January 25th, 2009
As many of you will know, the preferred web server for coding in php is called apache. Apache is by far the most popular web server software around, and dominates the web server market place, even though its free :-)!
One of the projects I’m currently working on for Students Work has required me to delve into the world of URL rewrites, which has forced me to look under the hood of apache (all be it only slightly). Now I do have some limited experience in dealing with apache, as I have my own web server set up at home, for a number of personal projects I have as well as a q&a server. So the task of editing httpd.conf files and creating .htaccess files didn’t seem like to much hard work.
So on Monday morning after a brief discussion with James about the direction he saw the project going, I set about creating the rules for the URL rewrites. Now it may be worth mentioning that RegeX is by far my least favourite scripting language, and I positively suck at writing it. I think I must have missed that lecture or been hung-over, one of the two. So I was instantly worried when I looked at the 1st google result contained lengthy and daunting amount of regex, so I quickly closed that page, and searched for the ‘beginners guide’.
Which brought up this fantastically simple, yet complete, easy to follow and very informative guide. The site uses very simple examples to explain the principles of the rewrite, and provides an easy to follow workflow from start to finish.
The end result now means that instead of the search URL having a value:
“/results.php?title=part%20%time&submit=Search”
We get a value:
“/search/part time”
As you can see the new value of the URL is much easier to read and interpret for the user.
Stew
Tags: Apache, rewrite, URL
Posted in Tech selection | No Comments »
January 12th, 2009
We are please to announce that this blog has now been optimized for use with the iPhone or iPod-Touch.
The process was extreamly easy, and a basic 30 second job, however the results I feel speak for its self. The system uses the iWPhone WordPress Plugin and Theme to automatically detect if the visitor is using an i-Phone/Touch device.
So if you own a iPhone or iPod Touch, you will now be able to read the students work blog with far more ease!
StewTags: iphone, ipod touch, optimisation
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January 9th, 2009
Blog and Facebook re-design
Over the past few months, I have become extremely interested in the area of web-design, and taken an active interest in following the latest trends within the web-design industry. I have discovered a hell of a lot about the way sites are built, with the main discovery being the whole web is built around WordPress!!!
Seeing the level of beauty that people had managed to achieve using WordPress spurred me to try and do the same with our blog here at Students Work. I have started the process of re-designing the blog, and have completed work on the Facebook redesign (SW application).
I also wanted to share with you some of the sites that have provided me with inspiration, help and guidance with my designing. It might at this point be worth mentioning that I have about as much design ability as a small ant, and that my skills with Illustration and Photoshop are extremely poor and using fireworks is not the best tool for creating flawless designs, however it works(ish) for me ☺!!
Sites that have helped me: -
1) CSS-Ticks – With out doubt the best site I’ve come across! Chris Coyier is a fantastic designer and an extremely good coder, and is not shy about sharing his thoughts, and wisdom with the rest of the world. Defiantly worth checking out for both designers and programmers
2) Script and Style – Another of Chris Coyiers’ creations, this is a collection of links to tutorials, and tips for designing. Again a well-designed site in its own right, and its contents is excellent! Well worth a quick browse in my opinion.
3) CSS Globe – This site specialises in topic of CSS (cascading style sheets), and provides a lot of tutorials, ideas, tips and tricks, as well as useful examples that you can use to inspire your creative fibers!
4) DevSnippets – Another link gathering site, often provides links to free stuff, like icons, templates etc… defiantly worth checking out on a regular basis just to see what they’ve got going on!
5) ScrnShots – A very simple idea, but massively useful for generating idea’s and seeing what other designers are doing with their designs and websites.
I think that just about raps up this post on designing, hope you enjoy the sites I’ve recommended, and if you’ve got any suggestions for me, leave us a comment!
Cheers
Stew
Tags: css, design, Facebook, re-design, Students Work, wordpress
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January 6th, 2009
A merry new year to you all!
And what a busy 2009 it has been so far!! Both my work and social calendar have been ram jammed since Christmas (although I must say the work side is defiantly taken back its control over the past few days). I’m now back up in Leeds, after working from Doncaster (home of the brave) during the holiday.
Our office is now extremely tidy (in comparison) now it features a few new white boards, so I can now doodle on that rather than wasting endless amount of paper, jotting down code chucks, work flows and other mindless information, that seem extremely useful at the time ☺.
With Students Work going from strength to strength, I will say it again expect big things from us this year, hugely big things!!
Stew
Tags: 2009, Update
Posted in Update | No Comments »
January 5th, 2009
To you all!
We (the team & I) hope you had a great break and are ready to see the new Students Work website! We’ve been working hard over the festive period to make sure that we are ready to bring you the best experience for our BETA launch.
You can post a job, search for part time work and volunteer opportunities from our partners (who provide the syndicated content) and give us feedback on what features you would like to see come to the site next.
Coming in the very near future we will have news of the our charitable projects for 2009 and the companies and recruiters supporting them.
Stay tuned for more news as Marco will keep you updated on our progress with partners and Stew on all things technical / how he is struggling to work off all the mince pies he has been eating.
Hope you had a good one and you’re looking forward to a big 2009,
All the best
James & Co.
