Here's the deal: I need to store some sensitive data (user names and passwords) in a flat file.

Of course, the passwords will be md5 encrypted in the file, but this wouldn't be enough.

This neat little login system, Micro Login System, seems to have the basic stuff for me to start with but, as said it stores the user info in a text file.

The contents of userpwd.txt would have been:

admin:3089af3a625carf15ed2a1a93684413ffa
user1:75580656a394292460ebb4b036ebeaf1
user2:c67ac4665947cd23ff7d1d180b8e41d5

That's user : md5( password ).

I was concerned about this because anyone who knew about the system could have entered address/userpwd.txt in the address box and gotten that info.

My solution

Php files are pretty secure right?...

How I use captcha without making my users complete the barely readable word

What I wanted was to have the commenting feature protected against spam bots without having the innocent human users ruining their eyes on captcha like images, or complete any mathematical equation or any other additional question fields.

One very important difference between a spam bot and a human using a web browser is that the first can't run JavaScript code. However, this isn't a perfect criteria of selection, because there are humans browsing the web using browsers without JavaScript support (Opera Mini for mobile devices for example).

My ideea (and as I did some Google searches, I found out other people had similar ideas) was the followig algorithm:

Does the user have JavaScript enabled?
If yes, he's ok. Let him comment.
No? He's a suspect. Read him his rights and give him the ultimate "are you human?" test.

Put your city on the map in 4 layers. Create an artistic old map of your area.

Here's what you should be achieving:

Playing around in Photoshop...

Or how you know it's time to fire your web designer...

In another list entitled "Top 50 Design Posts of 2007" I've stumbled upon this list of web design dont's :

DO NOT resize the user’s browser window, EVER. I know you can, I know you feel really cool when you put that little Javacrap on your page and like a little miracle the browser window resizes to your wishes, but NO. You see this atrocious web technique mostly with spam sites and when “designers” design websites. That is, someone in the photo/video/art industry who “also makes websites”, but in reality has no idea how to make a successful ecommerce website.

"Although freelancers today are usually designers, writers, programmers, photographers, or illustrators; a few centuries ago the word freelance had a whole other meaning. Back then mercenary knights or ‘free lances’ were soldiers for hire, named for the long poles they carried and the freedom they had in whom they fought for.
Though a lance is no longer required, today’s freelancer does share one thing in common with those knights: the freedom to choose.
It is this freedom to be your own boss, to select your projects and clients, and to have a different lifestyle. This is what draws so many people to a career in freelancing."

By Collis Ta’eed, from the foreword of the book How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer.

Why shouldn't you use flash for your website? Can there be anything wrong with a website that "enhances" the user experience by flying/zooming/swirling/flipping in like a .PPS document?

Well, besides the lack of SEO, low usability (for example: back button not working, "find on this page" not working, the "make text bigger/smaller" button not working etcetera), nonstandard user interface, fully flash based sites are pretty much ok.

This is a really old issue and of course modern technology offers solutions like Flex for powerful web applications, but unfortunately the web is still filled with flash based sites... which use flash just for the design's sake.

I'm not stating here that flash is bad or anything. It actually is GREAT! It's the best choice right now for online streaming video or audio, the only choice for some web applications or games, a good way to make your banner ads stand out (even though this can be really annoying for the visitors but that's a different topic).

Seeing how this is such an old topic, I need not to go in any more details as some people excellently did that already:

Making god use of flash: When you should and shouldn't use it. Is Flash going to help me in communicating with my audience?

Flash: 99% Bad.

Really, people... these things are so last decade even my article looks old fashioned. There's all the talk about web 2.0 and taking this paradigm to the next level... Do you think the definitions "the web as a platform" or "the web as a database" can include your site that not even Google can index due to the fact that the only navigation you have between pages is a flash menu?

Update: Fixed! Scroll to the end of the article to see how to fix this. 

Large centered bg image + Firefox + 800x600 =

Ok, let's say my website has the following CSS code for the body:

background: #000000 url(img/bg.jpg) top center no-repeat;

That's a black background with a centered image on the upper side. The "center" part should mean that the middle of the image will be in the middle of the browser's view port. That's pretty straight forward and looks as it should in any browser with CSS support.

Except in Firefox and Opera on a low enough resolution, or if the browser's window size is small enough the background image starts going left at a certain point! Works fine in IE.

If you're on Firefox or Opera, go ahead... resize this window making it narrower and narrower. You'll see the VileWorks logo going left. Now scroll right to see how the design broke apart Update: not anymore. 

Usually, when something works on Internet Explorer and doesn't work in Firefox it's somehow my fault and the fact that it works ok in IE is an IE bug. But I can't see how the above code couldn't be correct. And it doesn't just happen to me, check out Spoon Graphics, BittBox.com, Nick La's WebDesignerWall, Next2Friends and a lot more, I'm sure... These came to mind as having a large, centered, no-repeat, background images. All of these designs break somehow on a (for example) 800x600 resolution.

Update: What I did was add the two following lines (the bold parts) to the css:

body {
    margin:0px;
    padding:0px;
    background:#000000 url(img/bg.jpg) center top no-repeat;
    font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
    font-size:14px;
    line-height:20px;
    display:table;
    width:100%;
    }

...and allmost done.
The portfolio, about and contact links are the main pages to focus on right now.

The Vile Works site is currently under development.

Thank you for your interest :)