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Database Indices
I recently had the pleasure of indexing our company’s sites’ tables. The custom CMS I inherited has some really brilliant code, but it also has quite a large amount of idiotic code blocks as well. In this case, the database was not thought out as best it could have. I was able to reduce some…
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Demystifying the WordPress Plugin
I asked one of the guys on my team to build a WordPress plugin, he balked. I realized that he just didn’t get how easy it is. So I thought I’d dedicate some time to dispelling the myth that plugins are complicated to write. “Plugin” sounds formidable. But really, a plugin is a file in…
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Labor Surplus is a Resource to be Tapped, Not a Liability to Mitigate
“While those ancestral Maori who first colonized the Chathams may have been farmers, Maori tropical crops could not grow in the Chathams’ cold climate, and the colonists had no alternative except to revert to being hunter-gatherers. Since as hunter-gatherers they did not produce crop surpluses available for redistribution or storage, they could not support and…
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Why I use Bootstrap, and what I get from it
I previously wrote about the the Bootstrap front-end framework. In a nutshell my thoughts then were, it’s a useful tool but if something goes wrong, it’ll be a pain to troubleshoot. What I thought then still remains true, if you need to work outside their box, you’ll have a tough time. However, since I first…
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To the FCC: Thoughts on Net Neutrality
The internet is a great equalizer. It is the foundation upon which we share all our communication and knowledge, like the printing press. Giving priority access to some over others is the equivalent of constraining access to the alphabet or language. You’re damning the less fortunate to remain illiterate. Are you upset as well? Here’s…
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Leveling Up Your Development Skills with a Pinch of SysAdmin
“If you’re developing properly, you shouldn’t have to worry about whether your site is running Apache, Nginx or anything else. Your code should just work.” – anon When developing a plugin or theme for use by the greater community this is certainly true. Anything you put out there for someone else, should absolutely not be…
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How to Convert Docx to HTML
For my current side project I needed to allow a user to upload a docx file and then continue editing it from their WordPress dashboard. I chose docx because it is an open standard based on XML. I figured that might make things somewhat easier. Unzip Docx file Many modern formats these days are compressed…
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Handling a PHP unserialize offset error… and why it happens
I discovered recently the importance of proper collation of database tables. I inherited a proprietary CMS to manage. The default collation was latin1_swedish_ci. Apparently it’s because “The bloke who wrote it was co-head of a Swedish company”. The problem occurred when a form we had on our site began getting submissions with foreign characters. The…
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How to Use a post-receive Git hook to mark a deployment in NewRelic
I recently started monitoring my systems with NewRelic. Fantastic tool. One fun feature they provide is that you can mark in NewRelic’s dashboard when you’ve deployed new code. This way you can compare your site performance before and after the deploy. Using Git’s post-receive hook is perfect for this, especially since I already use it…
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What I Want to Hear About this Tuesday at the State of the Union Address
I received an email from BarackObama.com asking me to fill out a one question survey. The survey question was: What issue are you most excited to hear about in the State of the Union? This was my response: The biggest issue that lost my enthusiasm in the leadership of our president is how much the…
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Jack Reichert 