Entries Tagged 'Tips and tricks' ↓

The Unicode standard character list provides a great many letters and characters in languages we are both familiar with and unfamiliar with. It also provides a great many symbols for math, science, and other more obscure functions.

When you see a weird character being used by someone—particularly in their listing title—that’s usually where it came from. But for the most part, lists you find are of a few characters somebody thought was interesting before they got bored and gave up.

I have made a list here of the 60,000 possible Unicode characters. If you’re looking for a character to use in your HTML to decorate your page, you may very well find something there.

Note: the page is large and may load slowly if you have a slow connection. Also, if you make a listing title with a lot of characters in it, make sure there are spaces. If you break the front page or a category index page because your set it up without spaces, your listing can be suspended.

Click here.

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Let’s say you have your own domain. You have uploaded files, say, photos, and you intend to sell access to those photos. You don’t want to give access to anyone who doesn’t pay. All you want is to sell access to photo sets by email, not start a member’s area where someone could have full access to all the files you might have.

If you’ve read this far, you probably aren’t sure how to go about this. There are a lot of ways to do it, many of them requiring a fair amount of technical expertise.

I’m going to skip around those and give the one that is the easiest to use that I know of.

Let’s say I have a domain named mydomain.com. The URL of that domain is http://mydomain.com. If I have an ‘images’ folder, as many people do, the URL would be http://mydomain.com/images/. If you have an image in there named myimage.jpg, the URL of that image is http://mydomain.com/images/myimage.jpg.

The first thing you need to do is check to see what happens if you go to that /images/ directory by typing in the address http://mydomain.com/images/. It is often the case that typing in a folder name will by default send you to an index page you have in that folder. But if you don’t have an index page in that folder (because maybe you didn’t put one there), depending on how your server is set up by your host, you may see a default directory page that has clickable links to all your images.

This is a bad thing, as anyone who knows you have an /images/ folder (or anyone who guesses you have one) can see everything you have in there. You may want to contact your host to see if they will change that, or you can simply create and upload a blank index page.

Open Notepad (Start=>Accessories=>Notepad), select File=>Save As. In the window that pops up, choose where you want to save it on your computer first, so you won’t forget where you put it. Type index.html in the “File name” box. Change “Save as Type” from “Text Documents (*.txt)” to “All Files”. Then click Save.

Upload the file into any directory that doesn’t already have an index file of some sort.

Now, let’s say you want to sell someone a set of files named reddress1.jpg, reddress2.jpg, and reddress3.jpg. You may want to sell multiple sets. It’s really convenient to name them like that, because it makes it easy for you to see what you have and work with it. But it also makes it easy for someone else to guess what else might be there. So if someone who bought Set 1 guessed that Set 2 contained reddress4.jpg, reddress5.jpg, and reddress6.jpg, then typed those in, they could very well find them. They might also go looking to see what you named your other photo sets, based on your sales info.

Obviously that’s way too easy. Here’s what I do. I append a random string to the end of the file or folder I am giving access to, using PassUtils, a free password generator. Unzip it and install it. To use it just open and uncheck the “punctuation box”, because having punctuation in a filename can mess up opening that file. Create as many passwords as you like. Then right click each password and copy the password to your clipboard. Rename your files one at a time by right clicking in a Windows ‘Save As’ or ‘Open’ window, or in FTP, by right clicking and selecting ‘Rename’. The name will be selected. Hit the right arrow to put the cursor to the end of the file name, between the file name and the file extension. Type an underscore ‘_’ or hyphen ‘-’, then copy in the random string.

The goal is to change the file ‘reddress1.jpg‘ to ‘reddress1_6cYm2FTg.jpg‘. Now you can still read what the file contains based on what you named it, but nobody can possibly guess correctly what you named it to access it without permission.

You can also do the same thing with folders containing multiple images. If you sell a single set of images in a folder named /Set1_6cYm2FTg/, nobody can guess the folder name, and you can still give the photos easy names inside the folder.

Many girls are now using Photohostess to host their images for Niteflirt. Unfortunately, although photohostess is intended to host photos for girls on Niteflirt and provide them with links to use, it does not provide you with Niteflirt-safe image code or the information you need to fix the links to make them work but keep them from getting your listing suspended.

