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1. Take time to complete your DANIWEB profile.
2. Is that one of those pharma sites? I see a lot of deleted spam about that site. Something about Linda as well.

Having done copywriting for 3 years now, it's increasing getting clearer to me that copywriting is not just about putting words on a page.

It is about shaping perception, sparking emotion, and guiding action without overtly “selling.”

The best copy often feels like a conversation with a trusted friend and not a sales pitch. It’s subtle, persuasive, and respectful of the reader’s time and intelligence.

In an age flooded with ads and messages, I sometimes wonder: are we giving enough thought to how we communicate, or are we just focusing on what we say?

I am curious to hear your thoughts on how you approach this balance in your content.

If you’re not running Google Ads or producing a large volume of new content, chances are it’s not AdsBot or something new being discovered. Unless you're experiencing significant issues with your site, it’s usually nothing to stress over and could simply be background activity from Google.

I honestly think sometimes Google's little robots are on some sort of secret mission, checking things out or finding new ways to explore the web. They don’t always let us know what they’re up to!

Or you could see it as a cool job by Google’s bots: Maybe they’re searching for something super specific in your little corner of the internet that only those curious bots know about.

So really, there’s probably no reason to freak out. It simply means that Google sent some of its less common, specialised bots to see what’s going on in your space. They're just doing their thing to help people discover your corner of the internet!

👋 Hello Everyone!

Just wanted to say a quick hello to the community!

I'm excited to be here and looking forward to connecting with like-minded people. I recently started working on a project called Research Compounds Hub, a site dedicated to providing information on various research compounds in a clean, trustworthy way.

Still improving things on the UI/UX side, so any tips, feedback, or collaborations are always welcome. Happy to be part of this space and learn from you all!

Cheers 😊

P.S. Here in the US, our Nests are directly connected to the HVAC system hardwired in the wall, so they aren’t movable at all.

How can you bear to live in such an uncivilized country?!

Apparently not available in the UK. Although Amazon UK are selling them and there are lots of angry reviews left.

Oh I have not seen those before... interesting.

I was thinking of this

Huh? I'm referring to these. They're just tiny wireless pucks that you put wherever you want.

Indeed not. He's 7 now.

Yes you can get those free standing mounts, but I don't have any. My thermostats are wired into the wall. It'd be cool if you could just pop them off the wall and stick them on a stand anywhere you like, but alas you cannot.

I assume your son is no longer a baby, but nowadays you can get Nest temperature sensors to put in different areas of your home. You can officially tell Nest to control the HVAC based on the temperature of the family room during the day and the temperature of the bedroom at night, for example.

In Google Search Console, I see a giant spike in "Other agent type" in crawl stats a few days ago. We don't use Google Ads (haven't for many years), and didn't add any large amount of content recently that I could imagine would constitute Google AdSense crawl. What could this be attributed to?

Oh yes IFTTT definitely a good shout. I've had some success with it in the past.

When our son was a baby we had real trouble keeping his room warm in the winter because the upstairs thermostat was out in the hall which was nice and toasty from all the heat of the house rising to meet it, while his bedroom with the door closed was cold.

I happened to have a thermostat connected to a micro-controller (I'm a technology hoarder) which I connected to my home network and had a little bash script running on a raspberry pi that polled for the temperature every now and then and fired a webhook event to IFTTT to turn on or off our heating via a Nest integration. It was rather a convoluted solution but it worked well and IFTTT was the key enabler since it already knew how to control our heating system.

It might be a good middle ground between nothing and running a fully blown automation system 24/7. Keen to hear what you go for, so please do report back.

I assume that if you have a paid post that is not performing as well as you expected it to, giving it a little extra oomph, even if it costs you a few bucks, gives the brand a bit wider reach, and ultimately perhaps a higher ROI, and might make them more likely to advertise again with you in the future. I would not promote sponsored collabs that are already performing as expected though.

