CTO
Technical definition and development / QA
Mike is our CTO. His evenings and weekends are spent tinkering with electronics and riding bikes
Blog posts
- Working with SVGs in Sprites
07/08/2014Scaleable Vector Graphics (SVGs) allow you to have images and icons which look great on any screen and can be resized without any loss in quality. When combined in a sprite, they can also speed up your website by reducing requests
- How can I verify my Google Event Tracking is working?
03/10/2017Validating your Google Event tracking is working can be a tricky business. This blog post walks you through checking the data being sent to Google Analytics, so you can verify the information is correct.
- Schema - what is it and how do I use it?
25/10/2017Schema markup is a method of adding extra tags to your website in order to help machines, such as Google, understand the data. It can help identity key bits of information such as your address or reviews of your services. This enables users find you or trust you quicker. This blog post explains more about Schema and how you can use it.
- Bytes Conf - 16th November 2017
17/11/2017On the 16th November, Bytes Conf once again opened it's doors for an evening of entertainment and truth bombs from four fantastic speakers. Hosted by our very own Candi and Mike, Bytes Conf is about making an affordable,...
- How I wrote a book; the writing process from one of our Developers
08/03/2018In 2017, one of our front-end developers wrote and released a book about the JavaScript library; Vue.js. This blog post explains the process he went through to get the book from his mind to print.
- Why we're not dropping Slack for Google Hangouts Chat...yet.
15/03/2018Google finally released their "Slack Killer" to all Google Suite users - but is it as good as they say it is? We weren't convinced, but here is why...
- Using Vue.js with a Lumen powered API
18/10/2018Lumen is a mico-framework from the creators of Laravel. This blog post walks though how to integrate Vue.js with Vue router and use Lumen as an API for your app
- Using a post-merge git hook to clean up old branches
28/03/2019When you've been working on a project for a while, you might find you have a few stale branches hanging around. At Liquid Light we have a git hook which tidies up after a merge
- The technical challenges in building a data portal
12/04/2019We recently designed and built a data portal which collects disaggregated data from multiple sources from 40 countries for Leonard Cheshire and The Department for International Development. This data is presented on the portal in a series of visualizations across 16 development indicators, grouped into the four themes of inclusive education, economic empowerment, technology/innovation and stigma/discrimination.
- How to become device agnostic and what it means for your data
29/10/2019All too often you hear about people losing their phones and, along with it, their data. This blog post explores how you can become "device agnostic", freeing the tether between your device and your memories.
- How do you deal with designers who design without any thought?
10/12/2019As a developer, dealing with designers and their creations can sometimes be challenging. At Liquid Light we've honed our process to ensure minimum friction between both developers and designers.
- Why should you consider Cloudflare for your website?
20/04/2020Cloudflare is a service which, among other things, provides a CDN (Content Delivery Network), firewall, and performance layer for your website. It has plenty of paid upgrades and features and is a developer’s dream, but what advantage does it have for you to put your website “behind” Cloudflare and how does it work?
- What is a server?
20/11/2020Servers power the internet and have done since the creation of it. All the websites in the world run on servers (with varying levels of web interfaces & logins). So what are they, how do they work and what do Liquid Light typically use?
- Using the TYPO3 redirects module to ensure your visitors don't end up at a dead-end
15/04/2021With version 9, TYPO3 introduced a native redirects module - not only does it give you a place to centrally manage your redirects, it gracefully handles page renaming
- Incremental updates don't win awards
28/06/2021The web industry thrives on “the big reveal” of new designs and websites but we don't believe that should ever be the case.
- Creating Backend Layouts with TYPO3 CMS to build better looking pages
20/10/2022This blog post walks through creating, selecting and using Backend Layouts in TYPO3.
- Navigation drop-downs. Should they be hover or click?
24/07/2017Navigation drop-downs, or mega menus as they are sometimes dubbed, are becoming more and more common on the web. A drop-down menu is a navigation block which appears when a link is clicked (or hovered) - a good example of this can...
