Maintain Your Database Login Information with Ease by Externalizing the Connection Script
When working with databases like MySQL, a connection needs to be established before processing any queries. That connection script could be added to the top of every page needing access, but what happens when the database password needs updating. Who wants to update dozens (or thousands) of files? As a solution, let's look at externalizing the code that makes the connection and importing it instead. [Continue reading]
Custom Calendar Design from the United Blood Services
Over the past few years, the United Blood Services (UBS) has sent desk calendars to donors. Even though that sounds a little boring, I look forward to them every year. The reason being that these calendars have been customized for donors in a very creative way. I wanted to take a few minutes to share. [Continue reading]
Quickly Send Follow-up Messages with Microsoft Outlook
Have you sent an e-mail message and then quickly realized that something was forgotten. Maybe an attachment was missing or an important piece of information was left out. It's fairly easy to go through the sent items folder, forward the previous message, and include the new content. However, this requires us to re-add the contact information. That may not be much of a burden, but there's a quicker way. [Continue reading]
Maintaining a List of Blog Entries
When starting this blog, my goal was to release content regularly—at least once per week. Taking too long of a break would likely wreak havoc on my motivation for blogging. This isn't the first personal project I've tried starting after all. To stay focused, I needed a steady stream of ideas. Unfortunately, those ideas don't always flow when needed. They tend to crop up (and quickly disappear) when doing something other than writing for the blog. That's where tracking those thoughts is handy. [Continue reading]
Rethinking the Structure of My Templates
Over the past few years I've been working on an initiative which shares a single template over several websites. The overall process has gone fairly well, but my standard process for building templates in PHP isn't holding so well. The number of files could use some pruning and there have been issues with variables and helper functions not being available when needed. Plus, it would be nice to have a common place where overall website setting could be changed to affect all pages. So it's time to rethink my template-building process. [Continue reading]
Goals for 2013
Reading "New Year's Resolution" by Marc Towler inspired me to share my own goals for 2013. Some of them have been on my mind for years now. However, little work has been done toward accomplishing the goals. As the Get-It-Done Guy says, "When you publicly say you'll do something, you're just more likely to do it." So here it goes. [Continue reading]
Compose E-mails Faster with Outlook Quick Parts
Over the years, I've found myself writing certain things again and again when e-mailing customers and clients. To save time from composing essential the same message, I tried looking for similar messages in the Sent Mail folder to use as a template. However, it can be difficult to locate those messages. That's where Microsoft's Quick Parts come in. [Continue reading]
Scrolling through a Page Quickly with Keyboard Shortcuts
When viewing pages on the Web, there are a number of ways to get around. Interacting with the browser's scroll bar is one of the more tedious options, in my opinion. Let's speed up the process with keyboard shortcuts. [Continue reading]
How to Avoid Conflicting Variable Names
On occasion, variables in PHP may conflict. This is easy to avoid when all the code appears in a single file. What happens when code is scattered throughout the website? Maybe there are variables tucked away in a template file which is brought in with a PHP include. How do you avoid conflicting variables within a file that's used by many other pages on the website? [Continue reading]
Mysteriously Changing Font Sizes When Viewing Websites
When browsing the Web, has the text ever mysteriously gotten smaller or larger? If so, you're not alone. There have been many times where I'm working with a website and all of a sudden something doesn't look right. I used to think that a mistake was made in the code, but it turns out that my mouse was the culprit. [Continue reading]
