The New Look for the Google analytics is in full effect! And Boy is it hot. Much more simple to understand. Easier to navigate. Highly graphical for those of us that are visual learners (probably 90+% of us guys). Although lots of stats and numbers for logical and mathematical analyzing.

Much more user friendly interface that gets two thumbs up. Also Great feature for generating reports to send via email. Great for keeping clients/management/sales up to date on key data. Site Overlay works way better, especially on poorly designed sites (I am sure none of us have any). All in all this layout is more functional, easier to use, gives you more data per page, and very informative! Best of all Still FREE!!!!!!!!

For me here @ LookToTheRight it will help out big time on data mining for better targeting of campaigns, Keeping Clients informed, and keeping CTR’s, ROI’s High and CPC’s Low.

Tags: Pay Per Click Advertising, Programming Help by Noah - 1 Comment »

Over the years I have had many occasions to modify other people’s programs. Sometimes I have been pleasantly surprised, but, most of the time I have been extremely disappointed. Many times people pick up a web programming book and think it makes them a software expert because they finished it in “21 Days”.

There is much more to good programming than knowing how to write a loop. The biggest failing I have found is lack of planning for future success. What I mean is that many programmers program for the present. They ask how do I get this to work, not how hard will it be to update tomorrow. I’ve seen sites with huge navigation menus that were hard coded into all 50 pages of the site. If I need to make an update to the navigation, I now have to edit and change 50 files. If the programmer had taken the time to externalize the navigation an update would only require one file to be updated.

Too many websites have been created by hackers who had no idea what good software design requires. Yes, it takes time to plan and create a project implementation. Yes, more time means more money. But, ask yourself if you would rather pay a few hundred extra dollars today for a site that can be easily updated or a few thousand dollars a year to get someone to fight your site into looking like you want.

Make sure that your programmer has a background in designing sites that can be easily updated.� Take the time to talk to some of the referrals. A few well placed questions can save you many future dollars.

Tags: Programming Help by Fred - No Comments »

Last Forth of July we had a hacker use one of the forms on a client website to send out thousands of e-mail messages. We worked all day to find out what the issue was and fix it. This is part one of a multi-part series on making sure your forms are secure.

For each of your fields you need to determine if a plain text field is the best form control to use. If a question has a finite number of answers I suggest that you use a drop down selection control, radio buttons or check boxes. Which you use will be determined by the data being selected. Radio buttons are good for either or selections, yes or no. Check boxes are good for a small amount of choices where the user can select multiple. The drop down selection control works well for long list of data such as state or country.

This post will focus on the client side programming you can use to help prevent form abuse. The most common client side programming uses JavaScript as the programming language. For each of the text fields on your form you should decide if you want the data to be required or optional. The first step to secure your forms is to use JavaScript to make sure that required fields are filled.

This script is one of the easiest to implement that I have found: http://javascript.internet.com/forms/basic-validation.html. All you have to do is add the word required to the names of your fields and include the script. If you only want to make sure that required fields have values, use this script.

The next level would be to check that the field data contains correctly formatted data. If it is a date field, use a script to check for a valid date. If it is an e-mail field, use a script to check for a valid e-mail. You can find many scripts to validate fields at

http://javascript.internet.com/forms/.

The next level is to prevent invalid data from being entered into the field. If it is a date field, only allow numbers and dashes or slashes to be entered. If it is a phone number field only allow numbers and dashes. You can use a script that creates a mask for the data. A mask define the format for a field. A mask for a phone number might be (###) ###-####. If you would like to have masks for your fields you can use this script: http://javascript.internet.com/forms/dfilter.html.

The last thing on the client side that I would suggest is to use JavaScript to insert a hidden field into your form with data that can be validated on the server. I use an MD5 JavaScript function to place a field in the script based on a seed term. I then check for the hidden field’s value to make sure in has the correct data. Neither the field nor the data is visable in the html code of the page.

All of this still does not completely secure the form, but, if your form is harder to break into than the average site most hackers will look for an easier site to hack.

Tags: Programming Help by Fred - No Comments »