Category Archives: Web

iPhone development the easy way

Posted on July 8, 2009 by Todd Huss

Update 8/7/2010 PhoneGap apps are still being allowed in the app store! It’s not the right solution for every app (for example we went native with the Common Sense Media app), but I still think PhoneGap is really cool. I’ve … Continue reading →

Posted in Ruby on Rails, Software Engineering, Web | Leave a comment

Transcending CSS

Posted on August 15, 2007 by Todd Huss

Working at GreatSchools we do a lot of CSS work and we have a number of CSS books on our library shelf. However, last month we picked up a copy of Transcending CSS and it’s far and away the most … Continue reading →

Posted in Design, Web | 1 Comment

Open source caching proxy servers

Posted on May 22, 2007 by Todd Huss

Hello lazy web, I’m looking for some advice on caching proxy servers and thought you might have some good pointers! We currently front our site with 3 caching proxy servers to offload static content from the web servers and we … Continue reading →

Posted in Systems Administration, Web | 7 Comments

GreatSchools wins Webby People’s Voice Award

Posted on May 1, 2007 by Todd Huss

I’m thrilled that GreatSchools has won the Webby People’s Voice Award for best Family/Parenting site. We’ve been in the nominations before but I think continued growth and brand awareness through a largely redesigned site helped push us over the top … Continue reading →

Posted in Design, Web | Leave a comment

Search engine cloaking, it’s the intent that matters

Posted on April 16, 2007 by Todd Huss

Back at the end of 2005 I wrote a short post titled Cloaking, no need to be ashamed and now in 2007 even more big sites are practicing some form of search engine crawler targeted cloaking. Yet still most SEO’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Web | Leave a comment

Bay Area Indie Rock Bandega Style

Posted on March 13, 2007 by Todd Huss

My good friends in the east bay have just debuted their new Ruby on Rails based site Bandega :: never miss a show again! If you’re a San Francisco Bay Area resident that loves indie rock and wants to keep … Continue reading →

Posted in Ruby on Rails, Web | Leave a comment

Keeping Rails running at Dreamhost Part 2

Posted on January 24, 2007 by Todd Huss

Update 2/2/07: Per Thomas’ comment I’ve released the code below as the dreamhost rails plugin. Update 1/25/07: People have reported difficulties copy and pasting the dispatch.fcgi source code from this blog post so here is a dispatch.fcgi to download. Make … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Systems Administration, Web | 10 Comments

Keeping Ruby on Rails running at Dreamhost

Posted on January 9, 2007 by Todd Huss

Update 1/12/07: This solution has reduced my 500 error rate down to less than 0.2% but it’s still not perfect. I continue to plug away at this… Update 1/24/07: I’ve finally solved my Dreamhost 500 error problems with a different … Continue reading →

Posted in Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Systems Administration, Web | 4 Comments

Hello Newshutch, goodbye Bloglines

Posted on December 4, 2006 by Todd Huss

I’ve been a Bloglines user for a long time. However, after hearing about Newshutch on the Web 2.0 show podcast Episode 26 I’ve made the switch and couldn’t be happier. It sports just the right amount of Ajax, good keyboard … Continue reading →

Posted in AJAX, Blogging, Ruby on Rails, Web | Leave a comment

Ajax enabling crusty legacy webapps with Prototype

Posted on November 26, 2006 by Todd Huss

With all of the hype around Ajax it’s easy to think you might need an MVC framework with baked in Ajax support like Rails ActionPack or JBoss Seam to make Ajax easy. However, libraries like Prototype (which is what Rails … Continue reading →

Posted in AJAX, CSS, Javascript, Software Engineering, Web | 1 Comment