That said, sometimes when I choose not to renew a domain (usually because I do not wish to keep it), GoDaddy will renew the domain for me automatically.  I then have to and cancel the domain, and manually request a refund.

Here are the steps I follow to cancel a GoDaddy domain and get a refund:

1. Log in to your account at GoDaddy
2. Click “My Account”  (in the top right corner)
3. In the left hand menu, click “Payments and Renewing Items”
4. Find the item you wish to cancel.  Click the box to the left of it, then click “Cancel Item” at the top
5. On the right side, a box will appear.  Select “Cancel Now” and then “Save Changes”

If you have cancelled within a short period (I think it is 24 hours), then you can request a refund.  For this, you need to contact support:

1. Select “Submit Support Ticket” (found in the menu at the bottom of the page, under “Help & Support”)
2. Select “Domain Registration” from the drop down list
3. For the message body, I used text like this: “Hi, I wish to request a refund for the recently canceled domain “MYDOMAIN.NET” (order #6585559).  Thanks.”
4. Provided you’ve done this correctly, you should recieve your refund within 24 hours.

To avoid having to do this, I suggest removing “Auto Renew” from the domains you do not wish to keep.  It will save a lot of hassle.

I’ve tested, customized and integrated dozens of open source PHP apps/libraries into my projects over the years, and here are 5 of the best I’ve found. You will see that they cover a fairly wide range of purpose and function.

These libraries can typically be integrated with PHP based CMS (eg. WordPress, Drupal, etc), or can be integrated to stand alone, PHP based sites.

1) Dynamic PHP image thumbnails – PHPThumb

PHPThumb creates thumbnails from images (JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, etc) on the fly. The output size is configurable (can be larger or smaller than the source), and the source may be the entire image or only a portion of the original image.

The main benefit to PHPThumb, to me, is that you only need store a single instance of an image on the server, and can dynamically serve variants of that image at a specified file size and quality. And it works very well.

Other image processing features include:

• Dynamic watermarking and/or text overlay
• Caching for less server load. Mulitple sizes of any source image can be cached seperately. Thumbnails are automatically updated when (local) source image is modified.
• Embedded EXIF thumbnails (if available) can be extracted as-is, or used as the source image for thumbnailing if the real source image would take more memory than PHP has available.
• Images can be rotated, either by an arbitary angle or auto-rotated to either portrait or landscape.
• Images can be cropped, either by a specified number of pixels or by a percentage of original image.
• Output is antialiased into the alpha channel where appropriate when PNG output is selected.
• Quality can be auto-adjusted to fit a certain output byte size.
• Other filters: Alpha channel mask from mask file, Auto Contrast / Levels, Blur, Brightness, Contrast, Drop shadow, Flip Horizontal / Vertical, and more

2) Easy PHP form validation – vDaemon

VDaemon is a PHP library that grants an easy-to-use but powerful way to check user input for errors, and, if necessary, display messages to the user. VDaemon can perform wide range of validation tasks. It includes mandatory fields validation, validation for properly formatted value (currently supported types are e-mail address, zip codes for US, Canada and UK, US phone number, IP address, date and time in various formats, integer and floaf numbers, currency), comparing entered value to the predefined value or to another form element value, validating against regular expression pattern and more. vDaemon allows combining validation rules into logical expressions of any complexity. It gives possibility to create a conditional validation. Incorporation of VDaemon validation into existing web sites is very easy. vDaemon was once offered for free, however it has now moved to a pay (although low-cost) license.

3) Automatic MySQL database admin system generation – phpmyedit

How many times have you hand coded a MySQL table editor in PHP? phpMyEdit provides an instant table editor buy (nearly) automatically generating PHP code for displaying/editing MySQL tables in a web browser. All you need to do is provide table name(s) and database access credientials, and phpMyEdit does the rest.

It includes a huge set of table manipulation functions (record addition, change, view, copy, and removal), table sorting, filtering, table lookups, and more. The output is highly customizable, and there is a very good support forum containing answers to pretty much any questions I’ve had during implementation.

4) Integrate Google Maps with PHP – GoogleMapAPI

GoogleMapAPI is a library used for creating google maps using the Google Map public API. Features include multiple map markers, customizable icons, map directions built into info window, and sidebar generation.

5) PDF generation with PHP – fpdf

FPDF is a PHP class which allows to generate PDF files with pure PHP (eg. without using the PDFlib library). Here is a list of its main features:

• Choice of measure unit, page format and margins
• Page header and footer management
• Automatic page breaks
• Automatic line breaks and text justification
• Image support (JPEG and PNG)
• Colors
• Links
• TrueType, Type1 and encoding support
• Page compression

I have used fpdf in billing and invoicing systems, and for generating report output from various PHP applications.

I hope these libraries are helpful to you and save you as much development time as they have for me.

I still have a few hundred hockey games to catalogue and add to the system, in fact I only have about 5% of my hockey games listed. However, my very small NFL, CFL and MLB collection is completely identified.Many of these recordings are original, unedited broadcasts, including commercial breaks, intermission features, and pre and post-game interviews. Look to the “Orig?” field below to identify such broadcasts.

Part of my cataloguing process is to write descriptions for each broadcast, which is contained in the database. I’m just pondering how to present this data on the site. I will probably end up having seperate “detail” pages for each item. The search engines should like that, no doubt.

My recordings are not for sale, however I am interested in trades. My wish list includes:

• Any hockey (regular season or playoffs) from the 50s through the early 90s
• BC Lions (regular season, or playoffs)
• MLB and NFL games with historical significance (regular season or playoffs)

If you would like to propose a deal, please contact me.

The new page required a number of modifications to the “Unnamed” WP Theme, including the PHP code it uses to render CSS on the fly. And the Classic Sports Tapes collection page itself is essentially a custom WP template that contains WP function/API calls as well as my own database logic. It took a bit of research, and of course some trial and error, but everything seems to be co-existing fine so far.

Oh yeah, there’s a customized back-end admin system too, and I will talk about that in a future post.

Whenever building a Windows/IIS/PHP prod or dev box, I always refer to this guide. Through this excellent, accurate and well written document, Peter has saved me many hours of configuration and troubleshooting time.