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Salesforce Functions With Heroku Data for Redis

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This article is part two of a three-part series on using Heroku Managed Data products from within a Salesforce Function. In part one, we focused on Salesforce Functions with Heroku Postgres. In part two, we’ll explore Salesforce Functions with Heroku Data for Redis. Finally, in part three, we’ll cover Salesforce Functions and Apache Kafka on Heroku.

Introduction to Core Concepts

What Is a Salesforce Function?

A Salesforce Function is a custom piece of code used to extend your Salesforce apps or processes. The custom code can leverage the language and libraries you choose while being run in the secure environment of your Salesforce instance.

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Why Web Design Still Matters in 2023

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As we move into 2023, there are an increasing number of ways companies can engage with their customers. And as the number of apps, browser extensions, social media feeds, newsletters, vlogs, and podcasts grows, you can be forgiven for thinking that websites are a little less essential than they were in say, 2021.

However, the truth is that websites remain an irreplaceable part of the digital landscape and they will continue to be into 2023 and beyond.

Websites, as the keystone of a centralized, privately run digital experience couldn’t be more relevant. Unlike competing technologies, websites allow almost total control of their source code, and that provides an opportunity for skilled designers and developers to compete against the biggest names in their clients’ industries in a way that simply isn’t possible in tightly governed systems like social media.

Not only does quality web design help businesses increase their traffic, but it can increase the quality of that traffic; an attractive and user-friendly web page will encourage web users to stay on the page longer, and explore more of the content it links to.

Websites vs. Social Media

For many brands, the option they turn to for connecting with customers is social media. Particularly platforms like Facebook and Instagram. While billions of us are happy to while away our free time on social media, it’s not a great platform for informed decision-making or task fulfillment. For any form of productivity, websites are superior:

  • Flexibility: Websites can be customized to suit a company’s vision and values, whereas social media tends to magnify accounts that reflect its own values.
  • Ownership: When you publish on your website you own your content, when you post to social media the platform tends to own your content.
  • Investment: As we’ve seen recently with a certain bird-themed social network, you can spend years investing time in your social media channel only to have it canceled by an individual with his own agenda.
  • Findability: Websites are discoverable on search engines, and although algorithms govern these search engines, competition across different search engines keeps search algorithms honest. Social media networks each use a single algorithm making them free to skew browsing any way they choose.
  • Scaleability: Websites can take advantage of the latest technologies to improve user experience, on social media user experience is governed by the network’s decisions.

Websites vs. Apps

When it comes to owning a piece of the internet, a connected app feels like ownership. However, websites have a number of benefits over an app, from a superior user experience to lower development costs. And ultimately, apps are also controlled by 3rd parties.

  • Accessibility: Websites are universally accessible, while apps are usually limited to certain operating systems or platforms. If you want to distribute to devices, you’ll need to be approved by the store owner who can (and will) change the terms and conditions of store distribution without consulting you.
  • Flexibility: Websites provide a greater level of flexibility and scalability than apps.
  • Cost-effective: A simple website can be created and launched in a weekend, they are considerably more cost-effective to develop and maintain than apps.
  • Findability: Search engines have evolved around website technologies, and it is far easier to create a discoverable website than an app that ranks high in an app store.
  • Universality: Websites have lower entry costs for users, and there aren’t any downloads or purchases required.
  • 3rd-party features: Websites can integrate 3rd-party content like chatbots, payment gateways, and forms, that generally require licensing to include in an app.

Websites vs. Podcasts and Vlogs

There’s no question that podcasts and vlogs are engaging types of content. However, they are very limited when it comes to different kinds of experience. These tend to be passive, linear experiences. Even if your podcast opens itself up to listener interaction, your customers are still passive consumers.

