Again, I am no programmer though I have to force myself into this avenue sometimes.

I showed before how to display the latest row in a MySQL database. Now I have to display a random row.

There are a bunch of ways of doing this. In my research, I found a bunch of ways and here are a few ways to select a random row from a database table:

SELECT * FROM `layouts` WHERE id >= (SELECT FLOOR( MAX(id) * RAND()) FROM `layouts` ) ORDER BY id LIMIT 1

So in my application I used it like this:

<? $sql = “SELECT * FROM `entries` WHERE id >= (SELECT FLOOR( MAX(id) * RAND()) FROM `entries` ) ORDER BY id LIMIT 1″;
$rs = $db->Execute( $sql );
?>

<h2><?=$rs->fields['title']?></h2> path/to/<?=$rs->fields['thumbnail']?>

I have a blog that has been PR4 for a really long time but I want it to be PR5. I have a half dozen sites that have a PR4 but none higher. I even have a ringtone landing page that is PR4!

One day while researching the links to the PR4 blog, I saw that the non-www page had a PR4 and the www version had a PR2! What’s up with that?

The problem is that I had been using the non-www in all my links when making a comment on other blogs. I knew it was time to consolidate and I decided to consolidate to the www version.

Google treats non-www and www as separate sites. They recommend using redirect to send all traffic to the URL you want to use. This will also redirect all domain variations to the domain of your choice (i.e. .us to .com, .cc to .com, .org to .com).

Here is the code that I use. Copy and past it in your .htaccess file (after changing the domain name of course:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

And that is all there is!

I have a project that requires a Lyrics Script. I have one but it has no backend and the code is loaded with German (I think) modifiers. I am at the place where I could build a back end but really don’t want to waste the time.

Here are the two decent ones it seems:

Basically there is MiLyrics by Microscripts and RightInPoint’s script.

They don’t look that different. The MiLyrics has some things native that RIP (funny) charges for but theirs has a bunch of add-ons.

Any input from my 2 readers?

I am no programmer that is for sure, but when you are the head of marketing, sales, development, and IT at your company, (we call that an internet marketer) you have to figure things out.

So I have a site that is run off of a bunch of MySQL tables. I wanted to display the latest entry from a few specific tables on the front page of the site. I could pay someone $150 and give them access to my mortgage payment or I can figure it out myself. I decided on the later.

So here it is:

Lets assume that you have a table named “entries” and that the primary key is “id.” Every time you make a new entry, the entry gets an id number higher than the last. What we want is the highest number “id” and its data to be displayed. So what I discovered is that this is a two step process.

1. Get the information
2. Display the information

At some point in the beginning of your php page you have to connect to the database. If you are working on an existing site it is probably already at the top of the page.

Step 1 Get the information

I used this to get the latest entry:

<?$sql = "SELECT * FROM entries ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 1";$rs = $db->Execute( $sql );?>

Then I had to display the info:

  <h2><?=$rs->fields['title']?></h2> <?=$rs->fields['thumbnail']?>

I hope this helps someone in the future.

I could do a long post here but you know the drill.

I am not at all concerned about page rank. If you post a comment here you will get a trackback from now on. I joined the no-nofollow group at bumpzee though I don’t really know why.

If you want to know why you should make your blog dofollow, here is a pretty good description.

I still will have no mercy on spammers but the rest get link love!