Entries by admin

Quality Solidity Code with OpenZeppelin and Friends

Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/solidity-openzeppelin/

Given the fact that all of Ethereum’s computations need to be reproduced on all the nodes in the network, Ethereum’s computing is inherently costly and inefficient. (In fact, Ethereum’s developer docs on GitHub state that we shouldn’t expect more computational power from Ethereum than we do from a 1999 phone.)

So, security on the Ethereum Virtual Machine — meaning, the security of smart contracts deployed on Ethereum blockchain — is of paramount importance. All the errors on it cost real money — whether it’s errors thrown by badly-written contracts, or hackers exploiting loopholes in contracts, like in the well-known DAO hack, which caused a community split and sprang the Ethereum Classic blockchain into existence.

Turing Completeness — and a whole range of other design decisions that have made Ethereum a lot more capable and sophisticated — have come at a cost. Ethereum’s richness has made it more vulnerable to errors and hackers.

To add to the problem, smart contracts deployed on Ethereum cannot be modified. The blockchain is an immutable data structure.

This and this article go into more depth regarding security of smart contracts, and the ecosystem of tools and libraries to help us to make our smart contracts secure.

Let’s look at some amazing upgrades to our toolset we can use today to utilize the best practices the Solidity environment can offer.

Helper Tools

One of the coolest tools in the toolset of an Ethereum developer is OpenZeppelin’s library. It’s a framework consisting of many Solidity code patterns and smart contract modules, written in a secure way. The authors are Solidity auditors and consultants themselves, and you can read about a third-party audit of these modules here. Manuel Araoz from Zeppelin Solutions, an Argentinian company behind OpenZeppelin, outlines the main Solidity security patterns and considerations.

OpenZeppelin is establishing itself as an industry standard for reusable and secure open source (MIT) base of Solidity code, which can easily be deployed using Truffle. It consists of smart contracts which, once installed via npm, can be easily imported and used in our contracts.

The process of installing truffle

The Truffle Framework published a tutorial for using OpenZeppelin with Truffle and Ganache.

These contracts are meant to be imported and their methods are meant to be overridden, as needed. The files shouldn’t be modified in themselves.

ICO patterns

OpenZeppelin’s library contains a set of contracts for publishing tokens on the Ethereum platform — for ERC20 tokens, including a BasicToken contract, BurnableToken, CappedToken. This is a mintable token with a fixed cap, MintableToken, PausableToken, with which token transfers can be paused. Then there is TokenVesting, a contract that can release its token balance gradually like a typical vesting scheme, with a cliff and vesting period, and more.

There’s also set of contracts for ERC721 tokens — or non-fungible, unique tokens of the CryptoKitties type.

ERC827 tokens contracts, standard for sending data along with transacted tokens, are also included.

There’s also a set of crowdsale contracts — contracts for conducting Initial Coin Offerings. These can log purchases, deliver/emit tokens to buyers, forward ETH funds. There are functions for validating and processing token purchases.

The FinalizableCrowdsale contract provides for execting some logic post-sale. PostDeliveryCrowdsale allows freezing of withdrawals until the end of the crowdsale. RefundableCrowdsale is an extension of the Crowdsale contract that adds a funding goal, and the possibility of users getting a refund if the goal is not met.

Destructible contracts can be destroyed by the owner, and have all the funds sent to the owner. There are also contracts for implementing pausability to child contracts.

OpenZeppelin provides many helpers and utilities for conducting ICOs — like a contract which enables recovery of ERC20 tokens mistakenly sent to an ICO address instead of ETH. A heritable contract provides for transferring of ownership to another owner under certain circumstances. The Ownable contract has an owner address, and provides basic authorization/permissions and transferring of ownership.

The RBAC contract provides utilities for role-based access control. We can assign different roles to different addresses, with an unlimited number of roles.

Zeppelin also provides a sample crowdsale starter Truffle project which hasn’t been audited yet, so it’s best used as an introduction to using OpenZeppelin. It makes it easy to start off with a crowdsale and a token fast.

The post Quality Solidity Code with OpenZeppelin and Friends appeared first on SitePoint.

Move the World Mural Drawings by Deck Two

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abduzeedo/~3/atJW2Zx6Duw/move-world-mural-drawings-deck-two

Move the World Mural Drawings by Deck Two

Move the World Mural Drawings by Deck Two

AoiroStudio
Jun 08, 2018

Very cool project title for a mural drawing by Deck two who is an artist from Paris, France. Entitled: Move the World, we follow him on this absolute beautiful drawing showcasing the important landmarks of the World. It’s quite stunning and I can’t even imagine the level of patience it would take to work on this kind of project. Props to Thomas for his incredible dedication!

One of my last mural project in Memphis, Tennessee. A huge 2,6 x 13 meters long panoramic view in the entrance of JKI offices. That mural embraces all the famous places in the world that the company has been reaching through the years. Long days of work to complete this freehand mural with just a couple of Molotow acrylic markers. I chose a small 2mm nib to get as much details as I could so the visitors could stare at the walls to discover all the hidden details. I hope you guys will like it too.

