MailChimp API - Subscribe User Email Through PHP

So MailChimp let your users to susbscribe and you can send them newsletters in bulk and manage your subscriber's lists. Although MailChimp provide forms and lot of APIs and functions but for that you need to google and search, it takes time.

Here I'll show you how you can simply write some code in to your site while keeping your users on site without going to MailChimp.

Things which are required before you start code.

Sign Up on MailChimp

After successfull account creation and activation, Generate your API keys and List ID.

1. Go to your Account Settings -> Extras -> API Keys
2. Click on Create a Key button and you will have you API  key ready.
3. After that go to Lists section, Create List, Visit your created lists under Settings -> List name & defaults you will find List ID.

Now you need to download API files 

Download MailChimp API

I am using version2.0 API.

PHP CODE

MailChimp API send request through CURL so make sure you have enabled CURL in your PHP.

Create a php file subscribe.php

Place this inside subscribe.php file.

	<?php
	$api_key = "YOUR_API_KEY";
	$list_id = "YOUR_LIST_ID";
	require('Mailchimp.php');
	$Mailchimp = new Mailchimp( $api_key );
	$Mailchimp_Lists = new Mailchimp_Lists( $Mailchimp );
	$subscriber = $Mailchimp_Lists->subscribe( $list_id, array( 'email' => htmlentities($_POST['email']) ) );
	if ( ! empty( $subscriber['leid'] ) ) {
	echo "success";
	}
	else
	{
	echo "fail";
	}
	?>

view raw mailchimp_subscribe_user.php hosted with ❤ by GitHub

HTML

Create a index.html, place following code

	<div class="message"></div>
	<form role="form" method="post" id="subscribe">
	<input type="email" id="email" name="email" placeholder="you@yourself.com" value="">
	<button type="submit">SUBSCRIBE</button>
	</form>

view raw mailchimp-form.html hosted with ❤ by GitHub

JAVASCRIPT

Add jquery <script src="jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

	$(document).ready(function() {
	$('#subscribe').submit(function() {
	if (!valid_email_address($("#email").val()))
	{
	$(".message").html('The email address you entered was invalid. Please make sure you enter a valid email address to subscribe.');
	}
	else
	{
	$(".message").html("<span style='color:green;'>Adding your email address...</span>");
	$.ajax({
	url: 'subscribe.php',
	data: $('#subscribe').serialize(),
	type: 'POST',
	success: function(msg) {
	if(msg=="success")
	{
	$("#email").val("");
	$(".message").html('<span style="color:green;">You have successfully subscribed to our mailing list.</span>');
	}
	else
	{
	$(".message").html('The email address you entered was invalid. Please make sure you enter a valid email address to subscribe.');
	}
	}
	});
	}
	return false;
	});
	});
	function valid_email_address(email)
	{
	var pattern = new RegExp(/^[+a-zA-Z0-9._-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}$/i);
	return pattern.test(email);
	}

view raw validate-and-submit-form.js hosted with ❤ by GitHub

So here you go all done with basic code setup, make changes as you need with code.

Note: 

MailChimp does not show subscribers in your created list unless user activated their email. When user subscribes MailChimp send activation URL so only valid emails can subscribe.

How to Use Bcrypt to Store Hash Passwords in PHP

Storing stronger passwords hash in database is good approach that way you can prevent several security attacks. But no matter how difficult it is to guess good passwords, there may be no more difficult to crack than bad ones depending on how the password is stored. 

Some belive MD5 is a safe way to encode passwords, this is a lie (a very bad one, too)! MD5 is a good method to obscure non-sensitive data but it can be very easily “decoded” using rainbow tables. I once heard the story of a web developer who could not access a client's database after the client deleted an email that had his password details. The developer, after polish thoroughly through the client's files on their server, found a nicely formatted text file containing the MD5 password hash. It was just a quick copy and paste procedure into an online rainbow table lookup utility before they were logged into the client's database. This story has a happy ending as the client's password were recovered and development could continue, but the shocking truth is this process could have easily been carried out by the hands of a nasty hacker. 

