How good is your developer?
Recently a recruiter emailed me for a job. The job description seemed fine enough, but the experience and salary suggested that this would have been a fair job for me in around 2008.
I'm trying to contact you
Recruitment can be a cutthroat industry. So many jobsites and individuals are fighting for candidates and placements that things can often become genericised and impersonal.
Technical tests
As developers one of the things that's usually expected of us when applying for a job, both as a permanent employee or as a contractor, is a technical test.
The media industry doesn't like you
For a long time now the media industry has been at odds with consumers. Almost as long as we've been able to record and copy media, there have been ways to protect content which put us at a disadvantage.
Yes, I can fix your computer
I know a lot of developers and IT professionals that hate being asked to fix their friends and relatives computers. They dislike the assumption that just because they can administer a server, configure a network, or write some code that they can also fix a personal computer.
Site review: sass-lang.com
SASS is a CSS pre-processor that's quite popular in job postings right now. SASS proposes, like most frameworks, that it makes site development and maintenance faster and easier.
Domain name SEO
There's quite a lot of things you can do to enhance your search engine optimisation and one of those things is by using the correct wording.
Online marketing mistakes are expensive
I've spoken about the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR), also known as the cookie law, before. This law also covers spam and it can carry hefty fines.
Buzzword bingo
The tech industry is full of jargon and technobabble and as a developer I wade through these on a daily basis. Some of them really get my goat however, so I've gone ahead and vented what I believe the true meanings are.
Web security
All too frequently we hear about hacked accounts and stolen data. Users and service providers both need to play their part to keep their data safe.
Gamification
Since the explosion of video games in the 1980s, companies have been attempting to attract customers by adding a gaming element to their products.
Responsive images
I've seen many solutions to the problems of responsive images. Most of them fall down in some way, many of them leave me with blurry images on a UHD 4K display. If you haven't heard of the srcset attribute then now is the time to use it.
If your site doesn't work without JavaScript you could be missing out
In recent years, front-end development has exploded into a seemingly larger industry than back-end development, driven by new libraries and frameworks.
Continue reading: If your site doesn't work without JavaScript you could be missing out
Cloud services are encouraging poor development practices
On the 28th of February Amazon suffered a brief outage which took several sites offline. This is occasionally to be expected, but it's the sites that rely on Amazon for background processes that give the most cause for concern.
Continue reading: Cloud services are encouraging poor development practices
Clickbait, chain mail, and now the spammers have you
This article contains lots of information about clickbait. You won't believe number seven! There's also some stuff about chain mail. Share this article with ten friends, or a mysterious ghost will haunt you for the rest of eternity!
Continue reading: Clickbait, chain mail, and now the spammers have you
Cookies, banners, and privacy
Go to most websites based within Europe now, and you're often greeted by some big warning about cookies. Why has this happened, and is it necessary?
Why isn't your website accessible?
In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 requires your website to be accessible. Ignoring the Act at the design and coding stages of your product could have repercussions as you discriminate against your users.
Site review: Chicago Tribune
Newspapers are dying. People are now less likely to buy physical paper than ever. Enter the world of the dying, revenue grabbing news.
What is a web developer?
A difficult question, but not necessarily for the reason you think. It's difficult to define a web developer because the internet is an unregulated playground.
Mystery meat is still a problem
Nineteen years ago the term "Mystery meat navigation" was coined. Today in the growing age of the internet, the problem is worse than ever.
Validation: What is it and why should I care?
Validation is the process of running your HTML and other XML documents through the W3C validator to check for conformity against the specification. But is it important?
Continue reading: Validation: What is it and why should I care?
Social media icons: You're doing it wrong
We've all seen it. Pink, red, green, purple, circular, square, hexagonal, and more. Social media icons on the various websites we visit are all completely different and usually designed to match the site they're on; but are we doing it right?
Site launch checklist
Launching a new website may seem as straightforward as pressing a deploy button or copying some files to a server, and in many cases the act of launching itself is just that. But, many steps will have taken place before the glossy deploy button is pressed.
How to make a website
As I launch a new website for my business, the 9th version to appear on wizpip.com but first directly related to my new status as a business, it seems fitting that my first blog post should be all about how a website is made.