The JavaScript language has a long history. There are a lot of developers out there who are still learning the basics. But, if you’re trying to learn the language and make your first steps into it, you need to know what mistakes new developers make.
You have already researched JavaScript development tutorials, and you know that it’s one of the most popular languages in the world. You’ve started to use it for your website or app, but there’s still something that feels wrong with it, isn’t it??
Python is a robust object-oriented programming (OOP) language that finds a lot of use in the field of artificial intelligence. It is so useful that mega tech companies like Google have made libraries such as Tensorflow to help people to leverage powerful machine learning algorithms and models for various purposes.
People have made ‘sign language’ interpreters, Motorcyclist helmet detectors, and item identifiers using Python and its free libraries.
I bet you didn’t know that WordPress is the world’s most popular website builder and content management system (CMS).
Just kidding…of course, you did! But that’s not all there is to know about WordPress, so take our ridiculously challenging WordPress quiz and see how much of an expert you are…
(Scroll to the bottom for the correct answers.)
1. What is WordPress? – 3. WordPress is online, open-source software that you can use to create websites.
2. What is the number of websites using WordPress? – 2. In 2021, WordPress powers over 1.3 billion websites all over the web, and this number continues to grow.
3. WordPress has a tradition of naming major releases after – 2. WordPress has a habit of naming its big releases after famous jazz musicians. For example, in the first version of January 2004, they called 1.0 (Davis), named after American trumpeter Miles Davis. Another version of May 2004 was named 1.2 (Mingus).
4. How many websites are created on WordPress per day? – 3. Over 500 websites are created on WordPress every day. At the same time, only 60-80 sites are built on popular platforms like Squarespace and Shopify. Besides, every second, 17 new blog posts are published on WordPress!
5. What is the correct WordPress website address? – 1. The fact that always confuses beginners is that WordPress.org and WordPress.com are entirely different companies that provide separate services. WordPress.org is the real WordPress everyone talks about that helps you to build websites. While WordPress.com is a hosting provider created by Automattic, the co-founder of WordPress.
6. Who is the WordPress CEO? – 4. WordPress is a free, open-source project. That’s why it does not have a CEO; volunteer developers run the project from all over the globe. This is the reason anyone can submit a report about a bug or suggest features.
7. Which US government website is using WordPress? – 4. The correct answer is all of them. All major websites of the US federal government use WordPress for their websites. The list includes all government sites of big and small cities, counties, universities, and high schools.
8. How many languages is WordPress available in? – 2. The Default WordPress language is English; however, the platform provides a fully translated platform with plugins that allow you to change your site’s language in seconds. The software has been successfully used in over 72 languages and can be modified for more!
9. What is the most downloaded WordPress theme of all time? – 4. Astra is the most downloaded WordPress theme of all time. Astra is claimed to be the most potent and fast theme trusted by many popular brands. Besides, the theme earned over $30M.
10. How many Fortune 500 websites use WordPress? – 1. 11 Fortune websites, such as Walt Disney Company, ABM Industries, and 21st Century Fox, use WordPress.
11. What is the average salary of a WordPress developer per year? – 2. The average WordPress developer earns $56,000 per year, according to Payscale.
12. When was the first WordPress version released? – 4. The first version of WordPress was released on May 27, 2003, which makes WordPress much older than Twitter and Facebook.
Featured image via upklyak on Freepik
The post Ridiculously Challenging WordPress Quiz first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
The purpose of a website is to reach new customers and keep current ones engaged. Therefore, customer-first should be at the top of your list for design features. After all, without your clients, your business won’t grow or succeed.
Customer-first has been a buzzword for a few years now. In a nutshell, it’s easy to imagine what customer-first design means. The needs of consumers come before anything else. However, the concept isn’t quite as simple in practice. A lot of nuances enter the equation.
Just what does it mean to have a customer-first web design? What are the must-haves to reach users on their level and keep their attention for the long haul?
Embracing quality customer experiences has driven loyalty for as long as anyone can remember. However, we now live in a time of uncertainty, and when people leave companies on a dime if they’re dissatisfied with any aspect. So you must hit the high notes on every song – your website is your purest online persona and must engage users and keep them entertained.
Whether you embrace causes that matter to your customers and share information on them or tweak your design to meet accessibility guidelines, many factors come into play with a customer-centric design.
