Validate Data within A Model using CodeIgniter and MY_Model
CodeIgniter’s validation library is amazing out of the box and will save any developer an absolute ton of time. However, as CodeIgniter is an MVC framework it’s validation library does encourage data...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Just Search SEO Review
If you were looking for an honest Just Search SEO Review … .. apologies. If you were looking for an honest and impartial Just Search SEO review, this post has now been disabled due to pressure from...
View ArticleOpencart Theme Development – My Opinion
Opencart theme development, in it’s current state is flawed in my opinion. Opencart is a great platform for any type of ecommerce store, having a plethora of features for users and a low entry point...
View ArticleWebsite Transfer Guide – Common Pitfalls & Solutions
A Different take on the normal “Website Transfer Guide” … Taking over, or inheriting responsibility for an existing website happens to any web designer or developer at some point. In theory, website...
View ArticleBodyforms’ Perfect Response to Facebook Rant
Nowadays, companies and brands are wide open to criticism and comments from anyone with an Internet connection. With the dramatic rise of social media, there is no place to hide. Brands and companies...
View ArticleCounter Cache
Counter Cache (or Counter Cache Columns) is the term coined when adding a column to data tables in order to keeps track of aggregate data in an application. The term “cache” is used because the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Opencart 1.5.5 – Product Filters
Opencart have implemented product filters as of 1.5.5. In my opinion, category level product filters are a much needed feature and something Opencart has been lacking for a while. However, in true...
View ArticleClik here to view.
TalkTalk Business Websites – A Brief Encounter
I’ll keep this purposely short. I’m just in the process of attempting to transfer a basic 3 page static “Talktalk business website”, with a contact form from TalkTalk Business to my own hosting...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Laravel 4 Database Seeding with Faker
Database seeding can be a pain to perform and end up very clumsy. Seeding is a process required in the majority of web applications – either for stress testing or just to generate a reasonable sample...
View ArticleClik here to view.
SSH Access & Heart Internet, oh my …
SSH, or Secure Shell is something any web developer will have come across. Personally, every single website I deploy involves SSH where I’ll upload and extract a single compressed archive. This is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Multiple Categorisation for SEO
A very common technique in ecommerce, is for products to be assigned a single category – part of the filing cabinet approach to site development. This works for niche ecommerce stores, but not for the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Associate Products with Multiple Categories Using MySQL
Having a database structure that allows a product to be associated with more than one category is a very common scenario in any eCommerce website. However, after working on a couple of truely awful...
View ArticleClik here to view.
PHP Email Template with Flat Files
It’s quite common when sending an email message to see the following code to set the message body: $body = "Hi $firstname $lastname,<br /><br /> Thank you for you recent order - reference...
View ArticleThe Importance of Client Requirement Analysis
Recently I developed a small bespoke CRM system for a client, based on list of requirements gathered by a colleague approximately 2 months ago. The CRM was nothing out of the oridinary – a maintable...
View ArticlePassing Arguments as an Associative Array to a Function
Sometimes is it useful and slightly cleaner to pass arguements to a function via an associative array as opposed to a list of variables. There are a variety of methods to achieve this, such as using...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Populate Select Boxes using a Global Associative Array with PHP
The following post is being written because today I’ve been annoyed, very annoyed. I’ve been working on updates to a previous developers mini CRM system that I inherited, unfortunately. Basically, the...
View ArticlePHP Image Uploads – Better File Type Checking
When working on a project I came across a neat snippet of code that will uses PHP’s image manipulation functions to check the uploaded image type. The majority of the time the filetype is checked using...
View ArticleBest Practices With PEAR Cache Lite
Caching a website using PEAR Cache Lite has many benefits – it will speed up your site and is very simple to implement. However, there are several common pitfalls they could cause potential issues on a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Create A Slick Image Portfolio Effect
I was recently browsing a few photography website and came across a quite slick way to display a small snippet of information for for an image gallery. Unfortunately, it was Flash based, so I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Image Masking with CSS and HTML
A recent web design called for the following: the client must be able to upload their own banner images the banner image was not square and had a transparfent mask around over it (in Photoshop, the...
View ArticleStore an AJAX Response into a Variable using JQuery
Sometimes, it’s very useful and a lot cleaner to store the result of an AJAX request into a variable – that can used in your script. For instance, say you’re using some sort of calander plugin that...
View ArticleSEO URL Correction
The use of mod_rewrite to create SEO friendly URLs is common place now. However, if an application is not coded correctly they can have potentially negative effects. Take the fowllowing URL, this is...
View ArticleJQuery UI Love
Recently, I’ve completed a fairly large project that involved an invoicing system and electronic time cards. As the system was based in house, I decided to make extensive use of JQuery UI. After taking...
View ArticleClik here to view.
CRO and SEO – The Essential Relationship
Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of SEO related posts at the web design forum and have been contacted by a lot of seo agencies at work (my email may be doing the rounds). The thing that I’m most amazed...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Storing Ecommerce Order Information Correctly
Yesterday I was doing a tiny bit of web realted freelancing for a friend – simply involving doing a bulk, conditional update of his entire stock for his ecommerce website. The site itself was simple in...
