I was asked at work to create a simple filestore online to store various files that needed to be accessed by various members of staff around the country. The basic requirements were:

• Password protection
• Checkin and checkout facility for each file
• Basic usernames to track who has what
• Windows explorer style folder structure
• Upload new files, create folders and delete files or folders

Since I’ve been getting in AJAX recently I thought I would do the entire thing using it, obviously with PHP doing the background stuff. There was no real advantage of using AJAX, it was just a new project and was easily done in AJAX.

I’ve finished and tested it all now and everything is working quite well. I’ve just got to comment all the code and then I’m going to stick it all online for download if anyone wants it.

Edit: 17/07/2007
AJAX Document Store Code

I got an email through today that I was immediately cautious about. Partly because it was sent to an email address that’s been on the internet for years and receives pretty much no legitimate email, only spam, and partly because the message was in German (and actually came from a .as email address which is… American Semoa!).

My first thought was that it was a new virus that I hadn’t come across yet but after checking a few sites for new threats and running the attachment through 2 seperate AV progs, I decided to open it. Turns out it is one of these stock spam emails with all the details in the PDF.

I actually thought this was quite clever as the original message looks like a Fw: and any information that can be used to identify it as spam is enclosed in the PDF. It’ll be interesting to see how much they vary the content and names of the attachments to keep people on their toes.

I’ve been having the usual problems with spammers loading my board with registrations and profile with links to porn and viagra sites. I’ve got account activation enabled but couldn’t find the link to Enable Visual Confirmation.

After a bit of searching I found out that the problem was that I had installed a custom template that didn’t support the option in the Admin > Configuration page to allow me to turn it on. After googling I found this article that allows you to check your template for compatibility with visual confirmation. After making a few mods, everything was good.

The only problem now was that they were still showing up in the memberlist which kind of defeated the purpose. A few more searches and I found this post that shows you how to make the mods needed.

All fixed!

Well, that would be Pandora.com! (it’s free too)

This site basically asks you what your favourite song or artist is and then plays you random songs that are similar. The selections are based on other peoples recommendations in true “Web 2.0″ fashion (I’m beginning to hate that phrase!) and it’s pretty good for finding out about artists you haven’t heard of.

Apparently they play adverts every now and again, but I’ve been listening for a couple of hours and haven’t heard one yet so who knows what they are about…

From a web developers point of view, it’s also a sweet site: very AJAXy and with graphics that would make an Apple designer jealous.

Check it out