By Jordan , 23 July, 2015

Pantheon in Local: A Safer Way

I've spoken before (several times actually) about Pantheon, a high performance web host.  They're an amazing platform with many awesome features, but one lacking feature is an easy way to do local development.  Kalabox 2 promises to change this, but as we went to press Pantheon integration wasn't working yet.  The good news: there's an easy way to do this.

Selenium Webdriver tips

Selenium Webdriver is an automated testing platform for web pages.  It may not be the easiest or the most user-friendly, and it definitely requires a lot of coding, but it's the most powerful and works with any website.  Even better, it "drives" a real web browser and simulates real clicks, so you're getting a real UI test, not just a URL test.  

It's good stuff, but it's also arcane.  That's why I'm putting together this handy cheat sheet.  Expect it to change over time.

By Jordan , 6 April, 2015

Auto Update Drupal Multisite

I was recently talking with the fine folks at UCSF.edu and they mentioned that they do updates of giant Drupal multisites.  I asked them how they manage that.  The answer: a script!  So of course I wanted one too.

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Here are my steps:

By Jordan , 20 March, 2015

Project Spartan: Is it Compatible?

At work we're still stuck on IE9.  We just started the discussion of upgrading our web browser, and Project Spartan came up.  As a web developer, there's only one thing I care about: is it compatible?

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By Jordan , 1 February, 2015

VPS: It's Awesome, and It Might Kill Me

So, I made the leap from shared hosting to a virtual private server.  Why?  A few reasons:

  1. You'll never get great performance from shared hosting
  2. I've gained confidence in my own ability to devops
  3. I'm trying to improve my skill set
  4. It's actually cheaper; $7/mo for Hostgator shared hosting vs. $5/mo for Digital Ocean
  5. It's fun!  (I need to get out more.)

My first reaction?

Tenuki Design

Tenuki Design is now Koplowicz & Sons

I'm pleased to announce that Tenuki Design has rebranded as Koplowicz & Sons.

By Jordan , 10 July, 2014

Drupal 7 Clean URLs in Ubuntu

This is a problem I've solved many times, but I keep forgetting to write it down.  The problem is: You install Drupal on a new Linux server running Ubuntu.  Clean urls don't work.