honest.Well, I did not exactly say both tables are the same, yes, they are both MySQL tables, but they reside in different databases and the data are different in both, which brings me to the answer to your question, when you say you don't understand why I am using two separate databases (well, tables in this case).Quite simple, one is for casual subscribers, who ask to be put on the newsletter list (as is usually the case on any website that offers newsletters), by subscribing via a form I put on the website.The second database I use is for my administration and does contain the name and email address, but also many more data about my students.And, since I thought that my students should receive the monthly newsletter automatically, i was thinking of a way of inserting their needed details in the list that QIOS uses too.I can hardly run a database with my students' details, and in between a number of names and email addresses of people who subscribed to the newsletter, don't you think?By the way, could you mention some names of some of the free and open surce software that can merge databases?I am aware of the risk of being hacked, but at the moment I am learning about and practicing database management and automatisation, so it might help me in my practice purposes (btw, when I practice anything that has to do with sensitive data, to avoid any security risks, I always do my practice on my local machine, with the use of XAMPP.My software is free, but it is not open source, but even if it were, I definitely would not have the know-how to make changes to it.Also, like I said, I am happy with the way QIOS works, was just looking for that one thing, but you have made some useful suggestions too.Thank you both for all the advice so far.

Sorry,yes, I forgot to mention a few things.They are indeed both MySQL database tables, which reside on the same server, but they are both tables in a different database.Hope that makes things clearer, and thanks for your reply.

I use a great piece of software (it is even free) called QIOS Pelican to send out newsletters.It is compatible with a number of different datasources (MySQL, Access, Oracle, Excel, Outlook address book etc.), and then sends out your email (which you can also edit in the program) to the recipients it finds in your datasource.My problem is:I (obviously) have a (MySQL) database with subscribers, which QIOS Pelican uses to send out the newsletter to, and people can subscribe to that newsletter via a form I put on my website where they enter their name and email, which are then stored into the database.However, it is a newsletter about my private music tuition, and apart from people subscribing, my pupils should get the newsletter automatically, and I obviously have a database containing my students' details.However, have got a different option than either sending the same newsletter twice, meaning to the people in both databases or than to manually enter my students' details in the subscriber database?Is there not a way where I can, eg. when I enter a new student in my student database, automatically enter their name and email fields in the subscriber database?Both tables do reside in a different database, so I suspect that might be a bit problematic.I will be grateful for any advice.

Thank you, Nate.In the mean time I have sent the file which generated the errors to the programmer (especially since it is a beta version I am testing), and he is going to look into it.In the mean time, I will wait to see what it leads to.Thank you for your input.

Yes BCD,as you mention, I found php.ini, php.ini-production, php.ini-development and even php-pear.ini.I removed the |E_STRICT in php.ini, php.ini-development, but in the 2 others it did not appear.Now, when I run the form again, the error is still there.I think I will have to get in touch with the programmer again.But thanks for your help anyway.

BCD,thank you ever so much for such a great and detailed input you are sending.It is always good to see there are still people out there willing to help others.Now, first of all:About the front-end, I think of doing that with PHPRunner once the database has been made, of course, if you have any better suggestions, feel free to enlighten me.The fee is normally the same for students, there is a 30 minute and a 1 hour fee, one exception, when people enrol 2 or more siblings (or 2 or more family members like father and son etc.), they get a discount, but that is a very rare occurrence.About the fields:The student table is pretty standard:Name, First name, DOB, Address, Town, County, Post Code, Telephone, Mobile, Email, Lesson taken, Picture, and finally a "File" field where I store a Word file with their notes.Like you suggest, I had indeed thought about a date field in the next table (the date they take a lesson, and most people just have their 1 session a week), a field for the charge (0 if not paid) and a session type field (30 mins or 1 hour), was thinking about a field to distinct between the people who pay every session (the majority) and the ones who pay monthly, but wasn't 100% sure how to go about that. A true/false field for attendance would also be appropriate.There might also be an option for people booking slots, so I can immediately tell them whether or not a certain slot is available.An then I thought of opting for a final table, a sort of Income/Expenditure table, a sort of limited book keeping (with room not to send certain figures to the tax man, of course ).It might all seem very desorganised to you (because it probably is), but it would serve 2 purposes: a) it would help me improve my database development skills (which are quite basic for multi-table relational databases at this stage), and b)it would also be my 1st major project towards the automation of business.That is why I am very grateful you want to put up with my stupid questions and for your patience and willingness to help.Just keep your questions coming.Thank you ever so much.

