http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/ Latest blog entries from staff at SiteCrafting en-us Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:59:17 PDT Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:59:17 PDT SiteCrafting, Inc. CMS http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/value-determination/ There are a series of "Values" books that I remember reading when I was a child and we have started reading with our own children - Thanks eBay.  Each book focuses on a value and how a person from history best demonstrates that value. Whether it's the value of Boldness demonstrated by Capt. James Cook or the Value of Creativity - The Story of Thomas Edison - each story offers a biographical look at the subject and how that value played a role in their success.  Last week at my house we had a real life example of the  "Value of Determination". Charlotte woke early and agreed that "Today was the day to learn to ride a bike without training-wheels".  ... Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:24:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/to-go-1/ Seth Godin's latest blog post We Can Do It reminds me of the attitude around our office. We have a staff committed to "going for it", a group committed to "Yes" and then making certain we deliver. It's funny, it doesn't always end up the way we think, but more often than not we are pleasantly surprised with the effects our efforts have on ourselves, our teammates, and on others.  ... Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:22:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/line-lowest-price/ OK, so I'm driving down this road and I see this sign that says "We will meet or beat any bid".  On the surface it sounds reasonable - price wins.  So, I naturally start asking myself when does price not matter? When am I not interested in having someone beat the lowest bid? ... Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:20:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/flashs-stand/ This article about Virgin America abandoning Flash for it's website popped up late last week and it seems fitting since there seems to be a lot of discussion around Flash and mobile operating systems - specifically Apple and the iPhone and iPad. Actually there has always been a lot of discussion around the effectiveness of Flash and people usually fall into two opposing camps - yeah, big surprise I know.  My take is that Flash is a good tool when used in applications that could be made way more difficult to accomplish without it. I believe it is a good standard platform for video and some specialty drawing or gaming applications - but that is about it.  ... Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:33:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/disable-uac-windows-7/ I was annoyed after a upgrade to Windows 7 on a workstation machine, in order to do anything , you have to "approve the action" because of the UAC (User Account Control) settings are turned on by default. Just as painful is finding where the UI "checkbox" is to turn it on and off. Needless to say I ended up having to play around with the command line to turn the UAC Off and On. To save you the trouble here it is. ... Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:48:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/function-caching-in-php/ Web apps become notoriously slow when running database queries. Often times we find ourselves writing a useful look up as a function, and then forget that it requires a query each time. This is where caching comes in. And PHP has a really clean way to do it. ... Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:30:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/shine/ I've been reading Linchpin by Seth Godin and one of the things that Linchpin's do is let it shine. Godin says, "if you're going to go to all the trouble of learning the guitar, then SING IT! If you're not going to, why are you wasting your time?" The famous Saturday Night Live skit says it best according to Godin. In fact, it takes Bruce Dickenson (yes, THE Bruce Dickinson) to convince Will Ferrell to play more cowbell when he is tempted to just fit in. The thing is, not playing the cowbell with gusto is the same as not playing it at all. You can either fit in or stand out. Not both. ... Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:00:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/we-win/ No, this is not a spineless diatribe on why we are all winners. Even though I received a trophy when my 1987 youth soccer team came in last place, I don't share that sentiment. No ... this is about win-win situations. One in particular in fact.I wrote a while ago about seeing a "To Write Love On Her Arms" t-shirt while at Disneyland while my family was there celebrating my wife's birthday. We love that place. So when we heard about their program this year about getting a day pass for giving a day of service (Give a Day, Get a Disney Day), we jumped at the opportunity. ... Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:56:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/rush-faceless-transactions/ There was a Bank of America ad a few years back that I believe was in some way trying to make my point with this blog title. The narrator discusses how they have systems in place to take your single check and deposit it in the correct account every time. Furthermore they handle not just yours, but millions just like yours every night and all while there are millions the only one you really care about them getting right is yours.  Customers don't care how many other things you have going on, they only want to know that their job is the most important thing on your plate - and while you are working on it, or discussing it, it better be.  So, for that one instant when Bank of America is depositing your check time stands still and yours is the most important one. The fact that they handle millions really is irrelevant as long as when your number is up they get it right.  ... Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:25:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/presumption-excellence/ I try and run at 5:00am most mornings, and during that time and the cool-down period I do my best to reflect on what's going on in my personal life as well as what's going on in our company. I am constantly looking to challenge the way we do things and look for ways to increase my personal effectiveness and SiteCrafting's effectiveness. I have learned a lot observing other people and organizations and I've always tried to put myself and our company under the same sort of microscope. You see, ultimately it is not a race against others; there is really no competition except for the competition with ourselves.  ... Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:58:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/reason-shift/ So, there's been a lot of discussion around town as to why we at SiteCrafting felt we needed to create the SHIFT Awards. The answer is actually very simple. We're creating this recognition event to celebrate local business and their utilization of technology. This event springs from the refrain that was often heard at the South Sound Technology Conference about how we in the South Sound need to get together and create events around technology and collaboration. The reality is that there is a ton of great stuff going on in the South Sound relating to technology, and it's about time we look around and say, "Hey this is a pretty great place to live, work, and innovate."  