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Read our latest blogs on software and web development

The Art of Harmony: Colour Palettes and the Psychology Behind Design

Welcome to our colourful journey through the world of design! As a graphic designer, I […]

Navigating Uncertainty: A Guide to Handling Clients Who Are Unsure of Their Needs in Software Development

In the dynamic world of software development, one of the most common challenges that developers […]

Why Is Documentation Important In Software Development

Project Documentation is often overlooked as a step that is not emphasized in the software […]

DateTime with ASP.NET

DateTime manipulation is a crucial aspect of web development, especially when dealing with dynamic data […]

Managing Project Files and Documents

Working on multiple projects can become overwhelming, especially when you need to keep track of […]

Useful JavaScript Debugging Techniques

I know of many individuals whom find JavaScript to be this big scary boss fight, […]

The Art Of Collaboration

In the fast-paced and ever-evolving world of software development, successful projects hinge on more than […]

Unleashing The Power Of Relationships In Power BI: Connecting The Dots Across Tables

In the dynamic realm of data analytics, the ability to seamlessly connect and analyze information […]

Branding Brilliance: Creating Memorable Designs That Stick

In the vast and competitive landscape of today's market, the art of creating a brand […]

Software Development: How To Make Sure Your Projects Fail

How to make sure your projects fail in Software Development Software development is an intricate […]

Pantone Colour Of The Year

Pantone Colour of the Year in Your Design Incorporating the Pantone Colour of the Year […]

The Importance of Testing in Programming

Introduction Programming is a complex and intricate task, often involving countless lines of code and […]

Git Copilot: A Revolution in Coding Assistance

Introduction Git Copilot is a game-changing development tool introduced by GitHub, powered by OpenAI's GPT-3 […]

Creating Your First Microsoft Teams ReactJS Tab App

Today I will be walking through the steps to creating your first Microsoft Teams app […]

Harnessing AI to Solve World Hunger

The challenge of providing adequate and nutritious food to all is complex, but the integration […]

Understanding RDLC Files: A Comprehensive Overview

RDLC files, short for Report Definition Language Client-Side, play a pivotal role in the world […]

What Is A Unicorn Developer?

Unicorn designer/developers are highly sought after in the software industry because of their ability to […]

Importance of Spelling, Grammar and Wording in Web Development

It doesn’t take a genius to know that spelling is an extremely important aspect on […]

The Dance of UI and UX: Creating Seamless Web Design Experiences

In the digital age, a website is often the first interaction a user has with […]

Essential Software Development Tools Every Developer Should Know

In the fast-paced world of software development, having the right set of tools can significantly […]

Web Design Trends: Enhancing User Experience in 2023

Web design is a constantly evolving field, driven by technological advancements and changing user preferences. […]

Common WordPress Errors and How To Fix Them

WordPress is a popular and powerful content management system that empowers millions of websites and […]

The Impact of Responsive Web Design on User Experience and SEO

In today's digital age, having a strong online presence is essential for businesses and individuals […]

Tips for Writing Clean and Readable Code

Writing clean and readable code is essential for creating maintainable and efficient software. Code that […]

Managing Information of JIRA Tasks and GIT Flow

“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” – Murphy’s Law In my three years […]

Designing Effective Websites: Where Functionality Takes Center Stage

In the digital age, websites have become the virtual face of businesses, serving as a […]

ASP.NET and Google Maps

In the world of web development, maps play a crucial role in providing location-based services […]

Vue 3 Composition API: A Guide to Reactivity and Component Composition

  Introduction: Vue 3, the latest version of the popular JavaScript framework, introduces a powerful […]

Virtual Reality: The Game Changer in Education We’ve Been Waiting For

Introduction  Over the past few years, the way we learn, teach, and conceptualize education has […]

The Importance of Testing and Integration in Software Development: Ensuring Quality, Reliability, and Customer Satisfaction

Software development is a complex process that requires meticulous attention to detail and a systematic […]

Mastering Web Design: Tips, Trends, and Techniques

In today's digital age, a strong online presence is crucial for businesses and individuals alike. […]

Best Practices for Debugging Your Code

Debugging is a crucial part of the software development process. It helps you find and […]

