Interesting Things - Latest Comments in 5 mistakes new web developers often make

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

Mauritius web Design — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 01:15:26 -0000

Nice list really interesting

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

PS3 Controllers — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 05:30:03 -0000

If you have decided that you need a good website for your business,the next step is to decide who should create it.This decision is one that needs a lot of attention because if on the one hand, a well-organized and attractive web design can help you tremendously in making more money; on the other hand,a poorly designed website can cost you money, drive away customers, and can hurt your company reputation.

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

antibacterial_hand_sanitizers — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:25:45 -0000

I have not much time, but I've got many useful things here, love it!

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

jack fisher — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 01:13:30 -0000

ya for sure these mistakes happen alot

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

Carlos @ VPSmedia — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:54:37 -0000

Make sure your server is well secured, here's one of our guides: http://vpsmedia.com/article...
its specific for Centos 5.2 but it should give anyone a pretty good idea.

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

Webdesign Meppel — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 04:18:38 -0000

Mentioning some details about mysql_real_escape_string won't be a bad thing I guess...

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

Poppo — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:51:58 -0000

1 Mistake You Made:

Don't make your section headers smaller and less bold than your section content.

Why it's bad;

Because it's very hard to skim your page for the start of the next section.

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

Pete White — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:41:36 -0000

Good post, I will admit I've done a couple of them before. Fortunately I use Drupal now and it comes with Jquery which has a lot of the Javascript I need built in.

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

Adam B — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 23:17:52 -0000

Nice list. There are a few things I'd recommend in addition primarily for security. I've dealt primarily with PHP, but this can be applied to other systems as well.

On production, always disable error output. Send your error messages to logs, but don't ever output them to the browser. Error messages, in addition to being unprofessional, can reveal details about your architecture that no one really needs to know.

Second, ALWAYS filter and validate input. Assume every user is trying to destroy your server. Go with a white-list approach. If an input is supposed to be a numeric ID, make sure it's numeric only. Make sure to run input through sanitizing like mysql_real_escape_string(). And if you're doing queries, make sure that your web user has ONLY the privileges it needs - don't give it drop table access or anything. If you want to go further, use two web users - one for read that only has select access, and the write, which has select, insert, update, and delete. Only use the write user when you actually need it.

Finally, when configuring your server, make the docroot as limited as possible. That is, stuff like include files and template files (if you have them) should not be accessible through the server.

Hope these tips help!

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

Damien — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:30:57 -0000

reinventing the wheel shouldn't be a problem for a company specializing in wheel development. why should bob smith try to make the next GoodYear tire clone out of play dough and an etch-a-sketch.

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

imgriff — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:29:35 -0000

#6. Don't forget to spell check before posting your article *nudge nudge*

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

stuffigoogled — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 13:40:46 -0000

Good point with number 5. These javascript/ajax frameworks have been thoroughly tested in multiple browsers.

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

Vince — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:08:50 -0000

#5 - so true

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

Sarmad — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 09:03:10 -0000

I think it is acceptable to reinvent another model of the wheel

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

Kukas — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:10:28 -0000

Thanks for the article!

A point though about naming of include files - the best solution is to place them in a directory that's not directly accessible to the web. Your PHP scripts will still be able to include them just fine.

If you do have to have them in a web-accessible directory for some reason, at least place them in a directory all of their own. Then place a htaccess file in there containing the following:

order allow,deny

deny from all

</files>

It's a mistake to think that giving your includes .php extensions makes them entirely safe. Should anyone ever try to access them individually (which is fairly unlikely anyway) they might not see your raw PHP code, but that code would be executed, with unknown consequences.

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

ktb — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:27:41 -0000

A thing I learned;
Use many functions instead of copy and paste, and use stlye classes instead of coyping single style attributes^^

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

Richard Bradshaw — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:50:59 -0000

Thanks!

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

paresh — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 07:53:20 -0000

nice useful article.

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

Vinod Pahuja — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 06:54:23 -0000

If Wheels were never reinvented
we would be still using the tyre of rock

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

testerman5 — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:49:32 -0000

Also, avoid learning grammar from the internet.

You do have a point, however poorly written it may be. :p

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

Stephen Ward — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:01:41 -0000

Wow. This is all excellent advice, even for us pros (who all too often forget the basics). On "Don't reinvent the wheel," it's worth mentioning that learning about pre-existing platforms is a marketable job skill in and of itself. For example, I learned WordPress because I like to blog. However, because I developed that expertise, I now do a lot of lucrative side work setting up, customizing, and debugging WordPress installations. Learning existing tools can be well worth it from more than an efficiency standpoint.

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:41:37 -0000

I learned #2 the hard way. Built a site for a local dancing club in the beginning of my career, and didn't bother to worry about security.

2 months later I get a call, that their guestbook was full of spam, and that it had broken completely recently (a meta redirect inserted in the comment).

I quickly added a captcha and made sure no SQL or Javascript injection was possible etc. This is a given today, no matter how small the project.

Good read.

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

Richard Bradshaw — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:40:50 -0000

Edited to fix that... good thinking!

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

Elaine — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:16:08 -0000

Shouldn't that be "Don't ignore semantic design"?

Re: 5 mistakes new web developers often make

A Suresh Kumar — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 12:40:52 -0000

Good work, But in my case, the above issues doesn't cause more problem to the website except point no 1.