  • Cost-effective: Websites can be set up very cheaply, podcasts and vlogs on the other hand require high-production values to compete.
  • Longevity: Well-written website content can remain relevant for years, the lifespan of a vlog or podcast is often just a few months.
  • Flexibility: Websites can embed podcasts and vlogs, as well as virtually any other content; podcasts and vlogs can only ever be podcasts and vlogs. Websites will continue to evolve long after podcasts are obsolete.
  • Simple: There is now a range of no-code options for creating a reliable website, meaning it can be done with little to no skills or experience. Podcasts and vlogs require a great deal of technical knowledge to produce.
  • Findability: As with other technologies, podcasts and vlogs can’t compete with websites when it comes to search engine optimization.
  • Faster: A well-designed website is much smaller than a podcast or vlog, making it cheaper and easier to access, especially on a cellular network.

Websites in 2023 and Beyond

In 2023 websites will still be a critical part of a successful business strategy and web designers will continue to be essential members of any team.

Websites continue to offer numerous benefits over other technologies including increased flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and superior search engine opportunities.

Unlike social media platforms that allow you to customize a few assets like avatars and colors, websites can be completely customized to fit the tone and style of a brand. Additionally, websites have a far lower barrier to entry than podcasts, vlogs, or apps. While apps may offer a richer set of features than a website, that is offset by the restrictions on platform and device capabilities that apps impose.

Websites will continue to evolve as the tech landscape changes. New ideas for consuming digital media will appear over time, offering unique new experiences — for example, mass adoption of AR (Augmented Reality) is just around the corner. However, the website is perfectly evolved for the types of simple customer interaction that businesses rely on, and will continue to matter in 2023 and beyond.

 

Featured image by fullvector on Freepik

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Maximize Your Project’s Success With the Right Database Selection

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The database management system is chosen depending on the tasks of the business. For example, startups need a quick start with minimal investment. On the other hand, banks need to store data correctly; otherwise, customers may lose their money. Today, I want to talk about how to choose a DBMS for the project, taking into account the company’s needs.

Databases for a Newly Created Company

Problem: The business model of many newly launched businesses may change after entering the market. For example, Facebook was initially created as a social networking site for college students. Still, it has since expanded to become a platform for people of all ages to connect with friends, family, and businesses.

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40 Best New Fonts of 2022

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Choosing the right typefaces for your website can elevate a design from dour to delightful. The right typeface gives personality to your brand voice and can make sure your content gets read.

And so, every month, we put together a roundup of the best new fonts for web designers. In this roundup of the year, we look back at the past twelve months and showcase our forty favorite fonts of 2022. Enjoy!

Tellumo

Tellumo is an elegant geometric sans-serif that oozes positivity. It comes with a standard set of caps and an alternative set of swash caps.

DT Random Display

DT Random Display is an original approach to typeface design. It’s perfect for posters or a branding project with a courageous client.

Rebrand

Rebrand is a sans-serif packed with character. There are display and text versions, each with seven weights.

Aiglon

Aiglon is a monolinear semi-geometric sans-serif. It is simple and forthright, without being dull or forgettable.

Shorai Sans

Shorai Sans is a blend of geometric sans-serif and calligraphic brushstrokes. As well as Latin glyphs, there’s a complete set of Japanese characters.

Monden

Monden is a high-contrast serif with a clever little kick on the lowercase h, m, and n that adds richness to body text.

Canora

Canora is a calligraphic typeface with two styles: Frente leans to the right, and Verso leans to the left.

Epicene

Epicene is a beautifully baroque typeface with some intriguing details. There are two families, a display version and a text version.

Sangbleu

Sangbleu is a super-family of typefaces with five complementary styles: Empire, Kingdom, Republic, Versailles, and Sunrise.

Forme

Forme is a typically British grotesque typeface with the bonus of having an equally functional Arabic sibling.

Aprello

Aprello is a robust sans-serif that’s ideal for branding projects. There are six weights, each with an italic and a variable font version.

Selva

Selva is an elegant serif typeface in the Scotch tradition. It has a vast number of weights and a particularly attractive italic.

GT Planar

GT Planar is a unique typeface with both italic and retalic styles that slant up to 45 degrees in each direction.

