Adventures in Software Engineering
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Thoughts on Pressgram Shutting Down
Pressgram announced they were shutting down today. There’s always something to be learned when another entrepreneur “fails.” That’s in quotes because I don’t really consider Pressgram a failure, because I’m sure the lessons John learned from this are invaluable. The strange thing is that they have had more media, exposure, and users than any company…
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How to use the Phonegap Developer App
The Phonegap Developer app just recently hit the app stores, and it’s awesome! This app basically allows you to see any changes you make update in real time on your device. For example, if you fire up a Phonegap project called MyApp through the developer app, and make a change in MyApp/www/index.html, you will see…
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Beginner Stumbling Blocks in Phonegap & Cordova
Lately I’ve been working with Phonegap a lot for my new project AppPresser. Phonegap is a great product, and it’s pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it. The problem is that there are quirks that can hang you up as a beginner. This is the stuff no one tells you until…
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Innovation Requires Sacrifice
Innovating means… You spend whole days trying things that probably won’t work, with no pay. You turn away clients to spend whole days trying things that probably won’t work, with no pay. You bang your head against the wall for weeks because everything you’ve tried doesn’t work. Everyone else seems like they are doing better…
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7 Things I Learned in 2013
Instead of a “year in review” post, I just want to pass on some lessons I learned in 2013 as a WordPress business owner. Hopefully these help you out. 1. Failure Is Not The End I failed at something this year that was a pretty big deal. It sucked, and I was pretty bummed out.…
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WordPress and Generosity
People in the WordPress community took me to school today, but not about coding or business. About generosity. First, I had a 1 hour phone call with Shane from Modern Tribe. The call was just helping Brad and I strategize about AppPresser, pricing, marketing, etc. It didn’t really help Shane build his own business at…
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Responsive Images in WordPress with Picturefill
Images are the single biggest performance hog on most websites. Serving the same big images to a desktop and a mobile device kills your site’s performance, and makes you lose site visitors. We need to be able to serve a high resolution image to a desktop, and a smaller image to a mobile device. Responsive…
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Make your WP site a mobile web app with meta tags
Even if your website isn’t a traditional mobile app, you can still let visitors save your site to their home screen as an app icon. After they bookmark your site to their home screen, they can click the icon and open up your site full screen, just like a normal app. This is done with…
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Vertical Media Queries for Above the Fold Content
What the heck is a vertical media query? We’ve all used media queries that look something like this: [css]@media screen and (max-width: 25em) {}[/css] A vertical media query targets height instead of width: [css]@media screen and (max-height: 15em) {}[/css] Why would you do that?