Web Development Blog

Latest Magento, WordPress and general web development news

2024


March 2024

PHP Security in 2024: navigating the evolving landscape

As PHP continues to evolve, so do the threats that target its vulnerabilities. Ensuring robust PHP security practices is paramount to safeguarding sensitive data and... Continue reading

February 2024

Shopify: Set sales prices

Setting sales prices in your Shopify store is a straightforward process that can help boost sales and attract customers. Follow these steps to effectively set... Continue reading

February 2024

Animated SVGs (Scalable Vector Graphics)

Animated SVGs, Scalable Vector Graphics, are increasingly popular choices for adding dynamic elements to websites. Their scalability, lightweight nature, and flexibility make them attractive options... Continue reading

January 2024

Using Magento to get small businesses online

For small businesses aiming to establish a formidable online presence and drive sales, Magento emerges as a powerful e-commerce platform offering a suite of features... Continue reading

January 2024

Creating a brand-promoting brochure website with WordPress

In today's digital age, establishing an online presence is crucial for businesses looking to promote their brand effectively. One powerful tool for achieving this is... Continue reading

2023


December 2023

Using Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs)

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs) have revolutionised website design, offering unparalleled flexibility, scalability, and interactivity. As versatile graphic elements, SVGs can enhance the visual appeal and... Continue reading

November 2023

WordPress for charities and donation websites

In an era where digital presence is paramount, charities are increasingly turning to online platforms to raise awareness and funds for their causes. WordPress, with... Continue reading

October 2023

Magento database structure

The database structure of Magento is designed to store and manage various aspects of an e-commerce website, including products, orders, customers, and more. Understanding the... Continue reading

September 2023

Designing websites for accessibility

In the ever-evolving landscape of web design, the balancing act between accessibility and aesthetic appeal remains a crucial consideration. As the digital realm becomes increasingly... Continue reading

August 2023

Accessibility in ecommerce websites

In the digital age, where online shopping has become an integral part of our lives, ecommerce websites hold the key to business success. Amidst the... Continue reading

July 2023

How to secure WordPress in 2023?

Securing a WordPress website involves a combination of practices, including using secure hosting configurations, regularly updating WordPress and its plugins/themes, and implementing strong security measures.... Continue reading

July 2023

How can I speed-up my Magento website?

Speed optimisation is crucial for a Magento website as it directly impacts user experience, conversions, and search engine rankings. You should prepare your server so... Continue reading

June 2023

.htaccess: Enable GZIP Compression for Magento

Enable Gzip compression on your server to compress your website's files before sending them to the visitor's browser. This significantly reduces the file size, resulting... Continue reading

May 2023

Project Management Methodologies

Agile, Scrum, and Waterfall are three of the most popular project management methodologies used in software development. Each of these methodologies has its own advantages... Continue reading

April 2023

Popular Payment Gateways

Ecommerce payment gateways are critical components of any online store, as they enable merchants to accept payments from customers securely and conveniently. There are many... Continue reading

March 2023

Latest web image formats

There are a number of new image formats that have been developed in recent years to improve the performance and quality of images on websites.... Continue reading

February 2023

Using OpenAI tools in ecommerce environments

OpenAI is a leading artificial intelligence (AI) research organisation that has the potential to revolutionise the ecommerce industry. By leveraging OpenAI’s cutting-edge AI technologies, ecommerce... Continue reading

February 2023

Why is WordPress still so popular?

WordPress WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) in the world, and there are several reasons why it is so widely... Continue reading

January 2023

Mobile-first Web Design

Mobile-first web design Mobile-first web design is a design approach that prioritises mobile devices when designing a website. Instead of designing a website for desktop... Continue reading

2022


December 2022

Web development in Northern Ireland

Web development in Northern Ireland is a thriving industry, with many talented and skilled individuals and companies offering a range of services. Northern Ireland is... Continue reading

November 2022

Getting Started with Magento Open Source

Magento Northern Ireland Open Source allows you to build a unique online store from the ground up. Standard Features Magento Open Source includes everything you... Continue reading

October 2022

Redirects

Apache, Nginx, PHP, JavaScript and Meta redirects There are two main redirect options 301 for a permanent redirect. Use this when the redirect is pointing... Continue reading

September 2022

WordPress - WebP and AVIF Image Formats

An introduction to image optimisation in WordPress Northern Ireland Image Optimisation is an increasingly important step improve page speed and search engine performance of your... Continue reading

September 2022

Magento - WebP Image Format Conversion

An introduction to image optimisation in Magento Northern Ireland Image Optimisation is an increasingly important step improve page speed and search engine performance of your... Continue reading

July 2022

WordPress CLI Commands

WP-CLI is the official command line tool for interacting with and managing your WordPress Northern Ireland installation in command line. WP-CLI is the command-line interface... Continue reading

July 2022

Lighthouse and Google Fonts

I recently had performance issues on Google Lighthouse due to the fonts used on the website. The Google Fonts I used were classified as a... Continue reading

July 2022

Why WordPress?

