MediaGirl Toolbox

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Coding Snippets

Bookmark the following links for great code snippets and coding advise.

• Position Absolute
• Ajax Rain
• Smashing Magazine
• DevSnippets
• CSS Tricks
• Noupe
• UX Booth
• Mini Ajax
• Ajax Daddy

Filed Under: Bookmarks, Coding, Tools

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Devot:ee

Congratulations to Ryan Masuga for his recent launch of Devot:ee. Devot:ee is a website devoted to learning, teaching, tweaking, extending, and having fun with the Expression Engine CMS.

Filed Under: Expression Engine, Tools

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

EE’s New Traffic Management Control

In the most recent ExpressionEngine build release, 1.6.6, the ExpressionEngine coding team addressed a problem we recently have been struggling with on a high traffic project we coded and manage.

Specifically, on high traffic websites, EE's statistics tracking can overwhelm the MySQL database because it locks a table each time it writes new data to the database. Because EE frequently writes statistics data back to the database, things can quickly get out of control.

Derek Jones, Chief Technology Officer with EllisLab, details the new functionality in a recent blog posting: Traffic Management Features in the 20081212 Build.

Additionally, here is a nice writeup from the EE Docs on Handling Extreme Traffic with ExpressionEngine.

For our project, we turned all statistics tracking off because we were not using this data. Additionally, we installed Solspace's new Tracker module/extension to track statistics on which articles were being read on the website.

Time will tell if this solution helps reduce the MySQL server load that we experience when the site has traffic spikes. Our fingers are crossed.

Filed Under: Expression Engine

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Need an Expression Engine Coder?

If you are searching for an Expression Engine coder for a freelance programming project, we would like to offer the following tips:

PORTFOLIO
A programmer's portfolio represents the quality of their work and the complexity of projects they can handle. Go through an online portfolio thoroughly.

RESPONSIVENESS
A programmer's responsiveness to an initial voice mail or email message is likely indicative of how responsive they will be during your project.

PRICE
Don't shop on price alone. A low price may be tempting but most times it indicates a beginning programmer who may lack experience and discipline. It's not unheard of for low priced projects to end up costing more because you have to hire a second programmer to finish the job.

SCHEDULE
Good programmers have full schedules because word gets around about the quality of the work. Unless you are under tight time constraints, it isn't a bad idea to get in line. Once they start on your project, you will have their full attention.

REFERENCES
A quality programmer will always have references to give at your request. Ask for them.

Filed Under:

Monday, July 28, 2008

Modern Day Stop Sign

Filed Under: For Laughs