In a recent report, researchers found that about 88% of company leaders feel customer engagement impacts revenue. You can’t control every variable, but you can ensure your website hits all the strong points for a customer-first web design that grabs them and keeps them on your page.
Here are our favorite tips to create a customer-first approach. You may already be doing some of these things. Pick and choose what makes the most sense for your business model. Even small changes can have a big impact.
Before creating a website centered around your customers’ needs, you must know who they are. What are the demographics of your typical clients? Survey them and find out what their needs and expectations are. How can you best help them?
You may also want to survey them about your website. What’s missing that might help them? Is there anything they love? What do they hate? The more you know, the better your design can match their expectations. Create buyer personas based on their preferences.
At the same time, buyers will sometimes say one thing but actually feel another way. No one is quite sure why people do this when being surveyed. One way around that issue is to do some A/B testing to see how they actually feel about various changes. Do they respond the way you thought? What other adjustments need to be made?
Different industries trend toward various hues. For example, businesses in the banking industry trend toward blues and occasionally reds. Blue elicits trust from users and has a calming effect. On the other hand, the fashion industry might tap into brighter shades, such as lime green. Think about what colors people expect in your industry, and then find your color palette.
Each hue has its emotional impact. For example, red is a color of power and can elicit excitement in the viewer. Choose your shades accordingly to get the most emotional punch possible.
One of the best ways to improve your site over time to match the needs and preferences of your audience is by allowing feedback. Add reviews, place a feedback form in your footer, and even send out requests for feedback to your mailing list.
It’s also a good idea to find a mentor who has been successful at running a business. Ask them to look at your site and give you advice. You might also enlist the help of a marketing professional.
Have you heard of Jakob’s Law? The rule of thumb states that people prefer common design patterns they’re most familiar with. So when they see a pattern they know, such as a navigation bar layout, it boosts their mood and improves their memory of the site.
When making edits, don’t make significant changes. Instead, implement minor adjustments over time to give your followers a chance to acclimate to the shift.
If you want users to feel wowed by your page and engage, you have to limit their choices. Add in too many options, and they may not know where to go first.
Start by choosing an objective for the page. Cut anything that doesn’t point the user toward the goal. Ideally, you’d have a little info, an image, and a call to action (CTA) button. However, this may vary, depending on where your buyer is in the sales funnel and how much information they need to decide to go from browser to customer.
Recent reports indicate about 90% of people use mobile devices to go online at times. With phones gaining greater capabilities and 5G bringing faster speeds to communities, expect people to use their mobile devices even more frequently for internet browsing.
Making sure your site translates well on smaller screens makes sense for your company and for your customers. Be sure to test everything. Click through all links. Fill in forms. Ensure images and text auto-adjust to the correct size, so people don’t have to scroll endlessly.
Like most businesses, you probably have several buyer personas as you segment your audience. Don’t just create a single home page and expect it to fulfill the purpose of every reader. Instead, create unique pages for each persona to best meet their needs.
Make sure each landing page speaks in the natural language patterns of your specific audience. Think about the unique needs of each group. How do their pain points differ? How can you best meet their needs?
People are busy. They work, have families, and might visit your site on the 15-minute break they get in the afternoon. Most consumers want the information they need to decide and don’t want to dilly-dally around with other things.
Place the essential headlines and info they need above the fold, so they see it first. Make it as readable as possible by using headings and subheadings. Add in a few bullet points. People also absorb information easier in video format, so add a video highlighting your product’s or service’s main benefits.
You should also place a CTA button above the fold if it makes sense for your overall design. Keep in mind people may have visited and already read some of the information. Some users return just to sign up and want to find the CTA quickly.
Look at your site through the eyes of your audience. What works well? What needs to be adjusted? Over time, you’ll develop a customer-first web design that speaks to those most likely to buy from you. Then, keep making changes and tweaking your site until it hits the perfect balance for your customers.
Featured image via Freepik.
The post What Customer-First Web Design Looks Like first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
Two weeks ago, you started a web design agency. Last week you began to define your agency by choosing clients, setting red lines, and writing your elevator pitch.
This week, we will implement some practical solutions before problems occur. Remember one task per day; it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
In the rush of excitement surrounding a new project, it’s too easy to skip the preliminaries and jump into work. Before you know it, you’re halfway through the job, and it’s too late to set terms.
