There are multiple methods for displaying a website project in your portfolio, with pros and cons to each. This is a very frequent question as far as I’ve seen. Many people are unhappy with flat screenshots, and want to show something more. So they wind up thinking about WordPress multi-site and other very complicated solutions — but there are easier ways to display your projects in web development portfolios.
Why Firefox
I use Firefox on desktop, tablet, and mobile. Why Firefox I use Firefox at least partially because I still remember absolutely freaking out as a teenager over tabbed browsing. I’ve been using Firefox pretty much since it came out. I’ve stuck with it through some performance issues in the past — maybe a smarter person would’ve switched during those times, but I’m glad I never did. And at this point, I’ve been using it long enough that it’d have to become unusable for me to quit. Customization I also find Firefox more configurable and customizable than Chrome. I can do […]
Local Development for Beginning Developers
Local development is the practice of using your local machine to develop websites or web applications. Didn’t know you could do that? Sure you can. A web server is basically a big, powerful computer — and you can install software and similar that can help you turn your local computer into a place where you can develop websites.
Web Design and Development Workflow
This is a post describing my workflow for creating a website from scratch. It’s not necessarily right, just descriptive of what I do. If you see any flaws or potential areas of improvement, please let me know. This is primarily relevant to personal projects, where I do exactly what I want regardless of what anyone else wants out of me. This is not likely to succeed in environments where you’re working on a team! Added — this isn’t really step-by-step. Sometimes I’ll go back to Photoshop after doing the colors in code to design some specific things. I definitely doodle […]
Turn Off Taskbar Pop-Ups in Windows 7+
Ever since I started on Windows 7, the little pop-ups you get over your taskbar when mousing down there annoyed me. I know they have a real name — but they aren’t really “previews” for me on Windows Classic, and they’re not really tooltips, either? They’re basically just pop-ups that allow me to close a window — which isn’t useful for me because I turn off collapsing.
Using IFTTT to Share Social Media Posts Across Networks
IFTTT — If This Then That — allows greater connectivity between various services. It connects with a large number of different services (160 as of this writing). Everything from your phone’s text capabilities to your e-mail to your Twitter to your LinkedIn can be hooked through IFTTT. This post, however, focuses on using IFTTT to facilitate social media sharing across networks. Please note, I haven’t personally tested every recipe linked to in this post. You’ll have to do some experimenting of your own. Any recipe that has its own dedicated section with a linked example post on social media, I’ve […]
Use WordPress Admin Themes to Differentiate Local and Live Environments
Quick post because I am a busy, busy, tired person but good things are totally happening (yay!). Use WordPress admin themes to differentiate your local development and live environments. Though I always run a local development environment, I frequently need to look on the live website to make sure the settings are the same or check different things, etc.
Changes to Workflow: Command Line, npm, Grunt, Git
A list of things I did to change workflow from old crust to new shiny. Still learning! Maybe not that awesome but the time I’m saving here is pretty neat, for real!
XAMPP Installation and Common Problems
What We’re Trying to Do We’re trying to set up a local web development environment on a Windows computer with an XAMPP installation. XAMPP will allow us to run Apache and MySQL on our local computer. Apache is a web server technology: it allows us to run PHP. MySQL is a database technology: it allows us to create and operate MySQL databases. For more information, see the Apache and MySQL sites. Don’t get lost — extensive knowledge isn’t required to use XAMPP. We want Apache and MySQL because without them, we cannot run PHP/MySQL applications such as WordPress or phpBB. […]
Importing Large MySQL Database with XAMPP
Even locally, phpMyAdmin has a size limit to the database you can import. You can change those limits, I’m pretty sure, but you can also bypass phpMyAdmin altogether and import the database with the XAMPP shell. Open the XAMPP shell (“Shell” button on your XAMPP Control Panel). Type: mysql -h localhost -u root database_name < J:\path\to\database.sql Change database_name to the name of the database you want to import to. Change the \path\to\database.sql to the appropriate path and filename. I'm working locally with XAMPP so I don't set a password on my root MySQL user (this is default behavior in XAMPP […]