SAGRU

Ending Support for iOS 5.0 and Lower

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 12:02:56 -0400

With iOS 6 being released next week we have made the decision to stop supporting any version of iOS lower than 5.1, this will allow us to save time and provide quicker turnaround on client projects. This also means we won’t have to have any hacks in our code to deal with differences between pre-5.1 and newer OS’s. Simple things like tinting Navigation and Toolbars are no longer going to require extra lines of code or even additional category classes.

We’re planning on updating all of our products to support iOS 6 and some of our upcoming products will likely require it because we want to take advantage of some of the new features. Speaking of upcoming products, we should have our next one in the app store in the next few weeks, and you’ll hear more about it soon.

Staging at SAGRU

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 12:36:29 -0400

On a normal day we’re usually working on a web or iOS application, for both we commit them to Git when we’re done with a feature. This has generally been the stopping point for projects, from here they were either just waiting to receive commits or were cloned to the client’s server. This has been exactly what we’ve needed so far, the only problem it presents is that non-developer workers could only review the web work by either looking at it on the client’s server when it’s in a beta state or over a developers shoulder as they work on it.

As of yesterday that’s no longer necessary, as web projects are committed to their repos a combination of post-receive hooks and shell scripts run which automatically clone them into a web directory. Lighttpd starts serving them immediately on our local staging server allowing everyone in the office to view projects as they are being worked on.

Django Registration, Authentication and User's Names

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500

I’ve been using Django for a while now for it’s built in admin system, it’s ridiculously easy to setup and create a working admin section for clients. If they want to have testimonials for example, I just add a model and a admin entry for it, sync the database and it’s ready for them to enter content. Every time up until this point I’ve used Django just for the admin of projects, the front-end was usually written in PHP or Ruby and just pulled data in.

A couple of days ago I started converting a client project from consisting of a Django Admin, a PHP front-end and a Ruby API into a single project using Django for everything. Once I started doing this I found that setting up the front-end in Django is extremely simple… unless you need to do any sort of user registration. Now since I haven’t used it for anything more than just an admin before, I might be missing a very important yet easy step to get registration working in no time. I tried a lot of searches to find a way to setup user registration, but I couldn’t find anything simple; all I wanted to do was add a user the Auth module’s user table and just have them not have access to the admin. All I could find were sites saying to use the Django-Registration package or seemed to jump past some parts in using the included auth module.

After a full day of trying to figure things out I caved and forced myself to use the registration package, I had looked into it earlier but the tutorials were all confusing to me. I finally found one that made sense by Michele Pasin, in which setting up the registration package, the views and the SMTP debugging server are discussed. I followed Michele’s post to the letter and got the entire process working and all of the templates styled to match my project. There was only one thing left that I needed to do, collect the user’s first and last name. It’s not exactly helpful when you’re selling tickets to someone and you don’t know who they are.

This is where I ran into a problem, the registration package doesn’t include a way of registering the user’s first and last name; it doesn’t make sense to me as this data is all stored in the default auth module’s user table which has those two fields. After searching for an hour or so and only coming across sites saying to use the Django-Profiles package along with it I decided to roll my own form that handles it. The Django-Profiles package is a really great tool when you want to collect other information from your users, but it doesn’t make sense to use it for first and last name as the auth module already has those defined and why add another table containing information that should already be handled.

It took me about another hour to get this working and I’m going to detail it here for you so hopefully it helps you (more than likely though it’ll just be a reminder to myself of how to do it).

In my project the app where this is going to live is called shop, you can put this in whichever app makes the most sense in your project.

The first thing we need to do is edit our projectsurls.pyfile and add this line directly above the one that includes the Django-Registration urls.

Next we need to setup the form that’s going to be used. Create a file calledforms.pyand then enter the following into it:

Once the form is complete we need to need to update ourviews.pyfile, just make sure the following is in there somewhere, you can edit it to match your coding style but the important part is where we use ourProfileForm.

Since I couldn’t seem to find when django-registration actually uses theactivation_complete.htmlfile that’s where I decided to put our customProfileForm. Just edit the existing one to match your project’s style and add the following to it.

Now here’s the important part, you need to edit yourlogin.htmlfile’s opening form tag to the following:

This makes sure the user is actually directed to our work after logging in. When they login until they supply a first and last name they will be presented with the form, once they fill in the information they will always be redirected to the homepage (unless you change the redirects in theviews.pyfile).

