Remkus de Vries

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“It’s almost like our unconsciousness is a kind of failure”

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You know I’m all about applying perspective as much as possible when living our daily lives. It’s also one of the topics we frequently discuss with our kids – 10, 16 and 18yo. One of the questions we entertained ourselves with over NYE was about how the world looked / worked before the internet. When googling for examples we stumbled upon a very interesting article I’d like to share with you.

The following quote is what especially caught my attention:

“When you wake up, you have this gift of a blank brain. You could fill it with anything. But for most of us, we have this kind of panic.

Instead of wondering what should I do, we wonder what did I miss. It’s almost like our unconsciousness is a kind of failure and we can’t believe we’ve been offline for eight hours…”

I encourage you to read the rest of the article: What it feels like to be the last generation to remember life before the internet. 

Demo Screencast Preparation Steps

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I love discovering new cool WordPress plugins/solutions and I love it even more if the developer has taken the effort to create a demo video of the plugin in action.

However:

So, let’s address that. What is my opinion about that? I think it comes across unprofessional and sloppy. There, I said it.

Now, it’s very easy to criticize something, but it takes effort to actually come up with a solution. Or rather, in this case, steps to take to prevent sloppy demo videos. On that note, I’d like to share with you the steps that I take before I start recording a demo.

Screencast demo preparation steps

Time needed: 2 minutes.

In order to produce a clean and distraction-free screencast, follow these steps:

  1. Close all non-related apps

    All non-essential apps should be turned off before you start recording.

  2. Use a dedicated Demo Desktop screen

    Consider using either a dedicated clean account on your computer, or if you’re using a Mac, use a dedicated screen for your recording.

  3. Kill all notifications.

    Make sure you kill all notifications before you start recording. In OSX you can do this easily in your the Notifications pane in your general settings.

  4. Set up a fresh demo installation

    Create a new and fresh local development environment with a domain name that reflects the purpose. DesktopServer will allow you to do that, for instance.

  5. Update all the things. WordPress, plugins, themes, and translations. Yes, all the things.

    Not having any updates available will allow all those OCD viewers of your screencast to focus on the actual screencast.

  6. Dismiss all notices in the Dashboard

    All those upgrade and other kinds of notices are distractions. Perhaps even use a clever way to hide and combine all those notices, but that’s a different subject 😉

  7. Hide the toolbar, bookmarks in your browser

    There are possibly personal and/or private links in your bookmarks bar, so it’s probably better to remove it while recording.

  8. Hide all the browser extensions and plugins

    This is easily done by either using a private browser window or to slide the address bar all the way to the right.

  9. Make sure you have a fitting desktop wallpaper if you have the possibility it might be shown when clicking around

    If you’re recording your entire screen and you need to click around to show what you want to show, you may want to consider a friendly background image.

That’s my demo preparation checklist. Obviously there are some things to consider when actually recording as well:

  • Use a storyboard if it’s a long demo with lots of steps
  • Do a proper introduction starting at the beginning
  • Explain your steps while you’re doing them. Don’t assume the audience knows why you click somewhere
  • Get a proper microphone that records something that’s actually similar to your voice
  • Do a proper recap

So there you have it. Problem and solution. I’m sure there’s tons of smart stuff you folks do as well when creating demo videos and I’d love for you to share them in the comments!

Further reading

Transactional email alternatives (for Mandrill App)

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Like many of you, I’m sure, I found an email from Mandrill App in my inbox today that explains them merging their service with the parent company MailChimp. I’d be fine with the merge in itself, I love MailChimp, but what I don’t like about this move is this section:

Our billing and pricing model is also changing. MailChimp will generate one consolidated bill that covers your MailChimp and Mandrill charges. Mandrill credits will be sold in blocks of 25,000 emails. Blocks will start at $20 per month. This goes into effect once your accounts are merged.

We’re using Mandrill App for transactional emails on a bunch of WordPress sites to make sure delivery is pretty much guaranteed and we have insights in what actually goes out. Now, I don’t mind paying for a service at all, but some of our accounts are for relatively low traffic websites which would make the switch to Mandrill’s new pricing strategy a costly one. Luckily though, there are alternatives.

