Job Title: Web Developer
Location: Hagley Road, Birmingham
Job type: Premanent, full time
Start Date: June/July 2012
Keywords: Web developer, PHP, MySQL, Developer

Web developer job objectives

Scorchsoft is a small but growing company whose core competancy is using high-quality programming to develop websites and web applications that target commercial objectives. The web developer job will involve being in charge of developing these online applications and websites for commercial customers. This web developer job is a full time position based in Birmingham and presents a great opportunity to be involved on a range of diverse projects.

Scorchsoft web applications are written using a combination of PHP, MySQL, JavaScript (using frameworks such as jQuery), HTML & CSS. First and foremost we are after a graduate who is a capable programmer. As a web developer you will be expected to program using object-oriented principals using PHP within the early weeks of starting. You will be involved on variety of projects that will range from 25 - 400 developer hours in size through to sundry updates for existing websites.

If you are confident in interfacing with customers then they will be involved in meetings to build and clarify a customers requirements in order to create a build-specification.

Web developer role duties and responsibilities:

• Programming in PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
• Planning the development of a project before programming begins in order for us to be able to estimate the development hours of a project and to be able to build a product to this plan.
• Being actively involved in adapting how the business implements technology. This may involve researching the best frameworks to then develop a project within.
• Interfacing with customers in person, email and over telephone.
• Following API's and developer documention for new tools and frameworks and on the job learning to implement solutions using them.
• Sundry coding maintainance and changes.

Essential Skills

• A strong programmng ability.
• Experienced using: PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript.
• Familiar with programming using object-oriented methodologies.

Desirable Skills

• Experience using a web content management system such as Wordpress or Modx.
• Experience using the Adobe Creative Suite.
• Experience using Eclipse or Aptana IDEs.

To Apply

To apply for this web developer position please
email your CV and a covering letter to andrew@scorchsoft.com

We look forward to hearing from you.

We did a lot of research into installed modules etc. and found that the reason that Wordpress pagination was not working had to be something related to the wordpress core. We were able to alter pagination settings such as the number of posts per page, it was just the listing for page 2, 3, 4, etc that was the problem.

To give some background, we tried a lot of things to fix the Wordpress pagination including: changing permalink structure from /%category%/%postname%/ to various other things; recreating the .htaccess file; altering the link structure in the wordpress loop; altering php snippets. Needless to say, none of these solutions worked.

Solution to wordpress pagination not working:

After some digging we were able to fix the wordpress pagination that was not working.

To fix this we left the permalink structure as "/%category%/%postname%/" and installed the Category Pagination Fix plugin. This works in our current version of Wordpress 3.3.1. This plugin fixes when wordpress pagination isn't working by using redirects when using a customer permalink structure that is more that 1 level deep.

This seems to be a common issue that has been arround since version 2.7 and is still present in 3.3.1

<div class="repeater" mc:repeatable >

<div   mc:edit="tiwc200_content02" style="font-family:Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;">Title</div>

</div>

When clicking on the section in order to edit the Mail Chimp theme we found that the text within the "Edit Your Content" popup box would disappear. The text within the box would appear for a split second and then vanish.

The confusing thing was that the html validated, as did the CSS. After doing some digging we were able to pin down the issue to the style sheet. The repeater style looked like this:

border: 1px solid #CCCCCC;
font-family: Tahoma;
padding:5px;
margin:0 0 10px;
background:#fff;
font-family:Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;
color:#ee5515 !important;

We then changed it to this:

border:solid;
border-color: #CCCCCC;
border-width:1px;
padding-top:5px;
padding-left:5px;
padding-right:5px;
padding-bottom:5px;
margin-top:5px;
margin-left:5px;
margin-right:5px;
margin-bottom:5px;
background-color:#fff;

It seems like the Mail Chimp "Edit Your Content" box does not like CSS styles that are generalised. E.g. defining all of the padding, margin or border settings within the one style declaration. So essentially, by making the stylesheet as long as possible we resolved the problem.

See the Finance and Management Business School Website >

The core objectives were to give the customer control over their content whilst also improving the way that the website communicates with their customers.

They can customise the most important calls-to-action across the whole site. This means that their always able to promote their most important services.

Since implementation before christmas, the website has already generated enquiries and converted these leads. With ongoing updates remaining a key part of their strategy, we have no doubt that interest in their services will grow through 2012 as a result of their renewed online presence.

Like what you see? Why not arrange a free consultation with us to see how we can help you to achieve success on the internet. Speak to Andrew on 0121 4690009 or email on andrew@scorchsoft.com.

The Gallery and other modx revlolution plugins (extras) stopped working after moving the Modx Revolution files and database from on server to another. All research into the issue yeilded no results, but after much deeper digging into ModX revolution and the gallery, we have found how the fix this issue. Not being able to add albums to the modx revolution gallery being one of the problems.

What causes ModX revolution modules to stop working after a server move?

Modx Revolution seems to store file path references all over the place. It can make a migration relatively difficult in comparison to other content management system. The challenge is changing all of these references so that that everything starts working again. There are quite a few steps to doing this, so here is what to do:

Fixing ModX Revolution modules after a server move.

Step 1: Correct all database references.

Whether you do it through PhpMyAdmin or via another method, you need to update all of the file references in the database. Once in, open up your modx database. look for the "_workspaces" table and edit the "Default MODX workspace" row to point at the right place.

you will see something like "/home/altoedmq/public_html/core/" or "C:/Program files/Apache ...... htdocs/core/" the important thing to change is the file path before "core/" so that it is correct. Unsure what this value should be? If you have CPanel installed then log in and look on the left hand side for the "home directory" value. Add public_html to the end of this if you are on a linux server for the correct file location.

Next go into the "_system_settings" table. Look through every row. You are trying to identify any of the old references to fix them as with above. Just bare in mind that you will want to preserve the modx references such as "/assets" in the same way that you did with "/core".

Step 2: Correct the config file

Within your ftp client, navigate to "Your Modx directory/core/config/config.inc.php" and edit the file. You will notice within it many references to folder paths relative to the server file system. You will also notice references relative to a domain name. Correct all of these according to the correct server details. This is a similar process to above except you are editing lines of a file rather than database rows.

Step 3: Fix broken Modx Revolution modules.

Some modules have file references within their installed php files. The easiest way to fix them is to uninstall them and reinstall them. You would think that it would be as simple as this, but is isn't. Here are the steps to take in order to actually perform a clean re-install.

1. Fully uninstall the package from within modx
2. Delete the "Your Modx directory/core/cache/" and replace it with an empty folder of the same name.
3. Go into "Your Modx directory/core/packages/" and delete the folder that corresponds to your module. Leave the zip file where it is.
4. Go into "Your Modx directory/core/components/" and delete the folder for the module if it exists.
5. (Optional) delete any _modulename_ tables from within the database using php my admin. I say optional as it may not be essential to do this. It wasn't needed to be done to fix the gallery plugin.
6. Reinstall the module as you would normally.

Modx Revolution fixed after a server move!

And there you have it. Your ModX revolution core should now be working correctly, as should any ModX revolution packages/extras.