Summer 2010

Aug24

Interesting Password Tip

Brent Laminack August 24, 2010

Here's an interesting password tip from Lifehacker.

Aug16

Drop-Dead Simple Blogging

Brent Laminack August 16, 2010

When we work with someone who wants to blog, and they don't want to use Joomla content items (like we're using here), we generally recommend blogger.com. This is a free service from Google. It's a bit limited, but it's drop-dead simple. We can then do an RSS feed from the blog to the main website. There's another blogging service that's about to get my nod. It's called Tumblr. I think it may be even simpler than blogger.

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Aug15

Hosting Issues

Brent Laminack August 15, 2010

We try to host most of our clients' websites. We started doing this because we tried using a service that claimed to offer 'custom Joomla hosting' packages. After two days on that service and horrible website load times, the service called us and asked us to move the site off of their server, because it was getting too many visitors for their server to keep up with. We seem to be talking to more people these days who are using diverse hosting providers. Here's some of the issues we're running into with them:

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Aug12

New Joomla Online Magazine

Brent Laminack August 12, 2010

The Joomla! community has launched a new community online magazine. It's a good looking site, and has lots of information for everyone from new users to power users. So check it out!

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Aug06

Should I have a mobile version of my website?

Brent Laminack August 06, 2010

Every now and then, we're asked by a client if they should have a separate version of their website for mobile devices. These are generally called 'mobi' sites, because they often have a '.mobi' top-level domain name instead of the common '.com' or '.org'.

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Aug02

Choosing Good Passwords

Brent Laminack August 02, 2010

Choosing a good password is always a problem. The essential tension is that a good password should be easy to remember, yet hard to guess. Most people err on one side or the other. Most people choose passwords that are too easy to guess, such as the name of their spouse or pet. Any word in the dictionary makes for a quick security breach. We have other vendors who send us passwords like 8#{aUv7. Yes, it's hard to guess, but also impossible to remember, guaranteeing that it'll have to be written down, copied, pasted, stored, and generally left laying about. Here's some hints of forming usable passwords:

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Aug01

Three Waves of Content Management - Third Wave

Brent Laminack August 01, 2010

We've seen the first two waves of Content Management Systems (CMSs) as being the custom CMS that gave rise to the proprietary CMS. The custom CMS market is dead. The proprietary CMS is under a great deal of pressure from the third wave of CMSs....

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Jul27

Should we avoid Flash?

Brent Laminack July 27, 2010

One of our clients recently wrote to us, "Tell me about Apple's Webkit and your thoughts on avoiding Flash."

I anwsered: Apple's webkit is the software that is the heart of their browser, Safari. It's what's called the 'rendering engine' that lays the web page's elements out on the screen. The other major open-source rendering engine is the gecko engine that powers the Firefox browser. Both are perfectly serviceable pieces of software. Indeed, Steve Jobs is disparaging Adobe's Flash technology here of late, especially for the iPhone and iPad. He's pushing the next generation of web standard, HTML5, as an alternative. Unfortunately, no browser is yet 100% ready for HTML5 yet. My current release of Firefox (3.6.3) only scores 139 out of 300 points at http://html5test.com/, whereas the latest Safari (5.0) scores a bit better: 208. Don't even ask about Internet Explorer. So I'd say we're probably a good year or so away from being able to use the parts of HTML5 that will replace flash. We've always said that Flash is good, in its place, but shouldn't be overused. After a year or so, when more browsers are truly HTML5 compliant, we'll take another look.

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Jul25

Three Waves of Content Management - Second Wave

Brent Laminack July 25, 2010

The easiest way for most people to get a high-functionality, easily updatable website is to use a Content Management System (CMS). The first wave of these in the web 1.0 days of the 1990s was custom-build CMSs. Early in the 2000s, these gave rise to...

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Jul22

Three Waves of Content Management - First Wave

Brent Laminack July 22, 2010

Web design tools like Dreamweaver aren't for the faint of heart. They're expensive, cumbersome and have a long learning curve. They're overkill for someone who just wants to change text on a website or add a new picture. Plus, unless you're a programmer, you'll never be able to use it to add functionality to your website. These are some of the major motivations for having your website in a modern Content Management System (CMS). There've been three waves of CMS products so far. The first wave....

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Jul21

PCI Compliance for Everyone

Brent Laminack July 21, 2010

If your business handles credit card payments, you need to be concerned about the rules and regulations of safeguarding the sensitive cardholder data. I was reminded of this the other day when a charge for $9.95 showed up on my debit card from a website I've never visited. Since 2007 any business that accepts credit card payment--this probably means you--has been subject to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). If you're a huge business that processes a million or more credit card transactions per year, you have to hire an outside professional to audit your processes. If you're smaller than that, you can do it yourself by means of the Self-Assessment Questionnaire, or SAQ. The SAQ comes in four flavors, depending upon...

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Jul12

Oooooh, Shiny!

Brent Laminack July 12, 2010

We've all done it: bought something that's of absolutely no use just because it caught our eye. The problem is when we make business purchasing decisions based on glitter or glitz. Is it just me or are more people falling victim to this lately? A couple of examples.....

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Jul10

Event Registration Components

Brent Laminack July 10, 2010

I'll be giving a short talk this week at the local Joomla Users Group about event registration components for Joomla. See the notes here if you can't make the meeting.

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Jul02

Why Requirements Are Important

Brent Laminack July 02, 2010

We've run across several projects lately that hit a bump. Somebody calls us and says something like "Hey, I've committed to xyz, got the contract right here. Can you make it work?". In one case it was somebody who'd bought PC-based software that supposedly has a 'web interface'. The issues there were that the 'web interface' was untried and their network wasn't set up for web hosting.

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Jun29

My Nephew's Best Friend is Building Our Company's Web Site

Beth Snider June 29, 2010

Yes...we really do hear that from time to time. No disrespect to the nephew's best friends who really are professional web designers, but let's face it...most of you are not. So why do people keep doing it? Why would they entrust one of their most important business assets to a novice? Sometimes one who has not even graduated from high school? Here's what we've learned...

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Hi Brent,

I was in one of your HTML/CSS classes at Emory. IE9 rolled out as promised, and I have already upgraded to it. It has a few...

Frances Ohanenye 12. January, 2012 | #

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