MediaGirl http://www.mediagirl.com.com English info@mediagirl.com Copyright 2015 2015-02-26T22:09:01+00:00 26 February 2015 SnipCart Project Highlighted Sackwear.com, a Craft & SnipCart project I completed late last year, is this month's featured project on the SnipCart blog. The website was designed by Tim McGrath, Design Director & Partner of 3 Advertising.

I appreciated the ease of integration on this project. I was able to use Craft to manage my data and Snipcart to offload the shopping cart & checkout functionality. They worked very well together.

Read the full post on the SnipCart blog]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/snipcart_project_highlighted/ 26 February 2015 SnipCart & Craft Hangout SnipCart with Craft CMS. A full recap of the hangout was posted to the SnipCart blog or watch the full recording below:

]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/snipcart_craft_hangout/ 13 June 2013 EE Postcast Guest Hosting Gig
EE Error Pages with Ryan Battles
While error pages like 404 Page Not Found are “standard” server messages, they don’t always present your site visitors with useful information. Ryan Battles joins the show to talk about ways to make your server and site error messages more effective. He discusses how developers should approach their ExpressionEngine templates to ensure that a correct 404 redirect occurs, and shares tips for customizing EE’s system messages and front-end form validation.]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/ee_postcast_guest_hosting_gig/ 15 May 2013 Join Me At The Peers Conference Peers Conference in Chicago (June 26-28) and I'm excited to share the details of my 5 years working on the project I will be talking about. It's a site unlike most others running on ExpressionEngine because of the high number of entries in the database (~725K) coupled with regular high traffic, frequent article publishing & big traffic spikes. This is a case study talk which will detail walls I've hit along the way and fixes that have helped at each step to stabilize the website.

MediaGirl ToolBoxGet your ticket today... Early bird price is $299 for 15+ speakers, breakout coding sessions, business roundtables and one-on-one code review. I'm really looking forward to meeting you there and honors to have been invited to speak!

Periódico Zócalo: Lessons learned while working with a high traffic EE site

Launched in July 2008 by Anna Brown, Periodico Zocalo is a daily newspaper website serving the northern Mexican state of Coahuila and running on ExpressionEngine. The site currently averages ~10 million page views per month and has ~725K entries in the database with 500-700 new articles added daily. During this talk, Anna will share the project's ups & downs, advanced optimization tips and lessons learned while working solo on a large content EE site prone to traffic spikes driven by breaking stories.]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/join_me_at_the_peers_conference/ 06 December 2012 EE Focused Stack Exchange Site ExpressionEngine focused Stack Exchange site is live and in public beta! Please take a moment to signup to show your support... Use the site to ask all EE related questions and take a few minutes each day to help others in the community by answering questions.]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/ee_focused_stack_exchange_site/ 27 October 2012 Proposed ExpressionEngine Stack Exchange Site Stack Exchange proposed site specific for ExpressionEngine developers.

I am in complete support of this proposed site and am doing everything I can do to get the proposal to Beta stage. Please join us by "committing" to the proposal on the Stack Exchange Area 51 site.

In addition to committing to the EE proposal, you will also need to build a reputation of 200 or higher on one of the 90 available Q&A Stack Exchange sites.

We also encourage you to post any and all ExpressionEngine questions to the StackOverflow.com website until the proposed EE site it up and running. Post a link to the question on Twitter with the #eecms hash tag and you will get very quick answers to your questions.

Suggested Reading
- Why Stack Exchange matters
- Help Support The Stack Overflow ExpressionEngine Proposal
- Area 51 Commit Percent]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/proposed_expressionengine_stack_exchange_site/ 25 April 2012 EE Insider EE Insider. The website, managed by the talented Ryan Irelan, focuses on the latest EE news and information coming out of the community.

On the site you'll find ExpressionEngine addon reviews, video tutorials, new addon announcements, highlighted ExpressionEngine websites and lots of how-to tips and advice.]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/ee_insider/ 30 June 2011 ExpressionEngine & Newspapers ExpressionEngine rocks large content sites and scales well as data and traffic grows. Below are four of my projects that are good examples of what EE can do:

- Zocalo is the largest traffic and content site I've worked on. It's for a daily Mexican newspaper.

- Gulf Coast Business Review is a weekly business newspaper.

- zRecs Network is a group of online blogs focused on kid related content.

- Inkling Magazine is an online magazine on science and women.]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/expressionengine_newspapers/ 26 May 2011 Top 10 jQuery Snippets
Here's a great page of the top jQuery snippets for bookmarking... The 10 most used jQuery Snippets.]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/top_10_jquery_snippets/ 03 March 2011 Devote:ee Devote:ee website is my favorite ExpressionEngine hangout. The site centralizes ExpressionEngine modules/plugins/extensions/accessories in one location and gives developers and easy way to buy addons. Not all addons are represented on the site but it is by far the most comprehensive list anywhere on the web.]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/devoteee/ 13 September 2010 New Tools
The latest software I'm trying is Jing which installs on PC and Mac. So far I'm liking it a lot. You can capture the screen or capture a video of what's happening on the screen. Once the capture renders, you have the option of adding text, arrows or highlights, then can share via screencast.com, save it or copy it to your clipboard.]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/new_tools/ 14 June 2010 Hello Facebook MediaGirl, Inc. page on Facebook if you'd like to follow what's going on here in the office.

