This piece of code shortens a text string to the specified length on a word basis and adds “…” after. Perfect for use in teasers of lengthy text pieces and so on.

<?php
/**
* Shortens a string to the specified number of characters on a word basis.
* Adds "..." to the end of the string if the string was longer than specified.
* Example 1
* $text = "The sky is not the limit, I know 'cause I feel higher today!";
* echo shortenText($text);
*
* Would print:
* The sky is not the limit, I know 'cause I feel higher today!
*
* Example 2
* $text = "The sky is not the limit, I know 'cause I feel higher today!";
* echo shortenText($text, 20);
*
* Would print:
* The sky is not the...
*/
function shortenText($text, $chars = 256)
{
    // Do not shorten if the text is already
    // shorter that the desired amount.
    if(strlen($text) <= $chars)
        return $text;

    $text = $text." ";
    $text = substr($text,0,$chars);
    $text = substr($text,0,strrpos($text,' '));
    $text = $text."...";

    return $text;
}
?>

Hot-linking is the act of someone showing an image from your site on a site that ain’t yours, meaning that you get no visitors or any kind of recognition for having the image on your site, but you’ll still have to pay for it with your bandwidth. That sounds kind of unreasonable, don’t you think?

So let’s learn how to prevent it by adding a few rows in our .htaccess file in the root of our website.

Add the code in the box into your .htaccess file to make it work.

# Anti-hotlinking
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?kerola\.nu/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ - [F]

The first row checks if the referer (i.e. the place on the Internet your visitor came from) isn’t your own domain.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?kerola\.nu/ [NC]

The second row checks if the referer isn’t empty, i.e. the user typed in the URL to the image directly in her browser.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$

The third row generates a HTTP 403 Error (Forbidden) if the two above conditions were met and the requested file type was one of jpg, jpeg, gif, bmp or png.

RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ - [F]

So in short, this code denies access to your image if you aren’t requesting it from kerola.nu or directly through the browser window. Exactly what we wanted!

This code turns ugly urls full of parameters into user- and search-engine-friendly browser urls. And it’s totally automatic. This is a win-win-situation

Edit your .htaccess file like this if you want your urls to function like this:
http://domain.com/about -> http://domain.com/about.php

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php [L,QSA]
# http://domain.com/about -> http://domain.com/about.php

Or, if you want
http://domain.com/about -> http://domain.com/index.php?q=about

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]
# http://domain.com/about -> http://domain.com/index.php?q=about

This page is just a place for me to dump random stuff that I need to get off my mind but still don’t want to forget completely. So be prepared for a ruthless mind dump!