Sep/090
Designing an unbeatable CAPTCHA
The CAPTCHA has been around for years, but most designs are still not perfect. In fact most can be defeated with some simple image manipulation and a decent OCR algorithm. For those of you that don’t know, a CAPTCHA is an challenge-response system in which the user is presented with a problem that they must solve in order to verify that they are human and not a spam-bot. There are many popular designs around (reCAPTCHA, Egglue, etc) but the important question is which is the best?
To read the full article, click here.
Aug/090
MyBB Mod – Username Image
This isn't a file, it only requires some file modification. What this does is give you or users an option to replace their username in the postbit with an image.
Step 1 - Adding a custom profile field
Go to - Admin CP -> Configuration -> Custom Profile Fields -> Add new field
Title and short description: add something descriptive so you don't forget what it's for later.
Field: Textbox
Max length: 0
Field length: 0
Selectable Options: leave blank
Display Order: If you haven't added any custom profile fields before then you should put 4 here
Required/Editable by user/profile fields: These three choices are up to you.
Aug/090
Tutorial – Search box AJAX suggestions
AJAX is a concept based on existing technology. It stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. AJAX works using the XMLHttpRequest object. You use it to request information from the server and use JavaScript to handle the response and update the page accordingly.
I'm going to show you how you can create an AJAX enhanced search box which displays suggestions whilst you are typing.
This tutorial is written entirely by Burningmace on our forums. To see the whole tutorial click here.
Jul/090
PHP Dynamic Images Tutorial
PHP has a built-in image manipulation library called GD. You can use it to create and manipulate images in your PHP scripts. What we'll be creating here is a signature image that displays some statistics from a MySQL database.
- Create or load an image
- Allocate any colours that you wish to use
- Write or draw on the image
- Set the MIME type of the document
- Output the image
This tutorial was written by Burningmace on our forums, if you would like to see the full tutorial on PHP dynamic images then click here.
Jul/090
Recovering drives with mechanical failure
Tutorial was originally posted by burningmace on vorbb forums, which can be found by clicking here.
You're bound to get the "clicking of death" at some point when dealing with computers. When the mechanical parts inside hard drives fail, they make clicking and bumping noises. You may also get "delayed write failed" messages from Windows and some freezing and glitching. The number one thing to remember is don't wait to let it get worse. The longer you leave it, the less chance there is of recovering data. It's not a complicated procedure, and it doesn't require much effort.
To see the instructions click more.