Now as far as driving engagement on organic posts, I suppose that's just consistency, consistency, consistency to build up an audience. Also try partnering with other relevant influencers to increase both of your reach.

What about using something like IFTTT?

I have moved your post into the web development forum instead of the advertising/marketing forum where it was and tagged it appropriately.

Can you please provide the Javascript code as well as PHP code that is buggy so that we can help diagnose this for you. For example, if the JSON response is empty, it is most likely because of a bug in the PHP code. If the DOM doesn't reflect the new message, then that's a javascript issue.

What’s the best structure to manage these types of dynamic, country-specific conditions without hardcoding everything in JS?

I would store them in some form of database that PHP would have access to, and pass back ot javascript. None of the specific conditions should be hardcoded in javascript. I'm confused what you mean by hardcoding country-specific conditions in javascript, and yet using AJAX to have the PHP check a list. Do you mean the country-specific conditions are hardcoded in PHP instead of PHP utilizing a database?

Please provide your code :)

I’m working on a travel planning form that adjusts based on the selected nationality. For example, if someone picks a country like India, the form should display whether they need an electronic visa for places like Sri Lanka, and maybe show a short message or guide link.

I’m using JavaScript to detect changes in a <select> dropdown and send that to a PHP file via AJAX. The PHP checks a list and responds with JSON.

But I’m running into a few issues:

Sometimes the JSON response is empty, even though it works in the browser.

Other times, the DOM update doesn’t reflect the new message.

What’s the best structure to manage these types of dynamic, country-specific conditions without hardcoding everything in JS?

Any feedback appreciated — especially if you’ve done something similar for multi-country forms.

✅ This version:

Avoids links and commercial terms

Focuses on technical workflow (AJAX, PHP, JSON)

Mentions <link removed by moderator> as an example, not a pitch

I use semrush and kwfinder for keyword research.

What’s your most effective method for driving engagement on organic posts?

Hello, I'd probably start with an open source off the shelf solution such as https://www.home-assistant.io/

There are tutorials on their site that cover installation onto a raspberry pi so you should be able to get to and running fairly quickly.

It sounds like a fun project so please do let us know how you get on.

Hello everyone,

I'm in the early planning stages of a personal project to set up a smart home automation system using a Linux-based Raspberry Pi setup. My background is in electronics and embedded systems, but I'm relatively new to working with Linux for this kind of application. I’m hoping to get some advice from the community which lightweight Linux distribution would be best for running automation tasks smoothly on a Raspberry Pi, any recommended libraries or frameworks that make working with sensors and relays easier under Linux and common security or performance pitfalls I should keep in mind when exposing Linux-based devices on a home network?

Hello and welcome to Daniweb.

Along with keyword tools like Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush, don’t overlook using an SMM panel to test keyword performance in social media posts. It’s a great way to see what resonates with audiences in real time and boost reach on trending topics.

Hello! I am New over here. Hope my journey will be smooth over here.

    if sysInfo.lower() in ["exit", "Exit", "EXIT"]:

since sysinfo is now lower(), it will never be equal to "Exit" or "EXIT"

This was a fascinating read, Victor! The way you applied psychological principles like authority bias and loss aversion really shows how impactful small tweaks can be. I especially appreciated the emphasis on emotional storytelling, it’s often overlooked but clearly powerful. Thanks for sharing such actionable insights!

updated my code... everything is fixed :) i made functions

import time
import sys

#Global Variables
firstTime = True
loggedIn = False
incorrectLogin = True
admin = False
n = 0
n1 = 0
i = 0

