SQL Injection Defense

Dragonsaber, KimEngYeo.com and Frommer's have been protected against SQL injection attacks. For more details on implmenting the fix, please read the paragraph below by ColdFusion guru, Ben Forta.

SQL Injection Attacks, Easy To Prevent, But Apparently Still Ignored
I was just on a web site (no, not a ColdFusion powered site, and no I will not name names) browsing for specific content. The URLs used typical name=value query string conventions, and so I changed the value to jump to the page I wanted. And I made a typo and added a character to the numeric value. The result? An invalid SQL error message. Read more.
Ben Forta
Forta.com

38th Avenue Migration

38th Avenue Realty's website has just migrated from AccuWebHosting to Hostek, the same service as Dragonsaber. AccuWebHosting was an affordable basic host that only costs $4 per month. The move to Hostek was for future growth and plans add ColdFusion functionality. The transition was pretty smooth as tech support was helpful on both sides.

Click here for 38th Avenue Realty

A Walk in the Garden

The old version of Kim Eng Yeo's website has been archived in Dragonsaber's Classic section. It's also complete with a partially working demo so that users can get a feel of the page designs and graphics across the old site. There's been a lot of positive feedback about the old design with the wood & trellis motif, so it still needed a presence in the Web Design portfolio.

Click here for A Walk in the Garden

Frommer's Video & Mobile

Frommers.com posted a page promoting a new iPhone application created in partnership with Modality. There were actually 2 technological advances here:

1) iPhone App: This is the first Frommer's mobile app since the less known City-to-Go for the Palm VII in the late 90's. Even though it's only available for the iPhone & iPod touch, it will likely be successful because it's very visual and interactive, making full use of the devices' capabilities.

2) Video: Along with the app itself, the marketing department also worked on an instructional video to promote the application. This video is the first to be embedded on the site. Since this media isn't currently used in high volume on the site, YouTube was simply used for encoding and content delivery.

Click here to visit the Frommer's/Modality splash page

Dragonboat 2008

The Watercolors of Kim Eng Yeo

A year after the design update, Kimengyeo.com underwent a full redesign. The trellis and wooden elements were dropped for a more neutral and abstract design. The colors are similar to the previous design, but the lighter choices were used for the larger elements. All of these changes were meant to increase emphasis on Kim's paintings rather than trying to frame them with a matching design. The site also went to a 1024x768 design so that larger versions of each piece could be displayed.

The information architecture was also reworked to be more painting-centric and SEO (seach engine optimization) friendly. The previous site was more of a web presence with emphasis given to the "about" sections. On the new site, the painting were brought up to the forefront. Each painting section is a main section of the site rather than living under a "painting" section. The homepage is more text heavy than before, using natural language, yet getting the keywords in. The news section allows for updates that point to exhibitions or new paintings.

Click here for The Watercolors of Kim Eng Yeo

42-60 157th St.

A new Flushing apartment was added to the 38th Avenue Realty website. Like the Morningside Heights listing from last year, it also plugs in to Google Maps & Picasa Web.

This 2-bedroom apartment includes 2 full bathrooms, living room, dining area, kitchen, balcony & parking space. For details, hi-res photos & maps, click here.

Queen Mary 2

Strata-Art 2008 Updates

Strata-Art just went through a bunch of content updates. Starting from the top, the main page that features 3 paintings was redone. All three spots were replaced with newer pieces. On the backend HTML, Kerwin took the previously cut-up image and made it one large one. The one large image loads a lot faster for 2 reasons: 1) the total file size is a little smaller; 2) loading one image of a certain file size is faster than loading several images equaling the same file size.

Updated oil and watercolor paintings were added throughout the galleries. The News and Exhibitions sections have also been refreshed.

Click here for Strata Art

Frommer's BOS & HFX

Two more slideshows went up today with photos of Boston & Halifax, the two stops from my Memorial Weekend cruise on Queen Mary 2. Since these were cruise port stops, they didn't cover much, but I made sure to take a few general pictures and was even able to cover a handful of POI's (points of interest).

I found that the plugin that's doing the automatic photo resizing isn't perfect. It's tends to make diagonal lines a bit jagged when it resizes down. Being a perfectionist with my work, I actually did my own resizing and sharpening of some of my photos and reuploaded them, overwriting the automated versions.

Click here for the Boston slideshow

Click here for the Halifax slideshow