I'm sure many of us have been told at some point in our careers that "magic strings are bad" but why exactly is that and what could go wrong? And what alternatives are there to improve our code?
I am a senior .NET developer and lover of adventure based in Southampton, UK. During working hours I'm an Umbraco Certified Master and MVP who's been working with Umbraco at Bump Digital (and in various digital agencies over the past decade), but am an adventure-loving outdoorsman in my free time and can often be seen out hiking or canoeing with my dog, Carter.
I co-organise the Wessex Umbraco Meetup and can often be seen in and around the Umbraco and southampton.digital communities.
Blog posts & talk recordings
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Accessibility is a fairly new concept to a lot of us in the tech industry, but Ordnance Survey have been making maps since 1791. What have they done over the last two centuries to make their maps easier to read and understand for everyone? And how can our comparatively juvenile industry learn from their experience?
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A recording of my extended “Why are you being such a git about it” talk from Developer! Developer! Developer! Day 2021.
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I'm sure many of us have been told at some point in our careers that "magic strings are bad" but why exactly is that and what could go wrong? And what alternatives are there to improve our code?
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Live streaming Advent of Code 2021
My attempts at solving Advent of Code puzzles each day.
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Back to REBASE-ics
My favourite method of merging feature branches has to be "rebase and merge" (that's a "semi-linear merge" if you're using DevOps) - it allows us to avoid losing data while keeping the tree clean and tidy.
But what is a rebase and how do they work?
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Using Gitlint with GitHub Actions
Linting commit messages can be useful to enforce a standard of git commit messages - but how can we run these as checks on a GitHub pull request?
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Are your git repos a dumping ground for code? I'm really fussy about how people use git - and that's a good thing. We'll take a look at branching strategies, the importance of commit messages and how often should you commit, anyway? Let's investigate how, with 5 simple tips, we can turn a code dump into a glorious archive of software and how this can save time, frustration and money.
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My recorded talk “Why are you being such a git about it” from GitKon is available to watch.
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A recording of my talk at CodeGarden 2021. Also available in written form.
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It’s a dark and stormy night and you wake up with a start: is that the looming feeling of .NET 5 and Umbraco 9 on the horizon?! Upskilling yourself (and your team) can be a daunting prospect for developers, but I’ll guide you through which skills and processes need to change and which you can put on the back-burner. From development environments and .NET 5 concepts to configuration, deployment and hosting - it’s not as big a change as it might sound!
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Mapping our journey to accessibility: What we can learn about accessibility from maps
Accessibility is a fairly new concept in the world of the web. The web itself is only in its early 30's (not much older than myself!) and I think it's fair to say that accessibility wasn't a priority in Web 2.0. To catch up, it makes a lot of sense to stand on the shoulders of giants - what can we learn about accessibility from the real world that we can apply to the web?
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I moved my website to Umbraco Cloud, this is how I got on
One weekend. One website. One rebuild.
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How to set Windows Terminal as GitKraken's default terminal
GitKraken allows you to open the current repository in the terminal by hitting Alt + T but by default, this won't be the new Windows Terminal.
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Umbraco is "The Friendly CMS" and, as a community, we aim to be warm and welcoming, greeting everyone we encounter with a Friendly high-five. But how can we inject some of this Friendliness into our work and make the websites we craft as Friendly as possible?
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Marcin and Callum together with their guests celebrate umbraCoffee's 3rd birthday and talk about the new Community site, the Community Teams "retreat", Hacktoberfest and more.
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This week's guests are Honorary & New Umbraco Community Teams members - Poornima Nayar (@PoornimaNayar) and Joe Glombek (@JoeGlombek)
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Easily open uSync Sync-Pack files
uSync Sync-Pack files (with the .uSync extension) are simply ZIP files and can be viewed in any ZIP viewer, including the one built into Windows.
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Integrate, don't imitate - when an API beats rolling your own
It wasn’t long ago that every agency and freelancer had their own custom CMS they’d use for client projects. We decided that was a bad idea. But we’ll often be seen writing custom code within that standardised CMS. Are we making the same mistakes again?
