About Me

I'm a coder, based in Massachusetts. I like WordPress and JavaScript. I also write about books that interest me.

putting a loop in your sidebar

The simplest way to put a loop in your sidebar is with Justin Tadlock’s sweet plugin Query Posts. This lets you use the query_posts function, with all of its options, in a widget. However sometimes you might need a loop that does something unusual. I had a client who has a category of posts with natural history photos from near his home. He wanted an image to pop up, randomly selected, from the category.…

Does your slider make the text flicker?

I see this on lots of sites. Flexslider causes it. Every time the slider moves, text on some other part of the page flickers—on Safari. As far as I know, this is a Safari-only issue. The solution, fortunately, is a little CSS: -webkit-backface-visibility:hidden; Just put this on whatever is flickering. It also fixes the annoying lines that grow around the ‘navigation spots’ in Safari.…

Responsive web design: a list of methods

Responsive web design was the biggest web design buzz-phrase of 2012, and I’ve spent much of my summer working on the best, and fastest, ways to make a site responsive.  What I found worked best was all based on three ideas: breakpoints in the stylesheet device-specific conditional PHP high resolution, or resolution independent graphics for retina screens The breakpoints are the simplest. You can make a pretty good responsive site with just CSS breakpoints.  …

website testing

To build websites you need an assortment of testing platforms.. a smartphone, a tablet, and preferably more than one size computer monitor. I’m a mac person, so most of my testing is on apple gear. I use a PC set up in Parallels, a virtual machine, on my mac for testing on PC browsers. I have: a 1680 x 1050 display on my primary working machine Windows 7 running on Parallels, on the primary machine a 1366 x 768 laptop an iPad — version 3 an iPhone 3 On my computers I have a selection of browsers: Chrome, Firefox and Safari on the mac, and IE, Firefox and Chrome on the PC.  …

Equity Trust's website

Equity Trust: a theme for a non-profit organization

This theme for a non-profit organization website was a long time coming to life.  The org is Equity Trust, based in Amherst, MA. I built the theme, and the owner Jim Oldham wrote the content, and then I added lots of improvements to the information architecture.  Jim is the executive director of an ambitious New England non-profit organization that advocates sustainable land ownership.  He spent almost a year writing the pages and organizing the architecture before it was all pushed live. …

Steve Mumford’s Baghdad Journal

This is my brother Steve’s book, published in 2005. I still think its a stunning achievement. Why my brother felt a need to go to Iraq during wartime and draw pictures I can’t understand, but nevertheless he was called to this project, studied Arabic, grew a mustache, and went off armed with pen and paper and watercolors. That’s commitment. Of course I’m biased but I think these drawings are very strong.…

Number 9 Dream

Number 9 Dream

By David Mitchell I’m not sure what the title refers to—maybe I need to read it again?  But this is an exquisite coming of age novel, set in contemporary Tokyo. The protagonist is a very lost and confused teenage boy who habitually retreats into fantasy.  The narration drifts seamlessly into and out of his fantasy world, until he finds it possible to deal with the reality around him.…

The Wrestling Hub

The Wrestling Hub

thewrestlinghub.net Here is a quick site I built for a blogger.  It is nicely responsive, and loads Copperplate on its headings. It uses the very reliable Mobile Client Detection plugin code responsive architecture with your PHP. It lets you use the following very useful conditionals: is_desktop() is_mobile() is_tablet() is_chrome() is_explorer() I used Login with Ajax to make a login that does not take you away from the home page when you login.…

The Wreck of the Mary Deare

The Wreck of the Mary Deare

This is the most well known of Hammond Innes' 30 odd adventure novels. It was published in 1956, and worth a good price for the cover art alone.

WordPress Security

I’ve been going through all my websites and installing Jeff Starr’s: 5G Blacklist. It is pasted into the .htaccess file at the server root. The blacklist is a list of known malicious entities that are constantly attempting to break into websites.  It is formatted in some very clever GREP code that attempts to filter out all malicious server requests, and allow all legitimate ones through.  That’s not a simple task.  …