Bcrypt

bcrypt is an hashing algorithm which is scalable with hardware (via a configurable number of rounds). Its slowness and multiple rounds ensures that an attacker must deploy massive funds and hardware to be able to crack your passwords. Add to that per-password salts (bcrypt REQUIRES salts) and you can be sure that an attack is virtually unfeasible without either ludicrous amount of funds or hardware.

bcrypt uses the Eksblowfish algorithm to hash passwords. While the encryption phase of Eksblowfish and Blowfish are exactly the same, the key schedule phase of Eksblowfish ensures that any subsequent state depends on both salt and key (user password), and no state can be precomputed without the knowledge of both. Because of this key difference, bcrypt is a one-way hashing algorithm. You cannot retrieve the plain text password without already knowing the salt, rounds and key (password). Source

Using PHP >= 5.5-DEV

Password hashing functions have now been built directly into PHP >= 5.5. You may now use password_hash() to create a bcrypt hash of any password:

<?php
// Usage 1:
echo password_hash("rasmuslerdorf", PASSWORD_DEFAULT)."\n";
// $2y$10$.vGA1O9wmRjrwAVXD98HNOgsNpDczlqm3Jq7KnEd1rVAGv3Fykk1a

 // Usage 2:
$options = array('cost' => 11);
echo password_hash("rasmuslerdorf", PASSWORD_BCRYPT, $options)."\n";
// $2y$07$BCryptRequires22Chrcte/VlQH0piJtjXl.0t1XkA8pw9dMXTpOq

 ?>

To verify a user provided password against an existing hash, you may use the password_verify()as such:

 <?php
// See the password_hash() example to see where this came from.
$hash = '$2y$07$BCryptRequires22Chrcte/VlQH0piJtjXl.0t1XkA8pw9dMXTpOq';

 if (password_verify('rasmuslerdorf', $hash)) {
    echo 'Password is valid!';
} else {
    echo 'Invalid password.';
}
?>

You can also check if Bcrypt is enabled on your server by checking whether or not the CRYPT_BLOWFISH constant is defined and returns true or false:

 <?php
if (defined("CRYPT_BLOWFISH") && CRYPT_BLOWFISH) {
    echo "CRYPT_BLOWFISH is enabled";
}
else {
    echo "CRYPT_BLOWFISH is not enabled";
}
?>

After checking whether CRYPT_BLOWFISH is enabled or not you can simply do the following before saving in database:

 <?php
$hash = '$2a$07$R.gJb2U2N.FmZ4hPp1y2CN$';
crypt("securepassword", $hash);
?>

This is one way to store and make your password cracking secure you can use other PHP libraries too like 
Zend Crypt Password Bcrypt, Doucmentation Source
PasswordLib, Doucmentation Source
PHPASS Doucmentation Code , Project Site

Lastly the importance of using a secure hashing function such as Bcrypt should be vital to anyone creating a web application that will store users’ passwords and other sensitive data because of the fact it will keep up with Moore’s Law and easy to implement with PHP greater than 5.3.

How to enable Permalinks in WordPress (Ubuntu)

Few days back I was facing trouble how do I use pretty Permalinks of WordPress which on first place were not working as per my settings so I followed these steps and solved my problem.

To enable Permalinks in WordPress (Ubuntu), You need to enable mod_rewrite of Apache and .htaccess.

Steps required:

Open your terminal and enable rewrite module of apache

sudo a2enmod rewrite

After this you need to restart apache server 

Type in terminal

service apache2 restart

To get Permalinks working you will need to place an .htaccess file in your wordpress’s web directory (/var/www or /var/www/ in case of multiple blogs on same host) and add the following:

             # BEGIN WordPress 

                RewriteEngine On 

                RewriteBase / 

                RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L] 

                RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f 

                RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d 

                RewriteRule . /index.php [L] 

             # END WordPress 

Change the permissions on the .htaccess file to “chmod 666″ so wordpress can update it when you change permalink structures from wordpress settings page

Note: This is a hidden file so it will only show up when you type “ls -altr“

Open up the following file, and replace every occurrence of “AllowOverride None” with “AllowOverride all” (note : “all” should be in lower-case for this to work)

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/default 

sudo service apache2 restart

Modify the permalink in WordPress admin panel (http://your-wordpress-domain/wp-admin.php) to what you need by visiting Settings -> Permalinks -> and clicking to “Save Changes”. 

This will update the .htaccess file. Double-check this by checking the timestamp of the .htaccess file after clicking “Save changes” on WordPress admin panel.