Web Dev - Articles and Web Development guides

Check in with your database

It pays to take a step back and look at how your database is set up every so often. You will often find quick wins and hidden tech debt.

Keeping on top of website updates

Learn what website updates are, what they entail, why they are important, and how we can help

Select multiple lines in VS Code

How to select multiple lines to edit at once within VS Code

Move a line up or down with VS Code

A quick tip on moving lines up or down a file using your keyboard in VS Code

Purging DNS entries

I had no idea you can ask some public DNS caches to purge your domain to help speed things along

Moving from AWS to Render

How we moved a Rails application from AWS to Render, from code updates to DNS changes

Updating payment method email addresses in Stripe

You can't update the email address associated with a payment method in Stripe via their dashboard, you need to use the Stripe CLI

How we helped Turas

We've been helping a local charity improve their web presence, that often means more than code

Getting more out of Plausible

Some things we've done to up our Plausible analytics game

Creating draft posts in Jekyll

How to create and develop with draft posts in Jekyll

Configure VS code to only format changed lines

I used to format an entire file on save, but now I just format my changes, VS Code makes this easy.

Running Jekyll from inside VS Code

How to set up your VS Code to run Jekyll without needing extra extensions

Reducing Noisy JavaScript Errors with Rollbar

The docs didn't make it very clear exactly what I should do so here is my fix

Render's Support

I'm really happy with Render's support and will be recommending them for people to consider

Free tools to improve your website

There are lots of freely available tools to help get a sense check on how your website is doing and recommend improvements

Make time to address low-hanging technical debt

Making the time to address smaller bits of tech debt has been great for several of our projects.

Avoid forking dependencies

A common pattern is to fork a dependency to make a minor change, this should be a last resort, I will explain why

Using CSV files with Postgres on Heroku

How we can use CSV files to import and export data to Postgres databases hosted on Heroku.

Creating Docker images with M1 Macs

I ran into an issue with my Dockerfile when using it on a Linux machine, setting a platform fixed the issue

What does --no-owner mean in Postgres?

You have read a guide to doing Postgres exports or imports and seen --no-owner, this is what it means

What does --no-acl mean in Postgres?

You have read a guide to doing Postgres exports or imports and seen --no-acl, this is what it means

Restart the CodeDeploy agent after changing IAM profiles

The CodeDeploy Agent needs to restart to see new IAM profiles

How to add HTML into an iframe

Using srcdoc to add inline HTML into an iframe

Setting rel attributes in Markdown

Markdown can't do everything, including rel attributes. Use HTML for these links instead.

Where is everything? - Keeping track of project details

Quickly find where everything lives for a project with a little proactive documenting

Using nginx args helper to search for a URL param

Using nginx args helper to quickly check for a param in a request

What is the Aptfile

Do you use an Aptfile in your project? This is what it does

We are dropping our rates

We are dropping our rates for our friends in the charity and third sector

Setting a minimum TLS version with CloudFlare

How to set a minimum TLS version on CloudFlare and why you should consider it

Rebasing in Git - A Basic Guide

Some of the more basic commands I use when rebasing in Git

Setting up Permissions Policy with Rails

How to set up Permissions Policy HTTP header in your Rails app

Basic guide to Content Security Policy with Rails

The basics of setting up CSP with your Rails app

Previewing Markdown files with VS Code

How to quickly see if your Markdown files are formatted correctly

How to turn on invisible characters in VScode

A quick guide to turning on invisible characters in VScode

How to turn on invisible characters in TextMate

A quick guide to turning on invisible characters in TextMate

Cut and Paste in Vim

A quick and easy guide on how to cut and paste using Vim

Upgrading WordPress plugins on Lightsail with wp-cli

How we update WordPress plugins on a Lightsail/Bitnami install using wp-cli

Adding a service worker to Jekyll

Here is how we added a service worker to this very site

Running Commands On Heroku

How to run commands on Heroku locally and from their web interface

Essential non-programming skills for engineers

How soft skills benefited my career and can help your career too

Wildcard A Records

Wildcard A records are a big no-no unless you know what you are doing (I didn't)

How to completely remove the Zoom client from MacOS

How to completely remove Zoom from your Mac, including some of the stuff it leaves behind

Getting wireless printing working on Virgin Media Hub 3

A guide on how to get wireless printing working on Virgin Media if yours has suddenly stopped working

Testing DNS Speeds

Here are some quick scripts for testing DNS speeds and comparing the results

Setting up Rails to use PostgreSQL

A short guide to setting up your Rails project to use the PostgreSQL database

Hiding Secrets in Terraform

Let's discuss how you can hide secrets in Terraform. There are several methods, some more dangerous than others

