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Clove: A Showcase of Block Patterns by Anariel Design

Clove theme homepage.

Earlier today, Ana Segota tweeted and announced via the Anariel Design blog that her company had submitted its second block-based theme to WordPress.org. Clove is a more well-rounded follow-up to her first such theme, Naledi. It is currently under review for inclusion in the official directory, but anyone can give it a test run by snagging the ZIP file from its ticket. Or, just peruse the live demo.

This should officially be the 10th block-based theme to go live in the WordPress.org theme directory (note that a couple by Automattic are not tagged). That is assuming all goes well during the review process.

It has been a long road thus far, but 10 themes with the Full Site Editing tag is a notable milestone. The Q theme by Ari Stathopoulos was the first to land in the directory back in October 2020. Now, eight months later, there is still room for other theme authors to become pioneers in the space. With almost no competition, who will design that first block theme that squeezes its way into the most popular list?

If “practice makes perfect,” Segota is now ahead of the curve by pushing her second theme to the directory. This makes her theme company only one of two with multiple block themes.

Clove is experimental, as all block themes are. It relies on the ever-shifting parts of the Gutenberg plugin, but it all comes together into a floral, nature-themed design. There are hints of inspiration from Twenty Twenty-One, but it feels more structured, less chaotic.

The design is less of a theme and more of a showcase of block patterns and styles. Even on the template level, it reuses those same elements across each of its seven templates, providing multiple entryways for users to tinker with its features.

Clove even includes pricing columns. I seem to recall writing about how theme authors could implement them via patterns just over a month ago. Maybe the Anariel Design team came to the same conclusion. Maybe they took my message and ran with it. I like to think the latter is true. Either way, the result is a beautiful, theme-specific pattern — the sort of artistry that is tough to achieve from a plugin.

Nature-themed pricing columns block from the Clove WordPress theme.
Customizing the Pricing Columns pattern in the WordPress editor.

I am less of the fan of the overlapping and uneven columns in some of the designs designs, preferring some of the more-structured patterns, such as Three Quotes Images:

Three columns of images plus quotes, a pattern from the Clove WordPress theme.
Three-column pattern that showcases images along with quotes.

Despite my general dislike of the uneven column style, my favorite piece of the entire theme is the Illustrations page template, which leans into that design method.

The page intro section is an announcement to the world, “Hey, check out my work.”

Page intro section with uneven columns and two nature-based images.
Illustrations template intro section.

I also like the Illustrations page template’s widgets-like area in the footer. It manages to stuff several blocks in without feeling too crowded. It even showcases a box for artists to highlight their next exhibition.

Three columns of blocks that appears like a traditional footer widget area.
Illustrations page template footer “widget” area.

The Clove theme also registers 10 block styles for users to choose from. Most of them add different types of borders or frames to various elements. Plus, there is the fun-but-kind-of-an-oddball blob “Shape” for images.

  • Latest Posts – Dividers
  • Image – Framed
  • Image – Shape

Segota was one of several people to submit custom designs to the upcoming block pattern directory. There is some noticeable crossover between her current theme work and submissions, such as the Playful Gallery pattern that did not quite make the cut. Others, like her Recipe design, did. There is still an open invitation for people to contribute.

I am always like a kid in a toy store when a new block theme comes along, reaching out to grab the latest gadget. I want to see more experiments like Clove. Keep them coming, theme authors.

Side note: For people interested in the background-clipped text design used in Clove’s site logo, I opened a ticket to take us one step closer to doing it in the editor. Currently, users must create an off-site image and upload it.

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Kubernetes Native Gateway Series (Part 3): WebAssembly at Scale With Gloo Edge

WebAssembly (abbreviated Wasm) is a binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine. Wasm is designed as a portable compilation target for programming languages, enabling deployment on the web for client and server applications. At Solo.io, we are very excited about Web Assembly as a way to extend our Envoy Proxy-based API Gateway (Gloo Edge) and the most popular Service Mesh (Istio). We recently made it very easy to use WebAssembly with Gloo Edge and Gloo Mesh.

This is the last blog post of a series about Gloo Edge scalability. In the first blog post, Envoy at Scale with Gloo Edge, we performed benchmarks to determine how Gloo Edge was able to scale in terms of Requests Per Second (RPS.) We also provided information about the throughput one can expect based on the number of CPUs allocated to the gateway-proxy (Envoy) pod.

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Apple Hints at Adding Refund and Renewal API

Following Apple’s annual developer conference, WWDC, the company has updated several support documents related to customer support and refund processing to include hints at upcoming APIs providing new functionality. The new APIs would allow direct application support for refunds and subscription cancellations.

The new support documents outline the purpose of the new customer support and refund policies:

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The Beginners Guide to Holiday Parties

While holiday parties are meant to allow employees to mingle and let loose in ways they can’t do in the office, they can be challenging to plan and ensure that everyone has a wonderful time. A holiday party should be inclusive, entertaining, and rewarding for everyone involved. The onus often falls on the HR team or small business owners to make the magic happen.

