Today an interesting blog post on Zend Framework has made to the Hacker News front page. I have to agree with the author - Zend Framework is an over-engineered piece of software. A few years ago I was working full time as a PHP developer. Naturally, I had experimented with lots of frameworks, including CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Kohana, Yii, Symfony and obviously, Zend Framework. Over the years, I had developed many projects primarily using CodeIgniter and later on, Kohana. There was one project tha...

Hiring is usually a long and difficult process - in order to streamline and simply it, I use Kanban to manage the whole process. I believe, hiring should be as lean and agile as our development process. My Kanban board for hiring (we just started hiring at SitePoint!): [] Using a Kanban board offers a number of advantages: - a clear picture of the candidates with their feedback from code tests and interviews - a straightforward view of where a candidate is at in the hiring process - lim...

If you are looking at hiring developers, check out my article on this subject. The goal or the dream of working on your own startup is always full of excitement. And apart from some rare cases such as Dropbox, you probably need one or more co-founders to work with you on The Next Big Thing ™. Problem is, how do you (as a non-technical co-founder) find us? Or more specifically, how do you talk us into working with you instead of some other billion-dollar ideas? To answer this question, we need ...

If you are looking at finding technical co-founders, check out my article on this subject. In recent years developers become hotter and hotter - especially the good ones - they are hard to find, and they have plenty of employment options to choose from. Some companies (or individuals who are seeking freelancers) go the extra miles to impress developers with attractive salary/rate and perks, which is nice. But surprisingly, many companies and individuals seem to have a habit of keep doing things...

Holidays period is the perfect time to gear up and learn a thing or two from the masters - and as it turned out, reading Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup is one of the most exciting and joyful things I’ve done during the holidays. [] In this book you won’t find long-winded and boring theories, instead the book is full of real world use cases and practical advices. If you are an entrepreneur, or if you are responsible for product development, I urge you to read this book if you haven’t already. :)

After four days of sketching, designing and cutting up HTML/CSS, the new design (as you are seeing now) is finally live! The new design is structurally similar to the old design, but with a fresh header and better use of space. [] A new year warrants a fresh start. Apart from the redesign, I have also started heading up the development effort at SitePoint - dozens of interesting and challenging projects ahead! [] 2012 will be an awesome year! :)

A couple of days ago, a blog post titled "First employee of startup? You are probably getting screwed!" has made to the Hacker News front page and has spawned some great discussion and debate. Since I had just been screwed recently, I thought it might be a good opportunity for me to share what I’ve learnt. After my story got picked up by Hacker News and some other sites, I was contacted by my client. It was a very interesting and surreal experience which included keywords such as sue, settle, d...

Today I noticed that I don’t have Skype installed, so naturally, I went to Skype.com. Then I was presented with their homepage: [] The problem? No "Download" action button above the fold, or below the fold for that matter. That is, quite frankly, shocking. So I hovered on the "Get Skype" drop down menu and clicked on the one for Mac. On the new page I was presented with, I clicked on the "Download Skype" button. And then … [] Oh snap! You’d have to either create an account or sign in before ...

Update: I have blogged about the things I have learnt from this. Last night, after some long overdue frustration, I have open sourced Angel Nest - an online platform for connecting entrepreneurs and investors, similar to AngelList. Shortly after I open sourced my work, the news got picked up by Hacker News and went onto its front page. (Update: I was just informed that the story was picked up by Reddit as well.) The Github repository has since been followed by 250+ people and forked by 60+ time...

On a cold windy day, we are comfortably sitting in our chairs beside the fireplace, holding a mug full of hot tasty latte. We are slowly and calmly sipping on our coffee, imagining that things could be far worse outside of our safe and warm house. Exactly how do we know that things could be far worse? We don’t, because we are too comfortable and too familiar with what we currently have. Being happy with where you are is one thing, being ignorant is another. Inventions and innovations aren’t bo...