Social Media Ted Talks

I’m a big fan of Ted Talks, it forces me to think through my processes and my habits. Recently I wrote a blog post called “Breaking the Social Media Addiction“. Was I addicted to Social Media? Maybe, but I don’t think so, but I’d rather assume I was and make some changes to make sure…

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Home offices and the noise it may bring

Working from home has it’s advantages and disadvantages, but I wouldn’t change it. I think that the work/life balance is slightly off, sometimes really off. I’m not judging, I’d rather have my family around me, working just 40-45 hours a week instead of more. I also understand that it is often hard to get to…

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What is Namespacing?

Namespacing is something that’s been around in many other languages for quite awhile. In PHP, it was introduced at version 5.3. In PHP, they are designed to solve two problems: Name collisions between code you create, and internal PHP calsses/functions/constants or third-party classes/functions/constants. Ability to alias (or shorten) Extra_Long_names designed to alleviate the first problem,…

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WP Grunt Child

I found it frustrating that I had to write regular CSS and JS when working on extending a pre-built theme. So I have modified our Grunt config and integrated our SASS and JS build process into a template that can be used in any child theme. Check it out here: WP Grunt Child. To use…

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WordCamp Atlanta 2017 Beginner's Developer Day

WordCamp Atlanta 2017

WordCamps are normally a two-day event, but not in Atlanta.  Just like last year, we are doing beginner’s day.  The organizers of WordCamp, which I am a part of, feel like we need a day for nubees (spell check isn’t going to know what to do with that).  Friday, March 17th will be the day,…

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Custom Posts Made Easy using PODS

We specialize in custom PHP development and we currently use WordPress to do most of the CMS-related work.  If you are a one-person-shop, you might not have the skills in house to build custom content types and that is where PODS comes in. PODS is a very simple way to get rolling with custom post…

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Finding the DNS and Registrar Information

In the 90’s, if you wanted a domain name, you would pick up the phone and call InterNic. You would tell them you wanted a domain, they would ask you which one, they would say “Ok, it is yours”. Life was great. If you needed to make a DNS change, you’d pick up the phone…

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Our Development Tools (Part 1)

Development Tools

What are CSS Preprocessors? We have used two different preprocessors at Sideways8, LESS and SASS. Preprocessors are used in many different languages and have been around for a very long time. The idea is very simple, a preprocessor is a program that takes input, processes it and produces an output that can be used as…

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Another Browser called Opera Neon

Opera Neon

In 2000, I was using Windows 98 and ran Netscape, IE, Mozilla and probably a few other obscure browsers. As a web developer, I had to see what it all looked like on all browsers. Here I am in 2017, and a new browser came around, but it immediately reminded of the glory days of…

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Gravity Forms Running Total

The use case is pretty short and simple. Adam asked me if there is any way to come up with a total given on a specific field. For example, if there is a donation page, and people are donating money to a cause, he wanted a way to display how much has been given to…

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