Disallow Users from Modifying Backlink URL - javascript

I want to to offer my users the ability to embedd a badge I give them on their own websites. However, I do not want them to be able to modify the code. This means that the href should always come back to my website.
Example:
<img src="http://badge.png">
How can i ensure that they do not change the URL?
Do i need to do some sort of iFrame or encryption?

You can't prevent users from manipulating code, but you can make sure on the server-side that there is only one link that delivers that badge. Add tracking or whatever you're interested in on this link.
When the users change the link, the badge won't be shown anymore.

Related

Determine which link (on same page) was used?

I have a page with two links to an introduction/registration page. We want to show different content based on which link the user uses. They appear in different contexts on the same page, and we would like to tailor the message on the registration page to that context. For SEO purposes I was told not to change the URL.
I'm using rails. Since the incoming user will have the same referrer regardless of which link was clicked, what is the best way to know which link was used to get to my page? Is it possible in a practical way without altering the URL?
I would change the href on click like described in How to change href of <a> tag on button click through javascript
But I would not change the whole url. I would only append a parameter. This should not influence SEO.

User-Generated-Content—where to start? Users submits content into divs which adds to the gallery

A user would click a submit button and a function would create a div in a gallery on my site with which they could link to if they wanted to share that content specifically. The content is just embedded and hosted on other sites like youtube so the user would not be actually uploading any content or need an account. It's a free open gallery that anyone could copy a url and paste into an input and submit that content into a div in the gallery.
Any ideas where to start? Would this require php?
Well if you're a super beginner or something the first step would be to make your website just the way you want it and inside these div's you can just put the url that the user submitted instead of the content that url points to. [If you can do this then I assume you wouldn't need to ask this question, so don't mind me treating you like a complete beginner]
How would you achieve this? Well you're definitely need:
Some sort of server side language (php is a good choice) that allows you to use the input from the user (The POST request from the form he/she submits),
Check it for correctness / clean up the input / supported websites, etc.
Save this information somewhere (a database) so that you can get it back later.
The next steps would be to now get the information from the database and show it on your gallery page like you want it. This involves:
Getting whatever subset of information you want to display on a particular page from the database. Perhaps only cat related things or something, I don't know.
Just displaying it in your div's using a for loop or something.
.
foreach ($subset as $url) {
echo "<div>$url</div>";
}
Then the last step would be to convert these links into actual videos / images or whatever depending on the type of link. This can be done both client side using Javascript / server side using php or some other language.
This is going to be a lot of manual work, looking through every websites api and figuring out how to convert a url into a video for example. Images are easy but they may be hotlink protected so you might have to go through an API there as well.

Multipage vs Single Page and Unobtrusive Javascript

I have a section of a site with multiple categories of Widget. There is a menu with each category name. For anybody with Javascript enabled, clicking a category reveals the content of the category within the page. They can click between categories at will, seeing the DOM updated as needed. The url is also updated using the standard hash/hashbang (if we are being Google-friendly). So for somebody who lands on example.com/widgets, they can navigate around to example.com/widgets#one, example.com/widgets#two, example.com/widgets#three etc.
However, to support user agents without Javascript enabled, following one of these category links must load a new page with the category displayed, so for someone without javascript enabled, they would navigate to example.com/widgets/one, example.com/widgets/two, example.com/widgets/three etc.
My question is: What should happen when somebody with Javascript enabled lands on one of these URLS? What should someone with Javascript enabled be presented with when landing on example.com/widgets/one for example? Should they be redirected to example.com/widgets#one?
Please note that I need a single page site experience for anybody with Javascript enabled, but I want a multi-page site for a user agent without JavaScript. Any answer that doesn't address this fact doesn't answer the question. I am not interested in the merits or problems of hashbangs or single-page-sites vs multi-page-sites.
This is how I would structure it:
Use HistoryJS to manage the URL. JS pushstate browsers got full correct URLs and JS non-pushstate browsers got hashed urls. Non-JS users went to the full URL as normal with a page reload.
When a user clicks a link:
If they have JS:
All clicks to other pages are handled by a function that prevents the default action, grabs the HREF and passes the URL to an ajax request and updates the URL at the same time. The http response for that ajax request is then parsed and then loaded into the content area.
Non JS:
Page refreshed as normal and loads the whole document.
When a page loads:
With JS: Attach an event handler to all your links to prevent the default so their href is dealt with via Ajax.
Without JS: Nothing. Allow anchors to work as normal.
I think you should definitely have all of your content accessible via a full, correct URL and being loading it in via ajax then updating the URL to reflect the address where you got your content from. That way, when JS isn't running, you don't have to change anything.
Is that what you mean?
Apparently your question already contains the answer. You say:
I need a single page site experience for anybody with Javascript enabled
and then ask:
What should someone with Javascript enabled be presented with when landing on example.com/widgets/one for example? Should they be redirected to example.com/widgets#one?
I'd say yes, they should be redirected. I don't see any other option, given your requirements (and the fact that information about JavaScript capabilities and the hash fragment of the URL are not available on the server side).
If you can accept relaxing the requirements a bit, I see another option. Remember when the web was crowded with framesets, and we landed on a specific frame via AltaVista (Google wasn't around yet!) search? It was common to see a header saying that page was supposed to be displayed as a frame, and a link to take the user to the frameset version.
You could do something similar: when scripting is available, detect that you're at example.com/widgets/one and add a link to the single-page version. I know that's not ideal, but it's better than nothing, and maybe better than a nasty client-side redirect.
Why should you need to redirect them to a different page. The user arrived at the page looking for an answer. He gets the answer even if he has javascript enabled. It doesn't matter. The user's query has been fulfilled.
But what would happen if the user lands on example.com/widgets#one ? You would need to set up an automatic redirect to example.com/widgets/one in that case. That could be done by checking the if javascript is enabled in the onload event and redirect to the appropriate page.
One way for designing such pages is to design without javascript first.
You can use anchors in the page so:
example.com/widgets#one
Will be a link to the element with id 'one'
Once your page works without javascript, then you add the javascript layer. You can prevent links to be followed by using the event.preventDefault.
(https://developer.mozilla.org/fr/docs/DOM/event.preventDefault), then add the desired javascript functionality.