More Links
Learn about about Deck two
Follow Deck two’s work on Behance
Illustration & Art Direction
Move the World Mural Drawings by Deck TwoMove the World Mural Drawings by Deck TwoMove the World Mural Drawings by Deck TwoMove the World Mural Drawings by Deck TwoMove the World Mural Drawings by Deck TwoMove the World Mural Drawings by Deck TwoMove the World Mural Drawings by Deck TwoMove the World Mural Drawings by Deck TwoMove the World Mural Drawings by Deck TwoMove the World Mural Drawings by Deck TwoMove the World Mural Drawings by Deck Two

mural
murals
drawing
drawings


The best VPN for Mac and Windows in 2018

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/_a5IKv_V09U/best-vpn-deals-for-mac-and-windows

Struggling to know which is the best VPN service for your needs? We can help: we’ve taken a look at all the major Virtual Private Networks and rated the best VPNs below, to help you choose which is right for you.

The best web hosting services of 2018

Whether you’re working from Beijing and need the best VPN for China, or you’re based in your local coffee shop and need better security, we’ve got the best VPN for creative professionals – as well as the best VPN deals – right here.

And don’t worry: you don’t have to be technical. VPNs are surprisingly simple. Some just take minutes to get up and running… 

What is a VPN and why do I need it?

VPN, which stands for virtual private network, is a service that encrypts your internet communications. It enables users to securely access a private network, and send and receive data remotely.

If you’re a freelancer, for example, a VPN lets you remotely connect to an office network as though you were working in the building. It’ll also let you securely send confidential material to a client or do your banking from an unsecured public network, such as a coffee shop Wi-Fi spot, or abroad.

A VPN can also keep your internet browsing anonymous, or make you appear to be located in another country – which can be useful if you work with global clients that have IP-based restrictions on their sites. “I often have to fire up the VPN to make myself appear as if I’m in different EU territories,” says London-based web designer Robert Fenech. “A quick 'turn on and select country', and voila.”

Sometimes it’s not the website protocols themselves that you have to get round, but government censorship. Just imagine you’re visiting Beijing and needed to download some Photoshop files from a service that the ‘Great Firewall of China’ has blocked. A VPN can help you get around that too.

Whatever your reasons for using a VPN, there are a number of services on the market. Here, we’ve picked the very best VPNs for designers, artists and creatives. 

The best VPN services and deals in 2018

Canadian VPN service TunnelBear is aimed squarely at non-technies and VPN newbies. It’s incredibly easy to use, and gives you a wide range of clients – covering both desktop and mobile devices.  Setting up the TunnelBear VPN takes a matter of minutes, with a hugely simplified process compared to other VPN services. Explanations are jargon-free and written in the kind of plain English everyone can understand. 

The flipside of that, of course, is that options are limited compared to other VPNs, so more advanced users looking for high levels of configuration will be better off with a rival service. But that aside, what TunnelBear does, it does very well, with the choice of more than 20 servers around the globe, and pretty impressive speeds overall (although those speeds do drop a little over long-distance connections).

Paid plans give you unlimited data and can be had for a reasonable $4.16 per month. And TunnelBear also offers a free VPN service, which limits you to just 500MB of traffic per month.

Best VPN: Cyber Ghost

 CyberGhost is the best VPN for you if you're looking for a service that's a bit more customisable than TunnelBear (above) – yet feel a little intimidated by jargon and over-complex instructions. It's headquartered in Romania, and has a ton of easy-to-follow guides that explain everything in basic English that anyone can follow.

These are handily divided up by device, so you don’t have to cross-reference all over the place. And they explain everything from how to surf anonymously and how to block ads to more advanced fare, such as how to configure a Raspberry Pi as a web proxy with OpenVPN, or how to share a VPN connection over Ethernet.

And it’s good that these guides exist, because Cyber Ghost does offer a large number of configuration options, such as setting it to automatically run on Windows startup, assigning specific actions for different Wi-Fi networks, and making CyberGhost automatically run when you use certain apps, such as Facebook. 

The interface is pretty easy to use too. The main window offers six simple options: Surf Anonymously, Unblock Streaming, Protect Network, Torrent Anonymously, Unblock Basic Websites, and Choose My Server. And you can try the service out before you buy with the free plan – although it has some restrictions: you can only connect one device at a time, it may run slower than the full commercial service, and it displays adverts.

All in all, Cyber Ghost is a great VPN service for anyone who’s not a total newbie and wants to push what their VPN is capable off, but doesn’t want to go wading too deep into the techie weeds. 

Best VPN: VYPR VPN

VYPR VPN is a fast, highly secure service without third parties. If you’re looking for privacy, then a service based in Switzerland – known throughout history for obsessive levels of discretion within its banking system – has to be a good start. But while Vypr is keen to trumpet its service’s ability to provide privacy and security, it’s really the speed of the thing that’s the most impressive. 

VYPR VPN is hardly alone in claiming to offer “the world’s most powerful VPN”. However, it backs up this claim on the basis that, unlike many of its rivals, it owns its own hardware and runs its network. Either way, it was pretty nifty when we took it for spin. In short, if your work involves uploading and downloading a lot of hefty files, and shaving time off that is going to make a difference to your quality of life, VYPR VPN is the one of the best VPNs you can choose. 

