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)
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
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
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
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
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!
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
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
Development Starting with Symfony - Performance issues When I chose Symfony, I did so on the understanding that it was going to be a relatively lightweight, performance framework which I could use to build web apps which scale nicely and respond quickly. I started out with a tutorial where the first
Development Getting Started with Symfony (part 1) I'm about to make a change in my career and go back into development. To help me do that I've started a course on Udemy for getting up and running with Symfony 4. I figured that if I was going to be working with
Development Jenkins disk space usage I'm working on a project, part time, in my spare time. As part of that project I have Jenkins for continual building when I publish anything into the master branch in git. I've not done much for a month or so, but logged in
Development Automating the simple stuff We all use computers for one thing or another, and in most cases we'll do the same things on them over and over. Part of being a developer is realising the things which need doing a lot, and automating them to increase productivity. Doesn't
Development Introducing Charon File Uploader I've wanted to build a useful JavaScript library for a while, but never found any of the ones out there lacking. I've been working on a new project recently and one of the things I needed to do for that was be able to
Development Database Connection Mis-information Whilst on my usual rounds on StackOverflow to help spread useful knowledge of computing and web development I came across the following comments on a thread: Um... mysql doesn't connect over http... nor to a directoryNeither should it be an url. Usually it's localhost
Development Check, test and check again I noticed today as I was about to start a different article that my website was looking a bit, well, funny. The layout was wrong, some of the colours were off, the whole thing was a mess. Don't get me wrong, it's not at
Development NEVER trust user input I've had the joys recently of being part of a code audit for a potential client for a change or re-build of a system. The code in itself was complete textbook...of how not to code a system. It looked like it had been
Development The importance of meaningful variable names I was having my usual browse around Stack Overflow today (I really want that Fanatic badge) when I came across this question about fatal errors. The coder in question was getting the following fatal error: Fatal error: Call to a member function Createuser() on
Development Developers still lack security know-how Earlier this week I was looking into RESTFUL web services and how to create them, so I set myself a small project. The idea was to do something very basic, but that could be useful for someone rather than just a proof of concept.
Hardware Developers are the destroyers of hardware I've had a few discussions with some of my colleagues and friends in software development, and one of the things we all agree on is that there is nothing worse than a slow development environment. A lot of us work with IDEs, some need
Development Sensible SVN Structuring SVN, or any other version control system for that matter, should always be used when developing code. It doesn't matter if it's for a single person project, or a huge project involving hundreds of different developers. Version control is essential. Recently I've been involved
Development Coding basics: DRY programming I’ve been working on an old code base recently, a one which I have inherited, and looking through it I was frustrated at a lot of the code involved. Don’t get me wrong, that’s normal for most programmers when they inherit