Are you preparing to host a company holiday party? This guide offers tips and tools to keep it fun and light-hearted while keeping employees safe and happy.

What is a Holiday Party?

A holiday party is a celebration for the company’s staff. It has the power to build a strong sense of community among team members. An end-of-year party is also the perfect time to recognize each person’s hard work and dedication to the company. Most holiday parties feature refreshments, games or activities, and some form of entertainment, like music.

The Basics of a Holiday Party

Holiday parties have a few necessary components. Follow these steps to capture the basics:

#1. Determine a Budget

Before any planning begins, you should have a budget in mind for your party. Start with a base budget that your company feels comfortable spending. This budget might be adjustable later if you decide to ask employees to contribute to refreshments, ticket costs, or anything else. When creating your budget, be sure to include the cost of:

  • Food and drinks
  • The venue
  • Entertainment
  • Decorations
  • Recognition awards
  • Caterers, entertainers, photographers, and other hired services
  • Event planning, if outsourced
  • Hourly employee salaries, if the holiday party is mandatory

To stick to your budget, try to save money where possible. For instance, you might ask your employees if they have connections to entertainers or photographers to get a discounted rate. Or, have everyone bring a potluck meal rather than splurge on catering costs if that fits with your company culture.

Just remember, holiday parties are not necessarily mandatory (unless you make them so), and if you ask for assistance with costs or food, you may have employees elect not to come.

#2. Get a Headcount

Get a tentative count for the number of people who plan to attend if you’re hosting an optional holiday party. It can be challenging to get an accurate number without a set date, but even a ballpark estimate will help you with the following stages of planning.

Use SurveyMonkey to create a free survey after signing up for a basic account. Designate fields for the employee’s name and a yes or no response to whether they plan to attend. Have a few dates in mind or a range of dates, and include them on the survey to give each respondent a better idea of timing. Set a deadline of 48 hours to complete the survey so that you can get started with the next planning phase.

#3. Pick a Theme

Your theme can help you set the tone for the rest of the holiday party, so it’s a good idea to get this set as soon as possible before you begin planning. Once you have a theme, you can bring it into the decorations, food, entertainment, and awards. Brainstorm some ideas and ask for suggestions from team members. Hold a quick meeting to discuss everyone’s ideas and narrow down your options.

Choosing a theme for your holiday party can be tricky, as it’s vital to remain inclusive. Therefore, it’s usually best to steer clear of celebrating any specific holiday and instead choose a theme that celebrates the time of the year. “Winter Wonderland” or “Ugly Sweater” might be more appropriate choices that everyone can have fun with.

#4. Set a Date

A holiday party should have a date and time that works for as many people as possible. However, it’s virtually impossible to accommodate everyone, so you should instead focus on making it an accessible date for most.

To do this, start with a few dates and times outside of regular business hours you think will work. Send out a company email or Google Form link asking for employee preferences. Once you set a date, send out email invitations at least one month ahead of time. Then, consider sending reminder emails weekly leading up to the event.

If you’re scheduling the party on a business day, be sure to set a time that gives each employee ample time to get home from work, wind down, and get ready for the party. Allow for 3-4 hours, if possible, after the close of business. Let your employees leave early to accommodate that if needed.

#5. Choose a Venue

Your theme and date will influence the venue you choose. Some venues are better for upbeat parties, while others work well for low-key, relaxing events. When selecting a venue, make sure you look for one that matches the overall atmosphere you’d like to have for your party. Other important considerations include:

  • Availability on your chosen date
  • Number of attendees and venue size
  • Venue perks, like valet parking and included entertainment
  • The location of the venue compared to the locations of employees
  • Venue policies, like its policy on alcohol and using other vendors
  • How far in advance you need to book the venue
  • If the cost fits within your budget

Your employees might have suggestions of venues they’ve used in the past that would work for the company holiday party, so be sure to ask for opinions.

#6. Plan Food and Drinks

Use your headcount to determine how much food and beverages you’ll need. If you’re hiring a caterer, you can give an estimate of the number of attendees. The caterer can then decide how much to make based on your range.

Also, ensure you know about any food allergies, restrictions, and preferences of your employees before you meet with a caterer. Some employees might follow strict vegan diets, while others may have peanut or soy allergies. This is an excellent question to include on the headcount survey. It’s necessary to make sure all employees have options, even if you need to ask the caterer for a few special meals.

#7. Consider Entertainment

Live entertainment isn’t always necessary at company holiday parties, but some companies choose to splurge on it. Even if you decide it’s not right for yours, you’ll still need some form of entertainment to keep guests happy. This could be in the form of music, games, or a company slideshow. Your entertainment should match the overall vibe of the party, from upbeat to more casual or understated.

A good way to make your coworkers feel included is to ask if anyone has a talent or form of entertainment they’d like to share. It could be their favorite curated playlist or a comedy act they wrote. Sharing their talent should be entirely optional with no pressure on the person to perform. You want the party to be fun for your employees, not to feel like more work.