Best VPN: Windscribe

Windscribe offers a decent enough VPN that has one main benefit over rivals: its commercial plan allows for unlimited connections. That means that you can use it on as many devices as you want simultaneously, where most providers only offer five. 

Alternatively, you might be attracted by the high-level of privacy it offers. You don’t have to use your real name or provide an email address to sign up to the service. And if you want to stay totally anonymous you can (as with most VPNs) you can pay with Bitcoin. Plus, being based in Canada, it’s nicely out of reach of US law enforcement agents.

If neither of those things are a big selling point, though, then it probably shouldn’t be your first choice, as performance and features as a whole are fairly average. Prices start at $3.70 a month for a biannual plan.

Best VPN: HotSpot shield

HotSpot shield offers an impressive level of speed

HotSpot Shield is another fast mover. When we took it for a spin, we experienced very fast upload and download speeds when transferring big image files, and while these weren’t quite up to Vypr’s levels, they were pretty darned close. 

This may not be the best choice if privacy is your biggest priority, though. HotSpot Shield is based in California, making it subject to U.S law enforcement. It doesn’t let you pay for the service with Bitcoin. And it uses its own proprietary VPN protocol, which some people are suspicious of because it hasn’t been widely analysed externally. 

That said, Hotspot Shield Premium's high speeds and low prices have clear appeal, and the seven-day trial makes it easy to test the service for yourself. As you'd expect, the best value for money is the one-year subscription, unless you want to commit to the lifetime plan. 

Best VPN: ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN has a hard-won reputation for excellent customer service

ExpressVPN is based in the British Virgin Islands, which may ring alarm bells for privacy enthusiasts. But there’s no need to worry: this self-governing tax haven is in no way interfered with by British law enforcement. As you’d hope from the name, it’s also a super-fast VPN service and offers high levels of encryption. On the downside, it only offers three simultaneous connections per user, where most services offer five.

But what really stands out for ExpressVPN is its customer support. Although it’s not alone in offering live chat, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, its agents have a great reputation for sorting problems quickly, efficiently and with a smile in their voice. And while that’s not often our main consideration when selecting a provider of any service, perhaps it should be.

Related articles:

The expert guide to working from homeThe essential guide to tools for designers10 top prototyping tools

The Complete Guide to WordPress Performance Optimization

Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/complete-guide-wordpress-performance-optimization/

According to Builtwith.com, WordPress holds close to 50% of the CMS share of the world’s top 1,000,000 websites. As for the ecommerce sphere, we’re at 33% with WooCommerce. And if we cast a wider net, percentages go higher. Although we may complain that WordPress can get bloated, resource-heavy, and its data model leaves a lot to be desired, there is no denying that WordPress is everywhere.

Ecommerce software stats by builtwith.com

WordPress can thank its simplicity and a low barrier to entry for this pervasiveness. It’s easy to set up, and requires next to no technical knowledge. Hosting for WordPress can be found for as little as a couple of dollars per month, and the basic setup takes just a half hour of clicking. Free themes for WordPress are galore, some with included WYSIWYG page builders.

Many look down on it, but in many ways we can thank WordPress for the growth of the internet and PHP, and many internet professionals have WP’s gentle learning curve to thank for their careers.

But this ease of entry comes at a cost. Plenty of websites that proudly wear the WordPress badge were not done by professionals but by the cheapest developers. And often, it shows. Professional look and professional performance were afterthoughts.

One of the main points of feedback the owner of an aspiring high-quality website will get from a grudging professional is that performance and a professional look and feel shouldn’t be afterthoughts. You can’t easily paint or stick them over a website. Professional websites should be premeditated.

lingscars.com

Above, a famous UK used car dealer, Ling’s Cars, tried a unique way to make a kitsch marketing punchline. Unless you’re REALLY sure about what you’re doing, DO NOT try this at home

And this starts with…

Choice of Hosting

Typically, new users will go with products that are on the low-cost side, with most of beginner-friendly bells and whistles. Considering the shady business practices by some big industry players in this arena, and the complaints and demands for site migration professionals coming from clients, this is a part of website setup that requires due attention.

We can divide WordPress hosting vendors into a few tiers.

Premium, WordPress-dedicated vendors like Kinsta whose plans start at $100 per month, or even higher-grade managed hosting like WordPress VIP by Automattic, may be worth their salt, but also may be out of reach for many website owners.

Medium tier Flywheel, A2 hosting, Siteground and Pantheon are among those considered reliable and performance oriented, offering acceptable speed and a managed hosting service for those more price-conscious. Users here may get a bit less hand-holding, but these services usually strike an acceptable balance between a solid setup, price, and options for more advanced users. Not to forget, there is Cloudways, which is a hybrid between VPS and managed hosting. Those with their audience in Europe may look into Pilvia, as it offers a performant server stack and is pretty affordable.

There’s an interesting survey of customer satisfaction with more prominent hosting vendors, published by Codeinwp.