In my last entry I gave instructions on how to clean up Photohostess links by editing them. That is no longer necessary. I have created a page that you can enter your image url, which will give you a working image link to copy.

There is also a second form which will generate a working link. So you can use it to create HTML code for payment mail buttons, image links to your blog, or whatever you want.

There is a third form you can use to create text links.

You must enter naked links with no tags. There should be no spaces in your links. If you miscopy, it will create HTML code for you that just won’t work. If you are making payment mail buttons, copy the plain HTML link from the window that comes up after you create or edit your payment mail button, not the popup that links from the payment mail index and provides you with a gray payment mail button code.

These are standard links. They will work with any text or image anywhere you need an HTML image or link code on the web. They will not modify your image size for you.

Photohostess link generator

Photohostess is a photo hosting site intended for use with Niteflirt. The site requires photos uploaded to meet Niteflirt photo requirements. Therefore, it is rather odd that of all the links they give you to use your photos, none of them is Niteflirt-safe and ready. (Click to enlarge the image if it appears small to you.)

You have a choice here, but either way you have to do some editing.

You can take the hotlink for websites code, and remove the link (shown in red):

<a href="http://photohostess.com/etc…"><img src=”http://photohostess.com/etc…></a>

Or you can take the direct link and turn it into an image link by adding the parts in green here:

<img src="http://photohostess.com/etc…">

Also see How to host an image on Niteflirt.

I’m not going to take credit for figuring this out, as I saw someone doing it this morning.

Upload your photo as a profile thumbnail. When the listing is saved, click on the thumbnail to enlarge it in a popup. Right-click to copy the url. Put it in an excel file or text file somewhere safe, so you don’t lose the link. Now put it in a regular image tag:

<img src=”http://i.niteflirt.com…etc.”>

Even if you change the thumbnail, the image will stay hosted. Wasn’t that easy?

Put this code at the top of your listing, substituting a named color or a hex code color (also found on the same charts). You can pick an unnamed hex code color using a free color picker.

<body border=”0″style=”background-color:black;”>

Leave the spacing exactly as it is.

Unless you are using the old pre-transition callbuttons (which stopped working but then later became active again), your flirt-installed callbuttons do not change status when you change status. Code for those callbuttons is no longer distributed.

The link to callbutton code on your My Account page no longer is present. The link on our listings has not been coded, and if you click it the page ends up being refreshed. The only way to get current callbutton codes for your listings is to open a listing as if to edit it, submit twice without editing (unless you need to edit, of course), then click the link on the page that also has links to your account and help in getting started.

A callbutton whose code is obtained in this way while you were available is static code. It will always be set to available, though customers cannot complete a call by clicking it when you are unavailable. It will not send mail when you are Away.

I got this button while I was available:

   <a href=”http://beta.niteflirt.com/calls/new?listing_id=5734291″ title=”Yes – Taking Calls”><img alt=”D5_cb-call-now-136x40_v5″ border=”0″ height=”40″ src=”http://beta.niteflirt.com/niteflirt/images/D5_cb-call-now-136x40_V5.gif” width=”136″ /></a>

A callbutton whose code was obtained while you were away is also static code. It is supposed to send mail, and cannot change to “taking calls”. But the server is left off the code, so it refers back to your own server, and actually can never do anything if you place it anywhere but on your Niteflirt page. And why would you need to do that? There already is a ‘send mail’ option on your pages.

I got this code while I was set to ‘Away’:

<a href=”/messages/compose?message%5Blisting_id%5D=5734291&message%5Brecipients_list%5D=Principal+Angela+Quattrano”><img alt=”D5_cb-mail-away-136x40_v4″ border=”0″ height=”40″ src=”http://beta.niteflirt.com/niteflirt/images/D5_cb-mail-away-136x40_V4.gif” width=”136″ /></a>

If someone were to try to click it to send me mail, the address it would try to send mail to is http://help4flirts.com/messages/compose?message%5Blisting_id%5D=5734291&message%5Brecipients_list%5D=Principal+Angela+Quattrano, which is definitely not a real email address.

