Backups Commits are your backup If you are a software developer of any sort, you really should use source control. It doesn't matter if it's for personal or professional projects (but definitely for the latter)
Apache How to fix the Symfony web profiler in Apache So you've decided you want to create a web project using Symfony 5. Great! By now you've got the Welcome to Symfony 5.x.y message on screen; great. You're
Hardware Not all developers need a 4K monitor This is going to be controversial. And for those developers who's managers read this post and decline their, likely legitimate, request for a 4K screen, I apologise. But, not all
Recruitment Writing a good technical test Having previously defended technical tests, I started thinking about what makes a good tech test. It's also made me review the tech tests I issue to follow these guidelines. Writing
Development Why you should use Virtual Machines in development I've previously covered why I use Ubuntu, even at my day job where I have a Windows laptop I spend most of my time using Ubuntu. This is through virtual
Linux Why I use Ubuntu I use Ubuntu Linux. That much is clear from the title. It confuses some people as to why I would; and others have no idea what I am on about
Development In defence of technical tests I've just undergone a round of recruitment to expand my team at work. We're a small, steadily growing team. But when we hire someone, I want to understand their thought
Symfony Symfony unit tests with Redis on GitLab I've written a few times about GitLab and the CI/CD pipeline features it has. For most cases, it's straightforward to use. But, every so often, things don't always work
Why should you blog? There are millions of blogs out there. Literally. But there should always be more. It might be seen as filling the Internet with junk, and but I think everyone should
Security Clear out unused apps for security It's that time of year when we undertake a spring clean of our homes ready for the year ahead. Throw out the unused junk, and generally keep things tidy. This
Apache How to configure your CI pipeline environments This seems like a very simple and trivial thing, but it's something which gets easily overlooked. Setting up a CI pipeline environment is fairly trivial (unless you are using a
CI/CD Test your deployment tasks The great part of a CI/CD pipeline is the headache which can be removed from deployments. Manual deployments are painful, but deployments as a whole don't need to be.
Development Doctrine DBAL and the LIKE operator Doctrine is a great abstraction layer, and I've resolved to use it more and more through my projects to keep things simple and maintainable. The problem is, the documentation isn't
Backups Replacing a drive in Buffalo LS441D after a drive failure I mentioned back in August that I'd changed my backups to use a NAS enclosure rather than a full blown server. I'm glad I did, as I recently suffered a
PHP Fixing Magento Invalid attribute name issue after SUPEE-11219 Having recently updated a Magento installation to apply SUPEE-11219, there were issues when searching for products using the filters for the grid. I had an error message of: Invalid attribute name: blcg_custom_field_2The only reference to 'blcg_custom_field_' was a
Development Magento patching frustrations I've previously covered the issues I have with CMS platforms. They aren't bad (I use one for this blog), however some seem to want to make it as difficult as possible to update. I currently use Magento as part of my day job, and
Error Message HTTP status codes and their uses We all know about HTTP codes, or at least we know there is a 404 one which means not found. Some of us know that there's a 200 code (meaning OK), and that there's some odd ones in the 500 meaning something went bang!
Backups Changing my backups It's been a long time since I turned my old PC into a home media server, but time has come for that machine and some of its components, so it's
Development Issues with using a CMS If you have a website, the chances are it runs on a CMS (Content Management System). There are hundreds of them out there, some you will have heard of; Wordpress is the obvious one. Others include Drupal, Joomla, and Umbraco. These are great for
Having a break It's been a while since I last posted anything, despite starting off really well with weekly posts since moving to the Ghost platform. This hasn't fully been out of choice, however. My enforced break from the computer outside of work hours has been down
Data Protection (Mostly) leaving Facebook behind There's hardly a week goes by that Facebook isn't in the news for one thing or another - usually something privacy related. Privacy and data protection have been firmly on everyone in Europe's radar following the introduction of the new data protection laws (GDPR)
CI/CD CI/CD with Gitlab - Getting started I use Gitlab a lot. I use it for personal projects and have also implemented it at work - I love the platform. Others are available, but for me, having everything in one place (though risky!) saves me having several tabs open. I've previously
CI/CD A late introduction to continuous integration and deployment It's been one of the buzzwords around development offices in recent years, and everyone is wanting a piece of the efficiency generating DevOps, but what are the benefits of it, and how do you get started? It's not as difficult as it may seem,
Website Simple changes for a mobile friendly online store Sat on a train heading through the Welsh countryside, I've been doing some browsing and shopping on my mobile phone (yes, there is mobile signal in strange parts of the Welsh landscape), and have been reliving usability issues in a number of vendors which
