Blog
Read our latest blogs on software and web development
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