With the pre-transition codes, both the image and your availability are controlled by the Niteflirt server, not by the button. So the image changes when your availability changes, as does what happens when the button is clicked.

This pre-transition callbutton displays my correct availability status:

<a href='http://www.niteflirt.com/calls/PT_interimcall.asp?sid=XXXXXXX'><img border=0 src='http://www.niteflirt.com/calls/callimage.asp?sid=XXXXXXX&ImageType=1'></a>

I have changed the listing SID number to a series of x’s. Just substitute your listing SID number (found in the url of your listing).

First, you have to know how to use a stylesheet to format an HTML page in at least a general way. I can’t get into that here.

Put the link at the top of your listing edit textarea.
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
href="http://stylesheeturl">

The reason why the <h1> tag doesn’t work anymore is because Niteflirt has commandeered it in its stylesheet and assigned it to be gray 7 pixel. The only way to reassign it in a stylesheet is to take advantage of the fact that your entire listing is within a table cell with the class of “user”. The best way to change that default is to take advantage of that class:

.user h1 {
    color:black;
    font-weight:bold;
    size: 1.5em;
    font-family:georgia,garamond;
    text-align: center;
}

This will produce a heading that is big, black, bold, centered, and has the font I have chosen.

You really need to work with the “user” class, your own classes, or your own id’s within your listing, or you can seriously break the page by changing global defaults.

Some of us were using Call manager scripts to log us in and out of our multiple accounts when we got calls. Well, they don’t work anymore.

Heck, you can’t even see your callbuttons change anymore. If you have multiple accounts and add one callbutton from each to your favorites of one of the accounts (pick the slowest) then you can see all your accounts at the same time and hopefully tell which one is busy.

This script should open up your favorites in an iframe that refreshes every 60 seconds. Save it as an html file and open it in a browser File=>Open.

I wrote a little script to help girls log in and out quicker, now that the old ones no longer work.

Download the text file, open it in Notepad, and edit it so you replace the dummy accounts in “Account #1″, “Account #2″, etc, and the dummy passwords, “Password #1″, etc, with your own.

Do not use a word processor. If you have a Mac, you will need to download a free text editor. Get one that sounds like it’s intended for coders who are typing code. Make sure it is not a word processor.

Save on your computer as an .html file and open it in a browser. Bookmark it in your Bookmarks toolbar folder, so you can open it at a click.

If you click the logout buttons while you are in a browser window where you are logged into a Niteflirt account, it will log you out and change your availability status.

I have disabled the login feature so garbage doesn’t get submitted.
Demo
Text file

If you can’t get this to work, I can customize it for you for $5, but I think you can get it to work. It’s simpler than you think.

In fact, the upgrade has made it simple to view older payment mail buttons, even though they still haven’t gotten round to putting a link to page 2 (or even older ones) and there are only 25 buttons showing, half of which are phantom duplicates.

Login to your Niteflirt account to follow along. All the screenshots of listings are linked to the actual page. Screenshots of payment mail button pages are linked to a URL that will only show the account you are logged into.

Here’s the secret:
If you click on the new Niteflirt homepage and look at the url, it looks like this:

So now click on the link to Find Women, and the URL looks like this:

Now click to the next page. Wait, what?

And now the next:

Do you suppose that if you changed that ’3′ to a ’4′ it would take you to the next page? Try it and see. (If you’re lazy and just want to guess “yes”, you’d be right.)

Now the whole site is written on the same platform, the same code, which is completely different from the previous type of code.

Let’s look at the URL for page 1 of our payment mail buttons.

There’s no link to page 2 here. There’s not even any indication that page 2 exists. In fact, 12 of the 25 buttons showing are dummy duplicates of other buttons, so you’re really only seeing 13 buttons.

Let’s fake up that URL and see what happens.

Some of you ran out of payment mail button space on Page 1 long ago, even though there were maybe 200 buttons on each page. Now there are only 25 buttons, and half of them are fakes. But here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to give you links to the first 50 pages. You can take it from there.

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