Jekyll Raw Code Block Syntax

A guide to formatting code blocks using the Jekyll raw syntax

How to escape backticks in Markdown

How to escape backticks when you're trying to write inline code blocks with Markdown

Simple Postgres Commands I always forget

Here are some simple Postgres commands that I almost always forget

Quick and Easy CSS Minification Using Atom

A guide to quick and easy CSS manual minification using Atom. Sometimes you don't need a build step

Adding Author to Jekyll Posts

This is how I added the notion of an author to my Jekyll posts. Author information helps people who who wrote the post they are reading

Reducing Image Size for better page load times

The ultimate guide to reducing image sizes for more performant web pages

How I try and accelerate my learning

How I try and accelerate my learning by setting projects for myself and focusing on concrete tasks

Lead Developer Conference Reading List

My Reading list have the Lead Developer Conference in London recently

Code Review

My thoughts on Code Review, when code review should happen and what to review during it

Nginx Cache Busting Rewrite Rule

Following on from an excellent guide on cache busting, we see how you can accomplish this in nginx

List of Countries without a Postcode

If Stripe doesn’t always expect a postcode, it is because some countries don’t have them – here is a list of countries that don't

Posting to Slack with PHP

Posting to Slack with PHP is incredibly quick and easy, here is how you can

Tracking AdWords Conversions within JavaScript

How you can track Adwords Conversions from JavaScript callbacks, AJAX requests etc.

Close proximity leads to ideas being shared too soon

Does sharing a close proximity with someone lead to ideas being shared too soon? I think so

Fix for OpenSSL::SSL::SSLError on RestForce / Faraday

Fix for OpenSSL::SSL::SSLError on RestForce / Faraday. Hopefully this will save you some time if you see this RestForce error

What to do when things go wrong

Steps to take when something goes horribly wrong with a website or app that you are building

The EU Cookie Law

A backup of the EU cookie law website which used to live at theeucookielaw.com, the content is hosted here instead

Debriefing Development Teams

11 Best Practices and Tips I borrowed from an article aimed at intensive care situations

Setting up Moat and DFP

Setting up Moat and DFP isn't as straightforward as I would like. Here is a guide to getting it done

What I have learned about roadmaps

What I have learned about roadmaps and the process of roadmapping

Why a cold email from Udemy didn't hit the mark and what to do better

Udemy sent me some crappy marketing to try and get me to promote a crappy page of theirs (spoiler, it didn't happen)

Finding the List ID for the Marketo API

Here is how you find the LIst ID when using the Marketo API

Come play Codewars with me

Codewars is a great tool for learning fundamentals, you should try it out

Good habits for student developers – Time Keeping

Here I talk about good time keeping, how to do it and why it's important

What to do when refactoring a large codebase without tests

Some things that can make refactoring easier when you have no tests

What I would look for in a junior developer

Some things which I think are good qualities in a junior developer, if I seen these shine through in a portfolio or CV, I'd be happy!

How the technical direction of a project can be influenced

How outside and internal influences can change project direction

Squash br inside contenteditable

A fun CSS hack I recently discovered that I thought I'd share

Good Habits for Student Developers - Backups

Here is an overview of backups, how to do them and why to care

A beginners guide to ARIA

Help to get yourself some quick semantic wins with ARIA

Hearthstone APIs

Here is an overview of Hearthstone and some of the APIs available

Divs still have their place

Despite being abused by some folks they do have their uses

View Markdown Files in your Terminal

How you can view Markdown files in your terminal easily

The correct way to markup an image and caption in HTML

How to use figure and figcaption for semantic HTML gains

Some stumbling blocks I hit following my first Swift tutorial

Here I detail some difficulties I encountered with my first go at Swift

Quick Semantic Wins

Here's a list of things that can quickly give you some semantic wins

Accessibility and SEO are tightly linked

How both these things are tightly linked and how accessibility benefits SEO

What the header element can be used for

A conversation with Derek Johnson got me thinking about the header element

Gender Neutral Swear Words

We use too many gendered swears - here are some which aren't so bad

Every developer makes mistakes all the time

We all make mistakes no matter the level and that's okay

Backblaze is part of a great backup solution

My thoughts on Backblaze and how it's really helped me out

Kill off any process on a particular port - An explanation

I've written about this before but felt it needed a little explanation

Space Invaders and the fun reason it gets progressively harder

This is one of my favourite examples of something that starts life as a bug but becomes a feature

WhiteHat Aviator Phoning Home?