Reviewing Logic and Bug Code Solutions

When working on a big project, it is not always easy to keep track of […]

AGI: The Dawn of Artificial General Intelligence

Introduction Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has been the holy grail of artificial intelligence (AI) research […]

“The Design of Everyday Things” Review

"The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman is a must-read book for anyone who […]

Lavalite: A Laravel CMS

If you're a web developer looking for an easy-to-use and customizable content management system, Lavalite […]

How To Use ChatGPT To Make Yourself A Better Developer

In this blog, I will be going over ways that you can use ChatGPT to […]

The Beauty Of Writing Clean Code: Why Refactoring And Optimising Is Essential

In the world of software development, writing clean code is more than just a best […]

Hello, Laravel 10: An Overview Of The Framework’s 2023 Release

Introduction Laravel is one of the most popular and widely used PHP web frameworks, known […]

Migration Scripts

Migration scripts are an essential component of any software development project that involves changes to […]

Company Handbooks, Are They Important?

A company handbook is a one place stop to all employee's possible questions.  It stores […]

Improved Code Review

Code reviews are a daily occurrence for software developers. It can be a crushing learning […]

Why Having A Website Is Important

In today's fast-paced digital world, having a website has become a necessity for individuals and […]

OpenAI And ChatGPT

OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research lab that aims to promote and develop friendly AI […]

Principles Of Material Design

Material Design is a design language developed by Google in 2014. It aims to provide […]

Postman Mock API

Postman is a popular tool used for API development and testing. One of its key […]

How To Create An Interactive Postcard With Laravel Vue

When creating a home page for a web application, it is always important to make […]

ASP.NET

Over the years of software development, you will hear many differing opinions on what framework […]

Design Patterns In Software Development

Design patterns are an important concept in software engineering that provides a common language for […]

Creating A Basic Customisable PDF Viewer Using PDF.js

  In this blog, I'll be going over creating a basic custom PDF viewer by […]

How To Create An Angular Form Array

When you have to render multiple forms within a parent form dynamically, then form arrays […]

Git Flow

It is always good to establish a git foundation to work off. There are many […]

Level Up Your VS Code Snippets

Introduction Once you have started using and creating your own custom snippets in Visual Studio […]

How You Can Improve Your Online Presence For Your Business

I got asked a question some time back: "I have a website, but no business […]

Julia Programming Language

Julia Programming Language is a flexible, dynamic language suitable for scientific and numerical computations, and […]

A Summary Of Microsoft Ignite 2022 Announcements

It has been over a week (close to two as of date of publication) since […]

Laragon: Fast Website Development Environment For Windows

What is Laragon? Laragon is a portable, isolated, fast, and powerful universal development environment for […]

Building A Chat Bot With The WhatsApp Service From Twilio In Laravel

In this blog I’ll be going through the steps to making a chat bot in […]

Scrum – Can It Really Change My Working Culture?

Scrum Guide 2020 stipulates that people who become more proficient in living the five scrum […]

Shrinking Logs and Defragmentation In SQL Server

Shrinking logs in your SQL Server is a great way of recovering storage space in […]

Misconceptions About Software Development

Introduction Software development programmers are often thought of as sitting in a dark and lonely […]

Adding Animation To Your Application The Angular Way

Adding animation effects could be done in a number of ways, namely CSS/SASS or a […]

Help! I’ve Had To SSH Into A Linux Box For The First Time (Part 3)

We’ve made changes on the staging branch, please redeploy it. You’ve been SSHing into Linux […]

The Hybrid Work Model

What is a Hybrid Work Model? Hybrid is when there is a combination of working […]

Making The Most Of VS Code With Code Snippets

Introduction Visual Studio Code is powerful yet lightweight and was ranked as the most popular […]

12 Mistakes You Are Making On Your Website

Introduction With well over 1 billion websites in the world, there is definitely no shortage […]

Rules For UX Designers

  Introduction   User Experience is a broad discipline and UX designers need to have […]

Managing Project Documentation

Project documentation is crucial on detailing what a project consists of, how an ordinary user […]

What Is Test Driven Development?

