Thinking Practically

Articles, Thoughts, Updates & Musings.

In other words this is our blog. Read on to find out what we are up to and what we are thinking about current trends and strategies.

It is big and it is clever (mostly)
Cookie Consent Popups in 2024

Cookie Consent Popups in 2024

You may have noticed that we have no cookie consent popups on our site. We, as designers and web practitioners, have some real problems with those annoying cookie popups. And we are not alone…

What’s the state of the pawnbroking industry in provincial towns?

What’s the state of the pawnbroking industry in provincial towns?

Exploring the current state of the pawnbroking industry in medium sized UK towns, examining its history, consumer perspective, response to changing demands, and potential for growth. We look at the challenges faced by pawnbrokers in these areas and focus on a specific example in our hometown – Cheltenham.

Web design in Cheltenham – A comparative list

Web design in Cheltenham – A comparative list

There are a surprising amount of small to medium web design firms operating in this Cotswold town. This is not an exhaustive list but one created from our network and experience.

Diagrams to live your life by

Diagrams to live your life by

As part of our Practically Academy Sam shared a whole series of diagrams that help in the strategy work that he does, and beyond.

Why Small Agencies are Best: like busy garages

Why Small Agencies are Best: like busy garages

A recent visit to our local garage got us thinking about why clients should choose small, efficient agencies. And how a local MOT garage is just like a small web agency.

Perennial Blog Posting Strategy

Perennial Blog Posting Strategy

A blogging strategy that will save you time, increase your SEO health, make that content calendar easy to deal with and help with your sanity.

Start a new development project on the right foot

Start a new development project on the right foot

Multiple times in Web Development you will go through the process of creating a new repository for a new application or project that you are tasked to build. We think it is really important to get the order of tasks correct at the start of a new application…

Accessibility Web Design Rules – Our upgraded website for NHS

Accessibility Web Design Rules – Our upgraded website for NHS

Things we learnt by creating highly accessible website designs for the NHS & university sectors. Recent pitches and web briefs have put accessibility high on their list of needs, which is a great sign. However accessibility, just like GDPR, needs to be taken in context…

Divi alt tags done right (in functions.php)

Divi alt tags done right (in functions.php)

DIVI for Wordpress. Load Alt tags in Divi directly from the Media Library, pull alt tags in automatically even when these are added or changed from the Wordpress Media Library.

Service Broker Introduction

Service Broker Introduction

A service broker is a way of provisioning services and binding them to applications. With a service broker you can provision a database and bind it to a deployment.

Check out our work on the BBC

Check out our work on the BBC

It doesn’t happen often that some of our work appears on mass media, so please excuse our blatant plugging.

Mkcert all the things

Mkcert all the things

After Ade Attwood’s recent dive into TLS and creating server certificates with a root ca. This is a much simpler way with mkcert…

Yii2 stream responses

Yii2 stream responses

In your Yii2 controller, it is quite common practice to return the stream of a file to the browser for your user to download. However, it’s not so well documented you can set any stream reference as the content of your response.

Named regex matches in php

Named regex matches in php

When dealing with those pesky regular expressions trying to get our matches by their index, making your code that little less readable.

Git Repository Clean Up

Git Repository Clean Up

After you have been developing a project for some time your local git repo can become detached from the repository on ‘origin’. Here are a few commands you can run to clean things up a bit when you feel things are getting cluttered.

The Design Diamond

The Design Diamond

Simply stated, it aims to convince design students of the process of design. That without one of the four corners of the diamond then a design presentation (a crit or critique) will be weak.

Oddizzi

Oddizzi

Oddizzi is an online travel guide and learning resource for kids. It is designed to be used in primary schools.

Phenotype Definition

Phenotype Definition

The word ‘phenotype’ is a biological term and is best explained by examining the differences between the ‘phenotype’ and ‘genotype’ of living organisms…