Walking With Dinosaurs

This was the second responsive site I have worked on.  While the likes of the folding grid were handled by the front end developer I was still required to come up with innovative ways to serve content to both desktop and mobile devices.  In addition it was also a challenge to make the content of the website fully content manageable with WordPress.

I succeeded in making all the websites content editable via the CMS and used PHP scripts to detect which device the website was being served too, serving different content to each device.

A nice feature added to this site was the ability to share images in the gallery, served and managed from the likes of flickr and youtube, across social networks and have them open in a light box when the shared link was followed.  Also I enjoyed creating the ability to animate areas of the page when the video reached a particular time, something manageable from the CMS.

Shrek the Musical

This is the site that I have most frequently worked on during my time at aka.  It has received high traffic due to appearance on the likes of Britain’s Got Talent, resulting in us having to optimize the site numerous times, upscale the server and very aggressively cache the sites content.

While the site has very little in the way of impressive features, it has stretched and improved my skills due to the requirements of the client.  The site is built in WordPress and I have had to create a number of bespoke plugins and custom post types to allow for every aspect of the site to be manageable.  Innovative page templates have been created in order to allow for content managers to easily add attractive pages to the site, rather than in the past where it has been the responsibility of the development team to design, create and update multiple static designs for pages.

I have also been responsible for training the client on the CMS and have as a result work closely with them to improve the way in which it works in order to better suit their needs.

aka Promotions

This was the first responsive website I had worked on so was quite excited at he opportunity.  For those whom do not know, responsive websites are a means of serving predominantly the same content at the optimal resolution for the device it is being used on, changing the theme and aspects of the content according to the device.

There were very simple issues, such as rendering light box content (such as iframes) at a usable size on all devices, resulting in the creation of a script that sets the max width of such content depending on the size of the screen.  Also I had to detect the device being used by the end user while server side with PHP, and deliver content based on this information, for example, stopping the addition of a flash video playing on mobile devices.

I also added functionality such as an infinite scroller, a gallery plugin that could be easily added to content via a short code in both posts and widgets, a front page carousel which uses differing images to the featured image in posts.  I also created a number of other custom post types and plugins.

This website was again highly optimized and cached, but less due to the traffic and more due to the devices its content was to be delivered to.

Matilda the Musical

This site was quite a simple build, that had to allow for the content management of every aspect of the site.  The most challenging aspects of the build were getting things such as the breadcrumb to work effectively, getting varying page and category classes to be output to allow for an attractive design and the creation of a gallery plugin.

The plugin allows for multimedia content to be feed from Flickr and Youtube as well as WordPress and integrated into the same gallery.  Also the ability to share each gallery item was requested.  The plugin uses a scheduled task to regularly check these third parties for updates to galleries, playlists and photo sets updating the cache if new media is available and publishing it to the website.  This allows for easier management of the social campaign as well as website content.

Again, this website gets relatively high traffic so the site had to be heavily optimized and aggressively cached in order to achieve a consistent and acceptable page load weight and time.

LoFi

This website was for a graphic designer whom I worked with.  It was to advertise his work and a blog to act as a creative outlet.  This led to the creation of a simple theme and a number of bespoke plugins, allowing for every aspect of the site to be content managed.

This site has been optimized numerous times in order to improve performance but is currently being served from a sub par, shared hosting environment and is performing badly.  I would love to see the site on a better server as it would improve its page ranking and make for better user experience.

Which IDE is for me

An IDE is a term used to describe the main tool in a developers arsenal. The program you will spend most of your time in if your a developer.  There are quite a few on the market and I’ve spent some time in quite a number.  They all have there pros and cons and here is my low down on my favorites.

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Manage multiple WordPress installations easily

At work, I’m managing quite a number of websites.  We have all the clients sites setup with their own account in cPanel and in quite a number of cases were running WordPress to content manage.  As the number of sites we’re managing is going up, maintenance is becoming something of an issue, and falling behind on an update is simple a no go – hackers are ready to take pot shots at WordPress installations at a moments notice, due to something like 15% of the webs top sites running it (http://wordpress.org/news/2011/08/state-of-the-word/).  This is where Manage WP steps in! (more…)

My first mobile post

So it thought I’d try a mobile post to see if it works. Hopefully it should, but I’m wondering if my cache plugin will clear cache afterwards.  I could see this being very useful! A good little iOS app WordPress have here! (more…)

Website updated

So I’ve updated my website.  Maybe you won’t be able to tell since the site looks identical.  However, it now runs on WordPress!

I have been working mainly in WordPress development recently rather than Joomla so have felt it appropriate to migrate my site to WordPress.  While I wouldn’t really call WordPress a proper CMS I think it has some cool features and with regard to its capabilities as a blogging platform, I don’t think it is really parred.

Since I have and will be developing a number of WordPress plugins, I thought it would also be a good chance to test them out and then eventually make some them available in the plugins directory.  However, do not dispare Joomla users.  I still have a place in my heart for Joomla and will be continuing to use Joomla on a number of projects.