Step by step guides to help with technical issues that I have worked on over the years.
If there is one thing I cannot stand more than anything when it comes to computer support – it is failure to have a backup strategy. If you have pictures, email, documents, music, videos, etc that you consider valuable – do something about it. There are many ways to easily backup your personal data and […]
I have been very busy working on CSS for a big up and coming web site and I have spent the last few nights doing some research on best practices and came across a W3C site I used when I first started coding with CSS that is very useful. There are a number of tips […]
I have been busy working on an excited project that uses some pretty complicated layouts. I was originally hired to optimize and clean up the XHTML/CSS so it would work in IE 6, IE 7, Safari, and Firefox, but now am busy working on producing the clean XHTML/CSS from the start. I needed to brush […]
When every hour you spend impacts your bottom line, I have learned a few tricks to working smarter. Do not be a slave to email. When I am working on projects, email can be a continuous distraction. “I will just see what x client wants really quick” can easily turn into a mental distraction as […]
Yesterday I finally broke down and bought Parallels and Windows XP to run on my MacBook Pro so I could do my CSS debugging and testing on IE 6 and IE 7 for Windows. After the ridiculously long Windows install and then security updates (74), I was pleasantly surprised with the speed and performance of […]
If you ever need to implement drop down menus and want to use clean CSS/javascript code, check out: Son of Suckerfish Dropdown menus. I have implemented these on a few web sites now for my clients and have been very happy with the results. If you are using WordPress, you can also use to dynamically […]
Apache’s mod_rewrite is very powerful. You can prevent hot-linking to your site’s graphics to prevent others from stealing them, redirect your from your old URL to a new URL, re-write URLs, as well as about 500 other really cool things…but today I wanted to share the syntax needed to redirect every incoming URL for a […]
I have recently started using Tor for improved security and privacy when working out of certain locations. Not that I have much to hide but I do not want someone watching all my outgoing network traffic. Tor is also helpful if you are using a computer somewhere where they block ports (thus blocking services such […]
If you have thought it through and tried to make small changes but you are still unhappy with your site, here are some things to consider: Existing successful web sites. The first thing that I do as a web developer/consultant is ask my clients to list three-five web sites they like and find easy to […]
Recently I needed a way to align the bottom of a graphic to the bottom of the text and found the solution: vertical-align:text-bottom; (More information on vertical alignment).
A few simple commands to help make your life working with UNIX a little easier: If you are looking for a certain programs, use:whereis. Example. You want to find out where ipfw is located. In the command line type whereis ipfw and whereis will spit out the location (/sbin/ipfw). If you need to find a […]
When I recently updated my browser, Firefox, to the latest release and noticed that some of my extensions also needed to be updated. I do not use many extensions, but I absolutely love and rely on the Web Developer Extension. I had not gone through all the drop down menus in awhile within the Web […]
