Harry Roberts is a front-end architect specialising in CSS. I’ve learned a lot from his thinking and writing over the years, not least his excellent CSS guidelines.
This is a video that I’ve been meaning to watch for ages, so found the time yesterday to view it. It’s very good, very thought-provoking, very practical.
This evening I was reading an article by Giles Fraser on The Guardian website and I was intrigued to understand how they coded the drop-cap at the top of the article:
So being versed in the ways of the web developer I highlighted the letter, right-clicked and selected Inspect (I’m using Google Chrome, other browsers are also available). This opens a code inspector where you can poke around the HTML, CSS and JavaScript that builds a webpage, and it even allows you to edit it in situ to better understand how it all fits together.
I smiled when I saw, at the top of the HTML code, written in a comment in a combination of text and ASCII art:
WE ARE HIRING
Ever thought about joining us?
http://developers.theguardian.com/join-the-team.html
What a terrific idea! Brilliant targeted advertising.
At work yesterday I discovered that the localhost Apache web server on my PC wouldn’t start; it was running XAMPP.
Each time I tried to start Apache from the XAMPP control panel I got these error messages in the console:
08:59:34 [Apache] Attempting to start Apache app…
08:59:35 [Apache] Status change detected: running
08:59:35 [Apache] Status change detected: stopped
08:59:35 [Apache] Error: Apache shutdown unexpectedly.
08:59:35 [Apache] This may be due to a blocked port, missing dependencies,
08:59:35 [Apache] improper privileges, a crash, or a shutdown by another method.
08:59:35 [Apache] Press the Logs button to view error logs and check
08:59:35 [Apache] the Windows Event Viewer for more clues
08:59:35 [Apache] If you need more help, copy and post this
08:59:35 [Apache] entire log window on the forums
Reinstalling XAMPP didn’t fix the issue. But this did, spotted on the ever-wonderful Stackoverflow:
That fixed it. Now Apache is running, as evidenced by the green light on the XAMPP control panel:
A couple of weeks ago I was setting up a new laptop and kept putting off installing Sublime Text (my code editor of choice) because I knew that it would also involve about fifteen minutes patiently working through my curated list of packages (add-ons / plugins), installing each one by one.
There’s got to be a simpler way, I suddenly thought. Sublime Text saves me so much time doing other stuff automatically, surely they’ve thought about this too.
I was right.
In fact, front-end developer extraordinaire Paul Irish asked this very question back in 2012.
So, here is how to do it:
"installed_packages" you want (see below) and save it to Packages/User/Package Control.sublime-settings.Just be aware of any packages that need dependences that Sublime Text cannot install, for example Git or Zeal (offline documentation browser).
You can easily find the save location by going to Preferences > Browse Packages.
On Windows the save location is:
C:\Users\[YOUR USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Sublime Text 3\Packages\User
This is my installed packages list from work and home; I keep a copy in Dropbox so that I can keep the two in sync.
The names listed are exactly as they are listed in the Package Control: List Packages list.
{
"installed_packages": [
"Alignment",
"AutoFileName",
"Autoprefixer",
"Bootstrap 3 Snippets",
"BracketHighlighter",
"Color Highlighter",
"CSS Color Converter",
"CSScomb",
"DevDocs",
"Emmet",
"GitGutter",
"Handlebars",
"jQuery",
"JSHint Gutter",
"Markdown Preview",
"MarkdownEditing",
"MarkdownTOC",
"Package Control",
"Placeholders",
"Sass",
"Search WordPress Codex or QueryPosts",
"SideBarEnhancements",
"Status Bar File Size",
"SyncedSideBar",
"Tag",
"Theme - Minimal",
"TodoReview",
"Tomorrow Color Schemes",
"View In Browser",
"WordPress",
"WordPress Developer Resources",
"WordPress Generate Salts",
"Zeal"
]
}
Needless to say, doing that made installing Sublime Text so much easier and quicker.
I will try to keep this list updated, as much for my own benefit as any one else’s.
I have stored my most up-to-date settings in a GitHub repository: sublime-text-settings.
Over the last few months in the evenings and at weekends, I’ve been working on redesigning the Pittenweem Properties website for friends here in Anstruther. The site launched a couple of weeks ago.
Pittenweem Properties offers high-quality self-catered holiday accommodation and property management services in and around Pittenweem. They currently manage properties in Carnbee just outside Anstruther and Pittenweem. But their portfolio is growing and for good reason — the properties they own and manage are to a very high standard and in a beautiful part of Scotland: the East Neuk of Fife.
The site was quite fun to build.
We used Trello for communication and project planning, WordPress (of course!) as the content management system, and the Divi theme from Elegant Themes which allowed me to very quickly design and build the site. I also changed the built-in projects custom-post-type to properties using the method I blogged about in March: changing the Divi projects custom post type to anything you want.
For the booking calendar we turned to a premium theme: WP Booking System which we found intuitive and offered most of the features we needed:
If this plugin had also allowed online payments, say via PayPal, then it would have been absolutely perfect but as it is we’ve been really happy with the functionality and usability of this plugin.
There is a free version of the plugin, but it offers only one calendar and has customisation limitations. The premium version costs only US $34 (approx. GBP £21.50).
While the site is now live there are still a few bits and pieces to do, such as keep an eye on analytics data and try to improve search engine rankings.
Websites are never really finished, are they?
It was a fun project to work on. Time to focus on optimising family finances and admin, and cracking on with writing my book.