Okay, so maybe it’s not ALL about the domain name but the domain definitely plays a very big part. I’m saying this not based on scientific facts or even based on any particular tests or experiments but instead I based this on my own experience with SEO. Over the past 18 months or so I’ve launched several sites, some of which have achieved a page #1 ranking in Google whilst others have not. For each of these sites I’ve done the standard search engine optimization tasks including optimizing keywords, link building, article marketing and more. Looking over my sites I can see a trend that in general the sites whose domains are either an exact or very similar match to their primary keyword/phrase seem to be ranking much better compares to those sites whose domains are slightly less specific.

From this I’m led to believe that one of the most important things you can do if you intend to rank well in the search engines would be to make sure you choose the right domain name. I am by no means saying that choosing the perfect domain on its own will get you ranked higher. Instead I’m simply saying that a better, more specifically matched domain from what I can see has a big impact on how your site will rank (at least with Google).

I’ve seen the effects of this with one of my affiliate sites right away and have watched sales figures plummet since the announcement was made. Sure, my site may not be affiliated with the official bumper case product but who’s going to buy an iPhone case if Apple are handing them out for free? There may be the occasional iPhone owner who wants something different than what Apple is offering and may go ahead and purchase their own but this has put myself and many other iPhone accessory affiliates at a disadvantage which will likely cost quite a bit in affiliate sales.

I guess it’s time to concentrate my SEO efforts on alternative products.

So basically I needed to upload an image to a web server using Java and PHP. Reading and writing simple data to and from a web server with Java is pretty easy really but when it comes to transferring files things get that little bit tougher. This is because when uploading files the content type of the HTTP request changes from plain text to multipart making it trickier. You could either write a whole load of extra code to deal with this or you could simply send the data over as plain text and then just let PHP deal with it. Here’s how it’s done.

The Java

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// Setup vars
HttpURLConnection httpUrlConnection;
OutputStream outputStream;
BufferedInputStream fileInputStream;
BufferedReader serverReader;
int totalBytes;
int bytesTrasferred;
String response = "";
String serverResponse = "";
String localFileName = "mypicture.jpg";
 
// Establish a connection
httpUrlConnection=(HttpURLConnection)new URL("http://www.example.com/upload.php").openConnection();
httpUrlConnection.setDoOutput(true);
httpUrlConnection.setRequestMethod("POST");
outputStream = httpUrlConnection.getOutputStream();
 
// Buffered input stream
fileInputStream = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(localFileName));
 
// Get the size of the image
totalBytes = fileInputStream.available();
 
// Loop through the files data
for(int i=0; i < totalBytes; i++)
{
	// Write the data to the output stream
	outputStream.write(fileInputStream.read());
	bytesTrasferred = i + 1;
}
 
// Close the output stream
outputStream.close();
 
// New reader to get server response
serverReader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(httpUrlConnection.getInputStream()));
 
// Read the servers response
serverResponse = "";
while((response = serverReader.readLine()) != null)
{
	serverResponse = serverResponse + response;
}
 
// Close the buffered reader
serverReader.close();
 
// Close the file input stream
fileInputStream.close();

The PHP

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// Config
$uploadBase = "img/";
$uploadFilename = time() . ".jpg";
$uploadPath = $uploadBase . $uploadFilename;
 
// Upload directory
if(!is_dir($uploadBase))
	mkdir($uploadBase);
 
// Grab the data
$incomingData = file_get_contents('php://input');
 
// Valid data?
if(!$incomingData)
	die("No input data");
 
// Write to disk
$fh = fopen($uploadPath, 'w') or die("Error opening file");
fwrite($fh, $incomingData) or die("Error writing to file");
fclose($fh) or die("Error closing file");
 
echo "Success";

And that’s all there is. By placing the PHP script above onto a suitable web server and then executing the Java code you’ll be able to quite easily and painlessly transfer images (or any other file types) from the desktop client to the web.

I suppose some sort of celebration is in order

A demo is available here.
This WordPress is available for use for free and can be downloaded here.

And, I absolutely love the thing! I’ve barely put it down since I got my hands on it yesterday.

It’s actually quite easy really. Here’s the code for toggling an element on click with jQuery.

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$('#hiddenbox').animate({opacity: 'toggle'}, 'fast');

To use it simply have an anchor tag like this…

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<a href="" class="toggle-fade">Toggle box</a>

And then the jQuery code…

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$(document).ready(function(){
	$('.toggle-fade').click(function(){
		$('#hiddenbox).animate({opacity: 'toggle'}, 'fast');
		return false;
	});
});

Perfect!

When it comes to CodeIgniter though I’ve found that all of my table models all have the same 2 common functions. To me it makes sense to have this functionality built into the parent ‘Model’ class within CodeIgniter but since they’re not here they are for you to add them yourself.

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function get($where = array(), $limit = 1000, $offset = 0)
{
	$rows = array();
 
	$this->db->select('*');
	$this->db->where($where); 
	$query = $this->db->get("tablename", $limit, $offset);
 
	// How many rows?
	if($query->num_rows() > 0)
	{
		// Loop through each row
		foreach($query->result() AS $row)
		{
			$rows[] = $row;
		}
	}
 
	return $rows;
}
 
function get_by_id($ID, $where = array())
{
	$where = array_merge(array('ID' => $ID), $where);
	$rows = $this->get($where, 1);
	return $rows[0];
}

So what exactly are these two functions? They’re a quick and simple way for retrieving information from a database table using the relevant model within your application. By simply calling either of these functions you can quickly retrieve whatever data required and then carry on without needing to worry about table names, etc. So, if for example for whatever reason you had to rename a table you’d only need to modify it in just the one place (in the model) as opposed to having to wade through all your code if you’ve typed it manually. Sure, the likelyhood of you changing a table name is quite slim but you never know.

Of course you may want to extend this to allow for updates, deletes and inserts which only takes a few minutes. Just thought I’d put this out there in case anyone’s interested.

Some of the suggestions I fould included changing the USB cable, using a different USB port, upgrading to the latest iTunes version, etc. – All the standard stuff really. But none of this seemed to work.

After a little thinking I thought I’d disable my firewall (why not aye?). And guess what, it worked perfectly. My iPhone has been updated and is working nicely.

I just thought I’d put this up in case anyone else comes across the same problem and is looking for possible fixes.