Martin Geisler Online

gimpster.com is in the middle of a move to another server at Netsite. I’m moving because of the very poor security there is on a Cobolt RaQ. On the new server I’ll be able to use PHP4 — I can’t wait to check out the new session-management-stuff they have added.

I’ve made a page for PHP Shell — right now all you’ll find is the README-file. But at least it should be easier to find now.

I’ve removed the javascript-popup-menus, and replaced them with normal links. The links are generated automatically — of cause, since I’m using PHP.

Although I liked the popup-menus there were several problems with them:

• They popped up whenever you placed your mouse over the text — this confused some, since they tried to click on the text behind the menus.

• The menus popped up again, if you moved your mouse off the text, and then back in. The most annoying part of this was, that you menus kind of followed your pointer when you moved it along the text.

• Although they had been designed to be as compatible as possible, they didn’t work in all browsers. They didn’t work in Mozilla, Netscapes next-generation browser. I believe that’s because they haven’t implemented javascript completely. They didn’t work in Lynx either.

• I’m felt that I had to keep an alternative way of navigating my site. Thats why there’s these small notices on the top of most pages, where I’ve tried to put links to all my pages. The new system eliminates the need for those.

• I’m not sure that the spiders that have come to visit my site could understand the links. They properly just followed the normal links.

I hope that’ll explain why I removed them.

In case you downloaded the first version, then you properly noticed that the links to the parent directories of the current working directory didn’t work. They all pointed to shell.php — that was my working title, but I forgot to update the links as i switched to the name phpshell.php.

You can see the version of your file by looking for a timestamp in phpshell.php. It should say 1.4.

I’ve just released PHP Shell, a script I made in my efforts to get Webalizer to compile. By using the script, you will be able to execute aribitary commands on your webserver. You are only limited by the rights of the user the webserver is running as. This makes it very powerful/dangerous. Use it at your own risk :-)

Of cause it’s released under the GPL, so feel free to take it and make it even more useful. Just remember to give me credit.