#Create login if firstTime is True
if firstTime is True:
    print("Welcome new user!")
    time.sleep(1)
    print("It looks like it's your first time using this program!")
    time.sleep(1.5)
    User = input("Please create a user: ")
    User_password = input("Please create a password: ")
    time.sleep(1)
    firstTime = False




askAdmin = input("Would you like to set, "+ User + " as admin? (Y/n) ")
if askAdmin.lower() in ["Y", "y"]:
    adminPass = input("Please set up a admin password: ")
    print("Setting "+ User + " as admin...")
    time.sleep(1)
    print("Done!")
    User_admin = User
    admin = True
    n1 += 1
elif askAdmin.lower() in ["N", "n"]:
    print("Skipping...")
    time.sleep(1)
    print("No admin on system.")
    admin = False
    n1 += 1


def LoggedIn():
    sysInfo = input("1. Who is using the system" \
    " 2. Shutdown"
    " 3. Is there an admin"
    " 4. Change User password"
    " 5. Admin panel"
    " 6. Log out")
    if sysInfo.lower() in ["exit", "Exit", "EXIT"]:
        sys.exit()
    elif sysInfo.lower() == "1":
        print(User)
    elif sysInfo.lower() == "2":
        print("Shutting down...")
        sys.exit()
    elif sysInfo.lower() == "3":
        if admin == True:
            print("The admin on the system is: "+ User_admin)
        else:
            print("There is no admin on the system!")
    elif sysInfo.lower() == "4":
        if admin == True:
            print("Admin on System detected!")
            time.sleep(1)
            askAdminPass = input("Please input admin password: ")
            if askAdminPass != adminPass:
                print("Incorrect Password!")
            else:
                newUserPasswordWAdmin = input("Please …

I'm just coding something for fun right now and I'm stuck on looping. I'm using a while loop that only runs if my variable is 0. Right now, I set the variable to 0 but the code was after the loop. How do I fix this?

import time
import sys

#Global Variables
firstTime = True
loggedIn = False
incorrectLogin = True
admin = False
n = 0
n1 = 0


#Create login if firstTime is True
if firstTime is True:
    print("Welcome new user!")
    time.sleep(1)
    print("It looks like it's your first time using this program!")
    time.sleep(1.5)
    User = input("Please create a user: ")
    User_password = input("Please create a password: ")
    time.sleep(1)
    firstTime = False

#Cosmetic
print("Please log in")
time.sleep(1)

#Login code
while n == 0:
    if incorrectLogin is True:
        User_input = input("Please input user: ")
        if User_input == User:
            User_password_input = input("Please input password: ")
            #int(User_password_input)
            if User_password_input == User_password:
                print("Welcome, " + User + "!")
                loggedIn = True
                incorrectLogin = False
                n += 1
            else:
                print("Incorrect Password!")
                incorrectLogin = True
                loggedIn = False
        else:
            print("Incorrect User!")
            incorrectLogin = True
            loggedIn = False

#If want to set User as admin
askAdmin = input("Would you like to set, "+ User + " as admin? (Y/n) ")
if askAdmin.lower() in ["Y", "y"]:
    adminPass = input("Please set up a admin password: ")
    print("Setting "+ User + " as admin...")
    time.sleep(1)
    print("Done!")
    User_admin = User
    admin = True
    n1 += 1
elif askAdmin.lower() in ["N", "n"]:
    print("Skipping...")
    time.sleep(1)
    print("No admin on system.")
    admin = False …

We use Cloudflare, which I'm not sure if you use or are familiar with, but they have a feature called AI audit that analyzes AI crawlers. For example, I can see how many requests were made by Amazon Alexa's bot, ChatGPT's bot, Apple Siri's bot, etc.

You can block any one or many of these crawlers by specifying their name in your robots.txt file. For good measure, Cloudflare also gives you the option of blocking them with an HTTP 403 error if they are misbehaving and not respecting your robots.txt (which, in my experience, they do adhere to).

I would never block any specific IP or IP range for any long duration of time, but I think that blocking specific user agents makes sense server-side, and blocking specific bots via robots.txt is the easiest way since the AI bots are self-identifying.

As of now, I don't block any AI bots, but I do flood protection, just as you do. I have been on the fence about blocking AI bots because, as you say, on one hand it might be the future of getting web traffic, but on the other hand, they steal your content.

See attached for Cloudflare's report.