]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/hello_facebook/ 09 June 2010 Nothing For Free
I'm not a taco stand, I can't do $8.50, I don't do tests, I don't roll costs over to the next project, I can't help you out, I can't "do this", I don't need "opportunities" and I won't show you how I made it!

Warning... If you are one of these clients, I'm booked for life with other work.

Mad love to my awesome clients.

]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/nothing_for_free_here/ 29 May 2010 Where Are The Women? Lea Alcantara and Leslie Flinger.

Come on EllisLabs, there are a ton of amazing women designers and developers who have rallied around ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter... surely you could have balanced that speaker list a little better.

MediaGirl ToolBox]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/where_are_the_women/ 27 May 2010 One Awesome Database
MediaGirl ToolBox


What are the odds... Two nutty database up-times in the same month.

MediaGirl ToolBox

Here's a third one...

MediaGirl ToolBox

]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/one_awesome_database/ 16 May 2010 ExpressionEngine Coder ExpressionEngine coder and I'm pretty happy with that decision when I reflect on it. When I started I had the fortunate luck of being the go-to coder for an ad agency in Albuquerque that was just getting started themselves. Thus started my career as a coder for hire to agencies and designers.

My tool of choice at the time and now is ExpressionEngine for a myriad of reasons... the first being that I know any design I'm sent will work just fine within EE's templates. There might be a few tweaks needed, but nothing that will have me telling a client I can't build their project. Top that with the explosion of great EE addons and modules that have been coming out over the last couple of years and I know I can build just about any project that comes across my desk.

That isn't to say I don't tell people EE isn't right for their project... I actually say it a couple of times a month and as EE is becoming more popular, I seem to be saying it more often. Folks come to me saying "I want to use EE, oh and here are my project specs". They've selected EE as the software without fully understanding the software's limits. I personally don't get involved in projects that aren't right for EE. I don't want to be that coder who says "sorry, it actually can't be done" a month after the project started or "sorry, I need more money" to have someone recode EE to do what you want. I ask a ton of questions and know for sure I can build the project before I will quote it.

In the end, ExpressionEngine has proven to be a solid tool for me and I would like to tip my hat to all my fellow coders and to the folks at Ellis Labs who make it all possible. Cheers!]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/expressionengine_coder/ 13 May 2010 Digital Boot Camp to Groom Agency Talent
Consider a trip to Colorado where the University of Colorado at Boulder is offering a certificate through their Boulder Digital Works program. The class work focuses on building new media creativity and technical skills. But don't expect this education to come cheap... be prepared to fork over $25,000 for Fall 2010 tuition... all due upfront by August 23, 2010.

IMHO, design and programming skills are different and should be treated as two different tracks in such a program. Designers are generally not programmers and programmers aren't designers.]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/digital_boot_camp_to_groom_agency_talent/ 13 May 2010 HTML5 & CSS3 Readiness
So the question is, how many HTML5 features are supported by today’s web browser?

Check our this interactive graph for details >>

MediaGirl ToolBox]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/html5_css3_readiness/ 08 May 2010 50 best female web designers around the world
The following list, curated by indeziner, highlights indeziner's 50 best female web designers from around the world.

>> 50 best female web designers around the world

I recognize a couple ExpressionEngine designers on the list. I'd be happy to code any of their projects. Keep up the great work ladies!

MediaGirl ToolBox]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/50_best_female_web_designers_around_the_world/ 31 March 2010 HTML5 New Tags about the new tags that will available in HTML5.

  • <article> tag defines an article

  • <aside> tag defines content aside from the page content

  • <audio> tag defines sound content

  • <canvas> tag defines graphics

  • <command> tag defines a command button

  • <datalist> tag defines a dropdown list

  • <details> tag defines details of an element

  • <dialog> tag defines a dialog (conversation)

  • <embed> tag defines external interactive content or plugin

  • <figure> tag defines a group of media content, and their caption

  • <footer> tag defines a footer for a section or page

  • <header> tag defines a header for a section or page

  • <hgroup> tag defines information about a section in a document

  • <keygen> tag defines a generated key in a form

  • <mark> tag defines marked text

  • <meter> tag defines measurement within a predefined range

  • <nav> tag defines navigation links

  • <output> tag defines some types of output

  • <progress> tag defines progress of a task of any kind

  • <rp> tag is used in ruby annotations to define what to show browsers that do not support the ruby element.

  • <rt> tag defines explanation to ruby annotations.

  • <ruby> tag defines ruby annotations.

  • <section> tag defines a section

  • <source> tag defines media resources

  • <time> tag defines a date/time

  • <video> tag defines a video



]]> http://www.mediagirl.com/blog/entry/html5_new_tags/