For those of us not scared of the command line, there are VPS and dedicated-server vendors like Digital Ocean, Vultr, Linode, Amazon’s Lightsail, Hetzner in Europe, and OVH. Hetzner is a German vendor known for its quality physical servers on offer, somewhat above the price of virtual servers, while OVH offers very cost-efficient virtual servers. For the price-conscious, OVH’s subsidiary Kimsufi in Europe and Canada also offers bargain physical dedicated servers, and Host US has very affordable virtual servers.

With managed hosting, things to look for are a good server stack, good CDN integration, and of course SSD storage. Guaranteed resources, like with A2, are a big plus. The next thing to look for is SSH-access. Tech-savvy users may profit from WP-CLI availability.

When choosing a VPS, the thing to look for is XEN or KVM virtualization over OpenVZ, because it mitigates the overselling of resources, helping guarantee that the resources you bought are really yours. It also provides better security.

Easy Engine is software that can make your entire VPS/WordPress installation a one-hour job.

Regarding the server stack, Nginx is preferred to Apache if we’re pursuing performance, and PHP 7 is a must. If we really need Apache, using Nginx as a reverse proxy is a plus, but this setup can get complex.

Tests performed give PHP 7 a big edge over the previous version. According to fasthosts.co.uk:

WordPress 4.1 executed 95% more requests per second on PHP 7 compared to PHP 5.6.

When choosing your hosting, be aware of negative experiences with some providers that have become notorious.

Software Considerations

Things that usually slow down WordPress websites are bulky, bloated front ends with a lot of static resources and database queries. These issues arise from the choice of theme (and its page builders, huge sliders, etc) — which not only slow down initial loading due to many requests and overall size, but often slow down the browser due to a lot of JavaScript, and stuff to render, making it unresponsive.

The golden rule here is: don’t use it unless there’s a good reason to.

This may seem like a rule coming from the mouth of Homer Simpson, but if you can skip any of the bells and whistles, do so. Be conservative. If you must add some shiny functionality or JS eye candy, always prefer those tailored and coded as specifically as possible for your exact need. If you’re a skilled coder, and the project justifies the effort, code it yourself with minimalism in mind.

Review all the plugins your website can’t live without — and remove the others.

And most importantly: back up your website before you begin pruning!

Data model

If you have a theme where you use a lot of custom posts or fields, be warned that a lot of these will slow down your database queries. Keep your data model as simple as possible, and if not, consider that WordPress’ original intended purpose was as a blogging engine. If you need a lot more than that, you may want to consider some of the MVC web frameworks out there that will give you greater control over your data model and the choice of database.

In WordPress we can build a rich custom data model by using custom post types, custom taxonomies and custom fields, but be conscious of performance and complexity costs.

If you know your way around the code, inspect your theme to find unnecessary database queries. Every individual database trip spends precious milliseconds in your TTFB, and megabytes of your server’s memory. Remember that secondary loops can be costly — so be warned when using widgets and plugins that show extra posts, like in sliders or widget areas. If you must use them, consider fetching all your posts in a single query, where it may otherwise slow down your website. There’s a GitHub repo for those not wanting to code from scratch.

Meta queries can be expensive

Using custom fields to fetch posts by some criteria can be a great tool to develop sophisticated things with WP. This is an example of a meta query, and here you can find some elaboration on its costs. Summary: post meta wasn’t built for filtering, taxonomies were.

get_post_meta is a function typically called to fetch custom fields, and it can be called with just the post ID as an argument, in which case it fetches all the post’s meta fields in an array, or it can have a custom field’s name as a second argument, in which case it returns just the specified field.

If using get_post_meta()for a certain post multiple times on a single page or request (for multiple custom fields), be aware that this won’t incur extra cost, because the first time this function is called, all the post meta gets cached.

Database hygiene

Installing and deleting various plugins, and changing different themes over the lifetime of your website, often clutters your database with a lot of data that isn’t needed. It’s completely possible to discover — upon inspecting why a WordPress website is sluggish, or why it won’t even load, due to exhausted server memory — that the database has grown to hundreds and hundreds of megabytes, or over a gigabyte, with no content that explains it.

wp-options is where a lot of orphaned data usually gets left behind. This includes, but is not limited to, various transients (this post warns of best practices regarding deletion of transients in plugins). Transients are a form of cache, but as with any other caching, if misused, it can do more harm than good. If your server environment provides it, wp-cli has a command set dedicated to transients management, including deletion. If not, there are plugins in the WordPress plugins repo that can delete expired transients, but which offer less control.

If deleting transients still leaves us with a bloated database without any tangible cause, WP-Sweep is an excellent free tool that can do the job of cleaning up the database. Another one to consider is WP Optimize.

Before doing any kind of database cleanup, it’s strongly recommended that you back up your database!

One of the plugins that comes in very handy for profiling of the whole WordPress request lifecycle is Debug Objects. It offers an inspection of all the transients, shortcodes, classes, styles and scripts, templates loaded, db queries, and hooks.

Debug Objects plugin output

After ensuring a sane, performance-oriented setup — considering our server stack in advance, eliminating the possible bloat created by theme choice and plugins and widgets overload — we should try to identify bottlenecks.

