Signature banner has disappeared with W7 PC

[RayProudfoot]

This is very strange. I've just bought a new Windows 7 laptop and viewing my messages on these boards I don't see my signature PHP banner any more. But the file still exists on the server and on this link I can still view it. www.cheadlehulmeweather.co.uk/banner.php.

So why isn't it visible when I view the forum messages? Is Firefox or W7 preventing it?

[water01]

Well I can see it so it must be a browser problem on your computer.

[RayProudfoot]

Thanks David. It was AdBlockPlus that was responsible. I've disabled it for this page and the banner is back.

[DaveNZ]

For some reason adblock doesn't like the word "banner" in the file name and blocks it. Your banner has been blocked for me.
I noticed my banner was being blocked by adblock a while back so I renamed it to smallSummary.php and had no problems since.

[RayProudfoot]

For some reason adblock doesn't like the word "banner" in the file name and blocks it. Your banner has been blocked for me.
I noticed my banner was being blocked by adblock a while back so I renamed it to smallSummary.php and had no problems since.

Are you sure about the dislike of the word banner? All I did was change the Adblocker Plus setting for sandaysoft.com and it was fine after that.

[DaveNZ]

Are you sure about the dislike of the word banner? All I did was change the Adblocker Plus setting for sandaysoft.com and it was fine after that.

Mine was blocked from several forums I use and renaming it made it visible on all of them

[RayProudfoot]

Are you sure about the dislike of the word banner? All I did was change the Adblocker Plus setting for sandaysoft.com and it was fine after that.

Mine was blocked from several forums I use and renaming it made it visible on all of them

Assuming mine is still blocked for you perhaps you could change AdBlocker to not block sandaysoft.com.

I use it on other forums too but I can see it. Haven't asked others if they can see it though.

[DaveNZ]

Assuming mine is still blocked for you perhaps you could change AdBlocker to not block sandaysoft.com.

I use it on other forums too but I can see it. Haven't asked others if they can see it though.

Done - your banner.php is now showing and so is David's which was also hidden

[RayProudfoot]

Done - your banner.php is now showing and so is David's which was also hidden

Result.

[mcrossley]

As a small point of interest I changed my banner name and also reconfigured it so the extension can be .jpg .GIF or .PNG rather than .PHP

This means it appears to be an image file to other sites if they do a simple scan of the url and will not allow a .PHP extension file to be placed into your profile. As a bonus it get round the Ad block general rule as well.

[RayProudfoot]

Mark,

If it's a simple process in doing that I could be interested. A couple of sites I visit are a bit fussy about PHP links.

Bear in mind my HTML / PHP skills are close to zero.

[mcrossley]

Ray, it's a two stage process, so taking my 'avatar' banner as an example...

First in a .htaccess file on your web server I added two lines...

Code: Select all

#Banner image redirection to script
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(avatar[0-9]+).(gif|jpg|png)$ $1.php?format=$2 [NC,L]

This takes any request for an image file called avatarNNN with a file extension of gif or jpg or png, and passes the request to a php script with the same root name (avatarNNN) and passes the required image file format as a parameter. The NC flag makes it case insensitive, and L tells it that this is the last rewrite rule to process for this request.

I have two avatar scripts, one 90 pixels square the other 100. So requesting an image called "avatar90.png" will cause the script "avatar90.php" to be called with a format parameter of "png" - avatar90.php?format=png

Then in the php script you have to handle the format parameter to output the image in the requested format. Using the stand banner script I added an extra variable...

Code: Select all

$SITE['format']         = "png";        # Options: jpg  gif  png

Then get the supplied parameter (if any, it defaults to png as you can see above)...

Code: Select all

// Has an output format parameter been passed to the script?
if (isset($_GET['format']) && $_GET['format'] !== '') {
	$SITE['format'] = strtolower($_GET['format']);
}

Then at the end of the script output in the requested format...

Code: Select all

// Output the image in the format requested.

if ($SITE['format'] == "png" ) {
    imagepng($im);
}

if ($SITE['format'] == "jpg" ) {
    imagejpeg($im);
}

if ($SITE['format'] == "gif" ) {
    imagegif($im);
}

You can see the full code here: http://weather.wilmslowastro.com/avatar90.php?view=sce

An here is a jpg image version http://weather.wilmslowastro.com/avatar90.jpg:


An here is a gif image version http://weather.wilmslowastro.com/avatar90.gif:


An here is a png image version http://weather.wilmslowastro.com/avatar90.png:


And lastly calling the script in the old way as straight php creates a 'default' png image
http://weather.wilmslowastro.com/avatar90.php:

[RayProudfoot]

Hi Mark,

Thanks very much for providing those instructions. I do have a .htaccess file on my server but it's currently 0 bytes. I guess I copy it to my PC, edit it with Notepad and copy it back.

As the dimensions of my image are 468x80 which I would like to keep I'll only have a single output. So apart from editing .htaccess am I correct in assuming the remaining code goes into my banner.php?

[mcrossley]

Yes it does. If you only have a single file then your .htaccess could be simplified to look like this...

Code: Select all

#Banner image redirection to script
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^banner.(gif|jpg|png)$ banner.php?format=$1 [NC,L]

[RayProudfoot]

Thank you Mark.