Shameless Self-promotion

We all want to be special. Not that sarcastic special that people use air quotes around, but the kind of special where people know who you are and admire you. Some of us try to achieve that by going out of our way to make our voices heard over everyone else’s. Some of us try to achieve this through making sure everyone knows we are better than everyone else. Some of us hit that sweet spot of shameless selfishness that somehow manages to resonate with an audience whose needs align with our own. These all sound bad, right?

Continue reading “Shameless Self-promotion”

Getting Contact Form 7 to Send E-mails

I moved a client’s WordPress site to a new hosting company. The new hosting company had much stricter e-mail rules than the old host. Everything on the site was working after the migration except for Contact Form 7. The form said it had submitted successfully, but the e-mail was never received. Continue reading “Getting Contact Form 7 to Send E-mails”

Stop Coding

I had the pleasure of hearing Larry Garfield (@crell) give a keynote at Sunshine PHP 2014 (@SunshinePHP). He started out with a history of how difficult it had been to share code – no standards, no easy way (other than cutting and pasting), no easy way to maintain that shared code, etc., and we were fighting against years of “sharing” being “bad for business”.  Continue reading “Stop Coding”

Why Did We Ever Do It Like That?

Here is my latest editorial for the March 2014 issue of php[architect] magazine:

php[architect] - March 2014

Why Did We Ever Do It Like That?

Change is hard. I don’t get enough sleep as it is. I don’t have time to mess around learning new things. I need to get this job done because there is more piling up while I’m sitting here contemplating this.

I’m sure I’m not alone in having this run through my head periodically when faced with yet another new technology to “master”. And yet, we push through these moments. Time marches on. And suddenly, we look back at old code and think, “Why did I ever code that way? Continue reading “Why Did We Ever Do It Like That?”