I woke up today to find that my husband asked ChatGPT to generate an image of my dog. The coloring is correct with the exception of Sadie doesn't have white at the tip of her tail.

First of all, let me be blunt. I believe that Enzo only resurrected a 12 year old thread with the intent of spamming. You and I know that because, as moderators, we see in his profile his spamming attempts and his infractions. However, no one else coming across this thread sees that or knows that, so the other 2000 people reading this thread may look at his post through a completely different lens than you or I.

My downvote was for the benefit of all of those people. I want us to be known as a friendly community where newbies can feel welcome to post anything and there are no dumb questions and no one should ever be made to feel dumb for any code they post, no matter how wrong it might be. I feel like your comment accusing their teacher of teaching it poorly, and then preaching "malpractice makes malperfect", etc. could be taken the wrong way. For example, what do you expect a student to do with being told, "Good programming habits should be taught from the start"? Are they meant to respond in agreement? It can potentially come across as being chastised for doing something that their teacher taught them. My most important thing here is that your response is never for the one person you're responding to, but always for the thousands of people who come after and read what you have to say. Newbies who come across moderators saying things like this can make …

Here's a page about how to create and view your VS log files to point you to where or why the compile failed.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/how-to-view-save-and-configure-build-log-files?view=vs-2022

Why put them down?

Please explain to me how anything I said was a put down. If someone told me their methof of counting cows was "count the number of legs and divide by four", I would point out that it would be simpler just to count the number of cows. If I said "That's stupid, just count the cows", then that would be a put down. What I did was to advocate for simple over complex.

I think you are being too quick to downvote.

Since the file is not generated, try a full compile. Be sure you change to Debug for this build.
You usually can't debug what you didn't compile.

Example: There were compile or build errors which stopped the creation of the .exe file. But no mention of compile errors so I wouldn't write about that here.

I don't know why you would use reduce and lambda when you could just do

sum(numbers)

And the directive

You should make use of two higher-order functions (i.e., map and reduce, or something else) to simplify the design.

is self-contradictory as using map and reduce instead of sum does not simplify the design. It complicates it. That goes against the core principles of Python. If that was a school assignment then the teacher is teaching it poorly. Malpractice makes malperfect. Good programming habits should be taught from the start.

I was working on a similar assignment where I had to compute the average of numbers from a text file using higher-order functions like map() and reduce(). I was really stuck on how to incorporate them meaningfully, but I finally figured it out.

Here's how I approached it using Python:

from functools import reduce

with open('numbers.txt', 'r') as file:
    content = file.read()

number_strings = content.split()
numbers = list(map(int, number_strings))
total = reduce(lambda x, y: x + y, numbers)
average = total / len(numbers)

print("Average:", average)

This worked perfectly for the numbers in the file and helped me understand how to use functional programming in a real example.

We make a vertical distinction between visuals for UI (which are under the R&D department) and visuals for content management / site promotion (which are under the S&D department).

In the first case, which covers every visual within the scaffolding of an app / site, we normally create them ourselves. These are typically SVG files, and the ideas for them might come from various sources, or they could be an alteration of a readymade SVG (e.g., from Freepik, with an account and payment). Especially for icons, lately we've been grouping them into a font file using https://icomoon.io/app/#/select. However, if this service stops being free, we will use a native tool to do it.

For content management and app/site promotion, we primarily use Freepik (Premium, of course), although I'm not sure that will be the case for much longer. We also use ChatLLM in some cases when we want more control over an AI-generated image or video. Of course, in those apps / sites, there's always a phrase indicating that some secondary content images or videos are AI-generated, usually on the terms/privacy or/and GDPR info page.

I am not in that department, so they probably use more tools than I know (or care to know). In the past, I know they experimented with several AI services and image banks. What amazes me is that some of their AI-created videos for app / site promotion (that are clearly made with the help of AI) go viral easily on TikTok or YouTube …

As I have mentioned before here, my company has its own (interconnected) firewall system on our servers. Currently, we don't have a strict policy for AI bots, but we do have a strict policy against flooding requests, especially when we see that the ISP behind the request's IP is either a VPN, transit, or data-collecting company.

