Starting Docker: Running containers

Starting Docker: Running containers

Friday, Dec 2, 2016
So, you have successfully installed Docker. Brilliant! Now, what?! Well, the obvious thing to do is to go about running some containers. The Docker documentation suggests that you should pull and run the Hello World container, and although it is small, there are much better things we can do straight away to start to show the power of Docker. Docker Pull & Docker Hub To get started with running containers, you are first going to need to get some containers. ...

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Starting Docker: Installation

Starting Docker: Installation

Thursday, Dec 1, 2016
Unless you have been living under a metaphorical rock you will have heard about Docker. But although lots of people have heard of Docker, far fewer are using it day-to-day and even less in production. In this short post, I am going to go over what Docker (and containers are) and how you can start to get up and running with Docker. What is Docker? Wikipedia describes Docker as: Docker is an open-source project that automates the deployment of Linux applications inside software containers. ...

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Redirecting http to https on nginx

Redirecting http to https on nginx

Monday, Jul 11, 2016
If you have been following the growth of encryption on the web (https) and the fact that you can now get free SSL certificates (much like the one on this site) using Lets Encrypt, there is very little reason for not having your site running https, making your data encrypted between the server and the user, making everyone more secure. If you are doing this in Apache, then most open-source projects will suggest the you use the rewrite engine inside apache. ...

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Tidy Git Repos Using BFG

Tidy Git Repos Using BFG

Friday, Jul 1, 2016
Version control. A saviour of modern development and with everyone using git to manage their code nowadays (at least for the last 5 years) having an understanding of git is an essential part of being a developer. Recently I have become more and more involved in code review, using GitLab, Bitbucket and GitHub to manage code from different developers for different projects. This is made easier by using a workable workflow (something like GitFlow), however, as I am involved in more and more projects of endless dread when I start with project and it has unnecessary, large or sensitive files that have been committed into its history. ...

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Please never abandon this module

Please never abandon this module

Thursday, Dec 24, 2015
At Will Hall Online we always try to commit some time to developing open source projects. As I am sure that you are aware, we have been using Drupal since 2008 and absolutely love both the software and the community, however, much of our time is already committed and we do more in deed than in code to contribute to the community (providing assistance, presentations and helping the local Drupal group). ...

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Why Size Does Matter

Why Size Does Matter

Tuesday, Dec 15, 2015
Performance is important in all aspects of life, and none more than business. Oxford Dictionaries define performance as “A task or operation seen in terms of how successfully it is performed” and this should be applied to every aspect of your business, including your website. When it comes to performance metrics there are some key statistics you should be measuring on your website including page load speed, page size and number of requests. ...

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Webform Node Title Select List

Webform Node Title Select List

Friday, Nov 27, 2015
A quick note this week on a potentially useful contrib module that’s got me out of a jam. I’ve been trying to find a way to populate a select box on a Drupal webform with a list of node titles. Basically what I wanted was something like an entity reference field for webforms. One approach to get round this is to use the entity form module, which basically allows you to use entity edit forms in the front end. ...

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Drupal 8: All Systems Go!

Drupal 8: All Systems Go!

Friday, Nov 20, 2015
After over four years of hard work, the Drupal community was proud to announce the release of the first stable version of Drupal 8 at over two hundred release parties around the world. It’s a really exciting time for everyone involved with the project, and followers of our blog will know how much we love the new features. We had a great time at the London release party last night (19th November 2015) meeting Drupal users old and new. ...

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Drupal Commerce and Changing the Price Components

Drupal Commerce and Changing the Price Components

Thursday, Nov 19, 2015
We all know that Drupal Commerce is really flexible. If you want variable pricing dependant upon location, csutomer type or basket size, no problem. However, some areas of Drupal Commerce do require not only relatively specialist knowledge, but also coding to give the required outcome. We recently had an interesting problem through Cambridge Digital Academy, wherein they were looking at displaying discounts at the checkout form. By default the order of display is: ...

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WordPress: Up and Running

WordPress: Up and Running

Tuesday, Nov 17, 2015
Last evening I presented “WordPress: Up and Running” at the Cambridge WordPress Meetup group. Apart from being a very enjoyable evening, it is always interesting to get involved with new communities and see how people are using technology and building web applications. As we (at Cambridge Digital Academy) have been running training recently, I volunteered to run a quick presentation on how to get Up and Running with WordPress which basically discussed through how to start making websites/blogs with WordPress. ...

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