Veqay

Veqay is an elegant stencil typeface with organic shapes, making it ideal for certain branding and editorial design.

Apta

Apta is a clean sans-serif with excellent proportions. Unusually it comes in three versions, a geometric style, a humanist style, and a combination style.

Antodits

Antodits is an energetic script face that has the feel of graffiti. This is a great display font for headlines.

Delvard

Delvard is a family of three typefaces, Display, Subhead, and Text. It’s a beautiful serif with script-like strokes.

Rosales

Rosales integrates a humanist style with geometric forms and calligraphic alternatives to create a unique typeface.

Fisterra

Fisterra is an informal serif with two different styles: Morte, with emphasizes curves, and Fora, which emphasizes sharp lines.

Connection

Connection is a precisely drawn typeface with beautiful detail courtesy of a calligraphic influence.

Ping Round

Ping Round is a simple sans-serif drawn with as few strokes as possible, resulting in some characterful letterforms.

Mule

Mule is a hard-working serif with friendly, engaging letterforms. It has a great rhythm, making it ideal for extended text.

Arnika

Arnika is a contemporary typeface with a large x-height. The flares on its strokes put it mid-way between a serif and a sans-serif.

Kingsad

Kingsad is a sans-serif designed for branding. The generous curves and wide letterforms make it best suited to short text.

Apice

Apice is an elegant script font perfect for posters, branding, and editorial design. It’s a variable font with a setting to control stroke contrast.

The Future

The Future is a reworking of the ideas behind Futura. It has a great mix of Western and Japanese typographic traditions.

Mallory

Mallory is an Art Nouveau-inspired display face. It has graceful sweeping curves and strong contrast.

Fabbrica

Fabbrica is a functional sans-serif that performs exceptionally well at small sizes and especially well on screen.

Gills & Co

Gills & Co is another of this year’s crop of Art Nouveau-inspired typefaces. It’s ideal for editorial design.

Satiata

Satiata is an energetic typeface that almost dances across the screen. Best used for branding or display type.

Fold

Fold is a no-nonsense sans-serif that’s plan spoken and trustworthy. It has four weights with corresponding italics.

Bells Morten

Bells Morten is a display font inspired by vintage signage. It’s bold and all-caps, with sharp flared serifs.

Mori

Mori is a versatile sans-serif inspired by contemporary Japanese design. It’s ideal for branding and editorial design.

Nitido

Nitido is a humanist sans-serif designed as a companion for the popular Nitida font family. It’s beautifully suited to branding work.

Lithops

Lithops is a fantastic display face for posters, T-shirts, and editorial design, with a pattern making up the letters that’s reminiscent of seaweed.

Rapidissima

Rapidissima is a companion typeface to Rapida. While Rapida is a careful usable serif, Rapidissima is an exploration of speed.

Firelli

Firelli is a warm, contemporary slab serif with a range of weights. It’s an excellent choice for display and body type.

OBO Star

OBO Star is a semi-monospaced typeface, meaning that most of the characters use the same space.

Nagel

Nagel is a uniwidth sans-serif with a low stroke contrast and some bold detailing. It’s ideally suited to short texts and branding.

Practico Slab UI

Practico Slab UI is a workhorse slab serif that blends European and American mid-century styles. It’s available as a variable font.

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How Use and Deploy Vite With React

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In this article, we will look at how to make a simple project using Vite and React. As a bonus, I will show you how to deploy our project.

First, let’s create a folder for our project and start creating a project using Vite and its templates.

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Kubernetes Namespace: How to Use It to Organize and Optimize Costs

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When you’re running a relatively small cluster, you might get away with having no structure in place for it. But with time, your cluster will inevitably scale to dozens of pods and hundreds of containers. If you keep running them carefree, you’ll deal with a mess sooner rather than later. Here’s your golden ticket to get out of this chaos: Kubernetes namespace.

By keeping your cluster organized with namespaces, labels, and annotations, you’ll avoid the performance, maintenance, and security issues that come together in a package with the lack of control over the deployed objects and services.