I’ve done nothing more than copy and paste their marketing copy, but these are Mandrill app alternatives I found:

MailGun

We don’t just send your email, we deliver it. Our software automatically manages the delivery process to give your emails the best chance of landing in the inbox. And if something happens that keep your messages from being delivered, we’ll tell you.

Through our API or control panel, you’ll always know exactly what has happened to every one of your emails.

Powerful APIs that enable you to send, receive and track email effortlessly. 10,000 emails free every month. No credit card required. Check out MailGun.

Amazon SES

Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is a cost-effective email service built on the reliable and scalable infrastructure that Amazon.com developed to serve its own customer base. With Amazon SES, you can send transactional email, marketing messages, or any other type of high-quality content to your customers.

AWS Free Tier offers 62,000 messages per month to any recipient when you call Amazon SES from an Amazon EC2 instance. Check out Amazon SES.

Postmark App

Unmatched email delivery & troubleshooting. Since we send transactional only, ISPs love us. Our infrastructure combined with proper content and delivery practices means higher response rates from your customers.

View 45 days of searchable sending history including full content, bounces, and spam complaints.

First 25,000 emails are free. Check out Postmark App.

SendGrid

Transactional email delivery that is scalable, reliable, and easy to implement. Whether you’re developing apps for the web or mobile environments, you need an effective way to communicate with your customers.

Email remains the most powerful form of customer communication, but building and maintaining your own email infrastructure can be resource-intensive and costly. SendGrid eliminates the cost and complexity of maintaining your own infrastructure, allowing you to focus on developing the next great app!

Send up to 12,000 emails a month on their Free SendGrid Account. Check out SendGrid.

Mailjet

Emails sent after a transaction – order confirmation, password reset, delivery notification – are anxiously awaited by customers and have the highest open and click rates. Mailjet helps you create a consistent experience, enabling you to design and update transactional emails in drag and drop while ensuring a tight IT integration.

Mailjet allows you to send up to 6 000 emails a month, 200 emails / day. Check out Mailjet.

SendinBlue

SendinBlue empowers businesses to build and grow relationships through marketing campaigns, transactional messaging and marketing automation. Our platform combines a robust suite of email and SMS messaging services within a single, user-friendly solution. Reliable Delivery. Ensure your welcome messages, order confirmations, shipping notifications, app alerts, and other important emails reach the inbox.
Get up-to-the-minute analytics on your message deliverability and engagement metrics. Create custom, dynamic messages with our powerful API.

SendinBlue allows you to With the free account you can send up to 9 000 emails/month, 300 emails/day. The free account has no time limits. Check out SendinBlue.

Conclusion

I’m sure there are more out there, but these are the first ones I came across. Some of these services do a lot more than send out transactional emails and you should definitely do a comparison for your particular scenario, but this list should give you a good starting point. Hope this helps in your search.

Learning JavaScript in WordPress, Deeply

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If you’ve followed the development of WordPress the last couple of years, you couldn’t help but notice that more and more parts of WordPress, such as the Customizer, are using primarily JavaScript instead of PHP. With WordPress 4.4, the latest version available currently, the amount of JavaScript used has increased once again.

During the State of the Word 2015, Matt Mullenweg made it very clear that this trend will continue to grow in the years to come and urged every single WordPress developer out there to start learning JavaScript. I’ve been thinking about learning JavaScript properly, deeply, for quite a few years now, but not knowing where to start made the first step so big that I actually never got around to it.

The purpose of this post

For a couple of months, I’ve been carefully preparing to dive into JavaScript and the purpose of this post is to outline the steps I’m going to take, which books I’m going to read and which sites I’m going to use to start learning Javascript.

With the REST API being scaffolded into WordPress in 4.4 and with live examples such as Calypso demonstrating how we can build applications on top of WordPress in new ways with JavaScript libraries such as React, we really have no other choice but to embrace what JavaScript can bring to the table.

Now, I’m going to be the first to admit that my JavaScript skills are really poor, but I think that will be the case for a lot of you out there. You may have come across a JavaScript script here and there in your projects, but if you’ve never really taken the step to actually build something from scratch with JavaScript (and WordPress), then you’re exactly where I am at this moment.

A lot of the recommendations you’ll see further down are gathered from various blog posts I’ve seen around the subject. So, even though I haven’t taken all the steps myself just yet, I do consider the recommendations outlined to be solid.