I'd like to explain a bit of our vision for this event by first clarifying what the SHIFT Awards are not about, and then what our true purpose has been for this idea, as well as some insight on the honorees and goals for the event this year and beyond. So here goes... ... Sat, 30 Jan 2010 09:55:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/svn-files-revision/ An SVN command that gives a list of modified files between revisions. It is very useful when uploading files to a live server and when running through quality assurance. Another command to keep in your bag of tricks. ... Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:28:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/holiday-volunteering-at-ywca/ On December 22nd, over half the SiteCrafting crew headed down to the Pierce County YWCA to help out in their Christmas gift center. Every December, the YWCA's gym is transformed into a "store" where residents can pick out gifts for their parents/children/siblings. 13 of us volunteered to wrap and label presents during two different shifts. While the first few presents seemed to take an eternity to wrap, we soon got into the swing of things and were cranking them out like nobody's business. Good thing too, as there were lots of presents to go around. Donations come from several sources: individual donations, Girl Scout troops, churches, even Hell's Angels contribute everything from toys and clothes for the kids to housewares and perfume for mom. ... Mon, 11 Jan 2010 09:23:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/sitecrafting-honored-as-3rd-fastest/ Last night, myself, Brian, Julie, Mandi, Michael, Nick, and Kirk attended the Business Examiner's Fastest Growing Companies event at the Tacoma Glass Museum. Last year, we were honored to receive the #6 spot out of 10 finalists, but this year we received third place.Finalists were selected from companies headquartered in the South Sound. The winner of the #1 spot this year was Wichert Electric Inc from Chehalis. BCRA also won the Longevity Award for the second year running.Congrats to Wichert Electric, BCRA and all the other finalists.  ... Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:15:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/in-stars-in/ I had the privilege of being on a panel discussion this morning at the South Sound Technology Conference. Our panel consisted of Derek Young from Seasonal View, John Dimmer from FIRS Management and Tacoma Angel Network, Mark Briggs of SerraMedia, Graham Evans of the WTC, and myself. Our topic was on Entrepreneurship in the South Sound.  The panel had input on a variety of topics including mentorship, building connections and the importance of community for companies and start-ups here in the South Sound. After the discussion I enjoyed a bit of networking before heading out for what turned into a very long conference call, but that's how it goes.  ... Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:20:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/vanessa-behan-tour/ Last week Michael and I had the opportunity to spend some time with the staff of Spokane's Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery. As a Gear Grant recipient, we'll be working closely with the crisis nursery on giving their website an overhaul, updating it to better serve their current needs. Amy Swanson, the nursery's Executive Director, gave us a tour of the location and let us in on both the sad and really positive things that come with running a crisis nursery. Some of the stories make you really feel for the children that can't do anything about the situations that they are in, but the amazing success stories shore up the positive work that they are doing. ... Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:43:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/detecting-selfparent-in-mysql/ Usually, it's a bad idea to allow elements in a tree to be parents of themselves, because that creates problems with trying to add other children to those elements, or even listing out the tree's structure.But, sometimes things have to be their own parent. For example, if you want to report details of an element's children to the parent element, what happens at the top level of the tree? You can't outright exclude a tree element from the reporting, you can't create a placeholder element because that would skew the tree, and you can't add in a special case in your code base for that single item.Well, you could, but you don't want to. You'd rather have a simple and elegant solution that doesn't require lots of special cases for tree levels, and that doesn't require maintenance. So what do you do? ... Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:26:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/hiding-maintenance-wall/ A common task in web development is updating a live server. There are many ways to do it, but some of them require downtime. Rather then turn users away, it is best practice to put up a maintenance page. But what if you still need access to the site while you are updating it? .htaccess and Cookies to the rescue! ... Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:02:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/stackoverflow-devday-seattle-conference/ On Wednesday, I had the pleasure to attend and volunteer for the StackOverflow DevDays conference in Seattle. StackOverflow is a programming Q&A site, much like Expert's Exchange except without the nagging to register. It boasts over 1 million page views per day and something like 20 thousand active users.There were many interesting topics covered, from ASP.NET to Qt, and there's a few new ideas that I want to try out now. ... Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:42:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/adobes-browserlab-goes-live/ It is an unfortunate fact of internet life that not all browsers are made equal. Pages viewed in Firefox may look completely different in Internet Explorer or Safari. Most developers consider this a very frustrating part of the development process, and often wish there was an easier way to test things out. Enter Adobe's BrowserLab. Given a publicly accessible URL, BrowserLab will generate full-size images that depict how a given page will appear in various browsers. ... Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:30:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/theres-no-place/ During my freshman year at PLU, I woke up to two friends throwing my coat and shoes at me and telling me to get dressed and come outside to see all the snow. I jumped right up and did what they said because I heard it rarely snowed in my new town so there was no time to waste. We ran outside and I couldn't believe my eyes. People were making snowmen, snow angels and dragging sleds in a whopping inch of snow. Talk about disappointment. I mean I realize you've got to work with what you've got (so more power to you west side residents) but this just wasn't doing it for me. In Spokane an inch is no blizzard and it better get 24 inches bad to even think about canceling school. ... Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:57:00 PDT