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GraphQL in Microservices With Spring and Angular

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The AngularAndSpringWithMaps project has been converted from REST endpoints to a GraphQL interface. The project uses Spring GraphQL to provide the backend interface. The Angular frontend uses the Angular  HttpClient to post the requests to the backend.

GraphQL vs REST From an Architectural Perspective

REST Endpoints

REST calls retrieve objects with their children. For different root objects, separate REST calls are sent. These calls can accumulate with the number of different root objects that the frontend requests. With relationships between the objects, sequential calls become necessary.

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A Table Tennis Success Story Built With Apache Kafka

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The sports world is changing. Digitalization is everywhere. Cameras and sensors analyze matches. Stadiums get connected and incorporate mobile apps and location-based services. Players use social networks to influence and market themselves and consumer products. Real-time data processing is crucial for most innovative sports use cases. This blog post explores how data streaming with Apache Kafka helps reimagine the sports industry, showing a concrete example from the worldwide table tennis organization. 

Innovation in Sports and Gaming With Real-time Analytics

Reimagining a data architecture to provide real-time data flow for sporting leagues and events is an enormous challenge. However, digitalization enables a ton of innovative use cases to improve user experiences and engage better with players, fans, and business partners.

Think about wonderful customer experiences with gamification when watching a match, live betting, location-based services in the stadium, automated payments, coupons, integration with connected fan shops and shopping malls, and so on.

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A Complete Guide to Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC)

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Software testing is the process of evaluating a software product to detect errors and failures and ensure its suitability for use. It can be performed manually (where testers use their skill, experience, intuition, and knowledge) or automatically (where the tester’s actions are guided by a test script).

The fundamental objective of the test process is to ensure that all specified requirements of a software system have been met by the development process and that no undetected errors remain in the system. However, the overall aim of testing is to provide customer or end-user value by detecting defects as early as possible.

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10 Questions You Must Ask Before Hiring a Web Design Agency

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Finding a good web design agency is challenging, especially if you’re doing it for the first time. With so many options, it’s challenging to determine which best meets your needs.

The obvious place to start looking for a web design agency is by asking friends, family, and colleagues for personal recommendations, but bear in mind that they may not be qualified to judge your options objectively, and you’ll need to carry out due diligence on any web design agency recommended to you.

The process of researching and evaluating different design agencies can be time-consuming and complex. To make it easier, you must start with a clear understanding of your goals and expectations.

Begin by making a long list of web design agencies and freelance designers that might fit the bill. Then whittle it down to a shortlist by discounting anyone whose portfolio you don’t like — while design is about more than just subjective opinions, it’s also vital that you end up with a website you like and are proud to show off as part of your brand identity.

Now you have your shortlist, there are several key questions to pose to each potential candidate to ensure that they are the right fit for you. Here are the ten questions you should be asking to put you on track to finding your perfect website design partnership.

1. What types of website design services do you offer?

The first thing to realize is that there are many different kinds of websites, and as such, there are also many different kinds of website design services.

The types of website design services offered by web design agencies range from basic site creation to complex ecommerce solutions.

Basic web design services usually include developing and implementing a CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress, Joomla, or Craft. Agencies may also provide more advanced services such as custom website design, SEO optimization, and web hosting.

Different agencies and freelancers specialize in various types of sites, so you must compare their solutions with your requirements.

2. Do you have any case studies of past projects I can review?

Experience matters when choosing a web design agency. Ask potential candidates about the years they have been in business and the types of projects they’ve worked on. New doesn’t necessarily mean low quality — plenty of great agencies are founded by experienced designers whose portfolios are owned by their previous employers.

However, it is easier to ensure a web design agency is a good fit for your project if you can review case studies of previous jobs. Case studies will provide valuable insights into their approach and techniques and how successful their clients have been.

3. Where are you based?

When it comes to web design agencies, there are pros and cons to hiring a local or remote team. On the one hand, working with a local agency can provide many advantages, such as in-person interaction and access to their resources. On the other hand, working with a remote team may offer greater flexibility, cost savings, and access to a global talent pool.