When it comes to building software, software developers and the business they support want it […]

Software Testing And The Importance Thereof

What is software testing? Software Testing is the process that follows when software has been […]

A Deeper Dive Into TailwindCSS

Introduction Previously I compared TailwindCSS to Bootstrap and included some examples of how the different […]

Exposure To New And Unfamiliar Things

Recently I have found myself being asked to help out and participate in a multitude […]

Optimising Site Performance In Vue.js

An issue every developer will face at least once in their career is making your […]

Imposter Syndrome

Imposter Syndrome is defined as doubting your abilities and feeling like a fraud. I suffer […]

Help! I’ve Had To SSH Into A Linux Box (Part 2)

Now that you’re in your ssh session and know how to navigate the filesystem, can […]

The Weird And Beautiful JavaScript Language

  As a full-stack developer I often look for ways to continuously improve my code, […]

Why Communication Skills Is An Important Skill For Developers

  When you think of some of the top skills a developer needs, what comes […]

UI/UX: Just Because Its A Big Company Doesn’t Make It Right

Table of contents Introduction Examples where UI/UX went wrong Walmart loses $1.85 billion Marks & […]

What’s New In Vue

  Introduction In this blog I will be looking into features that have been added […]

A Web Developer’s UI/UX Resource Arsenal

When developing projects for various clients, you will need to have access to different resources, […]

Technical Skills IT Students Wish They Knew Sooner

Ever since the Silicon Valley tech boom ICT skills have been in ever increasing demand. […]

Why Is There No Coffee In FLASK?!

  When thinking of Flasks, your mind probably instantly goes to travel mugs, speedy coffee […]

TailwindCSS For Faster Front-end Development

In this blog post I will be diving into the very basics of what TailwindCSS […]

You’ll Figure It Out…

In the course of your career as a software developer, you will be faced with […]

Help! I’ve Had To SSH Into A Linux Box And Don’t Know What To Do

So, your team lead or boss has asked you to SSH into a Linux box […]

Many Ways To Skin A Cat – If A Cat Was A String Value

  Ways to convert a string to a number.   ParseInt() ParseInt allows for spaces. […]

5 Tips For A Successful Mentorship

  Why Mentoring is Important   I believe mentorship is very important as it benefits […]

How And When To Ask Clients What Their Budget Is

Discailmer: This article is based on "Price Creative Work With Confidence. Win More Bids. Make […]

How To Only Display Events From Database For FullCalendar On Livewire

When creating projects for clients or working on personal that consist of a huge amount […]

The Basics Of Using Leaflet.js With Open Street Maps

Recently I was put on a project that required me to visually display the user […]

Buddy Coding And Talking It Through

Every developer has had those moments where you get into the zone and you just […]

Simple Way To Send A File With Auxiliary Data Via Axios In VueJS

  Many times in the past I’ve spent countless hours trying to figure out how […]

Switch Branding In Your Angular Project

Set up a build configuration to easily switch between pre-defined layouts and data endpoints. - […]

Deciphering Web Design Lingo

Working with web designers and web developers can be frustrating at times if you don't […]

Setup A New Python Project Like A Pro (Part 2)

In my previous blog post, I talked about how to create virtual environments and how […]

Working From Home Tips

We have been working from home for a while now, since the beginning of Covid-19. […]

How To Make A Bulk Edit & Update Functionality For DataTables

When creating a screen that allows a user to interact with data, you will need […]

7 Tips Developers Can Use To Get Out Of Their “Burnout Slump”

We all know being a software developer is not an easy job. You have challenging […]

Why The Education System Needs To Invest In Teaching Coding Skills

Due to the sudden and exponential increase in software technologies in everything from fully automated […]

The All New Jetbrains Fleet!

JetBrains Fleet, a competitor to Microsoft VS Code? Fleet is the new next-generation IDE created […]

Studies And Online Courses To Better Yourself

Any developer can tell you that the world of software development and coding is a […]

Typescript Access Modifiers, Type Safety And Return Types And Why They Are Important

Typescript offers ways for a developer to write cleaner and more robust code by making […]

Implementing Laravel Echo And Socket.io With A Laravel API And Ionic Vue App

  The past two weeks I was struggling to implement sockets for an Ionic Vue […]

Setup A New Python Project Like A Pro (Part 1: Virtual Environments)

When doing development work using Python you will often find yourself using packages that you […]

Slider Revolution Plugin For WordPress

Slider Revolution is amazing! In fact, it is so great that I built an entire […]

Computer Vision

Computer vision is a field of computer science focused on replicating parts of the complexity […]

The Art Of Wireframes & Mock-Ups

In the web development industry, planning a website and web app’s functionality is crucial to […]

The Art Of Coding

For my first post I would like to discuss the “The Art Of Coding” as […]

What Is Firebase?