WordPress Already Uses a LOT of JavaScript

So, for starters, it’s good to know that WordPress right now already uses a ton of JavaScript. Particularly through libraries such as jQuery, Backbone or Masonry. But really, that’s just scratching the surface. Go ahead and open up a WordPress folder in your favorite IDE and look up the /js/ folder inside of /wp-admin/ and /wp-includes/. You’ll quickly find that WordPress is already using JavaScript a great deal, but particularly in the Customizer and themes.php for instance.

Navigating in JavaScript Land

They say learning JavaScript is actually not that hard, especially if you’re already familiar with another language, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be that easy either. JJJ said it best when he tweeted the following during WordCamp US:

One of the tallest hurdles is probably going to be more about familiarizing yourself with the complexity of an unfamiliar stack. This is because, if we take the React library as an example, for instance, you’re not just going to have to learn JavaScript first, React second, but you’re also going to have to know which React add-on/plugins – yes, they’ve got “plugins” as well – you should be using to build your project.

How NOT to learn JavaScript

One of the most important rules for learning JavaScript, or any other programming language for that matter, is to not try to learn JavaScript from bits of unrelated or related JavaScript tutorials online. All experts agree that this is the worst way to learn a programming language.

Trying to learn it in such a fashion is an incredibly inefficient process that lacks the proper hierarchical structure needed for learning JavaScript deeply. This, in turn, will most likely lead you to be stuck quite frequently and I suspect that to become very frustrating going forward.

Also, do not try to learn the language by just using online tools such as Treehouse or Codecademy. Even though those will help you to learn how to program bits of small JavaScript tasks, they are not suited for larger projects. It is critically important that you know (and keep practicing) how to code independently (without help from Codecademy) in your browser.

A 10 step program

JavaScript is Sexy is a site dedicated to helping you understand JavaScript. They have a program that I have adapted into a more condensed version here, but do feel free to go for the more complete version should you feel the urge. I’ve mostly removed the variations and extra text and brought it down to a more simple program.

Prerequisites

You don’t need a lot to get started, but you do need the following:

  1. Get yourself a copy of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide
  2. Get yourself an account on Codecademy

Weeks 1 and 2 (Introduction, Data Types, Expressions, and Operators

  1. If you do not already know HTML and CSS very well, complete the Web Fundamentals Track on Codecademy.
  2. Read the Preface and Chapters 1 and 2 of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide.
  3. Work through the Introduction to JavaScript section of the JavaScript Track on Codecademy.
  4. Read chapters 3 and 4 of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide.
  5. Read chapter 5 of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide.
  6. And work through sections 2 to 5 of the JavaScript Track on Codecademy.

Weeks 3 and 4 (Objects, Arrays, Functions, DOM, jQuery)

  1. Read JavaScript Objects in Detail and read chapter 6 of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide.
  2. Read chapters 7 and 8 of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide
  3. Right about now you should be spending a lot of time writing code in your browser’s console and testing if-else statements, for loops, Arrays, Functions, Objects, and more.
  4. Return to Codecademy and complete the JavaScript track by working through sections 6, 7, and 8 (Data Structures to Object 2).
  5. While you are on Codecademy, go ahead and build the 5 little Basic Projects on the Projects track. After this, you are done with Codecademy. The more you work on your own, the faster you will learn and the better prepared you will be to start programming on your own.
  6. Read chapters 13, 15, 16, and 19 of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide.
  7. Follow this free jQuery course: http://try.jquery.com/ And you can read chapter 19 of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, if you have the book, for more on jQuery.
  8. Work through the entire jQuery course at http://try.jquery.com/

Weeks 5 and 6 (Regular Expressions, Window Object, Events, jQuery)

  1. Read chapters 10, 14, 17, and 20 of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide.
  2. Remember to keep typing out all the example codes in your browser’s console and tweak each piece of code to experiment with it to really understand how it works and what it does.

