I had intended these to be far more regular than this, must try harder. A mixture of tips/tools/reviews/articles that you’ll hopefully find useful, I did.

20 cheatsheets for designers and developers http://designshack.co.uk/articles/freebies/weekly-freebies-20-awesome-cheatsheets-for-designers-and-developers/
Review of cross-browser testing tools http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/08/07/a-dozen-cross-browser-testing-tools/
3 rules of thumb for web development http://my.opera.com/karlcow/blog/3-rules-of-thumb-for-web-development
How loading times affect your bottom line http://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/
How to make users scroll down your page http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/scrolling-tips/
50+ useful CSS tools and generators http://www.noupe.com/css/50-useful-css-tools-and-generators-for-developers.html

I realise this site is currently in a state of half-finished, basic, stripped back horribleness. It’s on my list of things to fix – I’ve wireframed a proper, new,  ’finished’ version but haven’t found the time required to bring it to life. Hopefully in the next week or so this can change. Let’s say August will be the month of new things.

I’ve recently been looking at all of the admin side of things, a boring but necessary task.

We have all had those jobs that have started to spiral out of control with new and completely ridiculous demands being placed on you left, right and centre or clients who have taken months and months to pay for work completed.

Good admin makes the fun parts of your job (designing and coding) far more straightforward and effective.

I’ve found a number of great articles that outline things far better than me:

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/blog/about/contract_killer_the_next_hit A great article with an example contract. I actually used this as the basis of my standard contract
http://sixrevisions.com/project-management/drawing-the-line-6-things-you-shouldnt-tolerate-in-projects/ outlines some things you may want to consider when putting together contracts and processes. Could save a lot of headaches!
http://www.leemunroe.com/freelance-document-templates/ A good list of document templates that you could adapt … Read More »

“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed” (Gandhi)

Last week I was doing some speed tests on what I was expecting to be a relatively slow-load site that I’m working on, the results, whilst not completely shocking, were still surprising. The site was taking up to 8 seconds to load fully over a decent speed connection (and would’ve been much much longer over dial-up). This had been an issue that had been nagging away at me more generally for a while now so I thought it was probably time to look into how to address it.

“Delays under half a second impact business metrics”

I have been reading up on the tests that Google had conducted to see how long the average user would wait for a site to load before giving up and moving on (Bing also conducted similar … Read More »

I have returned from my little driving trip across Europe following some cyclists (www.istanbultoleeds.co.uk).

And I’m straight back into things, working towards getting the final signoff on Will Soden and Pickles and Potter’s sites.

I’m also in the final phase of populating the new site for Run For All. The new site will see a complete redesign and markedly increased functionality, I’m very excited.

So, back to work, a more useful blog will follow in the next week or so.

Next Wednesday I set off in a van on a 5,000 mile round trip to Istanbul to support the Istanbul to Leeds cycle challenge which aims to raise funds for the Jane Tomlinson Appeal. As a result I will be more-or-less out of action from 21st July through until 31st August – I will have some access to emails but will only be able to check and respond on an irregular basis.

Hopefully before then I will finish off sites for Will Soden (plumber), Pickles and Potter (Deli/Cafe) and the Northern Dales Farmers Markets (farmers markets) as well as getting on as much as possible with the new site for Run For All (mass-participation runs). Diverse to say the least!

Oh and as a slight aside I also found something else that results in WordPress’ wonderful white screen of death – messing … Read More »

A bit of house-keeping (for wont of a better word) first, I’ll be moving this blog in the next couple of weeks to integrate with my website www.bigthingsandlittlethings.co.uk. When I first set this blog up I wasn’t entirely sure what form it was going to take but I’ve managed to keep it quite web-relevant (thus far) so it seems silly to keep two separate identities running when really they are parts of the same thing….

Now, boring stuff over, on with the blog.

This isn’t a hugely technical blog this time but covers a few CSS-related things that I have found make a big difference to workflow and just generally making things a bit easier to organise and manage.

I came across the notion of CSS ‘global resets’ a few years ago, to me they make a great deal of sense, … Read More »

A while ago, on my personal blog, I mused about things you should consider when you have that epiphany…”we need a website”, worth a read I’d say (but then I wrote it, so I would say that wouldn’t I…) http://ashmannblogs.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/so-you-think-you-want-a-website-4-things-to-consider/

Friday saw the launch of the Jane Tomlinson Appeal’s latest charity challenge, a 2,500 mile bike ride across Europe from Istanbul to Leeds – and we designed and built the website which can be seen here www.istanbultoleeds.co.uk.

I’ll post a full blog about it all later this week.

I’m currently working on a new site for a client who requires a CMS. After a fair amount of research and based on my own experiences they decided that WordPress fitted the bill. So I needed to develop a bespoke theme for them.

Now I’ve messed around with tweaking wordpress themes before and it is pretty intuative. Unfortunately last night the whole thing came crashing down and I had to battle with the (apparently infamous) ‘white screen of death’ – which usually seems to be caused by a php bug. These bugs can be as simple and innocuous as an additional line break in your code (WordPress doesn’t like space it would seem). I’ve not yet tracked down the source of my ‘white screen’ issues (EDIT - I have since found the source of my bugs, it was caused by such … Read More »