Blog
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Podcamp Halifax 2012: WordPress Workshop
January 22nd, 2012 at 9:04am | No CommentsI’m running the following session at the Podcamp Halifax unconference today: WordPress Workshop After a 5 min intro including what’s new in the latest release of WordPress (and what’s coming in the next version), I’ll ask attendees what they’d like to hear. Do you want me to show you how to install WordPress? Maybe you’d ... read more »
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Image Crop Position in WordPress
November 29th, 2011 at 6:22pm | 10 CommentsI just submitted my first WordPress core patch today and have been receiving lots of positive feedback. It allows developers to set the crop position by specifying an array for the $crop parameter in the add_image_size function (see the Trac ticket for more details). WordPress 3.3 is at beta 4 at the moment, so it won’t make ... read more »
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What’s involved in building a web site?
September 21st, 2011 at 1:54pm | 7 CommentsIn my previous article on the cost of building a web site, I mention that with a larger budget you can afford to hire a professional or a team of professionals to build your web site. But what do these people do? What are the steps involved to produce a web site? Here I describe ... read more »
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Building a web site: Think content first
February 11th, 2011 at 9:42am | 4 CommentsWhen people start thinking about building a web site, they often get caught up in how it will look. The colours, the layout, photography, etc. That stuff can be sorted out later. To start, the most important thing to be thinking of is content. Do you need an FAQ? Will your staff be committing to ... read more »
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PodCampHalifax 2011 Review
January 24th, 2011 at 6:35pm | 6 CommentsI thoroughly enjoyed the third annual PodCampHalifax unconference this past Sunday. Kudos to event organizers Craig More, Bessy Nikolaou, and Ryan Deschamps for putting together a hit. Things ran very smoothly and it’s clearly due to their hard work and commitment to the event. This was my first PodCampHalifax but not my first unconference event ... read more »
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WTF is dial-up grandpa?
August 27th, 2010 at 4:40pm | 1 CommentToday is my birthday. And although birthdays can be great for the gifts and attention, they are also a reminder of years gone by. In my annual birthday chat with my mom, I was telling her how my work was going and we started reminiscing of the challenges I faced when I was doing internet work in my teens. I thought I'd share. read more »
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Encrypting credit card information with OpenSSL
July 26th, 2010 at 9:10am | 4 CommentsRecently, when I researched the encryption of credit card information, or card holder data (CHD) as it’s known in the industry, I was somewhat frightened by what I found. Almost every tutorial suggested using MySQL’s AES functions. While AES is an excellent symmetric-key algorithm, a symmetric-key algorithm is not a great choice for storing CHD long ... read more »
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What does it cost to build a web site?
April 4th, 2010 at 11:08am | 13 CommentsI’m often asked by friends and family, “What does it cost to build a web site?” And although I’m sure none of them will read this, at least now I have something to point them to. Asking “What does it cost to build a web site?” is a lot like asking, “What does it cost to ... read more »
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Fix WordPress “Missed schedule” error on Media Temple (dv) / Plesk
July 18th, 2009 at 10:37pm | 12 CommentsAfter a lot of debugging, I was able to figure out that Media Temple’s (dv) configuration was responsible for the “Missed schedule” errors I was getting in WordPress. By default, the /etc/hosts file looks like this: 127.0.0.1 yourdomain.com yourdomain localhost localhost.localdomain To execute cron tasks, WordPress needs to post to the URL http://yourdomain.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron. This isn’t ... read more »
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Developing SharURL: Lessons learned developing a new startup
July 6th, 2009 at 1:15pm | 7 CommentsLast year around this time I decided to pursue an idea for a simple file sharing service without any real planning. Although it shouldn’t have taken more than a few months of part-time work, I just managed to launch SharURL today (you will need this invite code to signup: p9q1h). I made a lot of mistakes ... read more »