Weeks 7 and, if necessary 8 (Classes, Inheritance, more HTML5)

  1. Read chapters 9, 18, 21, and 22 of JavaScript the Definitive Guide and read OOP In JavaScript: What You NEED to Know.
  2. Learn Backbone.js Completely, It’s one of the JavaScript libraries WordPress already relies heavily on and you should really understand it if you want to take this WordPress & JavaScript thing seriously.
  3. Learn React.js. Check out how Calypso is built and see what you can improve or change. Maybe even turn it into a bespoke version for yourself?
  4. Next: Decide on a personal project to build, and start building your project promptly (while everything is fresh in your mind).

Back to WordPress

By now you should start to feel really comfortable with JavaScript. You’ve gotten to know Backbone, jQuery and React intimately and you should be ready to create some badass JavaScript projects. The next step will create a JavaScript-based solution to your WordPress project. The only thing left to do for you is to make sure you add your JavaScript to WordPress the right way.

Extra Resources

So, there you have it. An extensive 10-week program that will turn you from JavaScript n00b to JavaScript developer. I think it’s safe to say you can not NOT know JavaScript anymore if you still want to call yourself a WordPress specialist by the end of next year. So, I know what I’m going to be doing for the next three months. What about you?

A Million Tiny Acts

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Every word you utter to another human being has an effect, but you don’t know it. If people begin to understand that change comes about as a result of a million tiny acts that seem totally insignificant, well then, they wouldn’t hesitate to take those tiny acts.

Howard Zinn

Johann Hari: Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong

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is to say to the addicts in my life that I want to deepen the connection with them, to say to them, I love you whether you’re using or you’re not. I love you, whatever state you’re in, and if you need me, I’ll come and sit with you because I love you and I don’t want you to be alone or to feel alone.

And I think the core of that message — you’re not alone, we love you — has to be at every level of how we respond to addicts, socially, politically and individually. For 100 years now, we’ve been singing war songs about addicts. I think all along we should have been singing love songs to them because the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is a connection

Johann Hari

Very interesting TED talk by Johann Hari that, once again, proves that John has been spot on all along.

Transcript

This Helps Me Get Perspective

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Whenever I feel challenged and find myself in a situation where I’m only focussed inward I quickly become aware that I need to find perspective again. You know, to look at the outside world again and get some perspective. Perspective, to me, is that one ingredient that helps me stay in touch with the grander scheme of things. Of life, really. Perspective – of any kind – helps me become aware of what’s really important to me again. It helps me focus on what I’ve got in front of me without feeling challenged

If I really went for it, I could probably list a whole bunch of solutions of how I go about finding perspective again – and maybe someday I will – but that’s not today. Today I just want to share one of the simplest hacks I use to find perspective again. For me watching a video that reminds me how small we (and whatever problems we think we see) are in comparison to what’s all out there.

This a video that does just that.

What’s your favorite way to get perspective again?

Source Photo / Video

Stop Giving “Just Honest” Feedback

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“I’m looking for honest feedback”.

As someone living in a world of (people working with) open-source software, I see the question above fly by many times a week. By open-sourcing your code, your suggestion, your solution, you are, in fact, looking for honest feedback. And that’s a good thing. It’s what the open-source community thrives on.

I see a lot of people putting in good amount of their free time into writing proposals, suggesting implementations or ways to improve certain things. Sadly though, a lot of times those people end up feeling disappointed and turned down in what ultimately was just a proposal or suggestion on how to improve things. Ultimately feeling disconnected to the very project that had them all fired up to improve upon in the first place!

Now, granted, the way a proposal is written often times dictates how people are going to react. Not everyone asking for feedback is as much in tune with how feedback should be requested as they perhaps could be. But neither are a lot of the people giving the feedback.

However, I propose we all start reacting a bit differently from now on when we feel inclined to give our honest feedback. Instead of just pointing all the things we see wrong about a proposal, how about we start appreciating the fact that someone took the time to start thinking about a solution in the first place, coming up with a proposal in the second place and thirdly, even taking the time to write it out and ask for feedback(!) before we comment.

So, instead of just giving what the requester asks, honest feedback, let us all focus on going the extra mile here and start giving well thought-out criticism based on appreciation and empathy instead of just honest feedback.

I’m sure if we were to approach “giving our honest feedback” in such a manner, we would all – instead of just a few brave ones – start to feel much more inclined to share solutions to problems we see every day.

Imagine how that would make the world better. I am.

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