3 May, 2024
A little change on this website
In the past, this website was sort of my place to keep family and friends in touch. I first set it up in 2005, just before going away to Peru on travels. It was a great. Facebook had been invented but wasn’t generally available or popular yet, other platforms weren’t well thought through or scattered, […]
15 February, 2022
Interesting times in the world of software
About a decade ago, I was at a conference and talking to a fellow developer (I still call myself one, even though I don’t code so much these days) when he giddily told me about the funding he’d got for building a new piece of software he was hoping would make it big. It was […]
10 July, 2011
Blog “Reboot”
Hello – here’s the refreshed blog. I’ve decided to revert to a more typical blog format, after many months of soul searching on the issue. I previously had a layout based on a framework we used at interconnect/it for a couple of clients But not only have I opted to switch to a blog layout, […]
22 September, 2010
New Spectacu.la Discussion Updates
My colleague James has been extending the threaded comments plugin that I use(d)* on this site. It’s available from http://svn.wp-plugins.org/spectacula-threaded-comments/trunk for those of you with SVN clients, and for download and easy installation from WordPress.org and Spectacu.la within a few days. If you wish to test it out, feel free to comment here… It adds […]
19 July, 2010
WordCamp UK – Great Stuff + a Little Controversy
I went to WordCamp UK 2010 in Manchester… this is my write-up of the event, and its controversies along with my presentations…
12 July, 2010
Live Threaded Commenting on WP
At Interconnect IT / Spectacu.la my colleague James has developed a new version of the popular Spectacu.la Threaded Comments plugin. It’s not yet in release form, but you can grab it from the WordPress.org repository via svn if you know how at http://svn.wp-plugins.org/spectacula-threaded-comments/trunk/ I’m bringing it up here because I’ve decided to trial the plugin […]
19 May, 2010
WordPress Performance, Make it 3x Quicker!
I’d started to notice that my site could often be slow to load – other sites on the same server weren’t suffering the same way, so I wanted to document a simple way in which one can identify performance issues on the site. This is one of them.
19 February, 2010
Of WordPress Training and Learning
Over at Interconnect IT, where I work, we’ve found that demand for our WordPress Training Courses has shot up over the past year or so. And it’s certainly interesting to see where the work comes from. Curiously, it’s very polarised – we either work with smaller one man band companies like Jason Nevin who runs […]
18 January, 2010
Is WordPress Slowing My Site Down?
I noticed on my pingdom stats recently that this site has been slowing down recently. But why? Is it WordPress? Some plugins? Time for research!
20 July, 2009
What it’s Like to Present and Attend at WordCamp UK
Over the weekend just gone I made two planned presentations at WordCamp UK 2009 down in Cardiff. I also threw in a quick 45 minutes of show and tell on the Caribou Theme that runs this site and is available for download from Spectacula.
25 May, 2009
mySQL Database Search & Replace With Serialized PHP [Updated]
Ever needed to migrate a database to a new server or website (especially with WordPress and other PHP applications) and been stuck because when you do a search and replace some of the data seems to get corrupted?
5 May, 2009
Handy Tip for CSS Reloading
CSS not refreshing in the browser can be a pain – Mark Jaquith has come up with an elegant solution to this for WordPress coders.
2 March, 2009
PHP Serialization Fix for WordPress Migrations (& other applications like Expression Engine)
Serialization of data loaded into an SQL table is a dreadful thing and makes WordPress migrations harder than they should be, but it happens and so we must deal with it. I’ve knocked up a rough and ready bit of code which does its best to resolve the problem.
Wordcamp UK 2009 to be in Cardiff
If you’re following the various WordCamp lists, you’ll already know about this event. But many won’t. If you use WordPress professionally, or with a great deal of enthusiasm, WordCamps are a great way to meet with other users, developers and designers who really understand the system. There are useful presentations, social events and activities based […]
7 December, 2008
Barcamp Liverpool 2008
I attended Barcamp Liverpool 2008 to join fellow geeks in a spot of technology appreciation at this ‘unconference’ at the CUC. Great venue, and great to be able to give an ad-hoc presentation on WordPress for News Sites in the Café
18 November, 2007
So now I’m on Facebook I Want a Blog Connection…
It makes sense, if you think about it – why duplicate data in two places? So in went the Wordbook plugin for WordPress, and then the Facebook application onto my profile. This post, really, is to see if it’s a success – does my blog here appear in my profile? And so it does! Woo! […]
25 September, 2007
Badminton Near Warrington
I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen that having a web presence is free and simple, and doesn’t need to be opaque to the search engines. It can be standards compliant, easy to find, and well structured. You can change the content as and when you like. You can add pictures and so on. And it’s […]
13 July, 2006
Resolving WordPress Migration Issue
I’m posting this for the benefit of anyone who experiences a similar problem to mine when moving WordPress from a directory into the web’s root directory. What happened was that many links and pictures, some placed in there by plugins, others simply links that were typed in, had failed. I realised that although I’d followed […]