Category: Articles (Page 219 of 256)

Personal opinions and how-to’s that I’ve written both here and as contributions to other blogs.

Friction Between Developers and Customers: It’s Unnecessary

September 9, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

In my limited experience, one of the most common things that I see in working with software development contracts has to do with the friction between developers and customers.

Or, more specifically, it’s about the challenges of communication. challenges that exist between communicating requirements between both us, as the developers, and our customers.

It’s not at all uncommon to hear:

Customers say something like “my developer didn’t do [whatever it is] I asked him to do,” despite the fact the developer believes s/he did exactly that.
Developers will also say “I’ve built exactly what the customer asked me to do,” despite the fact that customer doesn’t necessarily agree.

So if both parties are working together to build something together, then why is it so common for conversations like this occur?

How To Move Your WordPress Database

September 5, 2013 / Tom

Comments on are closed on this post so we can keep the discussion on the original articles.

Last month, I shared my process for performing WordPress-based site migrations. For the record, this process is the one I prefer and that I’ve found best in my day-to-day work, but it’s not necessarily perfect for everyone.

So there are obvious alternatives some of which may work better for you than others.

In my latest serious on Tuts+, I’ve got a three part series that will walk you through how to move your WordPress database.

Why I Prefer To Use Hungarian Notation

September 3, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

When it coms to dynamic programming languages such as PHP and JavaScript, one of the things that people often debate is the use of hungarian notation.

Like most things with programmers, the debate can easily become something that resembles a religious argument. The debate normally hits on the following two points:

You shouldn’t have to use Hungarian Notation – the context of your code should provide enough information.
You should use Hungarian Notation – it helps with readability of the code.

For whatever it’s worth, I prefer to use Hungarian Notation. And though I’m not exactly one who elevates things to a heated debate, I’ve found as much as I’d like context to provide me with enough information, I don’t always see this as being the case in projects.

My Day-To-Day: Using Reminders To Get Things Done

August 30, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Earlier this year, I talked about how I use Things to help get things done. Since that post, a few things have changed.

As I alluded to last week, I’ve been purging a lot of stuff in my online life in an attempt to greatly increase the signal to noise ratio such that I’ve really only got the things I need to get done (or things that I enjoy doing) in order to make sure that I am as focused as can be with as few distractions as possible.

One of the transitions that I’ve been working on in the last few months is migrating my “Getting Things Done” model from Things to Apple’s Reminders application.

Optimizing WordPress on Media Temple DV

August 29, 2013 / Tom

I am no longer using Media Temple as my web host, so comments have been closed.

Though it’s typically applied to software, I tend to apply the YAGNI mentality to other things, as well. That is to say that I’d rather wait and upgrade when I need something rather than pay for something that I may never need.

Case in point: A couple of weeks ago, I outgrew my current host and needed to upgrade so I ended up going with Media Temple DV hosting.

In most shared hosting environments, you use whatever configuration they give you; however, because of the nature of the DV environment, the server is completely yours. That means that you’re responsible for tweaking Apache, PHP, and MySQL to make sure that it’s working best for your needs.

So what would a migration to a VPS environment be without a little bit of tweaking?