WordPress is currently used by over seventy-five million websites worldwide. This is primarily thanks to its flexible, customisable and user-centred admin panel making it the... Continue reading

June 2022

Mortgage IQ

Mortgage IQ know the mortgage journey can be stressful. Their dedicated team go the extra mile to ensure your complete satisfaction, from your application to... Continue reading

June 2022

Cookie Script and GDPR

Quick guide to using Cookie Script for GDPR and cookie tracking. Cookie Script is a tool that helps website owners comply with cookie consent requirements... Continue reading

May 2022

Set-up a Rackspace CDN service

Quick guide for setting-up a CDN on Rackspace. CDN Set-up Log into your Rackspace MyCloud account. Click into Storage > CDN then “Create Service”. In... Continue reading

April 2022

Web Image Formats

The image file formats that are most commonly used on the web are listed below. Classic Image Formats These are the classic image formats universally... Continue reading

March 2022

Aheadworks switch to subscription model

Aheadworks will be removing Composer keys and download access for existing customers and switching entirely to a subscription model. From February 2022 Aheadworks announced it... Continue reading

February 2022

ProtonMail secure email

ProtonMail is an encrypted email service that takes a radically different approach to email security. In 2014 the Swiss company ProtonMail became the first email... Continue reading

February 2022

Magento Store Hierarchy

Before you start building-out your Magento website you must first plan your store hierarchy. Magento’s hierarchy is referred to throughout your store’s configuration. Each store... Continue reading

January 2022

WordPress Development Belfast, Northern Ireland

If you are a business in Belfast or Northern Ireland who is looking to expand your presence online, WordPress Northern Ireland is a great platform... Continue reading

2021


December 2021

Shopify: Add Breadcrumbs to Liquid Templates

How to add breadcrumbs to your Shopify Northern Ireland liquid templates Breadcrumbs are a secondary navigation aid that helps users easily understand the relation between... Continue reading

December 2021

Optimising Magento 2 in Easy Steps

Some (fairly) simple step-by-step instructions to ensure your Magento Belfast 2 store is running the best it can. While most of these options should only... Continue reading

September 2021

The Future of Magento

The Mage Open Source Community Alliance have published an open letter to the Magento community to announce a new initiative designed to focus on ensuring... Continue reading

August 2021

Google Sheets to PHP Array

This PHP function accepts a public Google Sheets URL and converts it into a PHP array. You can use the array to either display the... Continue reading

August 2021

Apache VirtualHost with Reverse Proxy

This post documents the process of setting up a reverse proxy to load one (Origin) website in the subdirectory of another. During this process the... Continue reading

July 2021

Magento 2 Blog Extensions

While Magento Belfast isn’t the go-to platform for blogs it can be useful for store owners to have a quick and easy way to post... Continue reading

July 2021

AOS: The Animate On Scroll Library

AOS is a simple CSS/JS based animation on scroll library by Michał Sajnóg. Easy to install and highly configurable. This is a basic introduction, there... Continue reading

June 2021

Upcoming changes to eBay's PayPal Payments

Over the course of 2021 eBay will be incrementally changing how it works with sellers. Changes include updates to the fee structure, how fees are... Continue reading

May 2021

What does Shopify do?

Shopify Belfast is an ecommerce platform that hosts your website for selling products and services. It helps organize the layout of your store's appearance through... Continue reading

May 2021

Choose a better browser

A run down of the most popular web browsers including Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Opera as well some alternate options if you'd like something different.... Continue reading

April 2021

Notes: Magento 2 Directory Structure

Magento 1 A brief reminder of the Magento 1 folder structure: app/code followed by either /core for core files /community for third party extensions /local... Continue reading

March 2021

Magento 2.4.2

The latest version of Magento Northern Ireland has been released - Magento version 2.4.2 is the usual mix of security updates, performance and some improvements... Continue reading

March 2021

PHP cURL Requests with JSON or XML

The following post will explain how to use PHP/cURL to retrieve data in JSON or XML and process it for using in your PHP application... Continue reading

February 2021

Global Payments: Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) and 3D Secure 2

The roll out of 3D Secure 2 has been a long drawn-out process not helped by the COVID–19 pandemic. Part of the update has included... Continue reading

January 2021

Shopify: Create a Discount Code

A quick guide to help set-up a discount code in a Shopify Belfast store. First login to your Shopify store admin area and click on... Continue reading

2020


November 2020

What is Magento Open Source?

Previously known as Magento Community Edition, Magento Open Source is the ecommerce platform. Adobe which acquired Magento in 2018 has confirmed the open source edition... Continue reading

October 2020

WordPress - Rename the Posts section in Admin

The PHP script below can be added to the WordPress Theme functions.php file. It will rename the standard “posts” section to “stories”. Replace ‘stories’/’story’ with... Continue reading

September 2020

Moving on from Magento: OpenMage and Mage One

While many companies have already upgraded to Magento 2 or moved on to alternative ecommerce platforms like Shopify, many smaller companies or larger companies with... Continue reading

August 2020

Notes on Transferring a WordPress site to AWS

Some notes on transferring an existing WordPress site to Amazon Web Services and some common issues. MySQL Import Fail If the import fails on import... Continue reading

July 2020

Install XAMPP on Ubuntu using Terminal

To install XAMPP on Ubuntu, you can follow these steps: Download XAMPP: Visit the official XAMPP website and download the Linux version of XAMPP. Choose... Continue reading

June 2020

Who should use WooCommerce?

