Jamie Huskisson

“Because it’s what the client wants”

Jamie Huskisson — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:30:08 +0000

This is likely the most often used excuse for giving the client something you don’t want to give them. To give them something that in your best opinion isn’t what they want at all. As developers, or people in the profession of giving people websites of quality (and I say that because some companies couldn’t [...]

Prioritising development

Jamie Huskisson — Tue, 26 May 2009 20:11:42 +0000

Developers when young in their career are keen to impress. The words “I’ll get on it straight away” are often used and the client ends up being impressed as a result. This works very well and everyone ends up happy when the workload is kept low. The problem occurs when growth accelerates and the developer has [...]

Introduction to directories for Magento developers

Jamie Huskisson — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:32:00 +0000

New developers to Magneto can find it a puzzling system in terms of system architecture. In this article I hope to shed some light on some of the key directories in Magento and what they do so any Magento developers out there aren’t quite as confused when unzipping their first set of Magento install files. Here’s [...]

Another designer trying to take over your project?

Jamie Huskisson — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:05:39 +0000

An ex-designer colleague of mine came to me the other night and asked me for some advice. He’s a freelance designer and has a set fee for a project he’s working on, but has ran into some trouble over the final design. This was his situation: he was two months into a big project the project involved [...]

Take control of hectic, out of control meetings

Jamie Huskisson — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:00:23 +0000

Meetings are a necessary part of life when working with web sites, especially when a freelance PHP developer. But sometimes they can get a little out of control and they take up more of your time than you wanted to give, they go off topic or just end up being the horror of your otherwise [...]

Start developing smarter and stop yourself working late

Jamie Huskisson — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:51:29 +0000

Let me start off by saying if you’re proud of being a workaholic, have no goal for a life and/or are simply “building up your business” then this article probably isn’t for you. This is (in part) how I stopped myself from working 10am to 2am every day of the week and actually went outside [...]

Changing the default Mac screen shot image type

Jamie Huskisson — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:00:59 +0000

I recently had the need to change the default Mac OSX takes it’s screen shots in. There’s some occasions where you need more quality than PNG and some occasions where you need a file anyone can open and simply don’t want PNG as your default. Well, in OSX 10.4 and onwards you can change the default [...]

Adding an unsubscribe link to a Magneto newsletter template

Jamie Huskisson — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:00:38 +0000

A quick tip for Magneto developer’s here, in how to add an unsubscribe link into a newsletter template so that the person can unsubscribe from the newsletter if they chose to do so. Simply add {{var subscriber.getUnsubscriptionLink()}} into your template in order to output the link for the user to unsubscribe. This even works for people [...]

‘Share on Twitter’ link

Jamie Huskisson — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:02:29 +0000

Ever wanted to give your readers, or your client’s readers a chance to share the post quickly on Twitter? The code is straight forward: <a href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=Currently reading http://www.test.com/post-url” title=”Click to share this post on Twitter”>Share on Twitter</a> If you’re using Wordpress and want to automate this, simply use the following to insert the link to the current [...]

Rescue Time is great for efficiency and productivity

Jamie Huskisson — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:00:39 +0000

After seeing Rescue Time I had to give it a go and see what came out of it. The web app allows you to track your time spent across various applications and sites etc. and gives you your productivity and efficiency scores based on that activity. You set productivity on a scale of +2 to -2 [...]

Some things I’ve found some recent CVs

Jamie Huskisson — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 16:00:25 +0000

I’m probably a little over anal when it comes to checking CV’s that people have sent across. But I’ve gone through nearly a hundred from our latest job posting and I felt it would be of benefit to a few people to mention some things I’ve noticed on the vast majority of CV’s sent in [...]

Students: gain valuable experience for free

Jamie Huskisson — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:30:20 +0000

Most students have come into our offices talking about what’s covered in their modules at college/university. They’ve come in, sat down and spoke reasonably passionate about what they want to do within the roles they’re applying for. Though there’s no depth knowledge when questioned, no portfolio or diversity in what they say and no opinion [...]

Why Virgin Media is better than Sky (from a Sky customer)

Jamie Huskisson — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:26:59 +0000

I used to be on Virgin Media, angry at Sky wishing I had Sky One and all the other quality features Sky has instead of being stuck over at Virgin. When I moved into my new house one of the first things I did was purchase myself a nice new Sky Plus box. Boy, was [...]

