The developer.
80 posts. Notes from the day job and the side ones.
Passwords are a liability. Laravel finally has first-party passkeys.
Laravel now ships a first-party passkeys package that plugs into Fortify. Wiring up the WebAuthn ceremony is the easy part — the interesting work is what passwordless does to the rest of your auth.
Stop your agents fighting over one test database
Run several coding agents in parallel git worktrees and they all hammer the same test database. Here is the small shim that gives each one its own.
Your secrets stay on your machine — here's how I keep it that way ↗
How Dotvault sends anonymous telemetry and crash reports without ever touching your `.env` files.
Nine minutes of Dotvault, no fluff ↗
Nine minutes of Dotvault on screen — editor, version history, Laravel encrypted env support, and how the trial works.
Why I built Dotvault ↗
Every developer I know has a `.env` problem. I got tired of it, so I built the tool I wanted to use.
Security Updates to Mojo Under Construction Plugin
I've posted a long overdue update to my Under Construction fork. This fixed a couple of potential security issues with direct file access and escaping output....
Mojo Under Construction 1.0.1 Released
I've just released a small update for my recently released under construction plugin for WordPress. I'd made a little mistake when enqueuing the JavaScript. I...
Mojo Under Construction Released
For years I have been using a great plugin for hiding development sites behind a coming soon page or a holding page. However, like thousands of users, with the...
Learning New Skills in 2015
As a developer there is a thin line between becoming stuck in your ways and constantly trying new technologies. Over the past 2 years I have moved away from...
Easily manage all your WordPress sites with 10% off from ManageWP
I've been managing LOTS of WordPress sites for a long time and it's not always easy! Plugin updates, Core updates, managing content can all be time consuming,...
How to fix "exim dead but subsys locked" issue
cPanel is annoying, but sometimes we still have to use it. If you come across the issue "exim dead but subsys locked". Have a go at the following: root@server...
Proper Big Boy Follow Up
This is a bit of a follow up to a question I posted last week. I was struggling with deployment options for my app and more specifically how I could...
Proper big boy applications and deployment
So this is more a call for help than my usual blog post. In the past I have been confined to simple (well I say simple) projects that generally run on...
Quick Tip: Increase PHP CLI memory limits
I keep running into memory issues when running pretty intensive scripts from the PHP CLI especially when generating API documentation etc. Now if you don't...
JavaScript: Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token ILLEGAL
So hopefully this will save you a shit load of time! I've been dealing with a mysterious JavaScript error over the past few days. It was a simple button that...
Getting to grips with CakePHP
So over the past few months the blog has been extremely quiet. Much quieter than I had hoped. This is mainly due to me working on a massive application using...
Looking all shiny!
As you may have noticed, things are looking a little bit different. I've been working on a bit of an updated look ever since launching the new site earlier...
Jetpack Local Development Mode
I like Jetpack. I've already talked about it in an article over at Wptuts+ but I was really interested to see a small addition to the latest development...
Show Yourself Off With a Custom Author Box
Another great article over at Wptuts+, even if I do say so myself! This time I'm looking at how you can add an author box to your blog posts and author page in...
Using JavaScript with WordPress correctly
JavaScript is something that is used on 99% of websites. In the last few years it seems to have exploded and become part of the fundamental toolkit for all web...
Using the New WordPress 3.5 Media Manager in your Plugin or Theme
WordPress 3.5 brought with it a completely redesigned media manager. A long overdue update that looks great! You can find out more about that in my previous...
Wptuts+:Getting Started With WooCommerce: Launching Your Store
My series on getting started with WooCommerce continues today with part two. You can check out part one in my previous post. In this tutorial we are going to...
The Mojo Admin Toolbox 1.3 Released
A much overdue update to my Mojo Admin Toolbox has just hit the WordPress Repository. I've finally updated the plugin to use the new media manager included...
Wptuts+:Getting Started With WooCommerce: Initial Setup
My most recent series on Wptuts+ talks you through getting WooCommerce setup. Check it out and keep an eye out for part two coming soon! E-Commerce is massive,...
Working with Sublime Text 2
I've been a long term user of Coda 2 from Panic for a few years now. Along the way I have strayed a few times to other editors mainly using TextMate if I am...
A LinkedIn WordPress group that isn't full of crap
I am a member of several WordPress groups on LinkedIn, however am so pissed off with 90% of the content in those groups. Despite groups named WordPress Experts...
WordPress 3.5 Passes 1 Million Downloads
In just over 72 hours WordPress 3.5 reached over 1 million downloads. Another record breaking release for the super popular content platform. How long before...