If we test our website in a tool like Pingdom Speed Test, we’ll get a waterfall chart of all the resources loaded in the request:

Pingdom Waterfall Chart

This gives us details about the request-response lifecycle, which we can analyze for bottlenecks. For instance:

If the pink DNS time above is too big, it could mean we should consider caching our DNS records for a longer period. This is done by increasing the TTL setting in our domain management/registrar dashboard.
If the SSL part is taking too long, we may want to consider enabling HTTP/2 to benefit from ALPN, adjusting our cache-control headers, and finally switching to a CDN service. “Web Performance in a Nutshell: HTTP/2, CDNs and Browser Caching” is a thorough article on this topic, as is “Analyzing HTTPS Performance Overhead” by KeyCDN.
Connect, Send, and Receive parts usually depend on network latency, so these can be improved by hosting close to your intended audience, making sure your host has a fast uplink, and using a CDN. For these items, you may want to consider a ping tool too (not to be confused with the Pingdom tools mentioned above), to make sure your server is responsive.
The Wait part — the yellow part of the waterfall — is the time your server infrastructure takes to produce or return the requested website. If this part takes too much time, you may want to return to our previous topics of optimizing the server, WordPress installation, and database stack. Or you may consider various layers of caching.

To get a more extensive testing and hand-holding tips on improving the website, there’s a little command line utility called webcoach. In an environment with NodeJS and npm installed (like Homestead Improved), installing it is simple:

npm install webcoach -g

After it’s been installed, we can get detailed insights and advice on how to improve our website’s various aspects, including performance:

webcoach command

The post The Complete Guide to WordPress Performance Optimization appeared first on SitePoint.

15 Tools and Resources That Will Help You Grow as a Designer

Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/15-tools-and-resources-that-will-help-you-grow-as-a-designer/

This article was created in partnership with BAWMedia. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.

It’s hard to stay in your web design comfort zone when trends and technologies are in a continual state of change. Many of your design and development tools might continue to serve you well for some time. The same may be true for the resources you rely on.

There will come a time however when a favored tool or a resource is no longer up to the task. Investing in new tools or resources is generally the easiest way to keep up with the changing times. This is especially when a tool or resource is easily affordable, and in some cases, free.

This might be a good time to take stock of what you have in your designer's toolkit. See whether some changes might be in order. This list of 15 of 2018's top tools and resources should get you off to a good start.

1. Mason

Mason

Requirements are always subject to change. These changes can be a headache to designers and developers as they usually involve repetitive cycles of work. Many of today's software tools are equipped to handle requirements changes only to the extent that they can repeat prior tasks.

Mason has a different approach.

Mason is a combination design/development, and maintenance/collaboration tool that can put an end to repetitive deployment cycles by relieving designers or developers the task of instituting changes or fixes they shouldn't have to be bothered with.

Mason has a wealth of software design features, including pre-packaged building blocks that address common requirements. What Mason does that is different is to allow downstream users (software maintenance individuals or teams, and even clients) to make changes in these building blocks in response to changing requirements or needs for fixes or product updates.

Mason's login and user registration protocols ensure that you always have total control over product changes, even though as a team leader or designer you're no longer required to make them yourself.

2. Mobirise

Mobirise

The ability to create mobile-friendly websites and apps is no longer a nice option to work with. In today's world it's mandatory. Some themes still treat device-friendliness as if it were a good design option to have. Mobirise on the other hand, was created with mobile devices in mind.

Not only does Mobirise contain everything you need to build device-friendly websites and apps, but it does so without any cost to you and without any restrictions whatsoever. Mobirise is free to use for both your personal and commercial pursuits. It's simply a matter of downloading it now and getting started.

Mobirise is an offline app, so you'll have total control over product design and hosting. It's also an excellent choice for smaller projects such as small websites, portfolios, landing pages, and promo sites.

3. Elementor

Elementor

If you don't believe Elementor is the #1 WordPress page builder on the market, you might take a close look at the numbers. 900,000 or so users downloaded this free, open source and feature rich page-building platform in a little less than 2 years.

Performance and ease of use account, in part, for Elementor's popularity, but its users also love its superior workflow features, visual form builder, custom CSS, and the menu builder.

Things are only going to get better for this product's users — and for you as well if you choose to download it. The Elementor 2.0 release, with a wealth of powerful new tools is already underway and will continue in increments throughout the rest of the year.

New features include enhanced WooCommerce shop product pages, single post page builders, new eCommerce page-building options and more. Users still can enjoy their favorite features of 1.0 version, too.

4. Goodiewebsite

Goodiewebsite

Goodiewebsite has helped hundreds of clients with website development. This is a platform, which specializes in websites on the order of 1-10 pages in size, design to code conversion (PSD, Sketch, Figma, XD, etc.), and simple WordPress sites.

Goodiewebsite services are cost effective and the tasks assigned to them are always performed professionally and reliably.

5. monday.com

monday.com

Whether you’re a team of two, or a team of 20,000 scattered around the globe, and whether it is tech on non-tech oriented, if you're looking for a high-performance team management tool, monday.com will suit your needs to perfection.

This team management tool allows you to accomplish tasks without spreadsheets or white boards and avoids any need for scheduling an unending series of meetings. monday.com promotes project transparency and empowers team members.