A concerned email and the response from WhiteHat and why Aviator phones home

Backing up an s3 bucket to another s3 bucket

How you can go about backing up your s3 bucket to another one

Force a CSV download from a WordPress Plugin

How you can go about forcing a CSV download from a WordPress Plugin

Nav Elements, not just ul wrappers

A great tip shared by Derek Johnson to make my site more accessible

How Much Does Your Website Cost You?

It's a good idea to know just how much your website costs you

Turning off the PiFace Control and Display

Here's how to go about making sure the LCD screen cleans up after itself

Kali Linux 32 bit mini ISO getting stuck on samba

Here's an issue I had with installing the Kali Linux 64 bit mini ISO

Removing Protected and Private from WordPress posts

By default WP will prepend Protected to any post title that is protected by a password and will prepend Private to any that is set as private, let's fix that

Copy and Rename multiple files in Linux

How you can go about copying and renaming files in Linux

Not able to cd or ls into drive mounted by s3fs

An issue I encountered with not being able to move into a drive mounted by s3fs

Quitting Postgres psql

I've just started using psql and had no idea how to quit - here's how

Setting I changed to up my Chromebook's internet speed

How I went about speeding up the internet on my Chromebook

My Chromecast Setup

Here I run through how I've gone about setting up my Chromecast

CodeIgniter - when to use get_instance()

How I learned when to use get_instance with CodeIgniter

Resources for getting up to speed with Redis

Here's a list of resources that will help you get up to speed with Redis

How to install the latest version of Redis on Ubuntu

A quick guide to installing the latest version of Redis on Ubuntu

Newbie Programming Resources

Here are some useful resources for folk new to programming

Values returned to ActiveMerchant by SagePayGateway during 3d secure

How to tie back values returned to ActiveMerchant by SagePayGateway

You should serve up assets without a protocol

Why and how you can go about serving up assets without a protocol

Things to remember to do before any video conference / online call

How to get set up for a conference call so you can have the optimal experience

Looking for Bootstrap's popover-inner?

Missing some of your popovers? Here's how to go about displaying them

Indenting Text using Vim

How you can go about indenting your text in the Vim text editor

GitGutter – A Sublime Text plugin for seeing changes in git

A short overview of GitGutter and how you go about getting it

Copy and Paste in Vim

A quick and easy guide on how to copy and paste using Vim

Right clicking inside Linux on your Chromebook

You might have issues right clicking in Linux, here's how I dealt with it

Getting Debian to recognise your UK Chromebook

How you can go about getting Debian to recognise your UK Chromebook

Automation is a lot like your windscreen wipers

Here's an analogy on how I think automation is a lot like windscreen wipers

Getting rid of text selection at the bottom of Sublime Text docs

Getting rid of annoying text selection at the bottom of Sublime Text documents

Stopping all instances of Ruby on Rails running on a certain port

How to find and stop all instances of Rails running on a specific port

MySQLslap - A quickstart guide

How you can set up MySQLslap quickly and easily - a guide

Web Developer Equipment

Here's some of my thoughts on how your equipment may or may not affect your work

Stack Exchange is winning the internet and this is not a good thing

Stack Exchange results tend to be the first ones on Google and this isn't always a good thing

Sublime Text reading SASS files as HAML

A fix for when Sublime Text is reading SASS files incorrectly

Safari on Windows doesn't like outline inside of :after

Here's a weird edgecase and a little detail on how this issue breaks down

Turn Off the built in apache on OSx

How to turn off and turn back on the built in apache on OSx

Only Firefox honours !important in CSS animations

A recent inconsistency I came across while working with CSS animations

Open all your browsers at once in OSx

Here's how to go about opening all your browsers at once

Different ways to undo in Git

Several different ways that you can undo things in Git and why you should or shouldn't

Big Wet Fish Get Marketing

How Big Wet Fish did a little gesture which got a lot of us round Belfast talking about them

Some command line tips for the web developer

Here are some command line tips that we think you may find useful

How to turn on invisible characters in Sublime Text 2

A quick guide to turning on invisible characters in Sublime Text 2

Update your Git install

You should really keep Git up to date and here's how I done it

Installing PEAR for PHP on OSx

A guide on how you can go about installing PEAR for PHP on OSx

What you need to make Firefox OS applications

A checklist of things you will need to learn to make Firefox OS applications

Using Mozilla's Mortar and App stub for Firefox OS apps

How to use Mozilla Mortar and App stub for bootstrapping

Using Stack Exchange to be better at what you do

Some tips on how to get the most out of yourself on StackExchange

Editing remote files locally in OSx

A quick guide to how you can edit remote files locally in OSx

Git branches seem to be case insensitive

A weird quirk with casing and Git and how to resolve it

Changing the font-style of placeholder text CSS

How to go about simply changing the font-style of placeholder CSS

Apache and PHP webserver version

Finding out what version of Apache and PHP a webserver is running when you have little access

