Archive for the 'coding' Category
New WordPress Plugin: SponsorMe
Posted by: Owen on Monday, 5th May, 2008
I’ve just published a WordPress plugin that I wrote a few months ago and never actually made available to the World. It’s called SponsorMe and lets you organise a fund raising campaign on your WordPress blog. Blog readers will be presented with a graph of the monies you have collected and an opportunity to sponsor [...]
EntreDroppers - Share the love!
Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 10th Apr, 2008
I’ve just finished putting the finishing touches on a WordPress Widget that lets you add a list of EntreCard droppers to your website. If you’ve never used EntreCard before, it’s a great networking tool for bloggers, where you can drop your Card onto another bloggers blog to let them know you’ve visited. It’s great fun [...]
Picking a Platform
Posted by: Owen on Monday, 31st Mar, 2008
Great post on ReadWriteWeb about 5 issues to keep in mind when choosing a web development platform. Regardless of what sort of platform you’re after, these ideas translate well to other technologies also. Here are the things to watch out for:
Reach of the platform - the broader the target market, the more effective the platform [...]
Facts on Software Engineering
Posted by: Owen on Friday, 28th Mar, 2008
I came across a post on CodingHorror where Jeff pulls out a summary from Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert L. Glass. There’s some great stuff in there that everyone working in software should know. And good advice is like cheap glasses, you can never have enough! So I’m echoing it here:
People
The most important [...]
WP Auctions goes GOLD!
Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 26th Mar, 2008
It gives me great pleasure to announce that WP Auctions, a WordPress plugin to enable you to sell items directly off your blog (without paying any listing/gallery/reserve fees), has finally reached Version 2.0. This version boasts a number of enhancements over the previous version, including:
Upload multiple images for each auction
Sell items only on ‘Buy It [...]
10 ways to improve your code
Posted by: Owen on Monday, 10th Mar, 2008
Interesting post on The Reg about Neil Ford’s talk about how to improve you code. The talk was aimed at Java developers but there’s good advice for everyone in there. Here’s what he said in a nutshell:
Write tests before writing the code
Use static analysis tools
Practice “good citizenship” by paying attention to how well your objects [...]
AJAX attacks and how to mitigate against them
Posted by: Owen on Monday, 18th Feb, 2008
Excellent post on The Register entitled Reduce your exposure to AJAX threats, which talks about three pieces of advice you need to keep in mind when developing AJAX applications. There’s nothing new in terms of security principles, just an application to the fact that a good portion of AJAX applications work on the client’s browser [...]
My WordPress Plugins
Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 14th Feb, 2008
Just wanted to take a few minutes to draw the attention of my readers to some of the more popular WordPress plugins I’ve written over the last couple of years. They would be of interest to you if you run your own blog on WordPress. So here goes:
Comment Email Responder: This is by far my [...]
Theming WPAuctions
Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 7th Feb, 2008
One of the great things about working with Hyder is that he’s a brilliant designer. I’m happy messing around with code and databases, and have no idea how to make front-ends look pretty, but he’s just star when it comes to CSS and graphic design. He’s added some great input into developing our WP Auctions [...]
UTW Import -> Solved!
Posted by: Owen on Tuesday, 5th Feb, 2008
I’ve managed to get to the bottom of why my Ultimate Tag Warrior tags were failing to get imported into WordPress. The code was getting as far as “Adding Tags to Posts”, and just stopping there with no warnings, no errors, nothing. Turns out that the script was actually timing out due to the sheer [...]
Forays into AJAX
Posted by: Owen on Friday, 1st Feb, 2008
I’ve recently had the opportunity to learn more about AJAX. For those unfamiliar with the term, it’s a web technique whereby web pages can make asynchronous calls to backend services to present functionality to the user without having to refresh the page all the time. I did this while developing functionality for my latest WordPress [...]
Technical Evening
Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 9th Jan, 2008
Wow, it’s been a pretty busy evening; I’ve been getting my hands dirty with a whole range of different things.
My Fonera arrived! It’s a great way to share your WiFi connection in a controlled fashion, so that you have control over what bandwidth you charge, who uses your connection and whether you want it to [...]
PHP - Want to create a graph?
Posted by: Owen on Sunday, 2nd Dec, 2007
Last night I wanted to create a WordPress widget for my brother in law, Randolph who has decided to ask people who ask him what he wants for Xmas to donate cash towards his new laptop. It’s a bit rough as I can’t really dedicate time to it at the moment, but I wanted to [...]
Dealing with cross-browser issues
Posted by: Owen on Monday, 26th Nov, 2007
It can be pretty frustrating to design a website that’s perfect in your client’s eyes only to find that it doesn’t work in a different browser to the one you developed it in. That’s why it makes sense to test as early as you can in as many different browsers a possible. And making your [...]
We have a tester
Posted by: Owen on Monday, 29th Oct, 2007
Well, here some mixed news. The great news is that Chris Merriman, a fellow blogger is testing out my GeoWidget plugin. The bad news, is that the plugin isn’t behaving as it’s supposed to. I suppose this is what user testing is all about. It would have been nice if it worked out of the [...]