6. A2's Fully Managed WordPress Hosting

A2

A2 Hosting adjusts to your specific hosting requirements instead of the other way around. You can expect to receive precisely the hosting experience you want and need at an affordable price other services simply cannot match. Site staging, automated backups, blazing fast servers, 24/7 Guru support – it's all there!

7. The Hanger

The Hanger

Whether the plan is to create an online presence for an existing clothing retailer or open a strictly eCommerce business, you might as well do it with a touch of pizzaz to draw the customers in.

The Hanger is a modern-classic WordPress theme that's just the cup of tea for building a high-quality online store in no time at all and customizing it to fit your brand or your client's.

The post 15 Tools and Resources That Will Help You Grow as a Designer appeared first on SitePoint.

Collective #425

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tympanus/~3/Olnl81Lv55U/

C425_layouts

The Layouts of Tomorrow

Max Böck shows how to break out of the common layout patterns with the power of CSS Grid.

Read it

C425_baw

Our Sponsor
15 Tools and Resources That Designers Are Using In 2018

These tools and resources will help you on your way to become more productive. They will keep you better informed, and keep a step ahead of your competition.

Check them out

C425_home2

Going Home

A lovely WebGL project made by 302 chanwoo.

Check it out

C425_Roller

Roller

Roller is a Sketch plugin that helps you find and fix design inconsistencies.

Check it out

C425_javascript

JavaScript engine fundamentals: Shapes and Inline Caches

An article by Mathias Bynens that describes some key fundamentals common to all JavaScript engines.

Read it

C425_unicode

More Unicode Patterns

Yuan Chuan shows how to create even more fantastic Unicode patterns.

Read it

C425_dreams

Theme For A Dream

A beautiful audio-visual web experience using WebGL and Web Audio created for the launch of Natureboy Flako’s second album “Theme for a Dream”.

Check it out

C425_shy

Shy blob

Cassie Evans created this super-cute dancing blob demo using tracking.js for face detection. The blob stops dancing when you watch.

Check it out

C425_font

Free Font: Renner

A beautiful evolution of Futura designed by indestructible type.

Get it

C425_soundlines

Spaghetti Audio

A fun demo by Joe Harry.

Check it out

C425_distinct

Distinct Design Systems

An interesting article by Dan Mall about what makes a design system better than any other.

Read it

C425_colorspark

ColorSpark

Luke Johnson created this tool to help designers find unique colors and striking gradient combinations.

Check it out

C425_worldcup

World Cup 2018 …in JSON

The classic API for the World Cup, now with all the new data for 2018.

Check it out

C425_chrome

ChromeREPL

In case you missed it: a Sublime Text plugin to execute JavaScript in Google Chrome. By Arthur Carabott.

Check it out

C425_cancelok

Ok→Cancel versus Cancel→Ok

An interesting article on how buttons are arranged in the Factorio game.

Read it

C425_problempattern

The Problem with Patterns

Cathy Dutton asks the question if design patterns actually result in better-designed products and services.

Read it

C425_8pt

8-Point Grid: Typography On The Web

Ellito Dahl shares some best practices for 8pt grid typography.

Check it out

C425_Yett

Yett

A small library to control the execution of scripts on a website.

Check it out

C425_emoji

Weboji

A library for building your own animoji embedded in Javascript/WebGL applications.

Check it out

C425_vuenative

Vue Native

A great project by GeekyAnts: a framework to build cross platform native mobile apps using JavaScript. Read more about it in this article.

Check it out

C425_wordpress

Google PageSpeed Insights – Scoring 100/100 with WordPress

Brian Jackson’s step-by-step guide on how to achieve better website performance.

Read it

C425_bash

Pure Bash Bible

A collection of pure bash alternatives to external processes.

Check it out

C425_ImageReveal

From Our Blog
Full Image Reveal Effect

A simple fullscreen image reveal effect where thumbnails slide out of the viewport to reveal a larger image.

Check it out

Collective #425 was written by Pedro Botelho and published on Codrops.

5 Reasons Why to Use Video Content in Web Design: mysimpleshow

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Designrfix/~3/40_U8-9pNKQ/mysimpleshow

Thinking about using video content in your website design, but don’t know where to begin? Well, if yes, then this article will be of help to you! In this article, you will discover why video content is beneficial and how mysimpleshow helps you to make excellent video content. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s […]

The post 5 Reasons Why to Use Video Content in Web Design: mysimpleshow appeared first on designrfix.com.

How to Stay Focused and Productive as a Freelancer

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/1stwebdesigner/~3/JmoaLLy0GEk/

For some freelancers, churning out work and keeping focused comes easy. For others, it’s a living nightmare. If you find yourself struggling and wasting hours on social media, all hope isn’t lost. Before you give up on freelancing and go back to that office job, try these tips to get back on track.

Establish Structure

Many people choose freelancing for its freedom. What’s better than waking up at noon and working in pajamas? But just because you don’t have someone looking over your shoulder or a tight schedule doesn’t mean you don’t have deadlines to meet.

Don’t let your laziness get the best of you. You’re allowed to make your own structure, so design a schedule that works for you!

If you want to have a 30-minute coffee break in the morning, then feel free – just make sure that you do start working on those terms. Don’t let 30 minutes turn into an hour. A lack of discipline is the downfall of many freelancers.