Hi, I use a program for making web forms called Simfatic Forms. I was trying out the latest beta and uploaded a from to my local webserver (running via XAMPP). There I got a bunch of errors, but the form was still displayed: According to the developer of the program, Simfatic Forms does not differentiate between online and offline storage (local or on the Internet), he said that, according to the error messages, I must have E_STRICT enabled, and advises me to turn it off. He also sent me a Google search link, but the pages all those links refer to might as well have written in Chinese as far as I am concerned. Here is what I did: Now, in my php.ini file, I found a line saying: "error_reporting = E_ALL | E_STRICT" I removed the "| E_STRICT" bit, just leaving E_ALL. After restarting XAMPP, the error just remained. Could someone please tell me "IN plain English" if that was the right way to turn off E_STRICT or if I should have done it differently? Let me just re-iterate: I am running this server locally, using the latest version of XAMPP (version 1.7.4). All help will be very much appreciated.

Thanks again for your reply, anwii.Looking at your sample page (thank you for making that example), I would say that is what I want.I notice that the left and right sidebars have remained intact and that your content in the body is as I would like it.So, just to recap, I want everything on my page left as it is (header, sidebar menu), except for the body where I want the content to appear as it does on your page, namely as blog entries, rather than articles which I have written in HTML.You also talk about creating an RSS feed here, don't forget you are dealing with an ignorant bum here (although one willing and eager to learn), I roughly know what RSS feeds are, but don't ask me to create one as I haven't got the faintest idea how to do that.My knowledge, unfortunately, goes as far as ceating pages using just HTML, the rest I am trying to learn.Also, when you tell me to look where you get the code from by clicking on the RSS feed button, when I do that, what I see is a page full of plain text, is that right?Sorry if the things I am saying and asking here sound dumb, but, as I mentioned, my knowledge needs to be extended a great deal, which is why I come here often to get advice from experienced people.Thank you for all the help you have given so far.

OK, I'll make it perfectly clear:Go have a look at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ the left yuu will see a menu, this I want to leave as it is (keep it), and at the right, you will see some news articles, sorted by date, but all written by hand in HTML and no comments possible unless (like on the top one) I add a form myself that users can fill in to submit a comment.It is that right hand side content I want to be replaced by Wordpress content instead of using static HTML, that is all.(Having said that, "that is all", means, "that is all I want to achieve", achieving it is quite a different matter).

I have been looking around if I can find a template or other model for a database (table), I tried Microsoft Office to see if there was a suitable Access template, but I didn't really see what I was after.Are there any places on the Internet where you can find database templates?Or, if anyone can give me some advice,what I want to achieve is the following:I have a database table (have both an Access and MySQL one) with the personal details of my private students in it.It obviously contains an auto-incrementing ID field as primary key.What I would like now is another table to keep track of their lesson day(s) and payments made or owed.The reason why I need their lesson day and attendance included is because, if they do not attend a lesson without giving proper notice, they get charged as if they had attended their lesson.I am not really sure how to set it up, or what fields to use, but basically, I need to be able to keep track of their payments (some pay every session, some pay monthly) and be able to send them a reminder (email, letter, or both) if there are any outstanding balances.So, apart from the fact that the frequency of payment can differ for some people (session-per-session or monthly), there are also different charges, depending on whether they do 1 hour or 30 minute sessions.After that (but that is the least of my worries at the moment,I first want to get this payment tracking table out of the way), I would like to make a relationship with another table which is a basic Income/Expenditure table, but as I said, no rush for that, it also seems much simpler to do than what I want to achieve now.So, if anyone can give me some tips how I can go about such a table, eg. what fields to use etc. (but please, keep it simple, as I am not an experienced database developer, I want to do this for my own use, but also to learn more about developing databases at the same time).So, any advice on how to lay out my table and which fields to use will be welcomed with open arms.(Obviously, any referral to a site or a template will be gratefully accepted too).