In the dynamic realm of e-commerce, choosing the right platform is pivotal to the success of any online venture. For businesses seeking a reliable and... Continue reading

May 2020

WooCommerce payment providers

Choosing the best payment gateways for WooCommerce depends on factors such as your location, target market, and specific business needs. Several payment gateways are widely... Continue reading

April 2020

Coronavirus: Ecommerce in a Pandemic

Online sellers need to keep on top of the impact COVID—19 is and will continue to have on retailers. The links below are some thoughts... Continue reading

March 2020

Coronavirus: Managing your Magento ecommerce store in Lockdown

The UK has now entered lockdown with everyone being told to stay at home. The spread of coronavirus (COVID—19) continues to increase day by day... Continue reading

March 2020

Magento 2: Show address fields on the user registration form

This post shows you how to add the customer address fields to the customer registration page. It uses the existing setShowAddressFields method for displaying the... Continue reading

February 2020

Security: DNS over HTTPS

Whenever you visit a website, even if you are using a site with SSL, the DNS query that converts the web address into an IP... Continue reading

February 2020

Website Optimisation with Pingdom Speed Test

There are plenty of website speed tests out there, some are better than others. Pingdom is one of these tools, this post explains how to... Continue reading

February 2020

Choose Magento ecommerce in Belfast, Northern Ireland

If you are a business in Belfast or Northern Ireland who is looking to expand your presence online, Magento is a great platform to take... Continue reading

January 2020

Best web browsers for security and privacy

A few alternative browser options for those looking to protect themselves against analytics, tracking, surveillance, and even censorship. Mozilla Firefox Iridium Ungoogled Chrome Tor Browser... Continue reading

2019


November 2019

WordPress Security - Nginx Hardening

Techniques for hardening WordPress Sites running on an Nginx server to enhance security. Limit Access to Admin Panel Limit XMLRPC Access This will lock down... Continue reading

November 2019

WordPress Security - Hardening Introduction and Plugins

This post is from 2019, it may be out-of-date. For up-to-date information try: How to secure WordPress This post is designed to give an overview... Continue reading

November 2019

Simple jQuery Cookie Pop-up

This is a simple EU cookie notification pop-up for legacy websites. All that’s required is jQuery. Add the following HTML, jQuery script and apply some... Continue reading

November 2019

Automatically Deploy website from Github

This walk through will allow you to set-up a website to automatically deploy on a remote server whenever updates are pushed to the GitHub repository.... Continue reading

October 2019

Magento 2.3.3

The latest version of Magento has been released - Magento version 2.3.3 is all about security and performance. Security Support has been added to Magento... Continue reading

October 2019

Setting up WordPress on Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale... Continue reading

October 2019

Choosing the right ecommerce platform

Choosing the right ecommerce platform is an important decision for any business looking to sell their products online. The three options below are tried-and-tested ecommerce... Continue reading

October 2019

Jekyll: Post Loop in Liquid Templates

Jekyll uses the Liquid templating language to process templates. This post provides a basic example to show the five latest blog posts and highlight the... Continue reading

October 2019

[Notes] WordPress + React Docker Starter Kit

I’ve been experimenting with a Headless WordPress + React Starter Kit from Postlight. It’s an automated toolset to create a powerful web publishing tool. Headerless... Continue reading

June 2019

Remove outdated content from Google Search Results

From time to time unwanted pages can appear in Google Search Results. Could be a temporary page, old content or even a test page that’s... Continue reading

May 2019

Magento 1: End of life

Magento 1’s expected end of life is fast approaching. Many, many merchants are still up and running on the system need to think about what... Continue reading

April 2019

Magento 2 Configurable Product Import

Magento 2 allows configurable products to be imported through the CMS. Unlike Magento 1 where Magmi generally did all the hard work when it came... Continue reading

April 2019

Magento Code: Magento 2 Cache Refresh Script

This is a stand alone script which can be called to refresh the cache in Magento 2 The script hooks into Bootstrap to generate a... Continue reading

April 2019

Magento Code: Magento 2 Indexer Script

This is a stand alone script which can be called to reindex a Magento 2 Site The script will create a unique instance of the... Continue reading

March 2019

Magento 1 to Magento 2 Migration Process (Part 1)

While the Magento 1 platform is still active and supported there’s less urgency to switch-up to Magento 2. There are benefits to upgrading to Magento... Continue reading

March 2019

Magento 1 Ongoing Support and End of life

Some thoughts on the expected demise of Magento 1. Magento 1 - Official End Date The official end date of the Magento 1 project was... Continue reading

January 2019

Introduction to Ubuntu MATE

This article was written in 2019, it provides a general overview of Ubuntu MATE, highlighting its key features and benefits, and why I decided to... Continue reading

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