Here's a list of our articles on Web Dev. Web Development is a huge topic so you will find a wide range of things here. Sorry if these articles seem a bit of a mixed bag, you may find something more specific on our articles page.
- 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 VScode 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 went about fixing 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
- MySQL 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
- 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