Dear Readers,
So many subtle things separate friendly web sites from those that just don't give a darn. Logical organization, ability to search within the site, and easy-to-find contact information are biggies in my book. But another characteristic that I appreciate is user-friendly error pages.
I hate that "bonked on the head" feeling I get when slapped with a chilly 404 message. It's like, "well, what do I do with this?"
If you're using PHP and Apache to serve your web pages, it's easy to incorporate more informative error responses for your site's visitors. You can serve an alternate page based on the name of the page that was not found, or create a page on the fly from a database. The two-step process to set this up is outlined nicely in David Sklar's "Custom Error Pages with PHP and Apache," recently published on O'Reilly's ONLamp.com site.
In case you haven't been over to ONLamp lately, it's been quite the happening place for high-performance web publishing. You might want to stop by and peruse the content.
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Until next week,
Derrick
Derrick Story
O'Reilly Network Technical Editor
derrick@oreilly.com
Custom Error Pages with PHP and Apache
Turn your "Page Not Found", or "404" messages into more than just
bland error reports. Serve an alternate page based on the name of
the page that was not found, create a page on the fly from a
database, or send an email about the not-found page to a
webmaster. David Sklar, coauthor of PHP Cookbook, shows you how,
using PHP and Apache.
Plumbing the Depths of the ThreadAbortException Using Rotor
Chris Sells was asked the other day how calling Thread.Abort could
raise an exception in a completely different thread. Finding the
answer led him on a merry chase.
Introduction to FileMaker Pro
In this first installment in our new FileMaker Pro series, we
introduce you to this polished, powerful relational database.
Alan Graham sets the table for things to come.
Linux in the Enterprise at LWE 2003
This year's LWE 2003 had an understandable focus on Linux in the
Financial Services industry -- it was practically next door to
Wall Street. Though the economy has taken its toll on Linux
companies, David HM Spector sees a bright future for Linux in the
Enterprise. Here's what caught his eye at LinuxWorld NYC.
Structure and Service: Illuminations from a Trip to the Forest
What do end users really want? Standardized formats, or plain
services? The bottom line, as Andy Oram discovers in his latest
column, is give users rich interactions mediated by a format of
their own choosing.
OpenEJB: EJB for Tomcat
If you've ever added EJBs to an existing application, you know
they can be complicated. Adding Tomcat makes it trickier.
Fortunately, OpenEJB makes the process almost painless, as Jacek
Laskowski explains.
Module::Build
Traditionally, modules have been put together with
ExtUtils::MakeMaker. Dave Rolsky describes a more modern
solution, and in the first of a two-part series, tells
us more about it.
XML at Five
To celebrate five years of XML, Edd Dumbill interviews a
selection of XML old-timers and experts about their experiences
of XML and hopes for the future.
Developing Visualization Applications with Cocoa and VTK
You can turn your garden variety iBook into a powerful scientific
ally by creating visualization apps using Cocoa and VTK. Drew
McCormack shows you how to set this up and get started.
X11 and OpenOffice on Mac OS X
X11 for OS X allows you to build graphical Unix-based applications
on your Mac. While you may not be a programmer, knowing how to
install X11 on your system allows you to run hundreds of programs
under X11, including the focus of this article, OpenOffice. Here's
how to do it.
Top Ten Digital Photography Tips
You have a digital camera and have recorded the typical shots of
family and friends. Now what? Here are ten tips to make your next
batch of digital images so impressive that people will ask: "Hey,
what type of camera do you have?" Guess what? It's not the camera.
OpenEJB: EJB for Tomcat
If you've ever added EJBs to an existing application, you know
they can be complicated. Adding Tomcat makes it trickier.
Fortunately, OpenEJB makes the process almost painless, as Jacek
Laskowski explains.
Top Ten Mac OS X Tips for Unix Geeks
From starting up to shutting down, there are big differences
between Mac OS X and Unix machines. Brian Jepson, coauthor of
Mac OS X for Unix Geeks offers ten tips he gathered while working
on the book. If you're a Unix geek moving to Mac OS X, these tips
will help smooth the way.
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