Category: Technologies to build applications
-
Understanding Formidable Forms and WordPress
I have been using Formidable Forms with WordPress on and off for about 3 years. I have a conventional SQL and web programming background and I have found understanding the Formidable framework difficult. Today I had the insight that Formidable “views” are really just HTML fragments that contain data fetched by a simple SQL statement working…
-
How to create great visuals
A very interesting article from Getty Images on current trends and the “Four I s” that help you to choose visuals that grab the audience.
-
What matters is WordPress and Office 365
Two years ago I placed a bet on what matters in IT and I said it was WordPress and Office 365. I think I won. WordPress powers 25% of the web and the new REST API coming out later this year will drive that upwards. There is a good article that discusses this here. Office…
-
How to clone a Bitnami server in the AWS console
I use the excellent Bitnami WordPress AMI. I wanted to clone it so I made a snapshot and then created an image from the snapshot. The newly created AMI launched but only passed 1/2 health checks. The problem was that when creating the AMI I left the AKI (Amazon Kernal Image) on “default”. You must…
-
IPN stopped! How to find your IPN settings and history on PayPal
I have been running a WordPress site for a couple of years and twice I have stopped receiving Instant Payment Notifications (IPN) from PayPal. The first time was because my server was off for a few days and PayPal got bored and stopped. But today PayPal simply changed my IPN settings to disabled for no…
-
How to style HTML emails
Email clients such as Outlook and Gmail have their own ways of rendering HTML. Most importantly you have to use inline styles on every element and cannot link to an external stylesheet or have a stylesheet in the head. So rather than having a simple declaration in the head like, <head> <style> body {margin: 0;…
-
GPL as an anti-competitive tool
For some the GPL is a religion for others it is a business model. I have long been concerned that open source creates non-competive monopolies. In the 1990’s there were many webservers but in after a couple of years only Apache and Microsoft IIS remained. When I posed this to O’ Reilly (of the books)…
-
How to render a blank WordPress page
I want to create a REST endpoint on my WordPress site. This is to be consumed by a computer so I don’t want any HTML in it at all. In the WordPress architecture the page or post content is put into a template and rendered to the user. This template has all the HTML boilerplate…
-
Extending the WordPress application framework with Formidable Forms
In my previous post I discussed how WordPress fulfils many of the needs of an application development framework but I noted that it did not support forms. I have chosen to implement this requirement with Formidable Forms (other forms plug-ins exist). This page is a work in progress and subscribe if you want to receive future updates.…
-
Understanding WordPress as a web application framework
I have decided to use WordPress as my preferred web application framework. This is because it is free, simple, elegant and easily extensible. For this post I though it would be useful to compare it with a general web application framework as described on Wikipedia (displayed in italics below). Model–view–controller (MVC)[edit] Main article: Model–view–controller Many…
Dr James Bayley 