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TOP TIPS


murfitUK

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EDIT: Please read entire topic. Important conclusion at the end.Might I suggest a "Top Tips" page for each subject. Lots of little things that the more experienced members have come across. Not huge amounts of text - that would be a tutorial - but just a couple of sentences.For example, today I had a problem that took me hours to solve and if I'd been thinking straight the solution would have been obvious.I had created a webpage to insert text into a mysql database. It took the text, added slashes for quote marks and other special character and so on. Another page pulled the text from the database and displayed it. All this was done on my computer. It worked fine.When I uploaded to my IP provider server it didn't work. I tore my hair out trying to figure out what was going on. It was displaying lots of slashes where they shouldn't have been. I changed this, changed that, changed everything until I had lost track of what I'd done.The solution - I should have run phpinfo(); on my local server and the IP's server. I would have found that my local server had "Magic Quotes - Off" but my IP's server had "Magic Quotes - On". So I switched my Magic Quotes on, made a couple of changes, uploaded everything again and it worked.Obviously, my IP's server is beyond my control and they might switch Magic Quotes off tomorrow if they felt like it, in which case everything would start to go wrong again. But at least I would know where to start.So my Top Tip would be something like "PHP/mySql: If slashes and/or quote marks start appearing or disappearing without reason why not check phpinfo() - are Magic Quotes On or Off? It makes a difference."Most of us on these boards will have, at some time or another, come across problems that caused us hours of headaches and stress - but turned out to be simple to fix. Maybe if there was a single page to look at, with just a line or two for each issue, it might save others a lot of hassle, and promote sharing of experience and good practice.I'm aware that lots of (most?) people don't read tutorials or search properly before posting their problems anyway so it might all be a waste of time. Is it worth doing? What do you all think?

Edited by Jonas
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Might I suggest a "Top Tips" page for each subject. Lots of little things that the more experienced members have come across. Not huge amounts of text - that would be a tutorial - but just a couple of sentences.
Sort of like "gotchas"?
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Some references to sites that would contain such tips would serve better. While a few tips may work for a lot of people, there will still be other simple fixes that will work for a lot others. Giving people with problems sites to look for solutions might serve better in the long term.Besides, there's already a topic like that for CSS and it seems to contain some usefull initial stuff.

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I don't think it would be a bad idea to put these at the top of a forum. It wouldn't take too long, and people can keep submitting their tips. :)

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Or maybe there could be a kind of system where experienced peaple could Add Useful tutorials in each languages forum, and those tutorials would be watched by Mods before getting accepted.I'm sure of a thing, Tutorials on specific subject would be sooooooo Helpful.

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NOTICEThe moderators have huddled and made a decision on this matter. We fully support the concept of a sticky post for "Hot Tips" or whatever you want to call it. Here are the conditions:a.) one person take ownership of maintaining the post, it will immediately be marked closed - so no replies will be made and the "owner" of the thread will have to be PMed with requests/additionsb.) the owner will be required to supply the moderators with the criteria used to accept/deny the tip being submitted.c.) moderators will only edit the post/tips if it contains content that contradicts, overshadows, or otherwise replaces content that already exists on the w3schools.com website.d.) "tips" must well written in good instruction format and smaple code must be enclosed in

 tagse.) the same process is to be applied to each topic category if it is decided by the owner to categorize the tips - otherwise, the post will be in the General section and each tip will need to be labelled according to its respective category.I, or any other moderator, reserve the right to modify/append these requirements at any time without notification but with immediate cooperation.As you can see, there is a lot to consider when looking into something like this.  Our (moderator) priority right now is spam. If the "tip" concept is to move forward, then we will need your help in bringing this to fruition.thanks in advance.Interested owners, please "REPORT" this topic and include in your message why you feel you would be a good owner for this controlled topic.
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  • 4 months later...

In light of topics being made such as this one and consequently this and this, I'm going to give this thread a bump, and urge someone to invest some time and effort if they want to make "Hot Tips" topic. If you want, you can organize this more than one poster, but it must be done according to the list Skemcin posted, well organized (as opposed to half-assed) and encompassing a few topics to start off with (although we can add to it later). Good templates to follow for this are the "Top Tips" topics already created in the XSLT forum and Javascript forum, by Boen_Robot and Skemcin respectively (click names to see topics).Want to take on this task for one of the forums? "REPORT" this topic and include in your message why you feel you would be a good owner for this controlled topic. Thank you.

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That link doesn't work. You probably mean this:http://w3schools.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=12367Seems allright with me. You want to keep it updated with recurring topics, it's yours. Let me know, and I'll split it so that yours is the first post.

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Yeah that's the topic I meant. I'll keep updating it. You can split it. Thanks Jonas.
No, no, thank you. :)
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Is the topic closed or can people reply to it? If someone wants to add something to it, it'd be cool if they cool reply.

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It should be closed. If someone wants to contribute they can PM you. Perhaps you could mention that at the top of the post. Take a look at how Skemcin is managing the Javascript Snippets. It is working well.Thanks for gettting involved. It is much appreciated.

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So can anyone create a topic in the forum of choice and report it for use? (I will do it in PHP I guess)
Justsomeguy has already volunteered and gotten responsibility for a PHP Tips topic. If you want to collaborate of course, I'm sure you can PM him. :)
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I don't think we want to see everyone just arbitrarily doing this. That is why we requested that you contact the moderators and have something already prepared so we can see that you are serious about maintaining this and making sure it doesn't conflict with what is already offered on w3schools.com

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