After a bit of a break from Websanova we’re finally back with a redesign and some new plugins which we will be showcasing in the following week. It’s been a long time since we’ve made any design tweaks to the site and it was starting to look very old and outdated. We’ve made tons of changes both on the surface and behind the scenes in the hope to make the blog easier to read and more accessible on a variety of platforms. We also wanted to streamline our processes so that we can focus more on posting and writing articles rather than worrying about little details on the back end. With that here are some key highlights along with some before and after shots. Read Full Article →

Staying relevant in the technology industry can be difficult, it seems there are so many new things to keep up with, let alone keeping up with the technologies you already know. I’ve seen too many developers simply learn skills, but not refine or improve them. You get caught up with trying to just produce as much code as you can and don’t think about producing more code in less time.

I always spent a lot of time working on side projects and would always make an effort to play with some new library or framework, however it always seemed like a never ending battle. So about a year ago I decided to try something new, I started spending 30 minutes a day reading up on something. Whether that was reading the jQuery docs, a book on advanced PHP topics or simply studying algorithms and object oriented design didn’t matter, the key was to spend 30 focused and uninterrupted minutes a day learning something new. Read Full Article →

I recently came across this post on HN about a little chrome plugin you can use to block your internet access until you are done writing some code. It’s very true that the internet can be an easy distraction when trying to get some work done and the little plugin is a nice little tool to assist with that. When I really want to focus on something I typically turn off all my instant messengers, put my phone on silent flip it over and start hacking. Read Full Article →