Firebase was originally developed by a start-up called Envolve, and it aimed to make the […]

Client Communication And Cooperation

In dealing with a client on a project, it is always important to remember to […]

Developing Problem Solving Skills Through Games

For most ordinary folk, when you mention the idea of playing a videogame, the first […]

Updating A Primitive Type Variable From A Service In Angular

  Do you need to get a value from a service level variable as soon […]

How To Connect Your Forge Remote Database In DBeaver

Sometimes a client wants to see the structure of the database, or you need an […]

Vim & Vim Adventures

As a software developer/engineer you'll likely spend a lot of your time in the command […]

UX Consistency In Web Development

When developing a website or web application, you will always need to ensure that your […]

What Is Distributed Ledger Technology?

In discussing distributed ledger technology, it has been noted that there are two types of […]

Power BI

Many of us have used or at the least heard of some version of Business […]

Simple URL Shortener For Your Encoded URLs In PHP Laravel

A problem almost every web or full stack developer will eventually come across. This is […]

SEO Tips I Recently Learnt On Ubersuggest

Lava Lamp Lab recently subscribed to Ubersuggest. For those of you who don't know what […]

A Developers Bonsai

An unusual thing has started to happen to me recently, unusual for me anyways. I […]

Laravel Livewire

  Laravel Livewire is a library that makes it easy to create applications in a […]

How To Setup Git-ftp For Windows

  Why use git-ftp? If you use git and you need to upload your changes […]

What’s New In Tech?

Hello everyone, today I’ve decided to post a curated list of some of the more interesting/impactful […]

Clean Code Best Practices

Introduction In this post I would like to share some principles and concepts that I […]

How To Charge For A Website

Introduction This is a hot topic at the moment in the web and design space. […]

A Simple And Powerful Git Version Control Workflow

This Git workflow can be used collaboratively or individually. This workflow will; ensure your individual […]

Dynamic Doughnut Graph Using Laravel Vue Component

When working on a project, there will come a time in the development process where […]

The Pros And Cons Of Azure Logic Apps

Azure logic apps is a fast and easy method of manipulating data by the use […]

Internet Hygiene

In the pandemic ridden times we’re currently wading through - hygiene has become an extremely […]

Router Extra Options

I've been fortunate enough to dev with Angular for the last 2 years, and I'm […]

Laravel Observers

  I recently had the task of keeping track of a User's status in a […]

5 Benefits Of Having A Developer Journal

  At Lava Lamp Lab we each have our own channel in Teams and this […]

How To Deploy Your App/Website On Heroku

  Introduction What is Heroku? Heroku is a fully managed container-based cloud platform, to make […]

8 Tips For Businesses Building A New Website

Yip, believe it or not, there are many businesses out there that still do not […]

Testing Practices For Developers

When working on a project, you will always need to confirm if your code is […]

Develop Incredibly Lightweight And Blazingly Fast Static Websites With Svelte

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”  - Albert Einstein   […]

Deploy Static Frontend Sites Instantly And For Free With Firebase

Intro: Okay so you have built your website and now you wandering how to deploy […]

JavaScript Basics

JavaScript is a programming language that can be used to extend the functionality of the […]

4 Tips To Make Time Estimating Easier

One of the many skills a developer needs, is to be able to estimate how […]

7 Design Principles For Web Design

There are seven main principles of design. These principles allow for a visually pleasing design. […]

The Important Role Of Documentation

When working on different projects, you will need a guideline and quick overview of each […]

9 Tips To Prevent Programmer Burnout

Many software developers have to deal with an ever increasing workload. Not to mention scope […]

How To Implement A Cropper Tool In Your Frontend Vue Application

So have you always wandered how you could implement a cropping tool on your Vue […]

Laravel Pivot Tables

I've recently run into the following scenario; A Store needed to be linked to multiple […]

Laravel Migrations VS CodeIgniter Migrations

Laravel and CodeIgniter are both PHP frameworks. They have many differences but they also have […]

What’s The Deal With CSS4?

