Web Wizardry

Notes from the Chief Wizard of Liberty.me
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  • David Veksler

How to build a Bitcoin exchange: Part 1 – design goals & risk management Jul 1, 2017

In 2013, I designed and built a cryptocurrency exchange for the China market.  The basic concept & architecture only took a few days, but the full implementation required several years.   I shared the basic architecture in 2013, and with the recent spike in interest in Bitcoin and Ethereum, I thought I would share additional details on the concept. I wrote the "kernel" of the exchange over a long weekend in Shanghai.  It turns out that building a large-scale cryptocurrency exchange is quite complex, and it finally (and successfully) launched in 2016.  The notes below describe my design vision from...

By David Veksler Vote16 3

Want to host your publication on WordPress? Here is what you need to know Jun 25, 2017

My first blog was launched from my university dorm room in 2001, using my personal computer as the web server for a long-forgotten XML-based CMS.   Over the next 16 years, I’ve created new sites using over a dozen different blog and content management platforms.  The websites I’ve created have had hosting costs from a few dollars to a few thousand dollars per month: from a few dozen to a few million visitors per month.  I’ve also been fortunate to work on larger projects serving tens of millions of users - Match.com and projects for an ad agency (VML). Most of...

By David Veksler Vote3 0

How and why I hire freelancers via UpWork Jun 8, 2017

The other day I mentioned on LinkedIn that I was looking for a freelancer web developer.  A USA-based agency messaged me to express interest. Their rate - $150/hour.  This a typical rate for an experienced US-based web developer.  The project I need help with has a budget of about $1000 per month, so this rate would give me under six hours of work, once rounding and communications overhead (or project manager) is factored in.  I ended up going to UpWork.com and hiring two developers: one from Ukraine for $20/hour, and one from India for $10 per hour. The Indian developer will do close to 100 hours...

By David Veksler Vote3 0

How FEE used Umbraco to share 70 years of archives Aug 22, 2016

The Foundation for Economic Education turned 70 years old this year.  Over the course of several decades, FEE collected a warehouse full of archives.  Although the archives were eventually digitized, no one knew what to do with the scans, so they sat around for many years collecting digital dust -- until now. Here is the process we used this summer to create http://history.fee.org/ 1: Scan and OCR archives The physical documents were located in dozens of file boxes with folders.  Each folder was scanned as a large PDF file, combining 30-50 individual documents.  Without any metadata to describe their contents, it was impossible to make any sense of the scans. 2:...

By David Veksler Vote3 0

How FEE.org implemented Push Notifications for Web Browsers Aug 10, 2016

[This post was written by Алексей Нащекин, a developer working on FEE.org] Web Push API is a new technology that allows web browser to send and receive messages pushed to them from the application server.   Whereas previously, push notifications were only available to apps that were installed on a computer or phone, the web push API supports sending notifications with just a web browser. With push notifications, a message will be shown to the user even if the web site is opened on another tab of the browser or even if it is not opened at all. Note that it is...

By Алексей Нащекин Vote4 0

How FEE.org implemented Facebook Instant Articles May 9, 2016

Facebook's Instant Articles are a new way to create fast-loading articles within the Facebook app.  We wanted it for FEE's page because we wanted the boost in performance as well as engagement. FEE.org runs the Umbraco CMS, and there was no Instant Articles plugin, so I wrote one and shared the code on GitHub.  The plugin supports two methods of publishing content: The latest content is shared via an RSS feed that Facebook checks every few minutes: https://fee.org/instantfeed/ Whenever content is published, the article is pushed to the Facebook Instant Article API. For both methods, the body of the article is formatted using the special Instant...

By David Veksler Vote5 0

Success factors for great software teams Apr 7, 2016

Some notes from a short presentation I gave on building quality software development teams: Effective teams start with good people. A business is not a charity and cannot wait for people to grow into the role required of them. Intelligence and inherent motivation cannot be taught. These and many other aspects must be screened for when hiring. But hiring good people is not enough.  Getting the most of a development team requires certain environmental factors. I have organized them into three areas:  internal/motivational, structural/organizational, and interpersonal/communication. Sometimes they will conflict with practical considerations, but we ought to take them consideration...

By David Veksler Vote2 1

10 questions you must ask when applying for a software job Apr 3, 2016

No matter what any recruiter will tell you, you alone are responsible for your career.    That means ongoing education and working on a team with proper software development practices. These practices will help ensure that you spend your time having fun building new things rather than the Very Bad Things which happen when they are not in place (trust me on this).  No matter whether you are applying to your first gig in IT or you are a master engineer, it is your responsibility to assess a potential employer during the interview process.   If these things are not in place already, your employer should be open to doing them. Do you...

By David Veksler Vote4 2

Three secrets of software development Apr 1, 2016

Individual skill makes a huge difference: A good programmer is ten times more productive than an average programmer. A great programmer is 20-100 times more productive than the average. Studies since the 1960's have consistently shown this. A bad programmer is not just unproductive - he will not only not get any work done, but create a lot of work and headaches for others to fix. “A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.” –Bill Gates...

