Learning new things for 2012

Posted in Personal Web development on 1 December 2011 | Comments

The last few months have been pretty busy round here with client work so it has been tough to set aside any time for learning new things. For example, I’d like to spend some hours learning more about responsive web design grids like Skeleton, writing an app that uses the Perch API, or even increasing the range of CSS selectors and properties I use.

Learning about new things was what dragged me into web design and development in the first place. Well, that and the lure of Internet fame and fortune ;-).

So, with an objective to have more personal development time in 2012, I’ve signed up for 12412 which I hope will provide peer pressure and/or motivation for me to look into some web design and development subjects that I would otherwise not find time for. Why not sign up yourself?!

And, of course, it will provide a few subjects for me to write about here as well….

An evening out with Points Brighton

Posted in Freelancing Web development on 17 October 2011 | Comments

I’ve been to a few web conferences over the last 3-4 years and they’re great. You get to see some famous web folks and hear their presentations in large venues and meet with other designers and developers. At the same time, with conferences averaging 500 or more attendees, it’s sometimes easy to feel a little ‘lost’ at such events. For that reason, I also like to attend some informal, more grassroots-style, local events as well. Last Thursday evening, I went to the first Points Brighton event and here’s my short review of the meeting.

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My top five reasons for using Perch as a CMS

Posted in Web development on 30 September 2011 | Comments [1]

In 2009, I described the (then) recently launched Perch content management system in this post. Since that time, I’ve used it on 6-7 sites so I thought I’d share why I like it.

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Textpattern mobile theme

Posted in Textpattern Web development on 13 January 2011 | Comments

If you’re a fan of Textpattern, you might be interested in Mobile Textpattern, which is a Textpattern theme that has been developed for mobile by Oliver Ker. The theme allows you to administer Textpattern sites via your smartphone with an easy to use single screen interface. You can edit and publish articles and comments and it works well with the image selector plugin upm_img_popper. The theme is simply installed by uploading the theme folder and choosing the theme in the Textpattern admin.

I’ve used Mobile Textpattern with my HTC Sense Android phone and it works great!

Form validation with PHP. Help!

Posted in PHP Web development on 16 December 2010 | Comments

I was recoding a form the other day and I needed a different form validation method (using PHP). We all know that JavaScript validation provides a neat user experience but it doesn’t work if someone wants to circumvent it or has JavaScript turned off for another reason. That’s why server-side validation is important. In my case, I’ve used a variety of different methods but I wanted to write something new that could be developed further and that was suited to my requirements rather than something off-the-shelf.

After hunting round on the web and browsing my own library of methods, I realised that I didn’t know quite as much about this as I thought. After several hours beating myself up (metaphorically speaking), I remembered this PHP User System Form Validation video tutorial from Think Vitamin. It’s an excellent tutorial that provides a useful starting point for validating forms with PHP.

Anyway, the tutorial helped me recode my particular form. Great work from the presenter Jim Hoskins and the Think Vitamin guys and gals!