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Blog

Creating a docs site with Bulma Clean Theme
Creating a docs site with Bulma Clean Theme

I created Bulma Clean Theme as a theme for my own website and decided to open source it so others could use it as well. One of the key things I wanted to do was to create a theme that worked with GitHub Pages, which also means that you can also use it as a docs site for your project.

Testing Laravel Validation Responses
Testing Laravel Validation Responses

Last week I was working on a project that used the requiredIf validation rule. No matter how many times I write tests, I always end up referring to the Laravel testing docs to make sure I use the correct assertion methods and pass in the correct arguments. This post will go through a couple of the validation testing methods I use to test validation rules and how they can be improved to help me debug issues.

What are Story Points?
What are Story Points?

I’ve always estimated development issues in hours or days but I recently created a new project in Jira and it only allowed me to use story points for estimates. I have always stayed away from story points as I have struggled to understand what they mean and why I should use them. But as the project only allowed me to use story points I thought I had better make a proper effort to learn what they mean.

How to motivate yourself
How to motivate yourself

Sometimes life as a developer gets you down. No matter how hard you work it seems like there is a never ending list of new bugs and change requests that keep coming in from your users. It’s easy to get fed up and start losing motivation, every day seems the same and time starts to drag. So how can you keep your motivation levels up?

Keeping Tests Simple in Laravel
Keeping Tests Simple in Laravel

When developing a Laravel web application it can often start out quite simple, but can grow in complexity over time. This complexity can also end up being reflected in your tests. Sometimes to run an end to end test you can end up spending longer creating the scenario for the test than the actual test. How can we keep tests simple and quick to write?

Using Eloquent Query Scopes in Laravel
Using Eloquent Query Scopes in Laravel

If you are writing eloquent queries in your Laravel project and find yourself writing the same logic in your queries over and over again then query scopes might be of use to you. Scopes offer you a way of extracting a part of a query from your controller and into your model to simplify your queries and keep them cleaner.

Latest Posts

Hosting a Laravel app with AWS Beanstalk
Hosting a Laravel app with AWS Beanstalk

There are lots of possible hosting solutions available for Laravel, from Forge, to Vapor to the new Laravel Cloud. I’ll start out by saying that these other solutions are much easier to get up and running than beanstalk, but I thought I’d share some of the “fun” I had getting it up and running.

Testing window.open() in JavaScript with Jest
Testing window.open() in JavaScript with Jest

I recently had to write a test for a React component that opened a new browser window. To open the new window I made use of window.open() in my code. This made the component easy to write, but I had to think a bit differently about how to write the test for this.

Why did I become a writer?
Why did I become a writer?

There has been a lot of discussion on Threads recently about becoming a writer, but don’t give up your day job. I have seen a lot of arguments from all sides, some people saying they became a successful full time writer, others saying they would never give up their job, then there are others who became writers full time then went back to another job. Writing has always been a hobby for me, but this discussion has made me think more about why I write.

How NOT to make a website

How NOT to make a Website

By C.S. Rhymes

From £1.99 or read for free on Kindle Unlimited!

Nigel's Intranet Adventure

Nigel's Intranet Adventure

By C.S. Rhymes

From £1.99 or read for free on Kindle Unlimited!