Big Trapeze

Lately, while developing sites, I’ve started to deal with a lot of form submissions, and I’m finding that it takes extra steps to prevent people from accidentally submitting a form twice. Double-posting (hitting the Submit button more than once, or refreshing a page where data has been processed) can lead to all sorts of bad problems. Imagine if PayPal had no mechanism in place to prevent a double post. When you win an auction and pay John Q. $500 for the latest smartphone, you don’t want to be able to refresh the page or hit submit again and pay him an additional $500 bucks. Most of the time, your browsers will give you a warning, much like:

I find those alerts more annoying and confusing than helpful, so I’d like to get rid of them completely. I’ve got a couple of HTML/PHP examples that demonstrate a typical form submission and a modified one that doesn’t show any POSTDATA messages.

You’ll probably want to use some more programming to further prevent double-posts, and I’ve developed a PHP class that may be useful to you. Check out the Post Block class and example here.

Apply BOTH techniques for a post-blocking double-whammy…

I bit the bullet and formed the LLC today. Supposedly. I’m still waiting on the paperwork and/or a confirmation call from the company. It was pretty painless, other than the $348 I spent to get it done. I used “The Delaware Company�, and their website touts the fact that they are the “5 Minute Online Delaware LLC�.

True to form, it only took about 5 minutes to complete the registration online. The questions were relatively straight-forward, asking me things like my 1st and 2nd choices for a company name and my initial member name(s). Since my company name is pretty unique, I entered two variations of it for my choices. I’ve decided to go with “Acrobatic Labs, LLC� (or “Acrobatic Laboratories, LLC�), as the company name. I’m sure if there’s any variation of that name out there both of my choices will be trashed, and I’ll have to come up with something else. I’ve already done some preliminary Google searches, and wasn’t able to find anything like that. I went ahead and bought the domains, too. (I’ll explain the whole circus / acrobatic / trapeze metaphor at a later time.) As for the “initial member names,� I just entered my name.

The only confusing part about the whole LLC process was applying for an EIN. An EIN is bascially the SSN for your company. You’ll probably need an EIN if you’re going to pay employees. I don’t plan on having any employees right now, much less paying them, but I went ahead and bought the EIN so I wouldn’t have to mess with the IRS for it later. One of the questions on the form was “date of first payment to employees� or something, and I tried to leave it blank. The form returned with an error, so I put “unknown.� I’m not sure that’s acceptable, since the EIN form will be filed by The Delaware Company to the IRS. I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough.

I had my information filled out and payment sent within about 5 minutes. I submitted the order at 10 AM, and received the confirmation email shortly afterwards.

Costs so far:

* The Delaware Company’s Corporation/LLC Package, $249
* Tax ID number (EIN) Obtainment for U.S. Persons, $49

What next? According to their FAQ:

We draw up and file your Delaware Certificate of Incorporation (Also known as the Articles of Incorporation) with the State of Delaware within hours after receiving your order. If you order weekdays before 4:00 PM, you will receive the following items the very next business day: your Certificate of Incorporation as well as a leatherette company kit, which includes a minute book, 20 custom numbered stock certificates, a company forms disk and more.

I’ll have more updates as soon as they happen.

1:08PM - Received shipping notification and FedEx tracking number from The Delaware Company

11:57AM (Thursday) - Received shipment from FedEX

1:39PM (Thursday) - Received EIN number from the IRS via The Delaware Company

There, that’s it. I’m officially a business now. I received a binder full of official documentation and “whereas’s� and “therefore’s� of which little makes sense to me right now. It also contained a CD full of customizeable documents which I’ll need to go through and print various forms to complete my official-ness.

This really was an easy process.