301 and 302 redirects with .htaccess

Jamie Huskisson — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:49:47 +0000

I’ve been asked this question time and time again, so here we are. How to redirect directories and old URL’s to new ones when moving your site from one domain to another, or launching a new version with re-structured URLs. Here’s a sample structure of a re-direct line: Redirect 301 /about.php http://www.newdomain.com/about /about.php here is the local URL [...]

Common mistakes of outsourcing

Jamie Huskisson — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 19:58:45 +0000

Through my vast amount of experiments in outsourcing I’ve made quite a few mistakes here and there that would have been better avoided if I had simply thought about it before I did it. Here are the common mistakes I’ve either been a part of or have witnessed myself through others, in a hope that [...]

Job openings, full-time or part-time

Jamie Huskisson — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:49:33 +0000

It’s that time of year again! Business is bursting at the seams and we’re looking for a new team member or two to come in either part-time or full-time (depending on your preference) to join us going forward into the future. We work with Linux, Apache, PHP 5 and mySQL 5 technologies; deploying Wordpress, Expression Engine, [...]

Rolled acquired by Juno Media

Jamie Huskisson — Tue, 20 May 2008 08:45:40 +0000

I’ve just announced over on Sausage Roll that Rolled has been acquired by Juno Media. It’s an opportunity to join an established company in the area with a good solid set of existing clients and revenue. Carers Federation and The Coffee Fairy are the two favourites that I’ve worked on so far, being the social [...]

New profile: Kongregate

Jamie Huskisson — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 11:07:47 +0000

Everyone who’s been reading my posts know that I get most of my developing ideas from the many web apps and social networks I visit around the web. So it’s no surprise then when while flexing the muscles of my newly installed and still speedy broadband, I chanced upon another cool website. I stumbled upon Kongregate [...]

JHuskisson 2.5

Jamie Huskisson — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 16:01:13 +0000

It’s not exactly a version 2.5 but we may as well stick with whatever Wordpress version I’m using instead of counting the exact amount of times I’ve changed around this site. It just makes things easier. (Update: WP 2.5.1 released four seconds after making the site live, good timing). I had David over at Rolled put [...]

Clients: things you need for a site launch

Jamie Huskisson — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:01:05 +0000

The following is a general list of questions that can be updated towards what client’s need to do to help people launch their site on time and without any problems. Decisions need to be made well in advance when it comes to launching a site, and this article covers just some of the most important [...]

WoW :o

Jamie Huskisson — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:43:53 +0000

I officially became a fully fledged geek the other day when I signed up and started playing World of Warcraft. The reason I’m making this post is that I know a lot of Final Fantasy Online players (though I don’t play), but I don’t know anyone on World of Warcraft. If anyone wants to get [...]

Robotic customer service

Jamie Huskisson — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:17:03 +0000

I rang up PayPal a few days ago over a dispute, and TV licensing today over a renewal. Both times I was met with a robotic system that plays a pre-recorded voice asking a question, then it requires me to say answers and then it would interpret these and ask another question until everything has [...]

Rolled looking for EE contractor and Front End Developers

Jamie Huskisson — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:01:46 +0000

View the official post at Sausage Roll for more information: http://sausage.rolled.at/job-openings/wanted-front-end-developer-and-expression-engine-contractor Tags: job openings, rolled, sausage roll Add to del.icio.us | Stumble Upon | Digg this No comments have been left so far, why not add yours?. Or talk to me on Twitter

Thoughtless error of the day

Jamie Huskisson — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:00:38 +0000

This appeared upon me entering my rolled.at e-mail address in on a site, despite me also entering my UK address and UK post code, and UK phone numbers. Darn that Austrian domain name for uncovering my true foreign identity. Tags: errors, funnies Add to del.icio.us | Stumble Upon | Digg this 2 comments have been left so far, why not [...]

Music Lessons

Jamie Huskisson — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:23:40 +0000

Seth Godin just posted a rare video of himself doing a full presentation. This presentation is on the music business and takes place at Columbia Records. The video messes up around eight minutes in, but is a fantastic listen in the background. If you haven’t read or don’t own a book by Seth Godin and are [...]