Your terms of service document is a formal statement of the terms under which you agree to work. This document is best prepared by a legal professional with experience in your jurisdiction, but you can write it yourself with a bit of guidance. Fortunately, as a web design agency, you’re not supplying physical products, which simplifies the document considerably.
You should include a statement limiting your liability. You need to assert your intellectual property rights. Unfortunately, you also need to include details of what happens when a client fails to pay an invoice.
Write the document in clear, friendly language. Don’t use marketing speak, and do not try to disguise anything onerous. A good client will respect you for being upfront in a professional manner.
Your terms of service should be on your website and sent to potential clients alongside any quote — I know some people who send their terms in the same PDF as the quote, so the client can’t overlook them.
Project management is probably the most crucial skill you’ll have to master. Meeting deadlines, bringing in enough work to cover the bills, and not pulling all-nighters depend on effective project management.
A huge and ever-growing number of apps promise to help you with project management. We have a list here of some of the best. However, if you already have a tool you use to manage your work that you’re comfortable with, consider sticking with it. Do not fall back on a notes app or a pen and paper.
Remember: organizing your work days is not billable. The more you can automate this process, the better.
Up until now, we’ve deliberately done one thing per day. Today, we will do two because they’re so closely related.
There are all kinds of business documents that pass money back and forth between companies, for example, purchase orders or credit notes. For a small web design agency, you’ll need two: a quote document and an invoice document.
Invoices are documents requesting payment and providing the details for payment. Quotes are previews of an expected invoice.
Some people like to have a receipt document that they send out to acknowledge payment. However, in my experience, sending a hand-written email is better; it’s an excellent opportunity to personalize your communication and foster a good relationship.
There are legal requirements that vary by jurisdiction, but an invoice typically includes: your trading name; the invoice number — an incrementing number code; your tax code if you have one; your address; the time the client has to pay — “Net 14,” meaning the total amount within 14 days is standard; the date issued; the client’s name and address; a list of services provided together with the rate for each service and the total; the pre-tax total; the total amount of tax; the total; and most importantly a way of paying.
Back on day two, you contacted your tax department to determine your liabilities. You may or may not have to charge sales tax or VAT. Always include the amount of tax on your invoice, even if the total is $0, so it’s clear whether or not it has been charged.
A quote document is virtually identical to an invoice, except that you remove the payment requests. You should also add a note stipulating how long the quote is valid — 3 months is standard.
Plenty of services will create these documents for you as part of an accounting system. For example, Xero, FreshBooks, or Bloom. Even PayPal will allow you to send invoices. If you prefer, you can create your own quotes and invoices and send them as PDFs — this option is best if you want total control over your documents’ design, but it will take longer, and it’s worryingly easy to make a mistake.
Start today by researching social media accounts. Look at the list of target businesses you made on day eight; which social media channel do they use the most? For example, if the niche you picked on day three is restaurants, they probably use Instagram. If you chose retirement communities, they probably use Facebook.
Once you have a clear picture of your clients’ channels, pick one (yes, 1) and register an account.
Social media is a significant drain on your time and provides considerably less return on investment than you might expect. So, choose one service that your prospective clients use and start building your profile. It’s far better to invest your time and effort in a place your clients will notice you than to spread yourself too thin.
It’s another two-task day. We’ve grouped these together because domains and hosting are frequently rented together.
Back on day nine, you selected your tech stack. You’ll be building your own site with the technology you offer clients, so it’s important to ensure your hosting enables this. If you intend to develop with WordPress, you need WordPress hosting. If you intend to build with Wix, you need a Wix account. If you’re planning on offering any kind of web app, you probably need Netlify.
Whatever you choose, choose something appropriate for your tech stack. The only exception is if you plan to specialize in a niche service like Shopify, which is entirely inappropriate for an agency portfolio.
There are endless debates over whether or not you should register a domain with the same company that hosts your site. Everyone seems to know someone who knows someone who registered a domain, and then something improbable happened to cause them to lose the domain that wouldn’t have happened if they’d hosted separately.
Back in the real world, simplicity is a gift you give yourself. Choose a reputable company, register a good domain, host in the same place, and let their support sort out your DNS for you — many good hosts will even give you free domain rental for a year to entice you to take up their hosting.
