Or, What does "scale" really mean?

If you interact with technical people, you will inevitably hear the word scale. They will say something like, "it doesn't scale well", or, "we need to make sure that this can scale up". Maybe you aren't sure what this means, but you nodded your head anyway. Well, let me tell you what they are talking about.

Three things to remember when participating in an online community

I have another article up 'How to Represent Your Organization in Online Forums' hosted by my employer ForeSite Technologies.

The paper covers what you should and shouldn't do when representing your company, charity or school online. Specifically, how to maintain a professional reputation in a world that is both immediate and permanent.

I'm on the intertubes!

Recently, I made two presentations at the Western MA Drupal Camp. One presentation was for people new to Drupal and the other was a very advanced look at the framework for database administrators. I have posted my slides on the camp website. Also, the first presentation was streamed live and is available for viewing. Feel free to take a look at the links below.

SEO Guidelines for Prominent Content

If you are interested in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) you may want to read a recent whitepaper that I wrote 'Writing for the Web - Guidelines for Prominent Content' hosted by my employer ForeSite Technologies.

The paper goes over what content a search engine is likely to look at first and how to optimize that prominent content without looking like you are trying to game the system.

For years, iRolo.net was both my personal and professional website. Since the site makeover, it has become purely a venue for my professional publications. However, I have always had a lot of fun, non-work-related content that I wanted to share. Therefore, Anna and I are announcing annadrew.name. Feel free to hop on over and take a look.

Case Sensitivity in MySQL

Yesterday I spent more than an hour trying to get a MySQL export from a Windows machine to play nice with a Unix server. This problem was compounded by Windows hiding a configuration file from me. Luckily for you, I eventually solved my problem and decided to write another Mistakes story.

The setup

Recently, I did some pro-bono consulting work for a client. As part of our agreement I made it clear that I would retain the rights to the code I wrote. The reason I did this is because I wanted to be able to give back to the community, and now I am going to do that. The work was made up of six tasks, ranging from trivial to complex. I intend to write six articles based on these tasks. This is the first.

Creating a Rollover Button without Javascript

JavaScript rollover buttons have been a common feature on the web for a long time now, but they do have some drawbacks. In the article below I will describe a way to make some neat looking rollover techniques with just XHTML and CSS. They aren't perfect for every situation, but they are an interesting alternative.

Why not just use MM_swapImage()?

Macromedia's (now Adobe's) ubiquitous JavaScript functions for rollovers are effective but they do have a few disadvantages:

What is Unit Testing?

In simple terms, unit testing is a definition of tests to run on your code. Usually, these tests are automated. The "unit" in unit testing means that the tests should test the smallest functional units, like functions or methods. However, unit testing does not have to be limited to only testing small parts; it can also test interactions between parts with complex combinations and variables, and even test some visual elements, like whether or not a certain image is actually shown or if a class was applied to an XHTML tag.

Here is another tip from "Mistakes I've Made". Don't mix up your conditions and assignments. In other words be careful about using assignment operators (like the eqauls sign '=') inside of conditional statements. Although this happened with PHP, the same problem can occur with many other languages. Let me explain...

Here is a very common way to loop: