SiteCrafting Blah Blah Blog

Apr. 25, 2008 at 9:25am

Appreciation

An Honor and a Challenge...

What an honor and at the same time, what a challenge. SiteCrafting is thrilled to be named by The Business Examiner as the Top Place to Work in the category of Employee Appreciation, but --- and here's the big but --- it means we have to live up that honor. A challenge I am glad to take on, given the dedication, commitment, and selflessness shown on a daily basis by our people who truly make SiteCrafting a top place to work.

Sure, we have a lot of very smart, technically minded people working here, but what's more important and worthy of recognition is the fact that we have incredible human beings working here. We have individuals committed to our customers, to our vision, to our community and to each other.

So how did this happen?  And how do I live up to the challenge?
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Comments (3) | Posted in Awards / Recognition, Deep Thoughts by Brian Forth

Apr. 1, 2008 at 9:48am

SiteCrafting to Expand into New Markets

Find out what's next for the high-growth company...

Seeing the time as ripe for expansion, SiteCrafting has launched a new venture in an effort to expand into prescription eyewear. SightCrafters, LLC will bring to the eyewear world what SiteCrafting has brought to the web development business.

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Comments (2) | Posted in Deep Thoughts, Horn Tooting, Latest Hits, Marketing, Testimonials by Nick Williams

Mar. 31, 2008 at 11:40am

Got API?

An API reference does a method's body good...

gotAPI.com is one of the most useful online resources I've come across, primarily because it places resources spread all over the internet into one simple site. I've been using this for quite some time, and have for the most part I have taken its usefulness for granted. Then it occurred to me that I might not be the only one that could find this tool useful (I know, it was a big 'DUH!' moment). So now I will share this gem with others...

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Comments (1) | Posted in ASP.NET 2.0, CSS, From the Workbench, Javascript, MS SQL Server, MySQL, PHP, Review, Software Engineering, XHTML by Nick Williams

Mar. 28, 2008 at 5:40pm

Change is Good

Normally government websites tend to be pretty dry and information-oriented, so I was expecting more of the same when I checked the Snoqualmie Pass traffic cameras from the WSDOT this morning. All the standard stuff that I've come to expect from years of checking the site before driving across the pass was there. However, there was one part of the site that gave me a good laugh this morning. Camera 2 was wiped out in an avalanche over the winter, but rather than a simple "Camera Unavailable" message that I've seen in the past, I saw this:

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Comments (3) | Posted in Deep Thoughts, Odds 'n Ends by Mike Ash

Mar. 26, 2008 at 12:41pm

Make PHP Growl

. . . but in a good way!

I stumbled upon a fantastic PHP class today and felt compelled to comment on it. Originally written by Tyler Hall, this class allows you to send notifications to any system running Growl from a PHP script. For those of you that don't know, Growl is an application written for Mac OS X that is intended to act as a universal notification tool (much like the taskbar notification bubbles we've all come to know and love in Windows XP/Vista).


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Comments (8) | Posted in PHP, Review, Software Engineering by Nick Williams

Mar. 12, 2008 at 4:34pm

PHP 5.3 - A Heavy Hitter in Training

PHP's next major release is just that, major!

The evolution of PHP into an object-oriented programming language has been a very exciting process to watch. I'll admit its advancement seems to move at a glacial pace at times, but looking back we certainly have come a long way. With the release of 5.0 we saw PHP leave its childhood and enter its awkward adolescent stage. At this point there is evidence of a mature and complex object-oriented language while stilll exhibiting many of its younger habits.

So what's in store for us next? Find out after the jump . . .

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Comments (0) | Posted in PHP, Software Engineering by Nick Williams

Feb. 14, 2008 at 4:29pm

Touch the Vote

Rock it as well, if you must

This time of year you either get hooked or get sick of everything politics. That's right, it's a Presidential election season and the 24-hour news cable channels are firing out tons of info both via your TV and online. Some worthy strides in web development practices have also come about on one news site in particular that may help political junkies get their fix anytime, anywhere.

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Comments (0) | Posted in Coding Techniques, Javascript by Kevin Freitas

Jan. 29, 2008 at 3:15pm

PHP Patterns, Part III

The TO Pattern

The Template Object (or TO) is a design pattern of my own that I developed to fill the role of the View layer in the MVC model. As you have probably figured out, the purpose of the TO is to handle everything related to the user interface. The idea here is to separate the interface as much as possible from the rest of the application, so that we could do a complete rewrite of an application without ever touching (or accidentally "breaking") the view portion. Read more

Comments (0) | Posted in Coding Techniques, From the Workbench, PHP, Software Engineering by Nick Williams

Jan. 22, 2008 at 7:41pm

There is Nothing Small About Everything

So this is a post I've been working on in my mind for a very long time. I only recently realized that it needed to be written. You see, small business is anything but small. The services and products that businesses like SiteCrafting provide add value to their customers in such a way that small business has become, essentially, everything.

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Comments (2) | Posted in Deep Thoughts by Brian Forth

Jan. 18, 2008 at 11:29am

Thoughts On Creating Website Advertising Guidelines

Let's say you've got a website, and you're considering whether or not to advertise on it. Or maybe you've already got a website with advertising, and you're wondering if a particular kind of ad is appropriate to display on your site. The only problem is, you don't have a concrete set of guidelines to filter out what is acceptable, and what isn't. These are the kinds of questions you should ask yourself to resolve this dilemma.


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Comments (0) | Posted in Deep Thoughts, Marketing by Dave Poole

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