HowTos

Cannot verify domain with Yandex when domain is behind CloudFlare 2

 in HowTos  tagged cloudflare / cname / domain / yandex by

Recently we were trying to verify the ownership of a domain through yandex. We tried the CNAME approach which would be more universal and so we added a new CNAME record in the DNS configuration in CloudFlare.

The record had the following configuration:

  • Type: CNAME
  • Name: yamail-dd63c3831dbd
  • Value: mail.yandex.com
  • TTL: Automatic
  • Status: DNS and HTTP proxy (CDN)

We tried several times the verify domain button in https://domain.yandex.com/domain/example.com/ but it kept on failing saying that the CNAME record was not found. Only after we disabled the DNS and HTTP proxy (CDN) did it work.

So in the end, the properly working record was as follows:

  • Type: CNAME
  • Name: yamail-dd63c3831dbd
  • Value: mail.yandex.com
  • TTL: Automatic
  • Status: DNS Only

How to use git features on a local project without a Git server

 in HowTos  tagged git / local / no server / vcs / version control system by

Like many of you, sometimes we develop code that does not belong to a Git server.
Working as so, one would think that we would miss all the features of a Version Control System (VCS).
Fortunately, this assumption is wrong.
Using the already installed Git tools, we can create a new local repository in any system folder with no additional configuration.

To do so, and create a new repository from an existing project, we need to do the following using a terminal/shell:

  1. Navigate into the directory that contains the project e.g. cd /home/bytefreaks/Projects/Party/banana/
  2. Type git init
    This command will create an empty Git repository in that folder and it will produce a message as follows:
    Initialized empty Git repository in /home/bytefreaks/Projects/Party/banana/.git/
  3. In case you have files that should not be included in your repository, it is better that you create a .gitignore file and add them there.
    This way you will be able to indicate all of the files that you don’t want to the repository to track.
  4. Use git add . (please note that you need the dot . for this command)
    This command will stage all files that are not in .gitignore to be part of your next commit.
  5. Finally, type git commit or git commit -m "Initial Commit with status bla bla", to make your first commit to the repository
  6. …
  7. Profit!

By now, you should have a fully functional local git repository without the assistance of an external server.

Create an HTML page with no JavaScript that will redirect the user after a few seconds 1

 in HowTos  tagged delay / html / no javascript / redirect by

The following sample page will redirect the user to bytefreaks.net after 5 seconds. This page does not require JavaScript to be enabled on the user’s browser.

To modify the delay time and the redirect path, you need to edit the following line in the head of the page <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;URL=http://www.bytefreaks.net/">. In this example we set the delay to 5 seconds and the redirect url to be http://www.bytefreaks.net/.

You can download a working example of this code here ([download id=”1779″]). If you rename the file to index.html and place it in a folder, it will be the first file that your webserver will read and the redirect will be applied.

<!doctype html>

<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>Bytefreaks.net Redirect Page</title>
    <meta name="description" content="A page that will redirect the user to bytefreaks.net after 5 seconds">
    <meta name="author" content="Bytefreaks.net">
    <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;URL=http://www.bytefreaks.net/">
  </head>

  <body bgcolor="#ffffff">
    <center>You will be automatically redirected to <a href="http://bytefreaks.net">bytefreaks.net</a> as this resource is not available.</center>
  </body>
</html>

 

PHP: Functions that check passwords if they are strong enough

 in HowTos  tagged password check / php / preg_match by

Following you will find a function that checks a string if it matches certain limitations that are usually applied on passwords.

Specifically, in the following code we check that the input contains at least one small Latin letter, a caps Latin letter, a number and a special character.

//Function that checks if string has at least one small Latin letter, one caps Latin letter, a number and a special character
function validString($string) {
  $containsSmallLetter = preg_match('/[a-z]/', $string);
  $containsCapsLetter = preg_match('/[A-Z]/', $string);
  $containsDigit = preg_match('/\d/', $string);
  $containsSpecial = preg_match('/[^a-zA-Z\d]/', $string);
  return ($containsSmallLetter && containsCapsLetter && $containsDigit && $containsSpecial);
}

In case you do not want to check for the case of the Latin characters and you just want to see if there is any of them we can merge the two checks as follows

//Function that checks if string has at least one Latin letter, a number and a special character
function validString($string) {
  $containsLetter = preg_match('/[a-zA-Z]/', $string);
  $containsDigit = preg_match('/\d/', $string);
  $containsSpecial = preg_match('/[^a-zA-Z\d]/', $string);
  return ($containsLetter && $containsDigit && $containsSpecial);
}