Man pointing to a date on a calendar.

Work with Your Energy Cycle

Every day has high and low points, and this cycle is different for everyone. Some find it easier to start right away, and struggle to focus as the day goes on. Night owls may need to spend the afternoon relaxing and ride on their nightly burst of energy.

Figure out when you feel most active and put those times to use. Save your recreational time for when you’re feeling lazy. If you work best in the morning, don’t get up and waste that potential energy on video games. Change up your routine if you must.

Typing in a dark room.

Rest and Reward

The best way to get motivated is to use positive reinforcement. If you force yourself to work without a break, you’ll only begin to dread your job. Our brains aren’t wired to sit still and stay focused for hours on end.

Break your work into smaller tasks. When you hit those milestones, take a break to do something enjoyable. Wrote 1,000 words? Play your favorite game for a while. Finished up a webpage template? Treat yourself to some ice cream. Even if it’s just to get up and stretch your legs every 30 minutes, make sure to give your brain a break.

You may find it easier to take frequent mini-breaks throughout the day, or work for hours and take longer rests. Just don’t reward yourself unless you’ve earned it.

But it’s also important to know your limits. When these small breaks stop working, take a long shower or do something that requires little mental energy. Get relaxed, then get back to work.

Video game controller.

Take Care of Yourself

Nothing does more wonders for your productivity than a good night’s sleep, lots of exercise and a few healthy meals. If your job is getting in the way of this, it may be time to step back. Know when you’re overloaded, and when to say “no” to a client. Don’t work yourself into the ground.

Create a Comfortable Workspace

It may not seem that important, but comfort can do wonders for your productivity. Work in a quiet room with no noise or distractions. Invest in a comfy office chair or a nice, spacious desk. Make it yours with posters, plants and your own personal touch. Decorate to create a casual or professional environment, depending on where you work better.

Man in home office.

Use Tools

There are many apps, websites, and programs out there that can help you stay focused. Desktop calendars, virtual sticky notes, and time management tools are great at keeping everything straight. If you’re desperate, Parental Controls can keep you off Facebook.

Apps like Habitica, Mindbloom or Fighter’s Block! “gamify” your life and reward you for staying motivated – helping you build better habits.

Person holding mobile phone.

Do What Works for You

More important than any advice a stranger can give you is this: Figure out what’s best for you. Articles like this can point you in the right direction, but they’re no replacement for experimenting. Keep trying and find what keeps you motivated, what’s best for your situation and what methods keep you focused and on track.


In 2018, Work with the Best Resources For Designers & Developers

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/1stwebdesigner/~3/iXNUIIdBmHA/

The learning process to keep up with the latest web technologies can take up lots of time. Fortunately, you don’t have to be an expert to put these new technologies to work. The more you know the better of course. But plenty of people out there are busy developing the tools you need to keep abreast of technology.

This is as good a time as any take an inventory of your computing tools to see which are obsolete. You may find yourself discarding a few old favorites. But when you first have the chance to put the replacements to work you’ll have no regrets whatsoever.

Check out these 15 best tools and resources. One or more of them could not only make your day but help make 2018 the year your business takes off.

1. Elementor Page Builder

Elementor Page Builder

There’s a reason why Elementor is the #1 page-builder. There are several in fact. This open source frontend page builder makes it ever so easy to visually create spectacular websites without any need to code. Elementor works on any theme, it’s developer friendly, lightning fast, pre-built with beautiful templates and creative design elements. Elementor is also free.

Elementor became the most popular website-building tool in a very short time, already surpassing 900,000 active installs in under two years.

Elementor surpasses its alternatives in terms of ease of use, superior workflow, and excellent performance. These advantages explain how Elementor grew so fast.

The most popular feature that makes Elementor shine above the rest is its visual form builder that comes included with built-in 3rd party integrations to most marketing automation tools and CRMs.

Another notable feature is the theme builder that lets you easily design your header, footer, single post and other dynamic parts of your site.

2. Mobirise Website Builder

Mobirise Website Builder

In today’s world, a website must be device friendly if it is to be successful. It makes sense then to invest in a website builder that specializes in building mobile-friendly websites – like Mobirise.

Mobirise is also great to have on hand for small projects like landing pages, portfolios, promo sites, or small to medium websites. Mobirise’s drag and drop functionality makes it simple to work with and there’s no need for coding.

Mobirise is an offline application so you’re not tied to any specific platform, you have complete control over your web-building projects, and you can host your website wherever you choose. The Mobirise package is chock-full of trendy blocks and templates (1,200 of them) plus large selections of icons, fonts, and free images.

Best of all, Mobirise is free for both personal and commercial reasons and without restrictions. Over 1.5 million Mobirise-built sites are currently active.

3. Amelia – Enterprise-Level WordPress Appointment Booking Plugin

Amelia - Enterprise-Level WordPress Appointment Booking Plugin

Amelia is a WordPress plugin from Elite Envato author that automates your booking activities 24/7 and gives you complete control over your appointments, your schedule, and those of your employees. Clients or customers can make appointments any time of the day or night.

