Category: Work

In my copious spare time I have been known to design and build websites. The first website I ever built was for the first company I worked for, back in 1996, so I’ve been at it a while.

However it’s only been the past couple of years that I’ve started to get some larger clients with grander ideas, and that has meant getting a bit more organised. As such I now have a standard questionnaire that I ask all prospective clients to fill in, a standard design proposal document which I use to present back my ideas based on the answers to the questionnaire, and I have a nice little area of my PC which is dedicated to building websites.

The key part of which is XAMPP.

I discovered this marvellous application about 3 years ago, and if you are building websites, or installing and customising anything that requires MySQL and PHP then you must give it a look.

Many people know from their own experience that it’s not easy to install an Apache web server and it gets harder if you want to add MySQL, PHP and Perl.

XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use – just download, extract and start.

It really is that simple. Once you’ve downloaded it, start up the Control Panel, start Apache and MySQL, then head to http://localhost. Done!

A lot of my web design work is creating custom themes based around WordPress, sometimes it is just a look and feel but more often than not custom code is required. Now, rather than having to upload a file to a test web server somewhere, I can work locally on the php files, and just refresh the browser to see my changes. Much faster.

XAMPP is one of those applications that, after you’ve used it once you think “how the hell did I manage without this!”.

Given that a lot of technical communicators are looking towards other distribution models (blogs, Wikis and so on), then XAMPP is an easy (and free) way to get a test system setup, allowing you to run short proof of concept projects. I hope you find it as useful as I do.

No, don’t worry, I’m not going to subject you all to my dulcet tones but I would like to mention two sets of podcasts which are well worth monitoring.

Not normally something I make time for, I’ve recently started going to the gym and it’s an ideal time to zone out and catch up on these. For those of you using iTunes, you can subscribe to RSS Feeds for both and they’ll be downloaded whenever they are published.

First up a fellow Scot (even if he is from the ‘wrong’ side of the country 🙂 ) Alistair Christie produces a regular podcast on a variety of technical communication related topics. He’s been at it for a few years now and has some excellent interviews which you can find in his archives. Well worth subscribing to this one.

Also worthy of a listen is the Tech Writer Voices sessions by Tom Johnson. He has interviewed many well know names in our field of interest and, like Alistair, has been publishing podcasts for a while now. His archives are chock full of fascinating interviews, and of course you can subscribe to his podcast series as well (via iTunes too).

Any other podcasts I should be listening to?

Dear Reader,

Firstly, thank you for taking the time to stop by and read my paltry contributions. Thing is, I was wondering if you could do me a small favour, it really shouldn’t take too long.

Could you possibly leave a comment on this post, and let me know where you are from?

That’d be great!

Of course, feel free to heap praise on me and this humble blog if you so wish, but, really, all I’m looking for is to try and capture the people who read this blog and are willing to comment.

Yours in appreciation and thanks,

Gordon

I’ve agreed to present at this years ISTC conference, and my topic will be blogging and technical communications. It’s a nice topic title, vague enough that I can stretch it in many ways, but specific enough that it has some natural constraints.

I’ll write up some of my thoughts here, naturally, but it’s interesting that I’m starting to see how other areas of the online world, the Web 2.0 vision of the future, are coming into play.

Case in point: Rhonda Bracey blogs about the presentation Tony Self gave, based on an article he wrote titled What if Readers Can’t Read? which I’d already read, and linked to in my monthly newsletter column for the ISTC. The premise of which is:

The fundamental shift away from traditional forms of written communication (books and documents) to new media (e-mail, social networking, collaboration spaces) is something that we as technical communicators should be attuned to. The shift is not just from paper to online media… the shift is also away from top-down, autocratic communication structures to democratic, peer-to-peer structures.

It’s an excellent, thought provoking article, whether you agree or disagree, and it’s made all the more powerful by some of the videos that Tony showed during his presentation, videos to which Rhonda has kindly provided links.

One of the videos is referenced heavily in Tony’s article so I thought I’d show it here as it’s quite a powerful message and something that should be shaping our thinking in the years to come.

Without blogging, I wouldn’t have come across this and this is a perfect example of why blogging can be so powerful, however you do need to be part of this online conversation to be able to catch these snippets.