Entering your email at the inbox is a bad idea

Why this is and what you can do to avoid having to do it

Setting up Apache on OSx Mountain Lion

A quick guide to setting up Apache in OSx Mountain Lion

CakePHP and htaccess caching funtimes

An issue I had with CakePHP and htaccess and how I fixed it

Styling Scroll Bars

How to go about styling scroll bars with CSS

Copying a CakePHP Project from Linux to Windows

A guide on moving a CakePHP project from Linux onto Windows

PHP - Turn UK Date into US Date

How to go about changing UK date to US date when using PHP

Things to check for in your htaccess file

Here is a list of things you should check before you go live

Printing on the web

A quick overview of some of the biggest sites on the web and how they fail at Print CSS

Validation in CakePHP 1.3

How to go about doing validation when using CakePHP 1.3

Deleting Magento Session Files

How you can go about deleting your Magento session files

Reducing Google Contacts storage on Android devices

How you can go about reducing storage on your Android device

CakePHP 2.0 Read Recursive

Something that caught me out when I was using CakePHP at first

Canonical and Base URLs

A guide to canonical and base URLs and why you should care about them

Having FTP in your IDE is part of a broken model

My thoughts on why having FTP in your IDE is not a good thing

Useful Web Developer Bookmarklets

Here are some bookmarklets I use on a regular basis that you may find useful

Get rid of var $name in CakePHP

How you can go about getting rid of var $name in CakePHP

Keeping on top of my to-do list

How I manage tasks that I need to get done/handling my to-dos

Proposal: Companies get your employees on Stack Exchange

Get your employees to answer questions on Stack Exchange and contribute to the community

An open letter to EUKHost

Here's some thoughts on the difficulties moving between providers

Netbeans Private Key Authorisation Problem

An issue that I encountered with key based authentication

MySQLTuner - An excellent free MySQL tool

Some thoughts on MySQLTuner and how to go about setting it up

Apache - [notice] cannot use a full URL in a 401

[notice] cannot use a full URL in a 401 ErrorDocument directive --- ignoring!

What I would change about the Computer Science degree course

Some of my thoughts on what I would've liked on my Computer Science course

W3C Web Application Privacy Best Practices - A Guide

The W3C have released Web Application Privacy Best Practices - What do we do with it?

Disqus showing bullets

How I fixed an issue I had with Disqus showing bullets

Using Git to create an archive of changed files

A guide to creating an archive of changed files using Git

IE7 td colspan width 'issue'

A thing which I believe IE7 have actually usefully gotten right

Git command to show files changed in a commit

How to see exactly which files have changed in a single commit

The importance of supporting OWASP

Security of the web is important and you should support it

Edit an option of a select menu using jQuery

How to edit an individual option of a select menu using jQuery

Getting the most out of StackExchange

Some tips and tricks on how to get the most out of StackExchange sites

Quick way to switch between folders in the terminal

How to move and forward between your present and previous directories

Importing a backup file from another MS SQL machine

How to safely import a backup file with no loss of data

Possible issue when using parseInt function

How to force integers not to be octals in PHP applications

PHP Security - General PHP setup Gotchas

My first post in a series dealing with security in PHP apps

SQL snippet - Selecting from table a items that aren't in table b

How I found items that were present in one table but not another using SQL

Finding your SQL Server Version

How I went about finding out what my current SQL server version was

PHP - Quick Is Not Set Replace

An issue that I encountered when I updated PHP and how I fixed it

IE Cannot Open The Internet Site - Operation Aborted

An issue that I encountered when adding JavaScript into a page

What you actually do when you untar something

What actually happens when you untar something when you're using Linux

Find out which version of Ubuntu I am on

How I went about finding out which version of Ubuntu I was running

Allowing your own From header with sSMTP

How to go about setting your own From header using sSMTP

Useful Git Links

A useful list of resources for learning how to best use Git

Skipfish - No such file or directory

A play around with Skipfish to see if I can automate security scans

Replace ereg with preg_match

How to update to using preg_match on newer versions of PHP

Switching between full screen modes in PuTTY

How to quickly change between full screen modes when using PuTTY

Exploring Built In Functions

My thoughts on the pros and cons of using built in functions

Clean out your links!

Some of my thoughts on how you should sort out link building

Acronym and Abbreviation Tags

What they are and how they are useful for your folk using your sites

Internet Explorer 8 Checkbox Issues

Here I detail some of the issues with checkboxes in IE8

About Pages - Are they totally necessary?

My thoughts on whether about pages are necessary or not

Out of the box design

Some of the thoughts I went through prior to setting up this site