Introduction Cascading Style Sheets or more commonly known as CSS is "a style sheet language […]

How To Sit For 8+ Hours A Day And Not Destroy Your Body

A quick disclaimer, I am not qualified in any medical field. This is just my […]

Prioritising Tasks And Skills

In the web development and design industry, you will always be faced with projects or […]

How To Setup Docker/Nginx For Your Vue CLI Project

So today I would like to show you how you can setup your Docker Container […]

Comparing WooCommerce vs Squarespace vs Shopify vs Wix in 2020

With so many options out there, it can be difficult to make a decision on […]

Debugging Best Practices

Bugs and Errors are common in Software Development. It happens to the best of us. […]

The Move To Clockify

In a previous post "Sprint planning and time keeping" I discussed how we plan our […]

Get Started With Bitbucket Pipelines: A simple PHP Composer Pipeline

Bitbucket pipelines are a great option for setting up automated testing and deployment of the […]

Tidy Your Ionic Codebase For The Next Developer To Understand

Introduction This post is geared towards developers working on production apps that are managed by […]

Laravel Eloquent: Advanced Queries On Relationships Using whereHas

Eloquent is amazing, and 90% of queries can be dealt with using where, find, has, […]

Upskilling Is The Key To Moving Forward

The Age of Information has changed how we work on a grand scale. New technologies […]

Integrating Vuex Into Your Laravel Vue Application

Firstly what is Vuex? Well the text book definition would be: Vuex is a state […]

Difference Between Screen Size, Resolution And Display Size

With a wide variety of different screen sizes, people often get screen size, resolution size, […]

Git Workflow With Multiple People

As LavaLamp is growing larger, and more and more people are working on the same […]

Benefits Of Hiding Columns When Using Datatables.net

In reference to a previous blog post on the implementation of DataTables. This blog post […]

Using Emoji In Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a great way of staying in contact with your team wherever they […]

Shipping A Full-Featured Video Calling App With Half The Effort (OpenVidu)

Introduction This is less a code tutorial and more of a report of our experience […]

Using Vue Alongside Laravels Blade Templating Engine

If you've been using Laravel, you've likely grown to love Blade. It makes creating the […]

How To Send A Tweet From Within Your Angular App Via Node Js

  This short tutorial will show you how you can use the Twitter API to […]

Important Steps On Taking Notes

It is a well- known fact that taking notes in a meeting, work or client […]

Embedding Website Links Into Your Android App

Sometimes when you are building an app, you need to display some sort of standard […]

Unhandled Promises Sent Through To App Insights In Node JS

App Insights is great for monitoring services, logging metrics and analysing traces and exceptions. However […]

Implementing A JS markdown Editor Into Your Application

Recently I was looking at online markdown editors that I could use in a small […]

The Research Of Code

When working with code, the most important thing every developer should know is that research […]

The Differences Between www And Non-www URL’s

Introduction I’ve had this question pop up a few times recently, so I decided to […]

Laravel: Accessors And Mutators

In Laravel, Accessors and Mutators allow you to manipulate data when you store or read […]

Datatables With Laravel

When creating a web app it usually involves creating a dashboard and a place for […]

A Kill Script For Processes That Are Using TCP/UDP Ports

I used to have trouble with processes blocking ports while developing. I would type up […]

Our Lockdown Story

Not too long ago we were all still enjoying the warm weather and our unchallenged […]

What Is OpenAPI And Why Should You Use It?

RESTFUL API's have been around for a while. And every year, more and more software […]

The Process Of Web Design

When a client has commissioned for a website to be built or redesigned, it is […]

Native Vs Hybrid

There’s often a debate between which is better? Hybrid or native? With everything else in […]

200 Factors From Google That Affect Your SEO

Original article:

Scrum And Agile Methodology

One of the most dominant Agile approaches is Scrum. It’s very popular and widely used. […]

How To Setup And Use OneSignal For Web Apps

  I recently learnt how to use OneSignal. One of my clients needed a pop […]

What’s New In Android 11?

