Archive for the ‘programming’ Category

WP Plugin: WP Server Detecter

Posted by tom.altman on March 4th, 2010

If you only ever use this once – I have a feeling it will be worth it.  I’m guessing this works best as a debugging tool.

This plugin is a really simple and quick plugin that puts the hostname of the server that the page was viewed from. This is useful if you are hosting your blog on many servers and want to see which one the current page came from. It puts the hostname as a HTML comment in the source code where the footer is. Now there isn’t many reasons you may use this for but for the ones that do want to use it, here it is.

WP Server Detecter

Posted in programming, wordpress, wordpress plugin Tags: , , No Comments »

Tricky page navigation solution

Posted by tom.altman on February 26th, 2010

WordPress is so good at so many things, but page navigation is not one of them.  I think it is because WordPress is a platform and page navigation is a bridge between design and development.

In steps this code from wphacks called “Page Sensitive Multi-Level Navigation”

The mission was to display sub-pages of the current page you are on in the left nav and once you hit the bottom of the hierarchy to show pages which are parallel to that page within the same branch of the hierarchy.

If you have a ton of levels of nav – this code is for you.

Posted in programming, web design, wordpress Tags: , , , No Comments »

Familiar with WordPress, but don’t want the overhead?

Posted by tom.altman on February 25th, 2010

Try BackPress.  It’s a lot like WordPress – but less, or more?  :)

BackPress is a PHP library of core functionality for web applications. It grew out of the immensely popular WordPress project, and is also the core of the bbPress and GlotPress sister-projects.

Posted in programming, wordpress Tags: , , , No Comments »

WordPress coding tips and tricks – part 2

Posted by tom.altman on February 25th, 2010

Yea – the last one 30 minutes ago was good too…but I found this too and it has some seriously good nuggets of code:

2. Showing Related Posts Without A Plugin
Tom: We are currently using a plugin to do this on GazetteOnline.  But I always wonder if it would be faster without it?

7. Insert Social Media Icons Without A Plugin
Tom: ShareThis and AddThis are very popular plugins.  But again – these reply on external scripts and load times can get messy if the intertubes get clogged.

8. Add Bread Crumbs to Your Wordpress Themes
Tom: I love breadcrumbs – but again, I always wonder if the site would load faster using the code.

9. Displaying Ads in Your RSS Feeds
Tom: I only added this to see if the sales people are reading my blog?  Any guesses if they are or not.  Question – would anyone buy ad space in an RSS feed?  I wonder who are good sales targets for this type of ad? What ads in RSS do you click?

Check them out…there are a total of 12, very cool.

Posted in programming, wordpress Tags: , , 2 Comments »

WordPress coding tips and tricks

Posted by tom.altman on February 25th, 2010

Using WordPress on gazetteonline, we have learned some tips and tricks.  This post from web design ledger shows some more – a couple are trumped by WordPress 2.9, but they are still hot, hot, hot.

  • Customize the Logo of Your WordPress Login Page
    TIP: Great for that custom look to your install.
  • Detecting Mobile Devices Accessing Your Site
    TIP: This is invaluable – no excuses not to have a mobile theme on your site.  (I hope my boss doesn’t read this…I’m sure we don’t have them on all our sites yet!   Shhhhhhhhh.)
  • Allow Only Your IP Address to Access the wp-admin Directory
    TIP: For the those paranoid network types.  (I’m talking to you Tim.)

These are all killer, and there are 10 more.  If you have others, please put them in the comments.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in programming, wordpress Tags: , , , No Comments »

Funny post on ‘Superstar’ Developers

Posted by tom.altman on February 1st, 2010
Html-source-code2
Image via Wikipedia

This is a pretty good read…and by these standards, I must be a-w-e-s-o-m-e!