Good hosting is reliable, with plenty of room to grow. If it can be cheap too, that’s a bonus. It’s common to start with bottom-end(ish) shared hosting and expand to a VPS (Virtual Private Server) at some point in the future.
Despite the massive growth in messaging apps over the last decade, email is still your most important business tool.
Depending on the hosting you set up yesterday, email inboxes may have been included. If not, you’ll need to set up a separate email provider.
You’ll need a general email address. Traditionally this has been info@, but hi@, hey@, hello@, and ciao@ are a little more friendly.
You need a personal email address that’s just for you. For example, I use ben@.
You also need a separate account for finances that you can use for invoicing and services like Stripe and PayPal. accounts@ or billing@ are fine.
Finally, you’ll need to set up a catch-all email forwarder for all the times people guess your email, mistype your email or assume you used info@. Forward those emails to your general address.
Once that’s done, set up an email signature for each account. Include your logo, contact details, and the social media address you set up a couple of days ago.
Finally, update your email address with your hosting company, social media account, and business accounts.
That’s it for this week. So shut down your machine, go outside, ride a bike, go on a hike, learn to skateboard, and relax with family and friends.
We’re approaching the sharp end of this process, and next week will be busy, so do whatever you do to recharge your batteries.
Featured image via Pexels.
The post How to Start a Web Design Agency in 28 Days: Week Three first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
Last year we saw the launch of a new Web programming language Dart – Structured Web Programming from Google. A very interesting approach to support web application development. Not so long after Go, Groovy, Ruby, Scala, << Name your DSL here >>; we see Dart. Is it a good thing to have at least one programming language to solve one problem? The answer is, like we already know, it depends.
It is your choice as to if you will try to do things yourself or allow the truly seasoned professionals to help out. Some decide that they are going to try to go it alone when they are programming something new, but this often ends up in a less than desirable place. It may even be more expensive than just hiring an expert who can help you get it programmed for you in the first place.
Last week, you started a web design agency. This week we’ll help you take the next steps towards making your agency viable.
The first couple of days were spent on legal checks and taxes. After that, you’ve picked a niche to specialize in, an awesome name, worked out how much you’re going to charge, and set up business accounts. Then, finally, you took a day off to prepare for this week. (If you skipped any of those steps, go back and catch up now.)
This week, we’ll start defining who you are as an agency. The process is the same as last week: focusing on one task per day. By the end of the week, who you are as an agency will start to become apparent.
For any new business, the temptation is to grab any work you can get to keep the money flowing in. However, chasing money is counter-productive; you end up clutching at opportunities instead of taking a targeted approach.
Last week you selected your niche. Today, you will choose the clients you intend to work for. And we mean that literally: draw up a list of target clients.
Do you want to work for Nike? Fine, add it to the list. Think Apple would look good in your portfolio? Add it too. Make sure you add a few that are more realistic but don’t aim too low.
By the end of the day, you should have a spreadsheet of companies to target.
Now you know who your agency is planning to work for, it’s time to identify the technology stack you’re planning to offer them.
It may be that you will be a full-service agency handling everything from branding to custom apps. Alternately, you may perform better handling one aspect of the job well and outsourcing the rest.
However you plan to approach the actual work, you’ll need a full-stack solution for most clients. That means brand design, web design, marketing and content, front-end code, content management, and SEO.
The best advice is to focus on your existing strengths and develop a skill to an expert level. Then, once you’ve done so, you can expand sideways to plug any gaps.
For example, moving into WordPress development is a good option if you already know HTML and CSS. On the other hand, if you’re more design orientated, a site builder approach using SquareSpace or Shopify might be a better fit.
Technologies change, so you shouldn’t expect your core technologies to stay with you throughout your career. But these are the solutions you’ll become an expert at over the next few years.
All companies have brand values, whether they define them or not. So at this stage, it’s more practical to look at what you’re not prepared to do.
Everyone has red lines that they’re not prepared to cross. Would you work for a pornography company? Would you work for a radical political group? Would you work for a controversial religion? Would you work for a company with a patchy human rights record? Would you work for big pharma?
There’s no right and wrong answer to this; it all comes down to your personal values. However, you will be asked to cross the line at some point. It’s easier to say “no thanks” if you know where the lines are in advance.
If you don’t have red lines, that’s valid too. But be aware that once you’ve crossed a line, that line will stay crossed; you’ll attract more of that type of work, which will define you.
