Kevin Pirnie' Articles

By: Kevin On: November 18, 2013

Posted In: Development ModX MySQL PHP Server Management Software caching design practices development hosting modx php web design web development web hosting

I have become quite the ModX lover lately, I use it to run my site, as well as a great number of client websites and find that it is extremely speedy, easy to use (from my perspective), and easy to teach. There are a few things I don't like about it, but this post is not about that (well... at least not all of them :)).  This post is about SEO and URL Friendliness. Now ModX has a great built-in way to allow us to have friendly URLs for our content resources, however, by default all HTML content pages are given the .html extension.  While this normally is not a big deal, I am a bit of a stickler when it comes to my URL's.… Read More

By: Kevin On: October 9, 2013

Posted In: CSS Design Development Grid HTML Javascript Mobile First SEO Wordpress compression css design practices development hosting javascript mobile first mobile friendly seo speed up the web web design web development

Mobile internet browsing is on the rise people!  As of this posting the number of people browsing the internet from a mobile device is up to 18% vs. a declining 82% browsing from a desktop computer.  These numbers are up 6% since this time last year. ~ http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-ww-monthly-201209-201309 What does this tell us? Well, plain and simple, as time goes on and mobile devices keep improving we will see these numbers reverse... meaning soon enough it will be 82% browsing from mobile! How does this relate to web design? It means that we as web developers really need to take a step back and start planning more for the future of our clients and their online presence(s).  Even if it means we have to take a… Read More

By: Kevin On: March 20, 2013

Posted In: Development ModX PHP Software Source Code design practices development modx php web design web development

Hey folks time for another quick article to get your ModX site running tip-top.    This one will allow you to 'prefetch' your sites pages for a faster browsing experience.   Now ModX has a pretty fantastic caching mechanism already built in, but I find that if your site has a lot of pages, sometimes that can take a bit on the initial load.This will take care of that issue.First and fore-most you will need to make sure to include the latest jQuery library in your templates.  This can be found at: jquery.comNext you will need to create a php file inside your 'wp-content' folder.   I usually create a few default folders inside this... one happens to be called 'php'Once you have the file… Read More

By: Kevin On: March 1, 2013

Posted In: Design Development Server Management Wordpress caching compression css design practices development javascript speed up the web web design web development

Here's a question and an "issue" I see all the time... ME: "Ok, your site has been re-designed and is up and running.  Please make sure to clear out your web browsers cache so you can see the latest version." CLIENT: "I still can't see the latest version, how do I clear my web browsers cache, and what is it?" Of course, to me this seems like a simple thing to do, but most people don't even know what your browser cache is. Simply put, (and I say these exact words to my clients) "It's little pieces of your website that are stored somewhere on your computer, so the next time you view your site it does not take as long to load." Each time… Read More

By: Kevin On: June 1, 2012

Posted In: .Net Design Development Mobile First Server Management Software Source Code asp.net caching compression css javascript mobile first mobile friendly speed up the web vb.net web design web development

Boy oh boy, it's about time we go another one of these "Speed Up The Web" articles out here. As with our last article we showed you how you can develop your ASP.Net website and automatically concatenate your scripts and stylesheets. This article will show you a nice and easy caching mechanism for all your static content. This of course, assumes you do not have use of a CDN (Content Delivery Network). Now, here at o7th Web Design, we have built ourselves a CDN, and for the purposes of this article, we are going to show you how we achieved the caching, and gzipping utilized throughout it. First and foremost, let's get the obvious out of the way first: What Is Caching? What Is GZipping?… Read More