Lynn Fisher walks us step-by-step through the redesign process of her latest outstanding personal website. In this design, increasing the width of the browser window will cause the illustrations on the page crack to open and reveal more within them:
This case study reminded me that Lynn also has an archive of every case study and project that she’s made over the years and that it's most certainly worth checking out.
The team behind Zero BS CRM launched version 3.0 of their WordPress plugin today. This is the first major release since the plugin was acquired by Automattic in August. The updated plugin uses custom database tables, opens the plugin for more extensions, and has a more consistent UI than previous versions.
CRM is an acronym for “customer relationship management.” CRM systems allow businesses to manage their customer relationships through an interface. How CRM systems work can vary greatly, depending on the software used. In general, the goal is to help manage contacts, sales, and productivity.
Zero BS CRM was co-created by Mike Stott and Woody Hayday. Despite a low number of plugin users (around 1,000 at acquisition), Automattic acquired the plugin based on the strength of the product. Currently, Stott and Hayday are the primary developers on the plugin and maintain more than 30 commercial extensions for it.
Many CRM solutions are SaaS products, such as Salesforce CRM and HubSpot CRM. “The main benefit of ZBS CRM over online SaaS type solutions is it sits in your WP admin dashboard, and you own your own data,” said Stott.
Version 3.0 of the plugin improves in several key areas. One major change is the switch to custom database tables rather than pigeon-holing everything into a custom post type. This change should speed up accessing data such as contacts and transactions in large databases.
Users should benefit from a much improved and consistent UI from previous versions. Zero BS CRM does not strictly follow the core WordPress admin UI. “When looking at ZBS CRM and how to tie in all our menu items into the WordPress UI – it wasn’t easy,” said Stott. “We settled on using a UI framework with our own top menu, and a natural follow-on for that was to draw our list views using that same UI and button systems. Whether we move this back or not depends on feedback from our users — we get a lot of positive feedback on how easy it is to navigate around and wouldn’t want to change something that’s been getting good feedback.”
Contact management screen in the Zero BS CRM plugin.
Moving to custom tables over custom post types has also helped improve elements of the UI. Stott said a huge advantage is not having third-party plugins accidentally adding themselves to the plugin’s admin pages, such as having unnecessary SEO options on contact records.
Another big change in 3.0 was building out a more extendable foundation for the plugin. This will open up custom CRM objects in the future. For example, plugin users could manage resources such as “properties” or “campuses” along with customer contact data. This update creates more potential for industry-specific extensions.
“It really opens the door for more extendibility in the future,” said Stott, “and through an improved API in 2020 will allow for us to do more work across platforms and open up our CRM tools to more people.”
The Zero BS CRM plugin remains free and is available in the WordPress plugin repository. The primary source of income comes from its extension bundles, which are priced monthly and billed yearly. The website currently offers freelancer ($11/month), entrepreneur ($17/month), and elite ($30/month) pricing options. It also has a reseller plan available.
The Move to Automattic
When the plugin was first acquired, there was an initial idea to rebrand as “Jetpack CRM.” However, they have maintained the Zero BS CRM branding with an acronym instead of the direct expletive for “BS.” A rebrand may still be on the table in 2020 or beyond.
“We’ve been gathering user feedback and sentiment following the minor changes to ZBS CRM and the initial reactions if we were to rename as Jetpack CRM,” said Stott. “Since the shorter name, there’s been less objection or negative feelings, which puts less pressure on a big rebrand project, but it’s certainly something we’ll be coming back to.”
Stott said the primary focus since the acquisition has been less on branding and more on delivering 3.0 to the existing customer base.
The acquisition by Automattic has helped with how their two-person team works. “The main thing is being able to lean on the amazing team and people throughout Automattic,” said Stott. “In the past, we’d only have Woody and my input, now we can reach out to experts in design, marketing, plus much more, and bounce our ideas around a vast pool of experience.”
He explained that the additional support resources of Automattic’s Happiness Engineers means that he and his partner can focus more on engineering and growing the product and team.
The acquisition of Zero BS CRM came during a busy year for Automattic. With major moves such as acquiring Tumblr and the Salesforce investment, this small plugin has mostly flown under the radar in comparison. Stott and Hayday have big plans for 2020. They would like to grow the engineering team and explore bringing their tools to more WordPress.com users.
The plugin’s growth has remained stable since the acquisition, according to Stott. “The announcement brought us some additional customers who saw the backing from Automattic as strong advocacy for the plugin over other solutions in the WordPress space, so they made the decision to join us,” he said. The plugin has doubled its active install count and now serves over 2,000 users. The team expects to continue growing in the coming months.
Within every aspect of healthcare, time is considered the most valuable component. Even minutes of delay can result in the loss of life. Early diagnosis lies at the heart of healing patients, and timely execution of treatment is of primary importance. At an average, doctors spend 15 minutes with each patient, which when considered intently, is grossly insufficient in providing a comprehensive diagnosis of the illness. In an ideal situation, a diagnosis should be made after careful consideration of all relevant patient information, including similar cases and demographics.
As the healthcare industry gradually moves toward an AI-driven world, things that were previously considered a hindrance or unlikely are now fairly simple tasks. Over the years, more than 90% of hospitals in the county have moved from paper-based systems to electronic processes. When it comes to medical diagnoses, patients' records are of primary importance. Risks towards critical illnesses can be caught through predictive analysis, thereby saving lives and costs. Early diagnosis is no longer a distant hope, but an actuality that can be easily accomplished through advanced systems.
