What’s this? A new GoSquared Help Sheet? Hell yeah!

We’re pleased to bring you a brand new GoSquared Help Sheet for your Node.JS needs.

What’s Node.JS?

If you’ve read this far, you probably already know, but for those intrigued, Node.JS is an evented I/O framework for the V8 JavaScript engine. It’s ideal for writing scalable network programs such as web servers.

We’ve been working on some exciting things with Node.JS, and we felt it was only fair to share our knowledge in the form of an easy-to-read Help Sheet.

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A few months ago, AWS introduced an extremely useful little feature to their consistently developing EC2 platform: Instance Tagging. Before tags, it was relatively tricky to define a clear instance nomenclature, forcing you to implement a vague approach using security groups if you wanted something close to the same functionality. Since there is also a full API surrounding tags, they can be put to work in many useful ways.

Naming instances

Besides attaching up to ten custom nuggets of arbitrary data to instances, tags can be extremely handy when it comes to naming your EC2 instances, and more importantly, using these names to differentiate between instances and their roles. For example, you have three instances. One holds your master database and website, the second is a slave database in replication, and the third is a staging/test server. You’ll want to make pretty damn sure that when you’re SSH’d into all three of your instances, the commands you send are received by the intended recipient server.
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We’re pleased to bring you the 3rd version of the GoSquared CSS Help Sheet, and a brand new CSS3 Help Sheet.

With the VI Help Sheet we released last week, we redesigned our Help Sheets for a much better result when printed on paper, while ensuring they still don’t look too shabby on the screen of your Mac, PC, iPhone or iPad.

We’ve put together a Help Sheet specifically for CSS3. We’ve covered most of the basic options now possible with CSS3, but there’s a ton more we couldn’t fit in, so we’ve linked to a couple of handy articles such as this post by 456 Berea Street on CSS Selectors, and this piece by Paul Irish on Font-Face.

So what are you waiting for? Download them. Print them. Stick ‘em on the wall and get creative!

New to GoSquared?

For those of you new to GoSquared – we help people improve their websites. GoSquared real-time web analytics enables you to understand what’s happening on your site right now. We run this blog, on design, technology and marketing to share our thoughts and content with wonderful people like you in the hope that you’ll also try GoSquared.

As always, if you find any errors or typos or anything like that, please drop us a note in the comments.

Get the CSS2 Help Sheet PDF (230KB)

Get the CSS3 Help Sheet PDF (221KB)

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We’re really pleased to bring you another Help Sheet. Introducing the VI Help Sheet for all you Linux loving developers out there.

It’s been a while since we released our set of web development Help Sheets for PHP, HTML and CSS, so we thought it was time to release another. This one should keep a lot of developers happily coding away into the early hours of the morning.

So what are you waiting for? Download it. Print it. Stick it on the wall and get commanding.

As always, if you find any errors or typos or anything like that, please drop us a note in the comments.

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Having used MediaTemple‘s hosting options for quite some time, we’ve built up a fair amount of experience working with their (dv) servers. Every now and again you may find it necessary to extend the core functionality of the pre-compiled PHP supplied with the (dv) server using PECL extensions to give your apps that little bit more of a cutting edge.

There is a quick and easy way to insall the PECL modules on your (dv) server: pecl install [extension]. However, if for whatever reason this does not work for you, this guide documents a manual installation method.

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Today, we’re introducing our all new Help Sheets. You loved our original CSS and HTML Help Sheets, so we went back to the originals, tidied them up, and gave them a sprinkling of coolness.

We’re also pleased to bring you an entirely new Help Sheet – the PHP Help Sheet. This should be a saviour for you hardcore coders when you forget the odd array function or two.

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If you like your blog, but want to make it better, and go tweaking the insides of WordPress, this may be of help to you.

Our good friends over at WP Candy have done a great job in providing you with the quick shortcuts and need-to-knows of WordPress all on one easy to use sheet.

New to GoSquared?

For those of you new to GoSquared – we help people improve their websites. GoSquared real-time web analytics enables you to understand what’s happening on your site right now. We run this blog, on design, technology and marketing to share our thoughts and content with wonderful people like you in the hope that you’ll also try GoSquared.

Get the PDF (592KB)

More Help Sheets by GoSquared: HTML Help Sheet, and CSS Help Sheet

A popular graphical style at the moment is to make your text look indented. I spent months and months trying to work out how to do this after seeing it perhaps for the first time in iTunes. I always looked for a filter or a tool to “emboss” or “bevel” the text, but these never looked quite as nice, and often made the text hard to read.

One day, it hit me: it’s SO SIMPLE! And the method I came up with didn’t involve filters, plug-ins, or any other jazz like that.

All you need to do to create the effect of indented text is to duplicate the line of text, with the duplicate behind, and slightly below the original.

Then, make the duplicated text slightly lighter than the original text. This will work perfectly when you have dark text, just like in the title of this post.

Also, not many people realise you can use this method with light coloured text aswell. However, instead of moving the duplicated line of text below the original, you move it above, and make it darker than the original text. This will look just as good and give the same effect.

This method can be used in almost any application, but I made these with Adobe Illustrator. It’s great to know that something that looks so good can be done so easily.

Hope this helps

Get the Adobe Illustrator CS2 File [1.1MB]

Ever wanted to type the copyright icon, or do an accent over an A without having to resort to some character palette? We have, and it takes time and is an effort. So we put together a series of help sheets that reference all of the characters that aren’t listed on your keyboard, along with their shortcut keys to make your life easier.

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The second in our Help Sheet series, you liked cheating with CSS, hopefully you’ll love cheating with HTML! To get going with HTML, just get the PDF below.

New to GoSquared?

For those of you new to GoSquared – we help people improve their websites. GoSquared real-time web analytics enables you to understand what’s happening on your site right now. We run this blog, on design, technology and marketing to share our thoughts and content with wonderful people like you in the hope that you’ll also try GoSquared.

Get the PDF (112kb)

See also: CSS Help Sheet

New Help Sheets Now Available!