November 2011
1 post
ExpressionEngine + Version Control
Version control has long been an integral part of any development team. One of the challenges I face when marrying the ExpressionEngine templates and version control with separate development, staging and production environments is keeping everything in sync. Let me begin by explaining a little about the development environment we use:
Developers begin coding on their local machine using...
August 2011
1 post
May 2011
1 post
4 tags
How To: Configure ExpressionEngine for Multiple...
One of the challenges ExpressionEngine developers who have separate development, staging, and production environments face is configuring EE to work in all three of those environments without having to modify code each time. Over the last few months, I’ve been looking for ways to make the EE configuration as dynamic as possible and here is what I’ve learned. The methods described...
April 2011
2 posts
4 tags
EE Addon: HTML/CSS/JavaScript Optimization with...
What is AutoMin?
AutoMin is an ExpressionEngine addon that automatically combines and compresses your template output, CSS and JavaScript code.
Features
On-the-fly combination and minification of your CSS/JavaScript
Intelligent caching mechanism detects when you’ve made a change to your tags or files
Automatic compression of your HTML markup
Handles CSS @import and @font-face...
4 tags
Code: .htaccess for ExpressionEngine and... →
Here is the .htaccess template I use for ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter web sites. It’s well documented and has support for far-future expires headers, 301 redirects (vanity URLs), web fonts, gzip compression, index.php removal, etc. Thanks to the guys over at HTML5 boilerplate for some of the far-future and web fonts code.
February 2011
1 post
4 tags
Tutorial: LINQ to Entities in .NET Framework 4.0 →
Before I began working on a recent .Net Windows application, I was checking out some of the new data access methods in .Net Framework 4.0 and came across LINQ to Entities, which was available in .Net Framework 3.x, but was vastly improved in Framework 4.0. Today, I’m going to spend a few moments talking about the LINQ language and, more specifically, LINQ to Entities and what it means for...
January 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Think: An OOP's Approach to JavaScript →
Sometimes it seems that there aren’t many hard-fast rules in programming. What works here, may not work there. What is best for this developer may not be best for another. One area where this is noticeably the case is the debate over coding standards and code-cleanliness. For me, this is always evolving as I discover new ways to make my code more maintainable, more readable, and just...
3 tags
Code: SVN Hooks for Staging Servers →
I had to develop some SVN hooks to automate our push to staging at Paramore|Redd. I decided to take it a bit further and include PHP Syntax validation. Check out the scripts here and modify/use them as you need.
November 2010
1 post
6 tags
Free App: Easy Hosts File Editing with... →
Open source and available for both Mac and Windows, HostsFileHelper is a small application designed to take the hacker out of hosts file editing.
September 2010
1 post
4 tags
How To: Server-Side Web Optimization →
If you’re anything like me, you like snappy (you like to find what you’re looking for and find it quickly), and slow load times can greatly impact your workflow. Turns out we’re no different than most web users. In this article, I’ll give you a few reasons why you should worry about web site optimization and show you some simple technical things you can do to speed up your site’s load time...