ConvergeSE 2012

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500

We’re happy to announce that Simple App Group is sponsoring the Development Workshops at ConvergeSE 2012. Which means we will be there in South Carolina with some awesome free swag and we’ll also be giving away some prizes. Make sure you stop by to say hi and put your name in to win one of the prices. We’re going to give away a prize during each of the three breaks on Friday and and a grand prize during the lunch break on Saturday. If you win on Friday you can still win on Saturday. We’re playing around with a couple of ideas and are hoping to possibly launch a new app while there. We won’t say what we’re doing until we are actually at the conference.

Database One

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500

This week we took some time to assemble a brand new custom server here at Simple App Group, the server which is simply named Database One is our new local MySQL/MongoDB server. Most of the time running a local copy of a database on each development machine isn’t a problem, but when you have to run complex queries for a project while still working on other things that are going to hog your CPU it comes in handy. Database One consists of:

Habey RPC-800 Steel 4U Rackmount Server Chassis
Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) ECC Unbuffered Server Memory Model KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G
OKGEAR 36” SATA 6 Gbps Cable W/Metal Latch, Straight to Left Angle, Black, Backward Compatible with 3 Gbps and 1.5 Gbps
Intel Xeon E3-1220 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz LGA 1155 80W Quad-Core Server Processor BX80623E31220
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD1600AAJS 160GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5” Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
MSI 24X DVD Burner Black SATA Model DH-24AS
Intel S1200BTS uATX Server Motherboard LGA 1155 Intel C202 DDR3 1066/1333 DIMM
Antec VP 450W Power Supply

Everything except the power supply was sourced from NewEgg, it was picked up at the local Staples. I’ve already determined a few more servers we could use at the office, mostly for testing out future projects but for now our office has one.

Dribbble

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Yesterday we setup a Simple App Group account over at Dribbble where we will be posting works in progress (WIPs) as well as random design ideas we have whether it’s for a simple button, or a full web app. You can currently check out some of the work we’ve been doing on our first iOS app and check back later for more projects.

Today we received our letterpress business cards from Hoban...

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Today we received our letterpress business cards from Hoban Press in Washington state and they are amazing. Evan did a great job of turning our simple Illustrator designs into absolutely stunning cards. We wanted to keep the design simple because that’s our philosophy for our apps. We ordered 450 cards total, 100 of each of our cards with our names and 250 of general cards with just the company name and contact information.

The cards are a little expensive compared to what you would spend at a site like Moo but the quality is worth it. They are printed on 110lb Crane Lettra 100% cotton stock. We used a font called Tungsten for our site logo and really like how it looked so we stuck with it on the business cards as well.

If you are looking for quality letterpress business cards we recommend Hoban Press. You will be happy with the outcome.

Status Update

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500

It’s been about three weeks since we took this site live and officially launched this business and I thought it was time for an update. Since our last post we’ve been working on setting up our office, we purchased furniture, computers, software and office supplies.

Our furniture is from Ikea and consists of desks, bookshelves and lights. I didn’t realize how large IKEA stores were. Since it was our first IKEA trip we didn’t know that we should go right to self-service furniture, after spending half an hour wandering the showroom we actually ended up in a department we needed, the office furniture.

After we found desks we decided on black-brown Vika Amon table tops that are 59” long and 29.5” wide. We paired the tops with Vika Moliden nickel plated underframes since they seem like a sturdier option than regular legs. We also picked up a black-brown Expedit bookcase and Capita legs for it since it’s going to be setup horizontally. For lighting we went with four Kvart wall/clamp spotlights in white and two Not floor uplight’s.

For computers we went with 27” Apple iMac’s with 8GB’s of RAM and 2.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5’s. We also picked up external 1TB Western Digital My Book hard drives, a copy of Windows 7 Professional for our Quickbooks computer and Adobe CS5.5 Design Standard.

Our Apple developer account was also approved for both iOS and Mac apps. Expect to hear about what we’re working on in a future post.

Now Open

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Today I am proud to announce that my brother Justin and I have launched our new web and mobile application development company Simple App Group (SAGRU). SAGRU’s one goal is to simplify the web and mobile experience, reducing bloated and pixel heavy systems down to the bare minimum. We’re striving to make projects we work on have the easiest user experience possible.

We’re not doing a traditional portfolio as we want to focus on showcasing our best work along with our own projects. We’re aiming to spend around three quarters of the year working on client work and the other quarter on our own projects. I’ve learned a lot about clients and the type of projects I should take over the last two years freelancing and we’ve decided to focus only on iOS when it comes to mobile applications. Android has too many phones and devices to build for as well as too many OS versions, we may add other platforms in the future as we test our ideas.

We’re currently accepting projects for December and first quarter 2012, if you’re interested in working with us contact us via our contact page.