Posted on Podcast

An Overview of the Develpreneur Podcast

The Podcast Overview This episode starts us on our journey to become a better developer.  We look at the planned release schedule and structure along with why this podcast came into being.  The episodes will cover three main topics that make up a great developer. These are technical skills, entrepreneurial drive, and life-hacking/life balance tips and tricks. We have a busy road ahead so this provides a high-level overview. The next three episodes will involve going more deeply into the topic areas that will be visited each week.   Read more

cloud search
Posted on AWS Tour

Cloud Search – Offer Your Visitors Custom Results

AWS Cloud Search provides a quick and easily scalable solution for your search needs.  One of the best features of the Internet is the ability to search for anything you want.  Thus, this is a service that is critical for your customers and the growth of your site. Why Not Rely on Other Sites? The first question one may ask is why search is needed.  Google, Bing, and other sites provide search features so why duplicate those functions?  In a case like Cloud Search, the results are focused and often more in-depth than a general search portal.  Better yet, public search portals rely on data they can see and index.  Your documents and white papers do not always cut.  Thus, a custom approach service... Read more

Posted on Become a Better Developer

Object-Oriented Design – Planning Your Implementation

Although we have not picked an implementation language or platform, an object-oriented design is useful.  This approach is easier to maintain and understand when done right.  This episode focuses on OOD principles and how to model a system using this method. Back To Basics The first step in this episode is to cover some object-oriented design basics.  We look at what makes a good design as well as some things to avoid.  The steps to take in building a model are then reviewed to help us get to a solid foundation. Considerations of Good Object-Oriented Design Our next steps are to build our design and determine our objects.  We use some of the same guidelines that were used to design... Read more

anti-patterns
Posted on Developer Course

Anti-patterns and How Not To Build Software

We recently discussed patterns in software design in a mentoring session.  The idea of anti-patterns was brought up.  However, we skipped addressing them at the time.  What not to do is an excellent area to consider though so let’s take a look at a definition and then some typical software anti-patterns. Anti-Patterns Defined First, it is important to note that anti-patterns are not solely a software concern.  There are famous anti-patterns that arose in non-technical situations.  For example, there is the cart before the horse anti-pattern.  Some other common ones are micromanagement, groupthink, and the peter principle.  These may not have been called anti-patterns before software patterns were defined, but they pre-existed the term. Common Software Anti-patterns Let’s look closer... Read more

WordPress Advances
Posted on General

Recent WordPress Advances and New Features

If you have checked out your WordPress admin console you have noticed some new features.  They have been steadily providing new versions and some new features along the way.  These may be highly useful to you so they are worth a look. New Widgets The big changes are found in three new widgets.  In version 4.8 they added the image, video, and audio widgets.  These are not monumental in what they provide, but they do provide an avenue that can eliminate the need for plugins or custom code. The image widget provides the familiar drag-and-drop approach for adding an image to the WordPress sidebar.  This also provides a post type of image.  These post types allow you to quickly drop a number... Read more