Latest at This Website
Here are introductions to the 11 most recent items:
29 June 2026, 18:41:21 UTC
Have you experienced your website suddenly giving error messages when you use https:// URLs? Many site owners have.
When that happens, it's almost a certainty that the domain's SSL certificate has expired. It is also almost a certainty that the website owner was unaware of the certificate's expiration date.
The software with this article, SSL Certificate Check, was written to do a quick check on a domain's SSL certificate. The software reports the certificate's expiration date.
SSL Certificate Check will check the certificate expiration date only on domains with a valid certificate. Expired certificates are no longer valid. If you don't have a valid certificate, then you already know something is wrong because https:// URLs don't work.
(The complete article is at
https://www.willmaster.com/library/snooping/avoid-expired-ssl-certificate.php)
20 June 2026, 20:21:37 UTC
ASCII quotes are what you see when you work with plain text software (not unicode text). Something like this:
He said, "You've got 'spicies' in your pie."
Typographical quotes are sometimes called educated quotes or curly quotes. The ASCII quotes in the above example converted to typographical quotes looks like this:
He said, “You’ve got ‘spicies’ in your pie.”
Notice that the ASCII apostrophe is also converted. It became a typographical apostrophe.
(The complete article is at
https://www.willmaster.com/blog/php/ascii-quotes-to-typographical-quotes.php)
16 June 2026, 15:57:57 UTC
Wanted: When a mouse hovers over an image, the entire image becomes larger.
This article describes how to do an image zoom. It uses CSS. But no JavaScript.
Also of note is that this is a hover effect. That means a mouse pointer must be available to hover over the image. Generally, multimedia phones and tablets don't have a mouse pointer.
(The complete article is at
https://www.willmaster.com/library/features/image-zoom-on-hover.php)
8 June 2026, 13:15:23 UTC
Every so often, a person just wants to know if a URL is valid.
This is especially true for website programmers. URLs are used frequently. It may be for a redirect. Or it may be a thank-you page URL. Perhaps the script is designed to post data to a URL.
(The complete article is at
https://www.willmaster.com/blog/php/testing-a-url.php)
26 May 2026, 16:35:11 UTC
The HTML ins and del tags can be used when you wish to display editing revisions. The ins tag underlines inserted text, and the del tag strikes through deleted text.
To display text that is inserted, put the text between the open and closing ins tag: <ins>text</ins>
To display text that is deleted, put the text between the open and closing del tag: <del>text</del>
(The complete article is at
https://www.willmaster.com/library/web-content-prep/the-ins-and-del-tags.php)
19 May 2026, 15:21:00 UTC
Here are steps to make an animation to indicate content is loading:
- Make an image to rotate.
- Rotate it with CSS.
- Smile.
The code in this article was made to rotate an icon image, although the code can be used to rotate any image. In other words, you might have other uses for it.
The image you specify rotates continuously at a speed you specify.
(The complete article is at
https://www.willmaster.com/blog/css/loading-icon-animation-with-css.php)
19 May 2026, 13:03:30 UTC
Viewing HTML source code with a browser means viewing the source code as sent to the browser. PHP and other server-side processes are completed before sending the page to the browser.
After the browser gets the web page from the server, there may be additional changes to the source code. Generally, those additional changes would be done with JavaScript.
Therefore, viewing HTML source code could be different depending on when and how it is viewed.
(The complete article is at
https://www.willmaster.com/library/web-content-prep/viewing-html-source-code.php)
12 May 2026, 20:51:59 UTC
Often I have use for random characters in my PHP scripts. I've tweaked my go-to function from time to time over the years. The latest version comes with this article.
A random character or a series of random characters may be needed for a filename, a password, a security implementation (to make something virtually unguessable, for example), or any of several other reasons.
(The complete article is at
https://www.willmaster.com/blog/php/random-characters-function.php)
1 May 2026, 18:21:05 UTC
I publish a number of books. The Books at Bontrager Connection index page lists a dozen or so. In addition to ebooks, some of them are published as hardcover and paperback books.
To publish hardcover or paperback, assuming you create your own covers, a custom template can be generated at Amazon. They call it a calculator. Tap kdp.amazon.com/en_US/cover-calculator to use the calculator.
The image below is an example of what the calculator responds with. The calculator was used for a recent hardcover book I published.
It used to be that every time I created a cover for publishing a paperback or hardcover book at Amazon, I had to do numerous calculations to figure out where to put various content on the cover image.
When the number of pages changes, the thickness of the book changes. When the thickness changes, the size of the wrap-around cover image also changes.
Here is the cover image of the hardcover book the above calculator screenshot was for. (One of my pen names is Vern Harrison.)
You see there are three panels with content. The left side of the image contains the panel for the back cover. The narrow, tall panel in the center is for the spine of the book. The panel at the right side of the image is for the front cover. (I almost always place the cover image under the panels.)
To find the specific locations for each panel is where I used to do manual calculations.
Now, I use my own software for calculating the position of the panels. I fire up the software and give it the numbers that the Amazon calculator gave to me.
(The complete article is at
https://www.willmaster.com/blog/tips/amazon-hardcover-and-paperback-book-cover-measurements.php)
27 April 2026, 19:58:50 UTC
The use for the HTML address tag is to publish an address.
A reason to do so is to have the address available for those who need it.
Another reason to do so is for website search engines. What's published with the address tag is assumed to be an address. The spider may look around a bit and then decide the address is for the person or business that is the subject of the web page.
The address tag may get the person or business on the search site's map. There is no guarantee, of course. Yet, providing an address is a better chance than not providing an address at all.
(The complete article is at
https://www.willmaster.com/library/web-content-prep/the-html-address-tag.php)
20 April 2026, 19:17:45 UTC
Probably the easiest way to implement hover text on a web page is by use of the HTML title attribute.
Here is an example.
I am here.
Hover over the word "here" in the above sentence. The text will pop up as a tooltip. Phones and tablets will need to tap on "here" because they don't have a mouse for hovering on anything.
Each browser implements the hover according to its independent programming. Generally, the tooltip will be below the mouse pointer.
Here is the code for the above example.
I am <span title="This article.">here</span>.
The above title attribute is in a span tag. The title attribute can be used in HTML tags that contain content, including a linking tags, img image tags, and p paragraph tags. The examples in this article all use the span tag. (The complete article is at https://www.willmaster.com/blog/html/easy-tooltips.php)