Dave Warfel, Author at The Great Escape

How to Replace Text with CSS

Jul 13, 2014May 5, 2016 Dave Warfel 17 Comments

Replacing text with CSS is not something I use often, but there are some specific cases where it comes in handy. If you have the ability to change text on the server-side, I always recommend that first. CSS text replacement should be a last resort, as that is not what CSS is intended for.

If you’re working within the limitations of a CMS, or you don’t have the ability to change your markup, CSS text replacement might be your only option.

There are a few ways to handle it. Let’s walk through the options, and explain how they work, and why other methods fail.

Add Line Breaks to CSS Generated Content

Jul 13, 2014May 5, 2016 Dave Warfel 5 Comments

You’re probably familiar with CSS generated content, and how it is used in conjunction with the :before & :after pseudo-elements. Maybe you read our article on replacing text with CSS.

A common question we get is, “How can I add a line break to my CSS content?”

Good news! Line breaks are possible with CSS, but there’s a little more to it than just inserting an entity conversion code into your content declaration.

How to clear your browser cache and cookies

Apr 24, 2013Nov 25, 2017 Dave Warfel 1 Comment

In our previous blog post, “How to refresh browser, web page,” we talked about how to refresh you browser in order for users to see changes to a website.

“When we make changes to a clients’ website, they often don’t see the changes right away. This is because their browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc.) has cached web pages. When a browser caches a web page, it stores a local copy on the visitor’s computer. This speeds up the page load time so the visitor can view the information faster when they visit the page again.”

If you don’t immediately see changes made to the website, you may have to go the extra step of clearing your browser cache and cookies in addition to refreshing your web page.

Allow Direct Database Access on GoDaddy Shared Hosting Plans

Mar 4, 2013Nov 25, 2017 Dave Warfel 3 Comments

We have recently setup CodeGuard for one of our clients, and we’re in the process of setting up numerous sites on the CodeGuard platform. Getting the files adding for backup was as easy as providing FTP credentials. Backing up the database, however, proved to be a bit more difficult.

If you’re having trouble setting up database backups for CodeGuard on a GoDaddy shared hosting plan, it’s likely due to the following configuration option.

Customizing mailto: Links

Dec 15, 2012Mar 8, 2018 Dave Warfel 122 Comments

If you’ve ever wondered how to customize a mailto: link, getting it to include your own subject line, list of recipients, cc or bcc someone, and pre-populate a message in the email body… look no further.

First, let’s look at a standard mailto: link.

<a href="mailto:onecooldude@gmail.com">onecooldude@gmail.com</a>

Example

Nothing special there. When you click that link, it opens up the user’s default mail program, and will populate onecooldude@gmail.com in the TO field.

Why WordPress?

Dec 12, 2012Jan 23, 2018 Dave Warfel Leave a comment

Before I dive into all the great things about WordPress, why you should build your site with it (or switch if you’re on one of the other platforms)… let’s start with a few stats:

CMS usage stats among top sites on the web (trends.builtwith.com)
Same stats, different source (w3techs.com)
Over 58 million wordpress.com sites in the world
Over 3.5 billion wordpress.com pageviews across all blogs
Google Search Trends, Worldwide from 2004 – Present (compares WP, Joomla, Drupal, Blogger)
Infographic from yoast – staggering numbers all around

Now that that’s out of the way…