I've realized that some of these data-collecting/scraping companies might be linked to AI bots, but I can't say it with 100% certainty. However, I have also seen the opposite: requests from IPs that "smell" like AI bots can be perfectly valid and have reasonable timing intervals (of a few milliseconds). In such cases, we let them get the information they want.

Most of our clients are e-shops or professional presentation sites. This means that when AI bots/data-collecting companies behave reasonably, we let them scrape whatever they want because real site visits from AI chatbots are increasing (although, in the data I have, not as much as has been reported).

We don't have a "forum" client, so I can't really speak about that, but we do have some news portals. We have talked with them about this, and so far, they don't face a significant problem from AI bots stealing content. However, we've already grouped them onto different servers so that we can apply different firewall rules in the future to aggressively block AI bots or related companies from accessing their content.

Dani, are you talking about bots that are collecting data to feed an …

We don't create a lot of them but a company I consult with has turned to AI Art.

That's really interesting! AI art is such a creative space. If you don't mind me asking, which tools or platforms do you use for generating your AI art?

@rproffitt I tried that with no luck

Hey! If you're using the CakePHP framework, you can connect to the Pinterest API with cURL and OAuth integration. Just follow Pinterest’s API docs for endpoints and token handling.

With my experience in digital marketing, I like to think of SEO as helping a friend find your favorite book in a library. You want to organize things so they find it easily, right? Here’s what I’d do today:

First, talk like a human, not a robot. If someone asks, “How do I fix a flat bike tire?” write answers that sound like you’re explaining it to a friend—simple steps, no complicated words.

Make your website super friendly—like a smooth bike ride, not a bumpy one. If it’s slow or doesn't look right on phones, people will leave fast. This will increase your bounce rate, which can hurt your website’s performance. Oh, and use pictures and videos! Google loves showing cool visuals, like a quick video that explains a simpler way to solve a problem.

Answer questions before they’re asked. If someone Googles “best pizza dough recipe,” put the recipe right at the top (with photos!), so you pop up first. Also, get “recommendations”, like when other websites link to yours. It’s like your friend saying, “Trust me, their pizza recipe is amazing!”

Voice search is super popular now. People ask Alexa or Google things like, “Where’s the closest bakery shop?” So write the way people speak, and use natural phrases instead of awkward or robotic-sounding words.

Lastly, keep it local. If you have a bakery shop, Google needs to know your address, hours, and that you sell fresh bread and cakes.

While there are many other strategies out there, …

When you browse the file system, does that file exist and is it accessible by the logged-in user? (Sorry, no VS experience.)

Digital Publishers:

Do you block AI bots either via robots.txt, with HTTP 403s, or both? Why or why not?

Currently on the fence about it and looking to get opinions from other publishers as to their reasoning and how it's influenced their SEO, etc.

That website copied DaniWeb's old design! Also, Web3 and blockchain are not synonymous. Web3 is just all about giving users control instead of corporations and social networks retaining all the control. In some ways, blockchain achieves that. In other ways, a social network adopting a policy of its users owning their own posts equally achieves that, and is considered Web3.

I don't know how or why a marketing agency would be specifically focused on Web3 unless it only caters to niche clients such as social networks or blockchain companies.

Given only this I won't be able to do more than comment how I use the Visual Studio system to debug my app.

1. I open the project.
2. I set the build to "Debug".
3. I set breakpoints on lines of code I suspect to be problematic.
4. I run the app while in Visual Studio.

That's usually enough to track down what I did wrong.

We don't create a lot of them but a company I consult with has turned to AI Art.

For protest signs we create our own. Here's one example:

It appears Web 3.0 is enabling far too many scams.

Nearly DAILY reports of multi-million dollar exploits and scams are revealed at https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com

As such, why would you go near such a thing?

Did any of our suggestions help you?

What are the best marketing agencies in Web3?