Google has released android 11(preview)(No longer opting to name android versions after deserts) a month […]

Sprint Planning And Time Keeping

At Lava Lamp we use Freedcamp to plan our sprints and keep track of how […]

Simple Architecture In Android

Architecture is quite a difficult thing to wrap your head around. Today I’m going to […]

From College To Work – A Web Developer’s Experience

It’s been a long year! You are done with your final assignment, you’re almost done […]

Easily View Your Laravel Logs Using Laravel Log Viewer

  If you've ever had a client or customer call you up and say "I […]

How I Like To Use Async Await In JS

Using async and await is generally considered to be a replacement for handling promises with […]

8 Misconceptions About Web Design

1. White space / space is a bad thing Space or 'white space' as it […]

Ionic Custom Form Builder

Ion-custom-form-builder This is an ionic-angular component library for building forms with the highlight of doing […]

Simple Authentication With Guards In Laravel

This isn't an in-depth article on the topic. There are plenty of those around. However, […]

Google Maps With Laravel

Recently I had to create a form, where the user can fill in their address. […]

Working With Eloquent: API Resources In Laravel – Part 2

Following on from my previous blog Post (found here) we are going to be discussing […]

Getting Django To Talk To MySQL 8

Recently I needed to move a Django database from MySQL 5.7 to MySQL 8. DigitalOcean […]

Pull Requests

Pull Requests are a feature that makes it easier for developers to collaborate. Developers can […]

Custom App Colours In Flutter

Flutter has great functionality but when it comes to UI, it lacks in one fundamental […]

Provisioning A New Digital Ocean Server With Laravel Forge, And Deploying Code With Laravel Envoyer

Today I had to migrate a server for our client Xstream Connect from their hosting […]

4 Handy Tools For Web Design

We as web designers need constantly learn new things to keep up with the latest […]

Extracting A Colour Gradient From A Shape In PowerPoint Into CSS

Being a web designer / web developer, you are faced with the task of translating […]

Laravel Backpack

This week I learnt about Laravel backpack. We have been creating a lot of sites […]

How To Deploy A Backend API To Azure

  In this post I will show with many screenshots the steps to making an […]

How To Use CKEditor 5 In Angular With Server Side Rendering Support

What is CKEditor and why would you be interested in using it? So if you […]

System Environment Variables On Windows

This week I did research on environment variables in Java on a Windows system. Let […]

My Java ExceptionUtil Class

Inspired by the Scala Try class, I thought there must be an easy way to […]

Getting Your Sage One Company ID For API Integration

Note: Sage One has been renamed to Sage Business Cloud. If you’re looking to integrate […]

Working With Eloquent: API Resources In Laravel

Sometimes when building an API you want to have a generic return message that all […]

Moving Applications To The Cloud (Presentation)

Earlier this year Nicolas Blank (NBConsult Group CEO) and our CEO, Gary Irwin presented at Microsoft […]

How To Create And Digitally Sign A PDF Using Laravel And TCPDF

  There are many reasons to digitally sign a PDF. The main 2 being to […]

The Importance Of Website Maintenance

I hear this all too often: "My site is slow." or "My site isn't doing […]

Flutter: The Good, Bad & Gotchas

Flutter: The Good, Bad & Gotchas Flutter was released to stable on December 4th, 2018 […]

Why Should You Use A Content Management System (CMS)

It's the 21st century and if you don't already have a website yet, you might […]

Reusable Components And RxJS Observables In Ionic-Angular

Reusable Components and rxjs Observables in Ionic-Angular Original Presentation: Reusable Components and rxjs Observables in […]

Android: A Quick Kotlin Eksperience

Benefits of using Kotlin Original Presentation: Android - A quick Kotlin Eksperience 1.No Semi-Colon 2.Default […]

What Makes Drupal Awesome Compared To WordPress

I love working with Drupal for one main reason: its' flexibility and power to add […]

Local Scopes In Laravel

Recently, while working on a project for a client I needed to be able to […]

How We Made A Build Server Using Webhooks, Fastlane And Bash (Part 2)

The next step in creating the build server is getting the build script to run […]

How We Made A Build Server Using Webhooks, Fastlane And Bash (Part 1)

This is the first blog post in a series about how we built a simple […]