So you’ve read Joel’s posts about how 1% of developers are 10x as productive as the rest; the superstar developers; the only ones worth hiring. You know you can program, that you’re reasonably talented, but that’s not enough. You want to be 10x as productive as everyone else in your company? You want to be the guru everyone else comes to when they’ve got a problem, the guy who takes one glance and puts his finger on the problem right away?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in programming, technology Tags: , No Comments »

Amazon CDN Grows Up, Adds Flash Streaming

Posted by tom.altman on December 21st, 2009

We’ve been looking at CDN’s, there are lot of good choices.  But it is hard to bet against Amazon.

When Amazon introduced its CloudFront CDN last year, one of the biggest knocks against the service was that it wasn’t primed for the delivery of video. That changed today, with the addition of video streaming capabilities in the form of Adobe’s Flash Media Server.

From NewTeeVee

Posted in Quick Post, Uncategorized, cloud computing, programming, technology Tags: , , , Comments Off

iPhone webapps to kick the AppStore habit

Posted by tom.altman on November 30th, 2009
250pxB
Image via Wikipedia

I love my iPhone.  I hate the AppStore.

I have not built my own iPhone app – partially because I haven’t found something I couldn;t already buy.  But partly because it seems complicated.  That’s probably why I don’t build desktop apps.  I came across a post by John Gruber called “iPhone Web Apps as an Alternative to the App Store” whih points to an article by Peter-Paul Koch “Apple is not evil. iPhone developers are stupid.” and they reaffirmed what I was thinking.

from Peter-Paul
“The fundamental problem on the iPhone is not Apple’s App Store approval policies, but the iPhone developers’ arrogant disdain for Web technologies.”

“Apple is not evil. iPhone developers are stupid. Their problems with the App Store approval process are entirely their own fault and they deserve no commiseration.”

Yea.  This is the exact arugment I’ve been having the desktop developers for 10 years – why hadn’t I connected the dots.

Although Peter-Paul has been “put in his place” and written a rebuttal – I think the issues will also be “fixed” with the competition with Android.

So – if you’re so inclined to write the iPhone app:

But the best proof is what I pointed out above: Apple itself created almost no iPhone web apps. Successful iPhone developers don’t just want to write software that works on the iPhone. They want to write software for the iPhone that’s just as good as Apple’s. Today that means using Cocoa Touch and the native SDK.

When you write a Cocoa Touch app for the iPhone, you’re not starting from scratch. You’re starting with the Cocoa Touch framework. As Faruk Ateş astutely points out in his response to Koch, to discount the framework is to discount everything that sets the iPhone apart as a development platform. Not only are native iPhone apps faster and more capable than their web-app equivalents, but they’re easier to write.

Nothing will be solved today – but as Android continues to spread in it’s open and loving ways…we’re be waiting with our web code ready to spring into action.

Related articles by Zemanta
Enhanced by Zemanta
Posted in Featured Post, iPhone, iPhone App, programming, technology Tags: , , , , Comments Off

It's common sense, stupid: The Mistakes I Made in My Programming Career

Posted by tom.altman on November 25th, 2009

I would have to agree with 3,4 & 5.

3.  Code reuse – the sooner you learn this the better.  I think it goes hand in hand with object oriented thinking.  You’ll do it eventually…may as well be today.

4. Documentation – we’ve gotten better at doing this via wiki/website at my work.  Seems to be a bit more user friendly for the masses.  Even if it is just loose notes at first – it is good to learn.  :)

5. Automated build – this is an art.  I think as “things” get more complicated, automated push is almost essential.

It’s common sense, stupid: The Mistakes I Made in My Programming Career.

Posted in Quick Post, programming, web concepts Tags: , , , Comments Off

Social Computing or Let the bots talk! | Internetdagarna

Posted by tom.altman on September 1st, 2009

Social Computing or Let the bots talk! | Internetdagarna.

I still have a lot to learn about XMPP, but I do know I like it.

Posted in Quick Post, programming, technology, web concepts Comments Off
« Older Entries
Twitter Delicious Facebook Stumbleupon