Steve Souders is the author of High Performance Web Sites and the creator of YSlow, the Firebug extension gave a presentation at SXSW09 about how to speed up website performance.
Steve, now working at Google, discussed the next set of best practices he’s developed, including advanced techniques for loading JavaScript, where not to place inline scripts, and the importance of using multiple domains to improve web performance.
Here are his presentation notes (.pdf) as well.
These courses are offered through this website and can be considered “self-study” which includes email support from the instructor.
Note: All lessons reference the most current release of
WordPress (version 3.2).
Introduction to WordPress: ($25) Six lessons guiding you step-by-step through all of the basic aspects of WordPress development. The materials that are used are the same as the class I teach at eClasses.org.
- Manual installation of WordPress software on a remote web server.
- Understanding the Dashboard interface
- Installing different themes to change your blog design.
- How to use plugins to extend the functionality
- How to market and monetize your blog
- How to secure your blog and best practices
- SEO tips and tricks
- Review of WordPress template tags
- Learn the basics of PHP syntax.
- Creating a basic theme from scratch (including example files).
- Code review of basic theme (line by line).
View the complete first lesson (.pdf) to give you an idea of how topics are covered.
Intermediate WordPress: ($5) One lesson on how to setup and install a local ‘development’ blog on your home computer.
Once you creating your online blog, you will probably want to continue ‘tweaking’ it (themes, plugins, pages, etc.). Professional designers and developers always have a local environment to develop and test before it goes ‘live’. WordPress is no different.
- Easily install Apache, PHP, and MySQL on any Windows PC (or Mac)
- Setup a local installation of WordPress as your local ‘development’ blog site
Intermediate WordPress: ($15) Three lessons showing you how to create a theme from scratch.
- Blog design considerations
- Development of a 3-column HTML/CSS theme mockup
- Explanation and use of various WordPress template tags
- Breaking up mockup to various template files
- Understanding template files for use with static pages
- Creation of a Magazine format WordPress them
- Debugging and troubleshooting best practices
- All files (JPG, HTML, CSS, PHP) included
Intermediate WordPress: ($5) One lesson on learning more useful plugins that can be used with your blog.
- Speed up your blog’s performance
- Help you get more traffic
- Give better search results
- Display multiple posts more efficiently
- Add a forum to your site
When Do the Courses Start?
You can start the class anytime you want since after you sign up, I will send you all the materials for class (lessons in PDF format). When you have any questions about the material you can just send me an email.
Lorelle VanFossen is considered one of top experts on blogging and WordPress in the world and can be regularly seen keynoting at large blogger conferences such as WordCamp and SOBcon.
Lorelle was kind enough to give me some of her time to answer a few questions on blogging, analytics and the WordPress community.
read more…
These courses are offered through this website and can be considered “self-study” which includes email support from the instructor.
This 6-week class will teach the students everything from the basics of programming, core concepts of the programming language, how the language is used on the web today, real best coding practices and some neat things that you can do with the DOM such as simple animation techniques. Each lesson is between 20 and 40 pages long (.pdf) and covers a lot of material including example files (.zip).
Support is available via direct email to the instructor.
The class is only $25 and there are no other materials or software needed.
Topics Covered:
Week 1: Core components: Data types, Arrays, and Conditional Statements
Week 2: Language Syntax: Loops, and Functions; JavaScript Native Objects
Week 3: Browser Objects (Location, Screen, Forms, Images) and DOM Overview
Week 4: Unobtrusive Scripting: Three Layers of a Web Page
Week 5: The DOM: Referencing and Modifying Elements; Creating a Custom Object
Week 6: Debugging Your Scripts; Ajax Basics: The XMLHttpRequest Object
To give you an idea of how each lesson looks, here is the first lesson (.pdf).
Materials for Class
All the course materials for the class are sent via email as attachments within 48 hours of payment. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Christian Heilmann is an author of books such as Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax: From Novice to Professional and Web Development Solutions: Ajax, APIs, Libraries, and Hosted Services Made Easy, speaks all around world as an International Developer Evangelist for Yahoo!, and is an all around Web guru.
Christian was nice enough to give me some of his time to answer questions about the future of the web, accessibility, conferences and of course JavaScript.
read more…
A while ago, I wrote a post on how to create a JavaScript Style Switcher, but recently I found the need to create a PHP based one. There are many ways to do this in PHP using sessions, arrays, cookies, etc. I created one that only takes a few lines of code and is super easy to implement.
This PHP Style Switcher can be done in two easy steps.
Step One: Setting styles
The first step is to create a new file on your server named switcher.php and paste the following code into it:
<?php
/* expire in 1 year */
setcookie("sitestyle", $_GET['set'], time()+31536000);
header("Location: $HTTP_REFERER");
?>When it’s queried, this file will write a cookie for the user detailing which site style to use. The cookie is set to expire in one year, and then the script sends the user back to the referring page. All of this happens behind the scenes, so the user will never really “see” switcher.php in action.
Telling switcher.php which site style to use is an equally simple matter. You can query it using conventional HREF links in text, images, or even flash
<a href="switcher.php?set=red">change to RED style!</a>
Step Two: Detecting styles
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen"
title="User Defined Style"' href="<?php echo
(!$_COOKIE["sitestyle"])
?'default':$_COOKIE["sitestyle"]
?>.css" />
This tiny script detects which style is in the user’s cookies and prints out the result. If the user doesn’t have cookies enabled, or just hasn’t chosen a site style for themselves yet, the script will default to “default.css”.
So there you have it. A cross-browser, backwards-compatible, forwards-compatible, standards-compliant style sheet switcher in just five lines of code. It’s fast, straightforward, and universally accessible because there’s no processing done on the client side.
Here is the code (.zip) as well for you to review.
This class has been closed, and it’s course materials have been moved to the new Database ASP.NET Web Development class
I created a second ASP.NET online class called Intermediate Web Development with ASP.NET at LVS Online.com.
This 6-week class will continue from my Beginning Web Development with ASP.NET class and focus more on ‘real-world’ ASP.NET programming topics. Since the first class focused on getting you up to speed on how ASP.NET works and the C# programming language, this intermediate class lets you take those skills in developing ASP.NET web sites.
The class is only $30 and there are no other materials or software needed.
Topics Covered:
Week 1: Master Page Basics
Week 2: Creating an ASP.NET Website from and HTML/CSS Design
Week 3: View State, Query String, Cookies, and Session State
Week 4: OOP: Building Your Own Objects
Week 5: Creating Your Own Controls: User Controls
Week 6: Error Handling
Extra: Website Navigation: Building a SiteMap
To give you an idea of how each lesson looks, here is the first lesson (.pdf).
When Does Class Start?
The class runs five times a year for six weeks in January, March, May, August and October. To learn more view the course description page and contact me to find out the exact date on when you can register.
