Web Links

Kian is a .NET developer and all round nice guy. He runs a .NET development business, which you can find at http://www.orangetentacle.co.uk/

Cat Ashton is a Manchester based photographer

Librarything is a very nice site that lets you build and maintain a catalogue of all the books you own. It can handle bulk imports of ISBNs and even has a mobile version for when you're in a bookshop and can't quite remember whether you have the interesting looking book you're holding.

This link will take you to my profile - click on the "Your Library" link to see my collection.

BGG lets you catalogue information about board games, build wishlists, suggest alternative rules and swap ideas or expansions for games. It's basically Librarything, for games.

In this case, Board Games doesn't mean Monopoly, but the more involved Eurogames such as Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, and Ticket to Ride. They tend not to have dice...

Audible is an online audiobook shop which has loads of unabridged audiobooks available to buy for reasonable prices. They also have subscription packages, where you pay a fixed amount each month for one or two audiobooks each month. Given that some of the longer books can be more than the monthly subscription cost each, it's even worth just subscribing for a couple of months if there is something you fancy!

WizzVPS are a cheap Virtual Private Server provider. This site runs on one of their VPS packages, along with a few other low-traffic sites. They're a UK company, and they pride themselves on being able to get you up and running quickly - from ordering to being able to work on the system took me less than 15 minutes, which is quick.

UK Fast are a dedicated server provider based in Manchester (in some very shiny offices at the top of City Tower - you get a great view from up there, so I'd recommend going to them to meet if you ever get the chance!) who host a good chunk of Excel's websites.

So, why don't I use them for this site? Well, it doesn't really get enough traffic to justify a dedicated server. However, for big projects, I'd recommend them without hesitation.

MySQL DBMS, probably the most common database system in use on the internet. All the sites I've worked on have run off it, and I've done MySQL for Developers training. Still, the reference manual on the website is always useful for checking the exact syntax of statements.

Drupal is a PHP based open-source Content Management System. It runs, among other things, MTV UK's site, the Australian Prime Minister's site, the Emmys site, and this site, mpettitt.me.uk. That's quite a range...

One of Excel's many sites, TiC was designed from the ground up to be user-friendly, taking lots of UI guidance into account. It was also the first Excel site to be designed without the aid of a designer - the logo was made for another purpose, which I then adjusted and turned into a full site design.

It makes extensive use of Views and ImageCache, as well as feeding post information to a Twitter stream.

One of Excel's many sites, EN for Business was originally built in Joomla, then migrated to Drupal (well, technically, is being migrated to Drupal - was supposed to have moved by now, but got delayed due to swine flu...)

It's a complex site with a lot of content types defined, each with particular behaviours and quirks. Among other things, it makes use of custom layouts through Panels, Taxonomy Image and Taxonomy Redirect for doing some fancy looking sections, and a whole pile of caching to bring it up to speed.

B&E is one of Excel's many sites, and runs on Joomla. It is one of the largest news sites for the UK Construction industry.

This site makes use of FlexContent module for Joomla, which was developed specifically to allow for better customisation of Joomla output. The module was then improved and extended for a range of Excel sites, and used by a number of third party sites.