Following on from my post on the Top 10 Mac Productivity Apps, I’m now going to share what I feel, are the top 10 web development apps.
Now, obviously my choices will not suite many programmers. For this reason, please bear in mind that I’m a PHP developer, and my choices focus on PHP/HTML/CSS development. There are going to be a few repeated apps, simply because there’s a fine line between the two subjects.
Ok, lets get started! Continue reading
I’ve recently been working on modifying my workspace to allow for greater productivity. This includes my physical desk setup as well as my desktop and apps. This is going to be the first in a series of posts on Mac productivity, and where better to start than with the Apps!
I do a lot of web development on my Mac’s. My current setup is to have my iMac as my ‘main’ display. To my far right I have my new MacBook Pro that I purchased on the day they came out (yes…I’m a fanatic). The MBP has a second display connected which sits in between the iMac and MBP. I’ve got FireFox running on that display, showing phpMyAdmin, Terminal and DirectAdmin. The main MBP display just runs Skype and iTunes. I then use my iPhone to control iTunes remotely to save having to turn around to keep skipping those naff songs that I’ve not gotten round to removing from my library!
On the iMac I do all the coding and design. I also have a Continue reading
If you are reading this, then RickyMills.com is on its new server, and has its new layout! You may remember me saying I was designing a new layout a few weeks back. Since I finished college last week I decided to get it finished and uploaded.
The layout was designed by myself, with the idea of being fairly simple and easy on the eyes. I have to say I did get a little inspiration from Paul Stamatiou who has a great site for anyone interested in Sillicon Vally related stuff! I also used a piece of code, provided by him on his website to pull my twitter status. I’ve not really used twitter much in the past, but decided I would make much more regular additions to it.
Another new addition is the Skribit block over to the right. This allows people to make suggestions for things they would like me to post about!
So there we have it….the new design!
I’ll be making a few more regular posts now that I’ve finished at college 
I’ve been wanting to get my own unique site up here in a while. At the moment I use a free WordPress layout which is great (minus the bug in IE, but I’ve come to expect those!). I started working on a custom wordpress theme for this site yesterday. I didn’t get very far however as I realized that after my upgrade to OS X Leopard I had forgotten to reinstall Photoshop (which I will do today).
Once the new layouts completed I will post it up for download should anyone wish to use it! I did think about moving away from WordPress. A guy I met on the VPSLink forums, Kelvin recently did the same and taught himself Python. His site is now running a totally custom system, and looks fantastic. I was thinking about doing the same, however I really don’t want to learn another language until I’ve sorted some more important things out (I.E WSDReg, Sites, etc). I may still do it, however not until at least next year.
I also was talking to my friend Mike about something I wanted to do. I am planning on creating myself my own management area. Basically with all the sites I have, if I want to check the emails I end up having to jump around all over the place to get to the accounts. So I decided I would make my own mail client (in php) which would allow me to add additional accounts to it from multiple sites, thus providing me with a single interface to manage the accounts with!
At the same time I also want to make myself a code library with reusable code, so I thought why not make it a complete “localhost” system to manage all my web related projects! I’ve not started the mail part, but the code library is getting there.I *may* give the system out when its completed, however I’m not 100% sure if I wish to do that yet.
I will also be moving RickyMills.com to a better host soon. I’ve been with VPSLink for a long time, however my VPS has stated rebooting, and the LXAdmin control panel is god awful to use…the amount of times I’ve had to reboot the server because it ends up hanging on a command or tells me the “back-end is being rebooted” is unbelievable!
VPSLink are really great, but LXAdmin sucks something terrible! So I’ll be getting a decent shared host that I can get a good deal with. Not sure who yet however it wont be until I finish college (about 3 weeks time).
I think that’s it for now!