The internet plays a huge role in my life, from a place to share photos and videos, to a career, to a means of communication linking me to friends and family all over the world.
I occasionally have a need to divert file requests on a website to a PHP script. By doing so, I can determine whether the visitor may access it, see whether an image should have a watermark automatically applied, or notify an administrator that a PDF has been viewed or downloaded. The easiest way to do […]
Read moreThe battle royal du jour in the web development community is the argument of whether websites should be built with a JavaScript-based technology like AngularJS, Node.js or React, or using the classic composition of HTML and CSS, then extending it with JavaScript for those browsers which support it. Without reading the detailed arguments from informed developers on both […]
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Using modern web technologies to replicate the ubiquitous red panel used by Swiss railway company SBB CFF FFS.
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Publishing photos to WordPress directly via FTP using Adobe Lightroom.
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I’m in the closing stages of development for a new WordPress site for a client. (A private one, so I can’t go into details.) As the development phase has progressed, the management of the required plugins in the Multisite installation has become ever more complex. Some sites are running an older Theme, which are dependent on a set […]
Read moreThere are many copy-and-paste examples of how to write your own functions and apply them through WordPress’ hooks and actions. But with a little simple knowledge of PHP’s namespace syntax, developers who regularly work on WordPress projects can make their lives a lot easier, whilst making their code much more robust, portable and secure. The first thing to […]
Read moreI wrote and posted my first blog post in this version of my website ten years ago today. To celebrate, I’m reviving the “Photos” section of the site, which will contain my best and my favourite photos.
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The latest project we’ve launched at !frappant is for SBB (Swiss Railways): a microsite for the Rail Control System team, which promotes their work controlling the flow of rail traffic throughout the national network.
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Until I had to switch to doing mainly technical work on web projects, I used to do a lot of design work. I came across my old designs when clearing out my home office and thought you’d like to see a few of them.
Read more2016 sees the tenth anniversary of this website. I decided that this was to be the year when I’d do some major overhaul work on my site: improved technology and a long-awaited clear out of some legacy data problems. That’s all been completed, so now it’s time to work on the appearance of the site.
Read moreWhy processes based in outdated print media routines can be massively optimised by adopting modern practices, and how process efficiency can lead to negative employment effects.
Read more“Comment spam” is a term which relates to automatically-generated website comments. People with too much time on their hands make software to submit to websites like mine. It’s then down to me to ensure that the nonsensical or downright abusive comments don’t appear on my website, and that my email inbox doesn’t get swamped with […]
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In an effort to share more of my work with the open source community, I’m gradually starting to submit more plugins to the WordPress Plugin Directory. The latest addition, approved recently and made public today, is a plugin which extends the backend list view with a small thumbnail-sized preview of the post thumbnail (where one is […]
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CSS Flexbox has been ready for mainstream use for a while now, and I’ve implemented it on a third client project for my employer.
Read moreI’ve added a feature to the site which allows you to get an email when someone replies to a comment you’ve left on this site. Let me know if you encounter any problems.
Read moreMany web developers (and web project managers) are insistent that we shouldn’t be concerned with the availability of JavaScript in the browser. “Who turns off JavaScript these days?” is often the argument. The problem isn’t related to who turns off JavaScript, but what happens when a CDN copy of jQuery isn’t available – the server […]
Read moreA technical goal for 2016 is to make more WordPress plugins, and to submit them to the official WordPress plugin repository, so that other users can benefit from them. The next addition to the set of plugins I’ve contributed is a simple one to add fields to the Settings » Media screen in the WordPress backend for Flickr […]
Read moreA colleague from the WordPress Bern meetups asked for advice on how to track clicks on certain page elements on his website. Having looked into this for a few different purposes over the past year, it was quick and easy to knock up a simple jQuery plugin for the purpose, which speaks to Google Analytics. The principle […]
Read moreThe Next Big Thing* in the world of CMS-based web development is the headless CMS solution. A headless CMS is a more pure – and therefore technically more simple – content management system. A system in which the focus is 100% on managing content and providing a way to access it: for example, creating new articles, […]
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