I’ve started with the basics like christmas trees, snowmen and crackers but I’ve got a big long list of other festive items still waiting to be drawn. I suppose that’s the downside of having started a clipart website so close to a big holiday; it’s close enough to create a demand for clipart but too close to get much done. I’m seeing lots of searches for santa, reindeers, elves and so on that are returning tragically empty results pages. Still, there’s always next year.

See all the latest Christmas clip art.

The first option I looked at was an online service called PayLoadz. I’d come across this site quite a while before I’d even started planning RandomClipart.com and thought it’d be worth checking out again. A PayLoadz account comes with a fixed amount of secure server space for you to upload your files. Your products are then promoted on your own website before handing over to PayPal to complete checkout. A successful PayPal transaction triggers PayLoadz to email download links for purchased products to your customer, with copies and invoices for yourself. Download links are obviously hashed to protect the original files and prevent repeat downloads and link sharing.

At first glance PayLoadz seemed to be an ideal solution but on closer inspection there were a number of problems. Firstly RandomClipart.com is database driven and I didn’t want to be manually uploading new clipart to PayLoadz as and when it was made. Secondly the amount of disc space PayLoadz offers would at some point become restrictive and costly to upgrade. And lastly, but most importantly, I didn’t want to be giving away a slice of my income to someone for something that I could probably achieve myself, ableit with a third-party script.

Further searches turned up a script called DLGuard. DLGuard at the time of writing costs $127 for a double install licence and requires PHP and MySQL. Having read all about the features and checking the requirements I bought a copy and after a straight-forward installation (it comes with a Windows installer to install to your server from the desktop) began configuration. I have to say that DLGuard is an extremely well written and documented piece of software but after 30 minutes or so of playing around with the settings I began to realise this script wasn’t going to work for RandomClipart.com.

The main problem was that DLGuard supposes it’s creating an e-commerce site from your product database and even wants to handle the shopping cart and product pages for you. Although nearly everything is customisable with templates it became apparent that the secure download functionality I needed was only a fraction of what was on offer. Rather than cripple such a good piece of software to suit my limited needs I decided to ask for a refund, which was kindly paid in full, and look elsewhere for a simpler, bare bones script that I could fully integrate into my existing website.

Eventually I came across a script called LinkLok from VibraLogix. At the time of writing this script costs $29.95 for a single domain install and comes with one year’s support. The core of LinkLok consists of just one PHP file and comes in several different flavours depending on your payment processor. As I already have experience of PayPal integrations and a PayPal account I chose LinkLok for PayPal. The beauty of LinkLok is that you can make it as simple or as complicated as you like. Products can be defined in an array, a text file or a MySQL database and there are dozens of customisation options including link expiry, IP blocking and download limits. The documentation is extensive and provides step-by-step setup instructions, details of configuration options and notes on testing and troubleshooting. You can even test out the script by downloading the PDF manual from the website.

If you’re looking for a straight-forward, customisable PHP digital download script or link protector that can be easily integrated into your existing site to enable you to securely sell intangible goods I can thoroughly recommend LinkLok from Vibralogix.

The following assumes you have previous experience with PHP and MySQL and just want a simple cut and paste example. Most of the code is self explanatory but I will add notes regarding specific issues I encountered.

The first thing to make clear is that an RSS feed is simply a dynamic web page in XML format with specific tags. If you have any experience coding dynamic web pages then you’ll easily be able to rework the code below to create your own RSS feed by following these steps:

1. Create a new file called rss.xml in a suitable directory on your website.

2. Create or edit an .htaccess file in this directory with the following command:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php xml

This will allow your web server to parse the PHP in your rss.xml file.

3. Add the following code to your rss.xml file and edit as appropriate:

<?php
header('Content-type: text/xml');
echo '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>';
echo '<rss version="2.0"
xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">';
echo '<channel>';
echo '<title>YOUR FEED TITLE</title>';
echo '<description>YOUR FEED DESCRIPTION</description>';
echo '<link>YOUR SITE URL</link>';
echo '<copyright>YOUR COPYRIGHT NOTICE</copyright>';
echo '<language>en</language>';
mysql_connect('YOUR_DATABASE_HOST', 'YOUR_DATABASE_USER', 'YOUR_DATABASE_PASSWORD');
@mysql_select_db('YOUR_DATABASE');
$query = ('SELECT your_id, your_title, your_description, UNIX_TIMESTAMP(your_date) AS your_date FROM your_table ORDER BY your_date DESC LIMIT 0,15');
$result = mysql_query($query);
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
echo '<item>';
echo '<title>'.$row['your_title'].’</title>’;
echo ‘<description><![CDATA['.$row['your_description'].’]]></description>’;
echo ‘<link>ITEM_URL</link>’;
echo ‘<guid>UNIQUE_ID_(ITEM_URL)</guid>’;
echo ‘<pubDate>’.strftime( “%a, %d %b %Y %T GMT” , $row['your_date']).’</pubDate>’;
echo ‘</item>’;
}
mysql_close();
echo ‘</channel>’;
echo ‘</rss>’;
?>

Important things to remember:

1. An RSS feed is limited to 15 items so ensure your query returns no more than 15 rows.
2. Special characters need to be encoded with entity numbers not entity names.
3. Wrapping a <![CDATA[ ]]> section around your description will allow you to include HTML markup in your item description. Use in other fields if needed.
4. The date format requires a time zone which can be returned with the %Z parameter. I have hard coded GMT because occasionally BST will be returned by %Z and BST is not supported.

4. Upload your rss.xml file to your website and point your feed reader at its location. If everything went to plan then you should see your brand new RSS feed! If it doesn’t work or things look weird then use this Feed Validator to check for errors. Good luck!

Here is the RSS feed I created.

The primary aspect of RandomClipart.com is to provide high quality, royalty free, vector clipart and illustration for sale at competitive prices. At the date of this post there are only twelve clipart pictures in the gallery so obviously I have my work cut out. However, nothing is a greater motivator than an empty website so I hope to be adding new clipart and illustrations on a regular basis. My long term goal is a clipart gallery featuring hundreds (and eventually thousands - eek!) of useful, original clipart images. Check back in year or so to see how that works out!

The secondary aspect of RandomClipart.com is this blog. I’ve never contributed to a blog before and I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to be writing about. There’ll probably be the odd bit of news, new clipart, sales, site features and such, but I’d also like to add more useful posts about illustration, web design and other pet topics. If any of that materialises then this is where you’ll find it.

With RandomClipart.com finally live it’s time for me to stop coding and tweaking css and start drawing and blogging. Looking at the sparse clipart gallery, I think some drawing is in order.