small-batch web products

Author: Christian Burk

Step-by-step guide to create a “Seven” sub-theme for Drupal 8

Step-by-step guide to create a “Seven” sub-theme for Drupal 8

Working in Drupal means always being open to learn new things. Nothing stays the same for long and there’s so much to pick up that you may not have before encountered. Today, that came in the form of an administration theme that went awry. (Enough […]

Ask a dev Omaha starts May 6

Ask a dev Omaha starts May 6

TLDR: Sign up for free mentoring from a local programmer (or just show up). Are you ready for some hard truth? Not hard to you, but hard to me, anyway? Ok, here it is: I am a fraud. I am not a great developer. I […]

It’s a series of tubes

It’s a series of tubes

The web is complicated. Here’s what I mean:

There’s the part you can write and (kind of) control:

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Javascript

And the part you don’t see or control

  • DNS
    • Nameservers
  • Hosting
    • Servers
    • Apache
    • .conf files all over the place
    • Linux
  • PHP
  • SQL
  • SASS
  • Content Management Systems (Squarespace, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Typo3 and lots other open source and proprietary ones)
  • Javascript libraries and frameworks
  • CDNs
  • Caching
  • HTTP

And at any point in any of these interconnected and byzantine technologies, you could have an error which leads to a problem.

And, to be honest, there’s so much more that I know so little about. The web is like a Pandora’s Box of software and hardware and most people see the very surface of it. It’s like a layer cake, and all most of us ever really notice is the frosting. Therefore, it’s no wonder that there’s a lot of need out there for some help navigating and figuring out how your own website works, why it might be broken and what it might take to fix it. That’s the part I like.

If you need help with any of the above, contact me.