Amelia is easy to install and easy to work with as no special training is necessary. The colors and fonts of its frontend elements can be customized to match your WordPress theme or your corporate brand.

An important advantage this plugin offers both your business and your customers is it eliminates call waiting, phone tag, and back and forth emailing to set up an appointment or get things straightened out. Customers and clients can book an appointment in seconds on their smartphone or computer.

Amelia supports group bookings, and automatically sends email notifications to participating parties whenever an appointment has been booked, cancelled, rejected, or is pending.

4. monday.com

monday.com

monday.com is a central platform from which teams can manage their tasks down to the finest details. This team management tool can serve a team of 2 or a widely-dispersed team of thousands equally well. monday.com encourages team collaboration and project transparency, it is a proven productivity booster, and provides team management solutions for both technically and non-technically-oriented teams.

5. Nutcache

Nutcache

This business-oriented project management application is equally well-suited for web designers and developers and project managers that subscribe to Agile processes and principles such as Scrum and the use of Kanban boards. Nutcache will help you collaborate and conduct your work more efficiently from project estimating and budgeting to expense management, time tracking, and final billing.

6. Uncode – Creative Multiuse WordPress Theme

Uncode – Creative Multiuse WordPress Theme

You’re bound to be impressed (as will a client) with Uncode’s portfolio-building features and functionalities that enable you to achieve awesome results in a relatively short time.

With Uncode, you don’t have to start a portfolio-building project from scratch, and you don’t have to resort to coding to achieve pixel-perfect results thanks to Shape Dividers, Slides Scroll, the powerful Gallery Manager, and a host of other cool features.

7. Themify Ultra

Themify Ultra

Whether you have a single project, or dozens of them for dozens of different clients makes no difference. With Themify Ultra you can handle them all. This multipurpose theme’s host of pre-designed layouts, customizable mega-menus, WooCommerce support and multiple other features including the portfolio post type plugin will ensure that you can build any website for any client.

8. Houzez

Houzez

Building a website for anyone in the real estate sector can be a genuine challenge unless you have exactly the right tools. Houzez is a real estate WordPress theme that has every function and feature you need to satisfy the most demanding client.

Houzez’ features include everything from advanced search capabilities and listings format options to the new custom fields builder and search composer. In addition, the team behind this theme is known for its high-quality customer support.

9. Salesmate

Salesmate

Salesmate is a customer relationship management plugin that you can integrate with your WordPress site to engage and capture leads to add to your sales teams and increase your sales.

This CRM plugin will help you keep your leads organized, tag leads having special views, talents, or characteristics, and moved them through the sales cycle to where you can communicate with and respond to them quickly and easily.

10. 34,000 Icons Full Bundle by Roundicons.com

34,000 Icons Full Bundle by Roundicons.com

This is your chance to download the world’s largest collection of icons all wrapped up in a single bundle. These 34,000 icons are royalty-free and consist of flat icons, solid icons, full icons, doodle icons, and most other icon types you’re ever likely to run across.

The icon bundle comes with a commercial use license and is yours for a one-time payment. Be sure to use coupon code R1200FFALL for a 20% discount.

11. Stockfresh

Stockfresh

This up-and-coming stock photo agency has already amassed several million hand-selected photos and vector images at competitive prices. This makes Stockfresh a wonderful resource to have for your stock photo and graphic images needs.

Stockfresh is currently working to extend their super selection to include themes, fonts, templates, and other design aides. Check their website for special checkout discount prices.

12. PhotoBlocks Grid Gallery

PhotoBlocks Grid Gallery

Creating a pixel perfect, attention-getting gallery to showcase your work couldn’t be easier if you make Photoblocks Grid Gallery with its visual drag and drop builder your gallery-builder of choice.

Photoblocks is responsive, so your gallery will be scaled up or down as needed, no matter the screen size. Photoblocks offers a variety of hover effects and social sharing icons.

13. Beamer

Beamer

Churning out emails, newsletters, and other methods of announcing promotions, new products or services and the like can be a hassle. Why not turn the problem over to Beamer?

It’s simply a matter of inserting this online newsfeed application into a website’s “What’s New?” section together with an accompanying menu item or icon. Beamer customers have reported over 10x more user engagement compared to other announcement methods.

14. The Web Designer YouTube Channel

The Web Designer YouTube Channel offers high-quality video tutorials on a variety of subjects relating to your day-to-day web design activities. You can view and learn from subjects ranging from UI and UX to WordPress and typography, and everything in between.

You’ll also find videos featuring design tips and actual design examples. Go to the landing page for more information on a service that can help your business grow.

15. Portfoliobox

Portfoliobox

This online website builder was designed with photographers, designers, artists, and other creative professionals in mind. Portfoliobox is flexible and easy to use, no coding is required, and it’s not theme based.

All templates offered by Portfoliobox are free of charge. With the free plan you’re allowed to host 50 images, 10 pages and 10 products.

Conclusion

Pick one or more of these 15 top quality tools and resources. You’re likely to notice improvements in daily web design/development work performance! You will see smoother workflows, increased sales, or some combination of the above.

These top-quality items are either free to try, completely free, or affordably priced. Each of them represents a cost-effective investment. Also, each in its own way will help you cope with the latest tech changes.