I was wondering if Linux Hosting restricts itself to the use of MySQL databses, or if it allows Access databases too. (Or maybe, Access databases are to be used with .asp pages only, being Microsoft almighty software, don't know). Anyway, using PHPRunner, I uploaded a set of scripts to use an Access database, I did try it locally (on my system, using EasyPHP), and it worked perfectly. However,when I uploaded everything and then tested it in my browser, I was greeted with the following: Below is the code to the offending file, I changed the value of "$uid" form blank ("") to "root", as, on my system, the username "root is required, and no password is set. (Doesn't matter disclosing that here, it is only for test purposes. However, I suspect (could be totally wrong, of course), that my server does not recognise the driver for Access databases and it has trouble with the variable $OCDBString. Am I right or wrong? Can an Access database be used on my hosting just like a MySQL database is used? Who can enlighten me? Thank you in advance for any advice. <?phpfunction db_connect(){ global $ODBCString; $uid="root"; $pwd=""; $conn = odbc_connect($ODBCString,$uid,$pwd); if (!$conn) { trigger_error(db_error(), E_USER_ERROR); } return $conn;}function db_close($conn){ return odbc_close($conn);}function db_query($qstring,$conn){ global $strLastSQL,$dDebug; if ($dDebug===true) echo $qstring."<br>"; $strLastSQL=$qstring; if(!($rs=odbc_exec($conn,$qstring))) trigger_error(odbc_error(), E_USER_ERROR); odbc_binmode($rs,ODBC_BINMODE_RETURN); odbc_longreadlen($rs,1024*1024); return $rs; }function db_exec($qstring,$conn){ global $strLastSQL,$dDebug; if ($dDebug===true) echo $qstring."<br>"; $strLastSQL=$qstring; return odbc_exec($conn,$qstring);}function db_pageseek(&$qhandle,$pagesize,$page){ db_dataseek($qhandle,($page-1)*$pagesize);}function db_dataseek(&$qhandle,$row){ $i=0; while($i<$row) { odbc_fetch_row($qhandle); $i++; }}function db_fetch_array(&$qhandle) { return odbc_fetch_array($qhandle);}function db_fetch_numarray(&$qhandle) { $row=array(); odbc_fetch_into($qhandle,$row); return $row;}function db_closequery($qhandle){ @odbc_free_result($qhandle);} function db_error() { return @odbc_errormsg();}function db_numfields(&$lhandle) { return @odbc_num_fields($lhandle);}function db_fieldname(&$lhandle,$fnumber){ return @odbc_field_name($lhandle,$fnumber+1);}?>

Thank you for your help, sonesay, I used a script (thanks to some copying and pasting) which does what you explained, but also formats the data in a table, this is what I came up with: <html><body><div align="center"><h1>Rouwregister - Condolence Register</h1></div><div align="center"><?php$username="mrdee";$password="***********";$database="mrdee_reloader";mysql_connect(localhost,$username,$password);@mysql_select_db($database) or die( "Unable to select database");$query="SELECT * FROM rouw";$result=mysql_query($query);$num=mysql_numrows($result);mysql_close();?><table border="1" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2"><tr><th><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Naam/Name</font></th><th><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Plaats/Town</font></th><th><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Boodschap/Message</font></th></tr><?php$i=0;while ($i < $num) {$f1=mysql_result($result,$i,"Name");$f2=mysql_result($result,$i,"Town");$f3=mysql_result($result,$i,"Message");?><tr><td><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><?php echo $f1; ?></font></td><td><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><?php echo $f2; ?></font></td><td><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><?php echo $f3; ?></font></td></tr><?php$i++;}?></div></body></html> But, once again, like I said, it works, and I did it with copy and paste from a PHP tutorial, but I just find it impossible to understand all the variables in it, or to see how exactly the loop works, unlike the good old "FOR/NEXT" loops in the old days of BASIC. I have been doing so much research, reading lots of sites, books and ebooks, hopint to learn PHP properly, but it still all looks like Chinese to me. I must also say, the Dummies in this world must all possess a PhD or something, as the "for Dummies" books I read are usually so complicated that I can't make heads or tails of most of the stuff written in them, like the book "PHP and MySQL for Dummies" by Janet Valade I have. I went for this book, hoping to learn, but some bits get so complicated from the very beginning that my whole nervous system seems to freeze. The problem is, I have not been able to find any evening classes or anything where you can go to learn PHP/MySQL as it seems to me self study is not really advisable, or maybe it is my age catching up with me or me getting past it. But, anyway, thank you for your help.