Archive for the ‘Web Design’ Category
Facebook Hackathon 2010
Today I am at the London Facebook Hackathon 2010. A bunch of developers in London are going to build Open Graph apps, and then show them off to some Facebook Execs. The best will be presented to Mark Zuckerberg tomorrow.
Unfortunately I am between a rock and a hard place. I don't want to do a presentation (can't stand them) but I do want to win. Regardless I'm going to do my best and see what happens.
Below is a gallery of ...
WordPress Caching, part 3: Custom Caching Library
When building Elemental (WordPress Theme) I decided to develop my own, very simple, caching plugin to help speed up the theme.
There were a few reasons why I did it but the main ones were:
I was doing things with public apis that have an hourly request limit, so I had to build some sort of data cache. Whilst wp_super_cache and W3 Total Cache are well known there's no guarantee people will use it. I thought it would be interesting to learn how.CSS Only Button – Redux
The other day a post was published on Hongkiat showing how to make a button using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) only. However it was misleading, the CSS only button also used JavaScript, and an image or 2. It was actually a really simple button so I thought I would rebuild it myself and explain what I did and why.
Note that to get the full effect you need to use a webkit based browser, Chrome or Safari will do ...
Optimizing Binary Moon
Recently I have spent quite a bit of time noodling around with different settings and functionality on Binary Moon.
I have been altering elements positions on the page, adding and removing things, and changing how things work. All in an effort to improve the user experience and to, hopefully, increase the number of people who visit the site.
This isn't something I've ever done before. Previously I have always gone with my gut ...
WordPress caching, Part 2
As I mentioned in WordPress caching part 1, WordPress has built-in caching that can be hooked into by plugins such as W3 Total Cache and Batcache (developed by Andy Skelton who is employed by Automattic).
In this article I am going to explain how I make use of WordPress internal caching - also know as the persistant cache - to speed up my site (and in turn Elemental).
What the persistant cache does ...
Add Website Favicons to Your WordPress Comments in 5 Minutes
Anybody who has been following my website will know that I like to use free services to reduce my development time wherever possible - and this post is no exception. I am going to show you how to use a little known Google service to find the favicon for a specific website and then use that favicon on the trackbacks of your blog.
What is a favicon?A favicon is the tiny icon you can see in the url bar at the ...
6 Tips to Build Better WordPress Themes
If you want to make WordPress themes, for clients, to release for free or to sell, then there are a lot of factors you need to take into consideration. Below are some hints and tips that should help ease your development process.
1. Think Like a UserIf you are building a theme for yourself, or for a client, this isn't quite so relevant, but if you're building a theme to sell (such as my themes on Pro Theme Design), or ...
file_get_contents : An Alternative to cURL
In my post about cURL the other day Matt mentioned that file_get_contents is a simpler method to use, and in many ways he's right.
file_get_contents is a PHP functions that gets the contents of a file. Unlike cURL it doesn't require any configuration so you can simply call it as so:
$data = file_get_contents('http://url_to/get_contents/from');There are some disadvantages, a big one being that some webhosts block the function, but for really quick data retrieval this function is perfect.
Using file_get_contents the ...
