Hiking, web development, best practices, and general awesomeness
There is a lot of buzz around performance optimization on web pages these days. Visitors want sub-second responses when they click on a link. They don't want to wait for a page to load or for redirects to resolve, nor do they want to wait for javascript libraries before they can interact with the…
In an effort to streamline and homogenize code a number of design patterns and best practices have sprung up in the programming field. One of the ideas that has moved across programming disciplines is the vilification of long strands of meandering logic, or called spaghetti code. For many in the…
Best practices can be great for a language like PHP. PHP is almost too easy to work in. Its low barrier of entry and high flexibility allow for many possible solutions to any given issue. Being a programmer, especially a PHP developer, you find that coming up with a fix or writing a new script is…
When developing applications it is easy for programmers to think in terms of successful occurrences. Code is built to expect certain results because the programmer is thinking of how the application should work. Whether the specifications are being outlined or the code itself is being tested before…
Thanks to the prevalence of microblogging, and before that the infamous 80 column screen, friendly (or keyword-stuffed) URLs have run into character limit issues. Long URLs are great for both SEO and usability. They give both users and search bots an insight on the page's content before actually…
One thing that all programmers and developers fear is working in someone else's code. Whether it is adding a feature or tracking down a bug, going through a foreign chunk of code can be confusing and frustrating at best. The intent of any script is best understood when it's created and quickly…
My career in web development started with delivering products, not necessarily expectations. Starting as a lone web developer I've previously made the mistake of trying to put the product specifications before the client needs, focusing on what I can do technically and not what I should be doing to…
I've always been a bit confused by people who consider themselves SEO (Search Engine Optimization) consultants. It's not that I don't think such a position should exists - on the contrary, SEO is an important part of the web development process that is often overlooked by web designers and…
Duplicate content is a well-known issue that members in the search engine optimization (SEO) and web development communities keep a close eye on. This issue can lower the relative value of a page in the eyes of search engines, due to their being multiple instances of the page's content. The address,…
Over the last few days I've been working on a relatively large change to my image linking logic. This change involved some reorganization on the server side, adding name-spacing, changing the url structure, and placing 301 redirects to all 1200+ of my photos. I made this update both in hopes of…