Ever had issues with putting HTML inside of HTML text boxes? This can be a pain as often times you will find different browsers will read it fine, but then some will break it.

In PHP there is a wonderful function called "htmlentities."

Recently I heard a extremely random agrument about a simple Javascript method.

Basically take a random string.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Multiply this about 500 more times... And then run these two seperate items...

var str = "Lorem  ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do  eiusmod  tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad  minim  veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip  ex ea  commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in  voluptate  velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur  sint  occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia  deserunt  mollit anim id est laborum.";
alert( str.split(" ").join("") );
alert( str.replace(/ /g, "") );

Which one is faster?

So you have a website and that site gets millions of hits per day. Either you are running a silly static site that you manually update or you have some intense CMS that caches using all sorts of methods.

XML happens to be one of the biggest tools of the trade.

Encoding is simply one of the most strangest topics with websites.

Usuaually I find issues when translating between encoding types such as UTF-8 to ISO or any variation of this. Setting the encoding type of the page is extremely important. "Obviously." Otherwise your browser trys to guess what it is and may fail at it. Along with this hackers can easily change the encoding type and get around your XSS filters. Which will then allow them to do XSS attacks.

When using JQuery it is easily abused with how many shortcuts and routes you can do the same thing.

I could go through my list of things to help with optimization, but this guy does such a good job...

ArtzStudio

Recently I was given a great link that gives ten great ways to optimize MySQL. With its may open ended methods that leave you crossed which direction to go. I found this article extremely helpful.

20Bits By Jesse Farmer

Shaunware is ran on its very own content management system (CMS). It uses PHP/PHP5, MySQL, Javascript (Jquery), CSS/CSS3, HTML/HTML5 and more.

Here is a small list of features:

• Unlimited number of sites to hook into.
• Targeting content / tagging content to pages/tags.
• Unlimited varations of content types. Ex: Articles, Banners, and more...
• Records impressions and clicks on specific content types.
• Email Campaigns - Send HTML emails to a list of registered members.
• User/Member Handling - Allows extensive registration details for membership base sites.
• Read more...

Filtering inputs is often a huge issue when figuring out which method is best. Typicallly its a matter of what exactly are your needs. Asking these few questions can resolve the problem.

1. Is the input needing more than letters a-z and 0-9?
2. Does the input need to be able to allow some tags but not others?
3. Can you filter everything out and not worry about what it returns?
4. Can you convert html characters to their entities so it still displays properly?

Hacking seems to be a common occurance now days. While it seems to be a somewhat complicated process in reality it is mostly simple hacks that result in tremeduous damage, costs, and lose of data.

Two Types of Web Hacks

XSS and SQL Injections. There are obviously more such as DDOS attacks, but those are short term.

What are they?

XSS is simply inserting Javascript into a page. An example of this is a simple alert.

<script>alert("Hi!");</script>

SQL Injections are a wider range of possibilities. They allow you to delete an entire database, to outputting important information. Or even logging in as an adminstrator.

Finally I have recreated my website. It is using a content system I created from the ground up. I will be writing more on this system in the future. A small list of features this system can do:

• Manage Multiple Sites in one.
• Member Registration
• Banners
• Page Control / SEO
• And so much more...