Author Archives: Alastair

Building the Tour of the North microsite

Posted on 21/09/2011 by Alastair

In April this year I went on a mountain-bike trip with a few mates. It was an epic, tough ride that involved digging very deep into limited early-season fitness reserves. On returning to London I decided that the journey should … Continue reading →

Simple content workflow for WordPress

Posted on 19/09/2011 by Alastair

Create a simple and convenient workflow process for multiple WordPress bloggers using two plugins. Posting content on WordPress is almost too easy. You paste text into a box and click publish, and your post is instantly pushed to your thousands … Continue reading →

Increase PHP memory limit on Slicehost

Posted on 05/03/2011 by Alastair

The simultaneously daunting and great thing about Slicehost is the control it gives developers over their server setup. I’m very much a novice at server admin, but today I learned something new. I needed to increase the memory limit for … Continue reading →

Creating a geoRSS feed from WordPress

Posted on 03/03/2011 by Alastair

A back-to-basics tutorial for generating a geoRSS feed from WordPress, correctly formatted for use in Google Maps KML layers. There are a profusion of (often very full-featured and cool) WordPress plugins out there providing geolocation or geotagging functionality. However, none … Continue reading →

WordPress + Next Gen gallery – remove default scripts

Posted on 02/03/2011 by Alastair

Next Gen gallery is probably the most full-featured, customisable WordPress gallery plugin out there. I’d been using it for a year or so before I read Dave Rupert’s post on optimising WordPress for speed. Looking at the source, I realised … Continue reading →

How to create a tablet startup screen for iPad in Sencha Touch

Posted on 25/01/2011 by Alastair

When creating a web app using Sencha Touch, the icing on the cake is a nice sexy startup screen that displays as soon as your app loads after pressing the home screen button. To show a tablet startup screen for … Continue reading →

Streamlining CSS on www.fashion.arts.ac.uk

Posted on 05/01/2011 by Alastair

I recently began a mini-project to streamline and upgrade the London College of Fashion CSS stylesheets. The overall aim was good housekeeping – and the wish to put new skills to use in polishing up the site’s front end. This … Continue reading →

LCF: back to black

Posted on 01/12/2010 by Alastair

Last night I took the radical step of transforming the London College of Fashion’s web colour scheme from pink to black. I’m awaiting either a storm of protest, or a standing ovation – or probably a bit of both. This … Continue reading →

The Social Network: responding to network downtime

Posted on 28/10/2010 by Alastair

I watched The Social Network last night. It’s an excellent movie – but one scene in particular struck a chord. Mark Zuckerberg launches campus hot-or-not site facemash.com, and within hours brings down the entire Harvard network. The stated overload traffic … Continue reading →

Extending the WordPress Campaign Monitor Addon plugin

Posted on 26/10/2010 by Alastair

A starting point for customising the WordPress Campaign Monitor Addon plugin, for using WordPress forms to maintain detailed contact lists in Campaign Monitor. By extending the Contact Form 7 plugin with the Campaign Monitor Addon, and with a little help … Continue reading →

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