An elevator pitch is a short couple of lines that can be delivered to a prospective client on a (hypothetical) elevator ride between two floors.
When someone asks you what you do, “Um, well, you know, mostly just websites and stuff.” Is not a good answer.
Your language should be natural, non-technical, and self-assured. Something like, “We help startups like yours outperform their competitors on Google.”
Once you’ve settled on a good elevator pitch, practice it over and over. Write it on a post-it and stick it to your monitor, screenshot it and use it as your phone’s wallpaper. Say it over and over in the shower, in the car, and in the elevator. Learn it so that when someone asks, it trips off your tongue effortlessly.
You don’t need fancy offices to start a web design agency, and in fact, the first agency I worked for tanked primarily because they couldn’t afford their office lease.
People are used to remote work now, and most meetings can be conducted by video call. But you will still find clients who like to meet one-to-one, especially for a kick-off meeting.
It’s always best to visit a client’s premises if you can, but coffee shops are a good alternative, and every new agency should have one.
Consider your coffee shop your meeting room. If you’re lucky enough to be in a town or city where there are a few to choose from, try to pick one that matches your values: quirky and independent, efficient and corporate, etc.
Check when the quiet times are (you don’t want to be shouting over the buzz of rush-hour orders). Make sure you know where the nearest parking or public transport is so that you can direct clients. Ensure the wi-fi is OK, preferably free, and find out the password in advance.
Two weeks in, you finally get to do something creative: design your logo.
If you’ve been matching days to the days of the week, then it’s Saturday. That should give you more time for this task, but don’t go to town. Your logo is going to change and evolve. It is far too easy to get wrapped up in tiny details like logos and lose sight of the bigger picture.
Remember: no logo, no matter how cool, ever won a pitch.
If you’re a designer, you probably ignored us and started the logo on day one. In fact, you’ve probably had something knocking around in a sketchbook for a while.
If you’re not a designer, type out your name in a geometric sans-serif, tighten the tracking, and call it a day.
Either way, by the end of today, you’ll have something that fits your niche, ties into your elevator pitch, and appeals to your target clients.
Hopefully, you learned the benefits of a rest day last week, and this week was easier as a result.
It’s time to do whatever you do to relax. If you can, do it outside away from your computer. Create some distance and recharge your batteries.
Next week, we’ll start putting together the assets you will use to present your business professionally.
Featured image via Unsplash.
The post How to Start a Web Design Agency in 28 Days: Week Two first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
In application development, microservices is an architectural style where larger applications are structured as a collection of smaller, independent, yet interconnected services. While this allows for highly maintainable and testable applications (as each service can be maintained independent of the larger application), the problem with this method is the inherent complexity of interactions between microservices. It can be difficult for developers and team members to visualize how these microservices are connected to each other. We have been looking for ways to produce architectural diagrams that illustrate these interactions. We found that GraphViz helped us to solve part of this problem, as it can take the microservices structure of an application in the DOT language and convert it into a PNG format. However, we wanted this process to be even more user-friendly and more automatic, so that the user would not have to manually generate a DOT file of their microservices architecture.
As we could not find such a tool, we decided to create one ourselves. We decided that the most user-friendly interface would be to create an in-browser tool that allows the user to upload a jar file containing a packaged service, and to have an image automatically rendered. This article discusses how we went about creating this tool and includes an example of what happens « behind the scenes » of this interface.
Ktor is an asynchronous web framework written in and designed for Kotlin, leveraging coroutines and allowing you to write asynchronous code without having to manage any threads yourself.
Here is a bit more background information on Ktor. It is backed by Jetbrains, who are also the creators of Kotlin itself. Who better to make a Kotlin web framework than the people that work on the language?
Alert windows are widely used across websites where an alert message acts as a mode to ‘interrupt’ the current flow of the user journey. A simple example of a JavaScript alert would be someone filling in details on the sign-up page and submitting the details without entering some mandatory information. This user flow also needs to be verified when Selenium automation testing is performed on the web product.
Handling pop-ups and alerts are one of the common test scenarios that should be tested using Selenium WebDriver. In this post of the Selenium Python tutorial series, we look at how to handle JavaScript alerts in Python. It is worth mentioning that the core fundamentals of JavaScript alerts and popups remain unchanged irrespective of the programming language used for Selenium.