Powered by Love, WordPress and some other Stuff
WARNING THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS GRATUITOUS TECHNOLOGY, SOFTWARE AND BABBLE FROM THE START. I thought it was about time I did one of those posts that every...
Wptuts+: What's New in WordPress 3.5
Yet another new post on Wptuts+ today. Today we're looking at the upcoming features in WordPress 3.5. There are some big changes particularly to the way media...
Quick Tip: Hide Jetpack from non-admins
I recently wrote a review and introduction to Jetpack with WordPress. I today discovered that non-admins (editors, even subscribers!) could see the Jetpack...
Add some Christmas Cheer to your Website
It's that time of year again, Christmas is only a few short weeks away and why not share some festive cheer with your visitors. With jQuery Snowfall you can....
Wptuts+: Give your WordPress Site Wings with Jetpack
In my latest post over at the ever useful WordPress Tuts+. I go through Jetpack from WordPress.com and how it can add a range of enhancements and features to...
Jetpack Carousel
In the past I have always used jQuery Lightbox For Native Galleries, a great little plugin that adds a great lightbox effect to your WordPress galleries....
Import GitHub Issues into Redmine
I love GitHub, it's free for open source projects, looks lovely and has changed the way I distribute both my open source code and the way I work on client...
Wptuts+: Common WordPress Development Mistakes and How to Fix Them
My first post over at the ever useful WordPress Tuts+. I go through the most common WordPress development mistakes and teach you a few basics so fix them! With...
Quick Tip: Remove IMG Height and Width with jQuery
As you may have noticed my new site is fairly heavily responsive. A lot of extra work has gone into helping make the user experience for 50% of my visitors...
Getting Started with LESS
CSS is probably one of the biggest advancements in web development since HTML itself and it allows us to do all kinds of cool things but as a developer it's...
YOURLS WordPress Plugin
I needed to setup my own URL shortening service for a project and found YOURLS. Simple to setup, easy to use and can be setup to have no public access a simple...
Mojo Admin Toolbox - Minor Update
Just a quick post about an update to my Mojo Admin Toolbox Plugin for WordPress. There was a couple of little bugs after WordPress got updated to 3.4 which I...
Quick Tip: CakePHP Baking and MAMP
Despite the hate that is going on right now at CakeFest. MAMP is fine for local development and can work with CakePHP just fine. If you are seeing this when...
CakeFest 2012 Now Live
CakeFest 2012 has now kicked off in Manchester for the second year in a row. Attendance seems to be down a little for the workshops which is a shame but should...
My Top 10 Must Use WordPress Plugins
We all have plugins we just seem to use on every project. These are things that would be great if they were added (or more specifically their functionally) was...
Get your WordPress CSS changes noticed immediately!
I'm sure you've had the same problem. You make some changes to your site's CSS file and don't get to see it until you hard refresh the CSS. Damn you Mr. Browser...
Quick Tip: Delete Remote Git Branches
Not exactly a new thing, but one I have always had to Google for. In my workflow I normally create a new branch when working on a major feature change (this...
Quick Tip: Custom Default Gravatar in WordPress
WordPress gives us lots of little things we can tweak to our own needs. WordPress out of the box includes Gravatar support and has a number of ways you can use...
WordPress features I didn't know about
It happens to us all, a new version of something comes out and we have a quick look through the new features. Normally only noticing the stuff we have been...
WordPress 3.4.1 Released
After 2 weeks and 3 million downloads WordPress 3.4 has its first update. WordPress 3.4.1 is a small maintenance release that fixes 18 bugs and adds a couple...
WordPress page templates in sub-directories, new in WP3.4
I've not spent a great deal of time looking at WordPress 3.4 since its release. However there is a nice little sneaky feature that seems to have been added...
Updating WordPress from Admin area with MAMP
I do all my development and testing locally on a Mac running OS X Lion and MAMP Pro. One annoying thing is you get the nice little WordPress update...
The Mojo Sliding Widget Panel Released
I've recently released my jQuery Sliding widget panel onto the WordPress plugin site. I have made some improvements since I originally blogged about it. You...
A little present to all clients
If you're a client of mine using a WordPress based website you will notice a new tab in your WordPress Dashboard. WP101 Clicking on it will reveal a series of...
Secure your Gravity Forms uploads
I love WordPress. I like Gravity Forms. The only trouble with Gravity forms is if you add a file upload field to your form it is stored within your...
