Blog
Posted by Jeremy on 22 January 2010
So, SilverStripe 2.4 (still in alpha at the time of this
post) has introduced a new feature (and class) called "Site
Config". This is huge, folks - on the level of discovering
XRays huge (except without the radiation poisoning part -
unless you're just that sloppy with your code, then, perhaps
you deserve it). My use for the SiteConfig class is to
level the playing field with other CMS offerings like
Joomla! and WordPress and allow users to change some (semi)
static content within their sites, without having to come to
me to update their templates.
A REALLY Good E-Commerce Question
Posted by Jeremy on 11 December 2009
I want to set up a website with a Content Management System
and an e-Commerce component. I've heard really good things
about Magento, WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal. My head is
spinning with all of my options. Which should I choose?
10,000 Friends vs. 1,000 Enthusiasts
Posted by Jeremy on 6 December 2009
Your business is considering a social media strategy and
your consultant keeps buzzing about ten thousand (or some
other ridiculously high number) of fans over night. You keep
thinking to yourself "This is too good to be true; sure,
he's done it for other people, but my brand?" You're
right. It is too good to be true, for a few reasons:
Linkr...finally!
Posted by Jeremy on 28 October 2009
I've kinda disliked Joomla's content management for a while.
Main reason: there isn't, by default, a mechanism to link
from one article to another in the content management system
(unlike SilverStripe - love it!). Until now, enter Linkr.
The most amazing little tool for finding links in your
Joomla! install and automatically inserting them into your
editor. If you have to use Joomla's content management
system, I highly recommend checking it out!
Transparent Backgrounds
Posted by Jeremy on 6 October 2009
Over and over again, I find myself needing to put text over
an image for some reason or another. (Darned designers and
their good ideas!) Recently, I decided to fake it and just
cut the image from a designer's PSD and use an image map. I
know, I know; I'm bad. It was the quickest way I could think
of to get this task done, until the customer wanted
different wording and I couldn't track down the PSD.
Broken Social Engine Comments
Posted by Jeremy on 6 October 2009
Recently, as we were wrapping up work on a Social Engine
project (stay tuned for more info on that!), we noticed that
people who put colorful text art (see below), were
unintentionally (or maybe not) breaking the blog comments
display. Really, what it came down to was the over
exuberant use of special characters in the word art,
specifically single quotes and double quotes. Looking into
this a bit further, we noticed if we escaped the incoming
text using PHP's htmlspecialchars() function, we'd no longer
have this problem. So, for all of you looking for the answer
to this question, here you go!
Over 2000 kurl'd clicks!
Posted by Jeremy on 17 September 2009
After reviewing some site stats today, we've noticed that
kurl.it[http://kurl.it/] (our URL shortening service) has
been used over 2,200 times (i.e. - people who have clicked
on a kurl.it link). Not bad for a small in-house system we
set up and haven't been pushing too much (get ready for that
to change, though!). Thanks to everyone who used it and we
look forward to providing you some very interesting features
in the future.
