Has the world ended yet? A first attempt at web development

There is an updated updated version of this project that uses AWS Lambda functions.

Despite the sheer nuttiness of it, everyone keeps going on about the end of the world as “predicted” by the Mayan calendar. National Geographic even had and entire day devoted to it. Building on that theme, I decided to make a very convenient (and pretty much useless) webpage that helps you figure out if the world has in fact ended: http://everett.x10.mx/end-of-the-world.php. This project was really simple, didn’t involve a lot of code or design, and was basically thrown together over the course of an hour and a half. It turns out PHP is extremely easy if your host is already configured for it, and I’m looking forward to doing some more web development related stuff both with PHP and other languages or tools. The HTML side of the page was also relatively straightforward. I’m impressed by what’s possible design wise using modern HTML and CSS3. My inspiration on that front was this amazing site: https://web.archive.org/web/20121211090057/http://www.tubalr.com/

It works as the page implies, by polling google.com for a response. If google is down, then it is assumed the world has ended, and the result is “Yes.” in big red letters. The PHP that does the trick is a slightly modified version of what’s posted at the following site: http://css-tricks.com/snippets/php/check-if-website-is-available/. The background is not mine, but I’ve left attribution on the image, and you can find the originals here: http://m3-f.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24#/d3b4qgn.

And because I see no reason not to release it, here is the entire source code for the page:

<?php
   function Visit($url){
     $agent = "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)";$ch=curl_init();
     curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url );
     curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $agent);
     curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
     curl_setopt ($ch,CURLOPT_VERBOSE,false);
     curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 5);
     curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE);
     curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_SSLVERSION,3);
     curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, FALSE);
     $page=curl_exec($ch);
     //echo curl_error($ch);
     $httpcode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
     curl_close($ch);
     if($httpcode>=200 && $httpcode<300) return true;
     else return false;
   }
   if (Visit("http://www.google.com")){
     $answer = "No.";
     $colour = "green";
   }
   else{
     $answer = "Yes.";
     $colour = "red";
   }
?>

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Has the World Ended Yet?</title>
<style>
  a:link {color:#FFFFFF;}
  a:visited {color:#FFFFFF;}

html {
  overflow-y: scroll;
  background: url(/backgrounds/eow.jpg) no-repeat center center fixed;
  -webkit-background-size: cover;
  -moz-background-size: cover;
  -o-background-size: cover;
  background-size: cover;

}

body {
  font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif;
  font-size: 24px;
  color: #fff;
  padding-bottom: 20px;
}

#main
{
  text-align: center;
  margin-top: 50px;
  margin-bottom: 20px;
  background: #000;
  background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85);
  -webkit-border-radius: 5px;
  -moz-border-radius: 5px;
  -ms-border-radius: 5px;
  -o-border-radius: 5px;
  border-radius: 5px;
  -webkit-box-shadow: 0 0 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5);
  -moz-box-shadow: 0 0 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5);
  box-shadow: 0 0 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5);
  border: solid 1px #000;
  width:800px;
  margin-left:auto;
  margin-right:auto;
}
#result
{
  font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif;
  font-size: 112px;
  color: <?=$colour?>;
}

#disclaimer
{
  font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif;
  font-size: 12px;
  color: #fff;
  margin-top: 80px;
  margin-left: 100px;
  margin-right: 100px;
  margin-bottom: 50px;
}
</style>

  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="main">
        <H1>Has the world ended yet? <sup>*</sup></H1>
        <br>
        <div id="result">
            <b> <?=$answer?></b>
        </div>
        <div id="disclaimer">
            <sup>*</sup> Does not actually check if the world has ended. Result is based on the assumption that if Google.com is not responding, the world has probably ended. <br><br> <a href="/">http://everettsprojects.com/</a>
        </div>
    </div>
</body>
</html>