What is the best approach for storing YouTube content appended to user contributed content?

So I'm trying to implement similar functionality to Facebook where I am including information from YouTube should a users post contain a link, and when clicked it embeds the video.
I've accomplished it thus far, I'm just wondering how Facebook stores this information.
To me there are two options:
1) Have the post saved as normal (it is just plain text), and if the post contains a youtube link, append it on the fly in JavaScript whenever that content is viewed. However I know that when you post a link, Facebook gives you the option to change the title, description etc. Which leads me to..
2) Generate the HTML that would be otherwise appended when viewed and store it alongside the post at the database-insert level.
If so, doesnt that add a significant amount of information per post? What happens if you want to change the formatting of all youtube content within posts on your site later on? Each will be stored individually and seems like it would be a pain.
What is the best way to manage & engineer this sort of functionality?
Cheers,
I'd store the information itself in the database, but not as HTML. Generate the HTML on the fly but store the data in a separate place. If you don't want to add too many extra database fields consider storing the information in some serialized form (like serialize() in PHP).
Anyway I would always keep information separated and never store auto-generated HTML unless it's some sort of cache that can be re-generated.
If you want the user to include his video within his text, store the link in HTML within that user's intervention, and output it as is from the database on the page. Then your users can edit their posts to decide whether to place the video before, after, in the middle or not at all, and can change the details in HTML.
If you are showing the video in some standard way, then store the video link along with the post in a separate database column, and generate the HTML on the fly. You can have data in columns for size, colour etc..., but the flexibility will always be limited to what you decide to store: if there is a database coloumn for colour then you are letting the user choose the colour, otherwise... not.
So, the most flexible is to let your users type HTML. If you think they aren't up to it, or you want to limit their choices of what they can format, you could use a java(script) rich text editor of the type that you have in stackoverflow, wikipedia etc., with possibilities to edit text in certain chosen ways via buttons. You could also store the post in XML, say in a chosen subset of HTML5 (anything that is valid in a certain container...), and transform it at presentation time.
to me this sounds like a problem that was taken too far.
if you implement ckeditor in your post form,
it should resolve the problem ( if i understood it right ),
since in ckeditor you can embed an swf/flv,
and the output will be html.
that gives the editor the power to decide exactly where he want the video ( since he can add the link wherever he wants in the form ).
since the flv/swf come with its meta data from youtube, you dont need to save that data,
just the link to the video.

Use jQuery to append star to menu item if the linked page's content has changed since last visit

I would like to create a similar effect to Apple's Safari 4 Beta Top Sites page -
when when you view it and a page's content has changed since you last visited, it displays a blue star in the top right hand corner to notify you.
I would like to do the very same, but only within my website and instead of an image I would like to append a '*' or some other character to the menu item's link.
I'm sure you would use the jQuery Cookie Plugin, but my scripting is not that advanced and I do not know how to dynamically change the cookie's content. Have I explained properly? How would I do it?
Many thanks in advance
Server side:
Read the website f.ex every minute and save the timestamp if changed content.
Save the users' visit timestamp to the page
Ajax:
Check if the websites update timestamp is newer than your visitors' timestamp, if yes make the star class visible, when the user clicks on the link, make the star disappear and update the users timestamp.
--
Showing a star or an image or whatever with Jquery is not the big deal here, it's a oneliner, the complex problem is to detect website changes, because minor changes can occur, but the main content could not change. The easiest way to do this would be if the website provides rss, then there's probable that the important new content will be published via rss.
You're asking a very vague question. Have you even attempted this? Please try it first then ask for help along the way.
Also, this is not something you necessarily need jQuery for. You could do it completely on the backend. But it's hard to say which solution is best for you without know anymore details.
I guess I would recommend using php and storing the cached page into a db (in other words the user would have a "fav pages" account) then when the user visits the "fav pages" webpage, you would fetch all the users favorite pages and compare it to what has been stored in the db. But for certain pages (for example if they have a date/time string), it would be very difficult to tell if the change was something the user wants to know about. Probably you would need to create a complex algorithm to decide what change is good change and what change is just certain website features.

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