One of my clients wanted a simple filter to alert visitors coming from specific websites that they (the other site/company) was in no way associated with my client and his/hers services/products. Without knowing the exact IP I had to rely on PHP’s HTTP_REFERER. This predefined variable can be somewhat unreliable as a hacker may insert a fake value or the browser doesn’t set it. However, for the average visitor and browser (user agent) it seams to work as intended.

In order to make it easy to maintain I created a small function including an array containing the blacklisted domains. To make it work you need to include it before the XHTML header on all the files you want protected.

Not to long ago some of my forms on evaria.com were abused (or at least somebody tried) to submit SPAM. In order to stop this I set up a simple rule in a few of my .htaccess files across the site.

In order for the “filter” to be effective you need to know from what IP(’s) you’re being targeted. This should be available in your server log or, if you are like me, in the admin notification mail received whenever someone is submitting one of your forms.

Below is an example from one of my .htaccess files, edit the IP’s to fit your needs:

order allow,deny
deny from 85.255.113
allow from all

ErrorDocument 403 http://www.example.com/403.html

You can add as many IP’s you want. From the example above I’m blocking all IP’s ranging from 85.255.113.0 to 85.255.113.255. These are all part of the “inhoster.com” network operating from the Ukraine. I might be blocking someone nice, but if so I’ve set up an info page (ErrorDocument 403) informing those (if any) about why and their options.

If you just want to give visitors coming from external websites a warning/info see my post about how to filter incoming links, but have in mind that this method can not be trusted in the same way as an IP block and should not be implemented if you depend on having the external client/site blocked.

When including anything but an image using the Lightbox Media (my Lightbox clone) you might have noticed that IE automatically adds a border around the content. I’ve tried numerous CSS modifications to get this disappear but not until today found a proper solution.

The ridiculously simple solution came about after some Googleing and it all comes down to the frameBorder attribute being case sensitive. As my code read frameborder IE simply ignored it.

Download Lightbox Media version 1.01

Facebook wants to become like Windows (an Internet version) by allowing new partners access to their 23 million registered users. In a press conference Thursday Facebook revealed their new strategy, which will kick-off by giving the users the possibility of uploading and share videos. This to compete against YouTube off course, one of Google’s latest acquisitions.

However, the second big news might be even more exciting. Mark Zuckerberg (CEO - Facebook) compares his new strategy with Microsoft’s in the last part of the 80’s.

Zuckerberg announced, like the rumours had said, a new strategy that will allow other companies to reach the users using their own applications served through the Facebook system (web).

It’s a very ambitious goal and is somewhat opposite of the way we are used to explore the Internet. Rather than jumping from one site to another Zuckerberg believes that the users (you and me) wants as many services gathered on the same service - which is Facebook off course.

So far the social networks have been closed platforms, but this is now coming to an end apparently.

Facebook has already recruited 65 software companies that wishes to add their applications/services to Facebook. Among the most known is Amazon who wants the users to write book reviews that will appear simultaneously on Facbook and Amazon.

Google continues to acquire the most popular companies on the web. In the past they’ve got Blogger and YouTube and most recently the RSS management company Feedburner.

Feedburner is in the closing stages of being acquired by Google for around $100 million. The deal is all cash and mostly upfront, according to our source, although the founders will be locked in for a couple of years.

So who’s next? If they had the possibility they would probably go after Facebook. Then again according to recent development it doesn’t sound like Mark over at Facebook is looking to sell out just yet. I’ll write a follow-up on this shortly. My bet would be a rising company in the top 500 sites ranked by Alexa, as I’m sure Google wont stop yet.

All these acquisitions kind of reminds me of another big company striving to keep their world domination (monopoly) - or is that just me…