It’s essential to ask about an agency’s location to understand their services’ advantages and disadvantages.

Effective team communication is essential for any project, so you should check the working hours of any agency you select — you don’t want to wait overnight for answers to urgent queries.

4. Do you specialize in any particular industries or platforms?

Web design agencies may specialize in various industries and platforms, depending on the specific needs of their clients. For example, some might specialize in ecommerce solutions such as Shopify or WooCommerce, while others might focus on frameworks such as Vue or React.

Additionally, web design agencies may specialize in creating custom websites for specific industries, such as healthcare or finance.

Suppose you can locate a web design agency with previous experience developing websites for clients similar to you. In that case, they will be better placed to anticipate challenges specific to your project.

5. What is your process for designing websites?

Before hiring a web design agency, it’s essential to understand their approach to website design. For example, some agencies may take a more traditional “design and build” approach where they create the entire site from start to finish, while others may prefer to work with an existing template and make customizations.

Some design agencies use a traditional waterfall approach, while others adopt an agile methodology. Waterfall is a sequential process in which each step happens in isolation, whereas agile is an interactive approach with frequent testing and feedback.

Knowing how an agency prefers to work will help you establish realistic expectations about how they will integrate into your company culture.

5. Do you offer any additional services, such as SEO or hosting?

Website design agencies may offer a range of additional services, depending on the needs of their clients. Beyond website design and development, many agencies also provide SEO (search engine optimization) and web hosting services.

All reputable web design agencies will ensure that your website meets the minimum standard for technical SEO. But some agencies will also adapt your content to incorporate keywords and phrases related to your industry to help you increase website traffic once the site is launched.

When it comes to web hosting, your web design agency will help you choose the best type of hosting for your needs, but some agencies also provide hosting and will set up and manage a server for you.

6. How will the project be managed, and what is your timeline for completion?

When it comes to website design projects, timeline management is critical to ensure that your new website is delivered on time and within budget. Managing a website project requires careful planning and execution to keep everything on track.

You should also ask how the project will be managed throughout its lifecycle so that you can schedule your in-house timetables.

7. What type of maintenance can I expect after launching the website?

Launching your new website begins a long-term relationship with your web design agency. It’s essential to ask about their post-launch support process to ensure you have all the help and guidance you need. The agency should be able to provide comprehensive maintenance services such as bug fixing, content updates, and security checks.

Additionally, you should understand the process for making changes and requests after the website launch. Find out how quickly they can respond to your inquiries and the cost of any needed updates. This will help you plan your budget accordingly and avoid any unexpected fees.

9. How much will the project cost?

Speaking of costs, it’s vitally important to establish ballpark figures before you shortlist an agency. Like any industry, there is a wide range of different price points, dependent not just on the project but the marketability of the web design agency.

Make sure you ask for a comprehensive quote that outlines all the costs involved. Ask for a payment schedule so you know how much you’re expected to pay upfront. Check on any additional fees, such as maintenance or hosting.

Never adjust your project to secure a web design agency outside your budget. If you can’t afford a particular provider, strike them off your shortlist and move on to the next candidate.

10. What do you need from me?

As a client, there are several steps you need to take to ensure that your website design project runs smoothly. You will need to supply a detailed brief if nothing else.

You should be prepared to schedule regular feedback sessions so your agency can stay on track. You’ll probably need to supply brand materials such as logos, style guides, and any text, images, and videos you want to be included. The agency may want you to sign a contract, agree on a payment schedule, and pay an initial deposit.

Conclusion

Hiring a web design agency is challenging, especially if you don’t have the technical knowledge to assess an agency’s past work objectively.

By asking the questions above, you’ll get a solid sense of what the company is like to work for, how well they fit your corporate culture, and whether their proposed solution is within your budget.

The more questions you ask, the better informed you’ll be, and the more likely your website design project will succeed. Good luck!

 

Featured image via Pexels.

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