View ArticleECommerce Content Source Ordering for Product Detail Pages
Content source ordering or SOC (source ordered content) is the idea that content nearer the top of the raw HTML source code has greater weight and meaning for search engines. For instance, a paragraph...
View ArticleEnchaning an Invoicing System for Reporting
At the start of the year I wrote a custom invoicing system for a client, using PHP and Smarty (hope to convert to use Twig at some point). The client has since come back to me to built in extra...
View ArticleSEO Indexing Services and Why You Don’t Need Them
SEO indexing is the idea of getting a new site indexed, or included within Google as quickly as possible. However, there are companies who prey on people not in the know, and sell seo indexing as a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Appreciating Your Chosen Web Host
Sometimes, you have small experiences that really make you appreciate your chosen web host. They leave you glad you spent the time doing your homework, testing out their support, features and generally...
View ArticlePHP Array Caching with PEAR Cache Lite
In previous posts full page, block level caching with pear cache lite have been discussed. Full page level caching is fine under a lot of conditions. However, sometimes it is desirable to cache the...
View ArticleHow to Install CodeIgniter Within the Web Root
By default, when installing CodeIgniter (CI), all the important files i.e. all files withing the application and systems folders are installed within the main web directory, that is visible to anyone....
View ArticleMagento as an ECommerce Platform – A Case Study
To date this year, I have inherited several Magento stores to perform web updates on. I thought I’d write a small post on my experience and thoughts in using the system and how that system translates...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Object Oriented CSS (OOCSS) – My View
After reading an article about OOCSS (Object Oriented CSS) I was left a little numb and confused to be honest. I’d advise you read the full article before reading what follows. The idea is fairly...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Epic Fix for IE6 Browser Issues
I’ve come across an endless list of IE6 hacks and apparent fixes for the one browser that still causes many issues. This on is my favourite: <!--[if IE 6]> <meta http-equiv="refresh"...
View ArticleClik here to view.
SEO Spam From India
Lately, spam from Indian website and SEO companies has been pretty bad for me. I’m not sure what has happened, but over the last 3-4 months it’s increased ten fold – the BBC article on India becoming...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Yell Websites and Template Recycling – A Review
It’s been fairly common news for a while now that the age old Yell.com offer web design services, or “Yellsites” as some have coined it. There’s been a lot written about this fact, with some people...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why Codeigniter Base Models Rock
There are a plethora of reasons to use a good base model (also called CRUD Model, MY-Model) for all your CRUD operations in a CodeIgniter (or any) application. Amongst many, a base model will boostrap...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Route Patterns in Laravel 4
When using the excellent Laravel 4, writing DRY and SOLID code is something you’re well aware of. Unfortunately, it’s common for the routes file to get messy and repetitive as an application grows –...
View ArticleOpencart 1.5.x Multistore – Associating Existing Data
The Opencart Multistore feature is a great addition for retailers requiring multiple stores, managed via a single administration area. Setting up multistore in Opencart is quite easy and can be...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mailcatcher & Laravel 4 – Sending Development Emails
During application development sending test emails can usually be a pain, even when using a modern frmaework like the excellent Laravel 4. During development it is very desirable to debug emails...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Laravel 4 IoC – Bindings and the Application Instance
At a recent business networking event I got talking to another web developer, who has just started using Laravel 4. We got chatting about Laravel in general and how awesome it is.Of course, the subject...
View ArticleClik here to view.
HotelHippo.com – Really?
Recently, the latest website security saga in the news has been Hotelhippo.com. I won’t try and top Scott Helme’s article as he does an excellent job at explaining the saga in exhaustive detail, along...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Microsoft Drop Support for Dated Versions of Internet Explorer
Web Developers & Designers alike can rejoice! As of 12th January 2016 Microsoft will no longer provide security patches and updates to dated versions of Internet Explorer. In an official...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bower – A Front End Package Manager Tutorial
Recently, I’ve been looking for ways to streamline and improve my workflow with frontend assets. This is the first article in a mini series, where I’ll be explaining my updated workflow with Bower and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
An Unexpected Selling Point …
This morning, I was part of a fairly normal client meeting discussing potential new work. The client started to discuss about what constitutes a good and bad service in relation to web development. In...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Video Js API – Referencing Video Objects
After using the excellent VideoJs HTML5 video player today, I thought a small article regarding improving site performance for video heavy websites was in order. The site in question is a project I...
View ArticleMoment of Clarity!
Just came across this gem, that I’m sure anyone who works in development can appreciate: As developers need to look at problems from a different standpoint, software projects cannot be accelerated by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Heart Internet Support – !*&^THD^(HDD
Whilst I don’t usually come into contact with the Heart Internet people too frequently (I only use them for a couple of domains personally and have experienced past annoyances with SSH/Shell access to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Brace yourself, code like this this still exists
Yup, it’s 2014 and there are countless articles written about security your PHP code. Hell, most people use a framework. Today, I took over from another developer on a rather large internal quoting...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MVC WTF?
As a freelance developer, inheriting and working with code I did not originally write is common place. More often than not, code written using a known framework results in perfectly readable code,...
View Article