- Render Conf 30th March 2017 - A review
18/05/2017On 30th March, I took the many trains over the many hours required to get to Oxford from Brighton and attended Render Conf. In it’s second year, this conference already seems to have gained quite an online following. The line-up was jam-packed full of reputable names you’ve heard and people with brains jam-packed full of info.
- Creating SVG Sprites using Gulp and Sass
11/11/2014Following on from the previous blog post, we walk through the process we have for creating and maintaining our SVG sprites with Gulp and Sass by using custom mixins and functions
- HTML Newsletters - Design Considerations
15/12/2014HTML emails are a great way of keeping your customers up-to-date, but are not as versatile as web pages. Here's our list of things to consider when designing and building HTML emails.
- Git for Beginners: An Overview and Basic Workflow
10/03/2015Git is a tricky subject to get your head around. Knowing the commands is one thing, but knowing how to use them is another. This article will walk you through a simple, single developer Git workflow - covering the commands that you would use at each stage.
- Using Slack to Improve Team Communication
30/04/2015Team communication is one of the most important things in a company. We use Slack to make sure everyone is up-to-date with company and client news - this blog outlines how we, and others, use the popular instant messaging client
- Responsive Typography in SCSS
02/11/2015Ensuring your website content is readable on all devices is something which is becoming harder to do. This blog post walks you through a solution which helps you manage your responsive typography.
- Let's drop IE8
03/12/2015Support for the browser is soon coming to an end. What does that mean for you and your website?
- YouTube videos vs self-hosted: Which one is better for you?
25/01/2016If you want your video on your website. the question of whether you should self-host or not often crops up. This post outlines the benefits to self-hosting compared to using a third party service such as YouTube
- Raspberry Pi: what is it and why do i need one?
15/02/2016The Raspberry Pi is a credit card sized computer which has taken the technical world by storm. Originally developed to encourage children and schools to get into programming - the cheap device has been picked up by the development...
- Creating a custom Mailchimp template with layout variations
04/05/2016Creating a responsive, HTML email template is not as easy as it first appears. Email clients are still behind with web standards and supporting latest web technologies, so HTML emails need to be built using the
<table>element and inline styles. This blog will walk you through creating a custom template while still using Mailchimp's WYSIWYG and Image editor - How do I update to Gulp 4?
22/03/2016Gulp is a task runner used for compiling SCSS to CSS, minifying JS and creating SVG sprites. Version 4 is about to be released and this blog post runs you through how to update and use the new features of gulp.
- Using lego to build a device lab
12/07/2016At Liquid Light we've got a range of devices which we use to test our websites on - accessing and viewing these devices was becoming cumbersome. Two of our staff took it into their own hands to build a Lego-based device lab.
- How we use Trello to keep track of our marketing schedule
02/08/2016Trello is a great tool which lets you easily manage projects. Ranging from websites to weddings, Trello helps you create tag and move cards. At Liquid Light, we use Trello to keep track of our marketing output - this blog explains how.
- Building a Vue v2 JS app using Vue-router
03/11/2016Vue JS is a javascript framework which has recently released version 2. Allowing you to display, manipulate and navigate data, Vue is a React, Knockout and Angular competitor. This blog post walks through building a web app with Vue Router.
- What's new in Feefo v3?
15/12/2016Feefo, the customer feedback and review website, launched version 3 of their product at the end of September. Although customers had no choice to be updated to version 3, what does this mean for users, customers and developers using the platform?
- How can I score 100 on Google PageSpeed Insights?
13/03/2017PageSpeed Insights (PSI) is a tool developed by Google to rank the speed of your website. There are a few things it doesn’t look out for, such as code validation or usability but it’s a good starting point at getting your site up...
- Use env files and variables to keep sensitive information out of your TYPO3 project
21/10/2021Environment variables are a great way of keeping sensitive information, such as passwords and API keys out of your project and git repository. Thos blog walks through setting them up with TYPO3
Get in touch
The Liquid Light team thrive on new projects and challenges. If you have a project in mind that you think we could add value to - then please do get in touch - we’d love to hear from you.
Please call +44 (0)1273 623 303 or