By David Veksler Vote5 3

Cloud architecture: Liberty.me versus FEE.org Mar 28, 2016

Two projects have kept me busy during the last two years: Liberty.me, a private online community, and FEE.org, a 70 non-profit educational organization. While both share a free-market philosophy, they have very different business models, and so very different designs and technology stacks. Liberty.me is build with WordPress and an open-source stack, whereas for FEE.org I went with Umbraco and a Microsoft stack. Despite this, they have a similar cloud architectures. Please share your suggestions or let me know if you would like more details about these configurations:    

By David Veksler Vote7 1

Case study in content management system selection: Liberty.me vs FEE.org Mar 28, 2016

In my previous post, I talked about the process of building a website for FEE.org using the Umbraco CMS. In this post, I will discuss why I chose Umbraco for this project. WordPress, Umbraco, or Custom? Background: Most web developers who were around before the explosion of modern content management applications have built one themselves. I built my first CMS using Classic ASP and Access around 2002 for a university newspaper. In 2004, I designed a new CMS for Mises.org and evolved it through the latest Microsoft technologies for just over 10 years.  (More on this project here.) It was a great learning...

By David Veksler Vote5 0

Essential tools for managing software projects Mar 27, 2016

Running software projects from concept to production requires much more than jumping into writing code. My most recent large project was to build a CMS for FEE.org.  Making this project a success in just three months required several key processes and tools.  Let's review the high-level process I used and the tools that made it possible: Development Process Overview Here is a high level overview of the implementation process: Interview stakeholders - understand their workflow and goals for the new site Perform in-depth site survey - build a sitemap to understand site structure Document types/page fields - survey all fields (properties) used on each page, think about...

By David Veksler Vote4 0

Six productivity best practices for software development leaders Mar 26, 2016

In the dozen years I've worked in the tech industry, I've balanced working as a small cog in large enterprises and working as a an independent IT consultant, building and running software for organizations like the Mises Institute, Liberty.me and the Foundation for Economic Education. One of my biggest challenges as an independent consultant has been time and task management. It's essential to track the list of priorities and the time I spend on each project. Here are six strategies I use for time and task management in my projects: 1: Make setting priorities the first thing you do, and write down tasks for...

By David Veksler Vote4 0

Liberty News Feed Dec 30, 2014

Liberty News is an aggregate news stream from over 50 liberty-related publications and organizations and links submitted by our members. Subscribe by RSS, email or add the widget to your web site: Enter your email address:Delivered by FeedBurner Subscribe in a reader Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: Powered by FeedBurner

By David Veksler Vote10 0

Liberty Links Bookmarklet Jun 9, 2014

The Liberty links Bookmarklet is a magical shortcut which you drag into your browser's Bookmarks Bar. Then, whenever you want to submit the current page as a Liberty Links story, just click on it. Then just click "Publish Link." Try it now: Drag this link to your browser's bookmarks bar: Submit to Liberty links

By David Veksler Vote18 4

Set a custom logo for your Publishing Site Jun 3, 2014

While you can't yet set a separate image from your profile for your publishing site, you can use this CSS hack to override the default image.  In the "Customize Publishing Site" settings, add this to the "Footer HTML."  Replace the image url with yours. <style> .avatar-box { background-image: url(//liberty.me/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/liberty.me-bird-logo-white.png); background-size: 100% 100%;}.avatar {display: none;} </style>

By David Veksler Vote1 0

Liberty.me Feeds, Podcasts, and Email Subscriptions Jun 3, 2014

The Liberty.me team is working hard on more ways to share our content with the world.  You can of course browse Liberty.me on your desktop, tablet, or smartphone, as Liberty.me scales automatically to fit on a mobile screen. But what if you want Liberty.me to come to you, instead of having to visit the site?  What if you want to get an email alert when a new book or guide is published?  What if you want new interviews and classes to auto-magically appear on your iPhone?  It's actually pretty easy to do with our RSS feeds & podcasts. Below is a...

By David Veksler Vote12 7

Liberty.me Publishing Site Secrets, Episode 1 May 19, 2014

The development team at Liberty.me is working very hard to make your site a publishing powerhouse, and we have a ton of tips and trickys to make your publishing site more awesome. Monetize your site, add social widgets, tracking codes, email subscriptions, and more.

By David Veksler Vote26 14

Turbo boost Liberty.me: Optimize your images with these simple tools May 11, 2014

Look at these two images:   They look identical, right?  Yet one of them is just 1/7th the size of the other – 109 KBs for the PNG and 15 KBs for the JPG. Why does this matter?  The Liberty.me homepage is over 2 megabytes in size, and most of that is images: While the development team is working hard to make our back-end perform faster, our speed is still limited by the size of the images uploaded.   We can make it faster by using a few simple tools. We suggest you run them on every image you upload...

By David Veksler Vote15 1

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