Tag Archives: Web Developer

A theory on approaching difficult tasks

Posted on with No Comments

Whichever industry you work in, whether you work for yourself or a company and whatever your job description, there are days where things just aren’t going your way. No matter how long you sit at your desk, tapping your pencil, the solution to the problem at hand just isn’t apparent.

As a developer, the problem and solution are usually quite clean-cut (such is the nature of code, prodominantly). The solution, however clean-cut it may be, isn’t always visible when approaching a coding task. At times like those, I employ a theory:
Continue reading →

A few guidelines for WordPress plugin development

Posted on with 2 Comments

The WordPress plugin API is vast and powerful. It allows developers to essentially hook code into almost any area of the WordPress system without modifying the core files at all. It also allows for the creation of standalone plugins that work within the WordPress system but do not hook into the core modules.

Over the last few weeks, WordPress plugin development has become one of my favourite things to do. I find it exciting to be able to create functionality, incorporate it seemlessly into the WordPress system and see it work smoothly with the other modules. While plugin development for WordPress is incredibly powerful, it also carries with it a few areas where people commonly stumble over and potentially lose interest in their code… which could be the next big thing. Here are a few guidelines I’ve picked up in order to step over the stumbling blocks.
Continue reading →

Coding with the other side of your brain

Posted on with No Comments

This might seem like a weird topic for a blog post. Let me elaborate.

If you’ve ever coded for a system that is build in a convention you’re not used to (for example, coding using a MVC framework, if you’re not used to it), this concept will begin to make sense. It refers to the almost complete paradigm shift required when approaching an unfamiliar coding framework or system. Here are a few things that I’ve found ease the process of coding with the other side of your brain.
Continue reading →

Content Management that enables developers

Posted on with 3 Comments

Content Management has always been an area of web development designed to make updating a website simple and easy for the end-user. Over time, I believe, the concept of content management systems (CMSes) has developed, in certain aspects, in a point-and-click direction. By point-and-click, I mean where developers sign into a console and click through a series of steps with, effectively, a “create module” button at the end. This then pumps out a module for the client to update when the website is live.

Does this make for a good CMS?
Continue reading →

Getting the information of a root page in WordPress

Posted on with No Comments

Often, when using WordPress as a content management or blogging tool on a website, one uses a multi-level page structure. This entails a page being listed “underneath” another page in a tree structure. Usually, if your WordPress installation’s permalinks deviate from the default setting, your page URL structure will look something like this:

http://websiteurl.com/parentpageslug/subpageslug (Note: note a real URL)

What if you require a value to be set depending on the highest level parent page? The process looks like this:

Continue reading →

Perch – a new lil’ CMS is on the market

Posted on with 2 Comments

This Monday past, I received an email from “Perch”. On opening this email, I was reminded that Perch, a new “small CMS”, has now launched. Content Management Systems being an interest of mine, I took a look into this new lil’ guy on the CMS market.

Perch is lightweight and easy to install and integrate into any website- new or existing. It allows the administrator to create custom content types (eg: one for pages and another for a single block on the website’s homepage) as well as providing a clean, customisable and easy to use system for the client user to work with. 

Perch retails at 35 Pounds per license. This looks like a potentially strong contender in the CMS market, despite it’s youth. I’d be keen to see a working demo version on their website. The video is quite explanatory, although there’s nothing quite like browsing through a CMS yourself on a demo version.

Useful HTML characters reference

Posted on with No Comments

While searching for a specific character (→ to be exact) I stumbled upon this great resource for HTML character entities. It can serve as a great resource for common characters used in web design (copyright symbols, etc) as well as other characters (for example, replacing a ^ with ↑ in a “back to top” link on your website).

I hope you guys find this as useful as I have today. :)

View the HTML characters reference.

Internet Explorer 8 has been released

Posted on with No Comments

So Internet Explorer 8 has been released. It’s been on the cards for a while now, and now it’s here. Boasting several new features including a “Compatibility View” (allowing users to view pages in older versions of the browser) and visual search suggestions in the search box (in a similar fashion to an auto-complete script) amongst others.

Just when you thought browser compatibilty testing was a laborious task, another web browser pops onto the scene. Internet Explorer conditional comments will hopefully adapt to reflect the addition of IE8, allowing users to customise their CSS and XHTML code for the specific browser… as well as possibly notify users of their browser of choice.

I’d love to read your opinions on this release. I look forward to testing IE8 and seeing how it renders my web code.