Some of the Many Things a CMS Won’t Do For You
There are a lot of people on the internet telling you how great X or Y content management system — often abbreviated CMS — is. We’re as guilty as anyone, telling you that you just need to get WordPress...
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Semantic Versioning and Software Version Numbers
Spurred on by a question from Jeremy Green, who organizes my local WordPress meetup and runs Endo Creative, I got to thinking about software version numbers. I had been giving it a little thought...
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What is an API?
“What’s an API?” is one of those questions that is really powerful, important, and interesting, but hadn’t crossed my mind in a while. Programmers talk about APIs all the time, and increasingly it’s a...
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Setting dynamic, equal heights for multiple elements with jQuery
The goal: Dynamic, equal heights Sometimes you’d like to have several elements that will all be the same height, no matter what content they have inside them. In other words: You don’t want thisYou...
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How to view variable values in Sass
This week’s post is pretty technical—it’s only for users of Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets (Sass). I’m leaving. Before I go, what is Sass? Sass is a CSS preprocessor—a way to write your CSS...
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Why PHP?
PHP is a strange and (let’s get it over with) ugly, little language. It’s not exceptionally fast. It’s not beautiful syntactically. It’s not formulated around a clear opinion. And it’s still what I...
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Easy HTML hacks to customize your PayPal purchase buttons
Probably the easiest way to sell things online is using PayPal purchase buttons. PayPal buttons can be a good fit in cases when a complicated and full-featured e-commerce solution might be overkill—for...
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A Simple Introduction to How Password Storage Works
One of the most interesting things that I didn’t understand before I really spent much time learning about computers is how passwords work. It seems kind of stupid, but it’s an interesting and...
View ArticleCut Your Web Development Costs by Making Your Developer Happy
In general, developers are a lot more flexible on price for projects they really want to work on, and a lot less flexible when they’ll have to grit their teeth for the money. Web developers are like...
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Why You Should Write Down Your Passwords and Never Reuse Them
There are a few commonly-known password sins, in rough order of how I think most people think of them: Writing down your password. Telling someone else your password. Reusing a password. Of these, many...
View ArticleWeb development: It’s a jungle out there
Most people I talk to who need web development help are frustrated and unsure. Many have had painful experiences with previous developers, and almost all are suspicious about being taken advantage of....
View ArticleA Quick Guide to the Services that Make Up the Web Industry
If you’ve got a new web project, you may not know where to start. What does it take to get a web project off the ground? Who do you need to hire? Should you hire just one person, or will you need a...
View ArticleHow to Signal Your Web Development Budget Without Getting Ripped Off
Just like a car, a web project could cost almost anything depending on your needs and budget. Your developer needs to know both. “I want a car. How much will that cost?” Web developers stare down this...
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The Two Root Causes of Software Complexity
With a few notable exceptions, software makers hate dealing with preexisting code. Sure, they’re happy to have tools that solve problems they have, but give them a bunch of code that “mostly solved” an...
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One Simple Trick That Will Make Your 404 Pages Much More Useful
404 is the HTTP “Not Found” error code. When a web application receives a request for a resource or page it can’t make sense of, it should return a 404 error and a page that corresponds to that error....
View ArticleHow to Choose a Great Domain Name
Today we’ll be talking about one of the least technical pieces of planning your new website, and one of the most important to get right: choosing a domain name. Your goals, in the order I’d put them...
View ArticlerUp: A Sass Function That Offers a Powerful Alternative to Ems
This is a second post exploring applications for Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets (Sass), the CSS preprocessor that can really turbocharge how you create and modify CSS. Here we’ll be looking at a...
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Preserving readability with variable text and background colors in Sass
This is a third post exploring applications for Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets (Sass), the CSS preprocessor that can really turbocharge how you create and modify CSS. Today we’ll be exploring a...
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What the Heck is the HHVM?
We do a lot of PHP work here at Press Up. Not only do we do WordPress, but we use the language on its own for many small projects, and we’ve run more than a few projects built atop of other PHP...
View ArticleWhat You’ll Need to Invest in Your Website
A website is not a purchase; it’s an ongoing investment. This is perhaps the most important thing you can hear before having a site built. We’ll be exploring this distinction by looking at what proper...
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