Tags: 2009, beta, Launch, new years, Students Work, team, Update
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December 23rd, 2008
Well,
It is that time of year again, where you suddenly remember you’ve forgot to buy that pair of socks for Uncle Dave, and your mum only asked you to bring one thing for Christmas dinner, but ASDA, Tesco and Morrison’s have all JUST sold out of Turkeys. (Not that it has ever happened to me!!)
But on a work related note, I really can’t wait for the new year to come! I am predicting big things for Students Work next year, as we strive to becoming the UK’s leading provider of part-time and casual labour jobs.
So with out further a do, I wish a happy Christmas/Holiday/Religious Festival/Non-Religious Festival/Whatever it is that you will be celebrating this holiday!
Festively
Stew
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December 22nd, 2008
Hi Guys – hope you are all well and looking forward to the Christmas holidays.
As usual we’ve been working ourselves to the bone here at Students Work but it’s all been worth it as in the next few weeks we expect to have thousands of jobs posted up on the site so watch this space.
We’re finally taking a well earned couple of days off for Christmas and would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for following our progress and wish you all a very happy new year.
Watch out for the launch of our Beta version 1 site in early 2009 – we’re very proud of it.
Happy Christmas to all.
Marco x
Tags: Happy Christmas
Posted in Update | No Comments »
December 12th, 2008
A widget is “an object used to hold data and present an interface to the user”. In other words it is a small application that is designed to give the user a quick reference point to information. For example many widgets can be found to give the user information about the weather, stocks values, or the latest news headlines.
Apple offer a wide verity widgets for their dashboard feature within the mac operating system, ranging from the ordinary system clocks and weather forecasters, to the widget such as ‘Snow on the Dashboard’ which provides a nice back drop of falling now for your dashboard, completely pointless, but it does look quite cool!
Because the widgets are essentially a combination of html, css and javascript developers have found it relatively easy to create their own widgets from scratch, resulting in the 4,000 widgets that can be found on the apple website alone.
Apple have also released their own programming environment to help developers create widgets, iphone applications and mac applications in general. XCode and DashCode and very popular within the apple programming community, with very slick (would you expect anything less from apple) user interfaces, and they also provide lots of start up guides, tutorials and general help within the environment. However one thing that has particularly bugged me, if not perplexed me is, why when I try to put text in “” it doesn’t understand this, leaving me with the only work around being to copy and paste from their own examples… which as you can imagine becomes VERY tiresome.
How does all this relate to Students Work? Well we are in the process of developed a ‘job-finder’ widget, enabling Students with Mac’s to find jobs from the students work site, right from their dashboard. We will also be developing a widget for windows vista, so as not to exclude those windows users!
We have also developed a widget that allows users to read the latest updates to our blog, from the comfort of their dashboards, which is available to download from here
Stew
Tags: blog, mac, widgets, xcode
Posted in Tech selection, Update | No Comments »
November 28th, 2008
Hi guys,
Just a quick note this week to keep you all informed with developments here at the Students Work office. It’s looking like the next stage of the site is taking shape as we’ve joined forces with www.jobs.co.uk, www.theworkbank.co.uk and www.brightsparksuk.com which means we will have a bucketload of jobs on the site very soon.
Another development has been working closely with a great company Swede (www.weareswede.com). We’re working together to improve the site’s brand experience and development so that we can launch the complete site with a bang in the new year. The idea is that the student/employer experience, from browsing for jobs to finding a candidate or taking on a role, is seamless.
Watch this space to be the first to find out about developments at Students Work HQ. Hope you all have a great weekend.
Marco
Tags: brand, Bright Sparks, experience, Jobs, Swede, Work Bank
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
November 23rd, 2008
AJAX, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is a term that was coined by one Jesse James Garret of adaptive Path in his essay “AJAX – A new approach to web applications” back in 2005. Since then, AJAX has become the latest new technology to sweep the web!
However AJAX is not so much a new technology, more a combination of existing and very well established technologies. It comprises of
- XHTML and CSS to give a standards-based presentation
- Dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model
- XML and XSLT allowing data interchange and manipulation
- XMLHttpRequest providing asynchronous data retrieval
- Javascript gluing everything together
So what exactly does AJAX do, and why is it taking the world by storm so quickly? Well AJAX allows pages dynamic content to be updated, without refreshing the entire page and therefore gives a website more of an application feel rather than the stop-start process that is typical of old web applications. It also gives developers a way of adding flash like animation to websites, whilst keeping them SEO friendly unlike flash.
Flash Vs AJAX
Flash see AJAX as a threat, despite Flashes overall advantage in so many issues, such as the level of animation, customisation and ease of creation. However, the flash world and Macromedia/Adobe are changing their approaches and attitudes. Here’s a brake down of issues between flash and AJAX, taken from www.pasz.com
AJAX is taking the world by storm, and whilst is it still has along way to go before is it as advanced as flash, its getting there. Very quickly…. So watch this space.
Stew
The following websites were used as search and are great sources for info on AJAX:
http://www.pasz.com/articles/FlashVsAjax.html
http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/000385.php
Tags: ajax, flash, Students Work
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Dynamically load audio. Support embedded flash audio.