Custom software installation is the installation of custom software carried out by the software development team responsible for creating it. It is different from packaged software installation in that packaged software is either installed by third-party contractors or internal company personnel. This is key because neither the contractors nor the company personnel were involved in […]
If you are a professional in the banking industry, the term “open banking” should not be new. The pull of customer demand for new digital services and a healthy push from regulatory bodies are driving the expansion of open banking globally.
Sophos, a cybersecurity solution provider, recently announced the availability of SophosLabs Intelix. The new threat intelligence and analysis platform is a cloud-based solution that empowers developers to build applications with enhanced security. Applications can call the Sophos platform for a cybersecurity threat analysis through API calls.
This is the tutorial I wish I had around some years ago when I first tried to learn how to use Vim. If you’re just beginning to know this amazing text editor, please keep reading; I am writing this tutorial right for you!
Whether you prefer to code in a simple steps editor or in a full-fledged IDE, the fact remains that a console-based text mode editor can be an invaluable tool for many purposes, from coding to remote system administration. VIM (Vi IMproved) is the most common version of a classic UNIX text editor named vi, which is currently available on almost any platform. It’s one of the most useful and complex console tools you can find, and also one you can make use right away, no matter what you do for a living (everyone needs to write something, right?).
If you have been following beginner or even intermediate guides on Python and are starting to feel the need for more advanced learning; this book may be the one you have been looking for.
According to the authors, this book was written for those who already know the basics of Python but want to deepen their knowledge and skills. While being targeted to people who already know the fundamentals of Python, it still includes a quick review in the first chapter. It briefly discusses fundamentals like variables, operators, data types, basic I/O, if/else, while, for, function definitions and arguments, lists, tuples, dictionaries, sets, and the distinction between global and local variables. This initial chapter is presented as being an optional reading, as its contents are pretty basic, but the authors recommend that the reader takes a minute or so on the last to pages, which cover the global statement.
In this post, let us start exploring Flink to solve a real-world problem. This post from zalando.com shows how they are using Flink to perform a complex event correlation. I will take a simplified and practical event correlation problem and try to solve using Flink.
Awhile back, I had a conversation with a friend that I went to school with (currently a senior member of the engineering team at a large retail chain) who was tasked with the job of identifying potential application security partners (he addressed vendors as partners, which I personally liked) that they could collaborate with on various areas as part of their product security initiative. The following piece emerged as an extension of my immediate thoughts when he shared his views of what could have made his experience of interacting with front line sales and marketing folks better.
In the context of DevSecOps, much has been said about the need for engineering to speak security, security to speak code, DevOps to speak security, etc. But, as a Technology Service Provider (TSP), riding the current wave of application security, its almost mandatory for the Sales and Marketing teams to speak relevant tech!
When using Wix, when working with Corvid you don’t need to deal with HTML/CSS when developing UI. Instead, you get a full-blown WYSIWYG editor, where you can create the UI for your application. Then, all that’s left to do is write the application logic, which is really what we want to focus on when developing applications.
Most examples you’ll see today that connect application logic to the view are similar to old-style jQuery applications. You bind an event handler to UI elements, and in response to those events, you run some logic that updates other UI elements with the result.
Winter is a season of contrast. It welcomes entrepreneurs with one of the most profitable periods of the year then pours cold water over them in January which is notorious for economic stagnation. However, you can’t just stop email marketing …
Get Started With PostgreSQL’s Row Level Security in YugabyteDB
In this blog post, we are going to introduce you to how PostgreSQL’s row level security feature works in the latest YugabyteDB 2.0.6 release. YugabyteDB supports RLS and a host of other security and encryption features “out-of-the-box,” as part of the open source distribution.
What Is Row Level Security?
Originally introduced in PostgreSQL 9.5, Row Level Security, or "RLS," allows a DBA to set policies that restrict users from viewing or manipulating specific rows of data in a table. Depending on your use case, this can be especially useful in blocking access to especially sensitive records, like customer or financial data. This might be prompted by legal, liability or compliance concerns. As you might expect, RLS is a feature that you’ll also find in other enterprise RDBMSs like SQL Server and Oracle.
Ten things that should be on your container registry wish list.
Container registry technology is picking up steam with microservices architecture, with current Google trends indicating clear growth in this area. While there is no disagreement that a registry is needed; it is clear you need a robust one to deliver your container images to customers effectively. We should, however, set what our expectations should be when working with a container registry. Here are ten things to look for in a container registry.
When you create a container image, you definitely need a registry so your consumers can effectively consume both the first version, as well as subsequent versions. With continuous image updates, customers must be notified of the new versions so they can easily pull these new images in an effective and seamless fashion.
The 12-Factor Application principles for flexible applications.
There are a lot of frameworks in app development, but not all of them are tailored for today’s cloud environment. Many of them lack modularity and flexibility; some don’t even leverage the benefits of using cloud computing. The 12-Factor application principles are designed specifically for modern, containerized cloud environments from the beginning. Each component is tailored to the flexibility of containers and cloud deployment, all while creating a standard for every team member—and third-party developers— to follow.
At the same time, the 12-Factor app creates a more straightforward approach to developing a cloud app with microservices. It takes into account the need for a positive user experience and how virtual environments can be utilized for higher availability.
How does functional testing with visual assertions help simplify test development for complex real-world apps? Like, say, a retail app with inventory, product details, rotating displays, and shopping carts?
Thirteen reasons why you should do more than just test.
Functional testing of a web application or a website is one of the most essential phases of the SDLC. Providing a scalable infrastructure for cross-browser testing on the cloud, we realize that offering a SaaS platform to our audience with even with a minor bug may lead to a devastating outcome, and not only for us, but also for our customers.