Mojo Admin Toolbox 1.2.1
I've made a couple of big changes to the plugin over the last week and just wanted to post an update. Version 1.2.1 firstly includes a fix for the login page...
Mojo Admin Toolbox 1.1
Just posted a little update to my admin toolbox. This update simply adds one new feature. The ability to change your WordPress from name and email address for...
The Mojo Admin Toolbox
The Mojo Admin Toolbox is a collection of little functions I found myself using a lot to customise the admin dashboard of WordPress, specifically when I was...
Mojo Gallery 0.4 Released
Yay! Development is really pushing forward, today I have pushed 0.4 to the WordPress Repo. I've been working hard actually getting the front end presentation...
Mojo Gallery on the WordPress Plugin Repo
Just a quick update to say you can now also keep track of updates from the WordPress plugin repo! Finally managed to get it working, stupid SVN! The most...
Mojo Gallery Plugin Update
Following on from my post a few days ago I have put some serious time into the plugin. The backend is shaping up nicely and is working well. I am currently...
CentOS Root Certificate Authority Failures
Oh CentOS why you so annoying! I love you and hate you all at the same time! When trying to add the shiny GitHub RSS feed on the right of the page I came up...
Mojo Gallery Plugin
Had to put together a gallery for a client site, the trouble is that most of the existing gallery plugins are far to bloated, and generally pretty crap. I...
UWPCRM Update
It's going slowwwwww.. I kinda know what I want to achieve and believe that Custom post types and taxonomies are the way to go on this. What I am struggling...
WordPress Email from Address
Just a quick from me today. WordPress is pretty good, but one thing that always was a little strange was the way your site emails always came from...
The Ultimate WordPress CRM Plugin
So it's time to give back and get involved. Over the past few months I have been seriously knee deep in WordPress, advanced theme development and plugin...
Super Useful WordPress Admin Customisations
I've recently been working on a big corporate theme and wanted to limit and customise the WordPress core much more than I have done in the past. A few handy...
Custom Post Types and Metaboxes - MyWay
I am not a professional writer so apologies for my incoherent rambling! UPDATE I am aware of some issues in this implementation. Specifically with my...
WordPress jQuery Sliding Widget Panel
I've used a jQuery slider on a site in the past but wanted to have a re-usable version that could easily be deployed on WordPress sites. I found one that was...
Git Bash Completion
After CakeFest 2011 I have been well and truly converted to using Git and GitHub for my source code management! One thing that was frustrating me was the lack...
CakeFest 2011
Tomorrow I'm heading off to Manchester to attend the 2011 CakeFest. This is the annual developers convention for CakePHP. CakePHP is a PHP application...
PHP 5.3 and the date!
So PHP5.3 is being widely used now, and even comes as default on newer CentOS distros, however seems there is a little problem with date(). An example:...
How to update Ruby on CentOS 5.x
CentOS is great and by far my preferred distro, however its package support is terrible. Whilst its ties to RHEL make it solid and usable the lack of repos...
vTiger Initial Setup .htaccess
I've been setting up vTiger for a client on a new server and felt in a sharing mood. During the requirements check in the vTiger installation it checks your...
Add custom links to WordPress Admin bar
WordPress 3.1 added the handy admin bar. It kinda hovers there giving you some quick and easy links for updating and editing your site. Unfortunately WordPress...
Plesk 10 Health Monitor Woes
Following on from my previous blog entry about Hard disks, after increasing my disk allocation I was still having issues with Plesk reporting the old disk...
Webmin installation problems
I'm just in the middle of setting up a new server for testing and thought I would go with Webmin to act as the manager just to make things nice and simple....
Update all CPAN Modules
I've inherited a nasty PERL based web tool for managing IP addresses and realised that I don't actually know much about PERL. Being faced with over 300 PERL...
Goodbye e107
After over 5 years of using e107 I'm saying goodbye. It's been a long and not always pleasant ride but the last year or so has been full of good reasons not to...
UKWDA - A joke?
I was interested to find out about the UKWDA (UK Web Design Association - the Web Standards Organisation in the UK according to their site). After reading...
Fight Div-itis and Class-itis With the 960 Grid System | Webdesigner Depot
A while back I made a post about blueprint CSS (may have been before I ruined my website). Found another really nice post on Webdesigner Depot Years ago, HTML...
Oops Internet Explorer Sucks!
Ok just noticed whilst checking my new site that IE has a few weird colours. I'll sort it out as soon as I can, why not use FireFox instead which is a far...
Blueprint: A CSS Framework | Spend your time innovating, not replicating
Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your development time. It gives you a solid foundation to build your project on top of, with an...