Author: Tom

  • Resizing images – the right way

    Something that is very important on the web today is how fast our websites load, and alongside script optimization and other fancy tricks, images are a large part of our sites, and so it’s important that they are optimized for the web. However what if we don’t have control over the size of the images,…

  • Building a CMS Part 3

    And so we’ve arrived at the last in this set of tutorials; if you’ve been following along, by now you should have a user system as well as a basic CMS. At the moment we have a very strong base for our CMS but there are still a few things that we need to talk…

  • Building a CMS Part 2

    Note: This post is currently undergoing review and will be updated within the next few days to reflect more recent standards and better code quality. So if you’re following this set of tutorials you should now have your very own login system that allows users to sign up and login. However these tutorials aren’t about…

  • Building a CMS Part 1

    A content management system (or CMS) is the best way (I think) to maintain a site. This site, like many others uses WordPress, a blogging CMS. There are many options available to us web designers out there, but I think creating your own CMS is a really good way of learning a lot of new techniques.…

  • Get going with jQuery!

    If you would have asked me 6 month ago what I thought of Javascript, I would have told you I thought it was a precarious language which never worked for me – and that’s coming from a semi-programmer! To me the language was cumbersome and seemed like it was cobbled together in a very short time…

  • Do you do To do?

    In today’s modern society, with the ever growing amount of information I find many people are turning to “To do” applications to keep track of all the little things they need to get done in their lives. I’m told they are a God-send; that they couldn’t live without them, or that they don’t know where…

  • Don’t vet Passwords!

    I’ve designed loads of forms in my time, some for collecting random data, some for logging in, and some for user sign up. I usually employ form validation to make sure it’s a valid email, and a valid phone number etc, but I never check the password (unless it’s for length). I myself like to…

  • Get out of the Office!

    So over the past couple of weeks I’ve been on holiday. Holidays are great when I need to relax and get away from work, however when I’m on holiday I like to design websites and other stuff anyway. I also love to learn new stuff and get on with whatever I was doing before I…

  • You should host with Media Temple

    I remember a few months back when I was faced with a dilemma, what hosting company should I go with for a certain client. I have had experience with some cheaper companies and to be honest for the price it isn’t bad. However recently I have had problems with slow servers and a lot of…

  • Where is Google Wave going?

    It seems only a short time ago that Google introduced their latest endeavour to the world in beta – Google Wave. I remember watching the keynote by the developers at Google IO and thinking that it looked pretty damn cool, but I am beginning to wonder if my first impressions were only such because of the technologies they used to create…