Managed Mayhem

What a group to bring together, eh? I’m using the following: http://www.wordpress.org http://www.shopplugin.net http://www.mediatemple.net http://curl.haxx.se/ So first off, I had an issue where the FirstData plugin built by Shopp was pointing to the incorrect URL: var $url = “https://secure.linkpt.net/lpcentral/servlet/lppay”; This url is actually FirstData’s ‘Connect’ url… which is a forms based api… but the Shopp Plugin FirstData gateway plugin actually uses FirstData’s ‘Global Gateway Api’, but this is not the URL that they are...

Got me a sweet set!

Now… sometimes you have some tools on your team… but that’s another article. I must confess that I’m writing this from the perspective of a guy who has invested a lot of time into a specific technology, and is now having a difficult time getting work in that specialization. So take what I’m about to say from that context. Perhaps a bit idealistic of me here, but why don’t more companies focus on forming great teams with the people that they hire rather than focusing only on hiring for a specific tool? Do you hire the carpenter, or do you hire Ryobi, Craftsman,...

Even after 12 years of developing enterprise ColdFusion applications, I’m still amazed that I hear statements like this. I recently left a job where I helped to build a highly scalable application for the financial industry using CF. Our team used EXTjs, MySql, and Railo as the CF parser. I am still ‘invested’ in this project, and so I was talking with the COO yesterday and he mentioned that there was another developer they were talking with who said … ‘Coldfusion is not scalable’. No explanation given… just that it wasn’t scalable. I was actually...

This article really just serves as some notes for multiple browser testing… I will clean it up later if I have time. http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE (abandonware) Issues with IE Conditional Comments http://www.russellheimlich.com/blog/walkthrough-setup-multiple-ie-virtual-machines-on-a-mac/ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang=en http://lassauge.free.fr/qemu/ http://www.agileapproach.com/blog-entry/need-multiple-ie-clients-mac-linux-run-virtual-box http://blog.ryanparman.com/2009/06/30/run-ie6-ie7-ie8-images-virtualbox-macosx/ https://browserlab.adobe.com/index.html?sdid=EWRNK& Very...

By far the coolest add-on for firefox I’ve seen for developers since firebug. It’s also available for Flock and Seamonkey. Web Developer Toolbar This thing gives you all sorts of information about the page that you’re viewing. Some of the toys available: Line Guides Ruler Display Div Order Display Element Information Resize Window Dom Inspector Validation tools for CSS, Feed, HTML, 508 Outlining of Frames, Headings, Links, Tables, Block Level Elements, Positioned Elements Display Image File Sizes, dimensions, paths Disable CSS, Javascript Inline editing of Html and CSS There...

I’m noticing a trend… and I’m liking it. I’ve been working with cakePHP … and they have a wonderful way of causing you to want to name things a certain way so that you don’t have to fiddle with a bunch of configuration files… Coldbox (which I love!) has the same thinking behind it… but still has a nasty mess of xml files that you wind up needing to hoark with. In CakePHP … your database tables, models, controllers and views are all linked by the naming convention that is used… Database table: “dogs” Model class: “Dog”,...

I recently re-installed OSX on my mbp … and decided to look into a more integrated approach for my development environment. Since I’m developing in PHP as well as CF, I opted to pickup MAMP, which is a packaged lamp-ish type stack installer and configuration manager for Apache, MySql, and PHP on Mac. There is a free version, but I decided to get Mamp-Pro because I like using virtual hosts, and it’s such a good product that it needs to be supported. Mike Jones has a great video tutorial for CF8 that helped me get CF9 up and running under MAMP.

I saw this posted on a job board today for a web designer looking for a PHP coder. “I need someone organized and responsive above all else. I’m talking the type of guy (or girl) who checks email every 20 minutes.” I thought it was funny… because I’m diligently trying to reduce the number of interruptions to my workflow by only initiating and responding to contact via email, chat, and phone calls during specific periods of the day. You might be ‘responsive’, but you can’t check your email every 20 minutes and be productive. I think this guy is looking...

http://www.52framework.com/ Awesome Html5 / CSS3 framework! Thank you Tyson Cadenhead for posting this on Facebook. I require this for home use. http://net.tutsplus.com/ Just came across this today… where have you been all my life? http://freelanceswitch.com/ Another great site by those guys at Envato … I’m going to keep an eye on this one. http://www.zend.com/en/products/studio/ Looking into some IDE bidness for PHP.