Latest Writings

For many, building a successful blog feels like a dark art. I’ve blogged for more than 10 years, yet still there are times when making something a success feels like a complete mystery. I browse my favourite blogs and despite them churning out average content, they seem to attract thousands of followers on Twitter and Facebook. I’ve often asked… View Article

Just because your clients are breathing down your neck, doesn’t mean you should feel guilty about some down time. Take a holiday ffs! Step back, drop your tools and book yourself a holiday. Its a great way to get away from everything, free up your brain and get some perspective. Three years into working self-employed,… View Article

So someone sends you a message on Facebook and you don’t want them to know its been ‘seen’, however you still have to deal with the annoying notification. So how do you get rid of the notification without informing the sender you have read the message? Its pretty simple and quick. Just make sure you… View Article

Are you experiencing the white screen of death when you try and save a page or make changes to the setting in a plugin (when WordPress uses post.php)? I’ve just been having this issue with my local install and the fix was annoyingly simple. I turned on debugger in the wp-config.php file. (I suggest having… View Article

As a web designer or freelance web developer you will often have to work with PSD files with hundreds of layers. What’s annoying is when you just want one particular layer and can’t find it because its lost somewhere in the list. Lucky there is a quick way to locate a layer without having to… View Article

If you are a freelance web designer the chances are you use WordPress for a lot of your builds. Its lightweight and very flexible, making it an ideal platform to learn in order to please a wide range of clients. One issue I recently had that messed with my head for longer than it should… View Article

I’ve often wondered why all my HTML files and browser requests opened in Firefox…that was until today. It turns out that Safari (The native browser with OS) is responsible for setting your default browser which is a tad strange, so you have to make changes through their Preferences panel. Open up Safari > Preferences. For this I usually… View Article

Tens of thousands of social networking junkies have flocked to a new social networking website which has been dubbed the ‘anti-Facebook’. ello.co seems to be gaining considerable traction after publishing a user-friendly policy on the content you submit. Basically Facebook likes to sell the things you place on Facebook to advertisers where as ello.co promises to keep yours private…. View Article

Google has confirmed that updates to the Panda algorithm change are being rolled out this week which means you might see an improvement or drop in your rankings. “Earlier this week, we started a slow rollout of an improved Panda algorithm, and we expect to have everything done sometime next week. Based on user (and… View Article

If you have the ‘Pages’ app for Facebook on your phone you no doubt will be getting sick of ‘tip’ updates. Your phone vibrates and its something on your page so you get excited…unfortunately its just Facebook saying something like ‘You’ve not posted for X days, why not add a post?” These are actually pretty easy… View Article