3 Tools to Improve Holiday Parties

In addition to providing HR software for your team, consider adding one or more of the following tools to your toolkit. They’re excellent options for helping your HR team—or yourself—plan a successful holiday party.

#1. Canva


Try Canva to create invitations, flyers, and other handouts or visuals you might need for your holiday party. You can also use it to create nametags, table placeholders, and event programs.

The free tool includes a drag-and-drop design tool and a ton of templates to get you started. Search for the type of product you want to make, and Canva probably has a base template for it. Choose from thousands of free graphics, images, and fonts to customize your design before you save and print it.

#2. Trello


Trello is a planning and organization tool with various uses. Although many use it for editorial planning and project management, it also works well as a free event planner.

Divide your holiday party’s main components, like entertainment, food and drink, and decorations, into boards. Then, you can use cards to further break down and assign the tasks involved with each component. For example, you might have the entertainment board filled with tasks for auditioning, choosing, and booking a live band or DJ.

#3. SocialTables


If you need more comprehensive planning than what Trello provides, SocialTables will do the trick. This event planning software is best for businesses with frequent events, although you can try it for one event with up to 150 attendees for free.

SocialTables helps you manage attendees, create visual seating charts, explore the best venues, and allow guests to check in. You can also print seating charts and other diagrams you make.

4 Tricks for Holiday Parties

Try these actionable tips for making every company holiday party a successful one.

#1. Give Employees a Survey

Making your employees feel heard is the best way to foster a healthy company environment every day. Consider bringing that openness into holiday party planning, too. Gathering opinions from the people you work with can take some of the planning responsibilities off your shoulders, so it’s a win-win.

The simplest way to accomplish this is through a quick survey at least a couple of months before the big day. You can use a free tool like Google Forms to ask questions and share the link via company emails. Consider questions like:

  • What venue suggestions do you have?
  • Should the party be family-friendly?
  • What kind of theme would you like, if any?
  • Are there any dates or times that do NOT work for you to attend?
  • Would you be open to donating anything, like money or refreshments, for the party?

Establish an open-ended answer space for respondents to offer suggestions for anything you may not have thought of. Be sure to collect names on the form to follow up with your employees if you have any questions or would like more information about their suggestions.

#2. Limit Alcohol

Alcohol can cause liability issues at a company holiday party. If you plan to have alcohol at the event, you should have some ground rules in place beforehand. It’s not asking too much of employees planning to attend to review and sign off on the company liability and behavior policies a day or two before the policies. And make sure management is setting a good example by drinking responsibly.

You can choose to have an alcohol-free event and offer non-alcoholic replicas of some of your staff’s favorite drinks. However, many employees see a company party as a place to let loose a little and enjoy a fun social event and may even expect some alcoholic options to be served. You could limit the number of drinks per person by issuing drink tickets before the party or setting a time for the bar to close.

#3. Make Invitations Clear

The clearer your invitations, the easier it will be for everyone to adhere to any policies you have in place for the party. For example, to have a proper count of how many attendees to expect, you can limit each person to one guest, making it clear on the invitation that it’s a plus-one event.

If the event is childfree or you’re asking each person to bring a covered dish, note these requests on the invitations.

#4. Show Your Appreciation

The best holiday parties take time to thank employees for a great past year and recognize individuals for outstanding achievements at work. Doing so can boost company morale and create an inviting, rewarding culture that employees want to be a part of. This doesn’t need to be the longest part of your party, but it should take enough time to make sure everyone feels appreciated.

Use this time to make a speech about employee and company accomplishments throughout the year and recognize at least a few people you feel have excelled in their positions. You might also pass out company bonuses and individual awards.

What to Do Next

A holiday party is not a benefit like company retirement plans and health insurance, but it is another way to show your employees appreciation year after year. With a strong focus on planning your holiday party with all employees in mind, it should be a successful one that everyone can enjoy. Consider using project management software, like Trello, to organize and plan a memorable party with ease.

After the party, invite your employees to share feedback about what they liked and didn’t like. You can even have cards ready for them to fill out and place in a feedback box before leaving the party. Use their feedback to tweak next year’s holiday party, potentially making it an even better one.

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Building a Lightweight Trino Distribution

Too many data frameworks built for large scale have unacceptable complexity at small scale. But with a few tweaks, Trino scales down to run nicely on small single-container configurations.

Trino (fka PrestoSQL) is an open source query distribution engine.

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Open-Source Tools You Should Be Aware of to Manage Your Cloud

Businesses of all sizes are shifting some or all of their data and applications to cloud computing environments to take advantage of all the benefits available to them: availability, flexibility, scalability, accessibility, etc… The migration and the tools used to do it have to be assessed correctly to be successful.

The purpose of this article is to list tools that everyone should be aware of when it is time to manage a cloud infrastructure. In the cloud, it is obviously better to rely on cloud services offered by the provider but sometimes it is better to use open-source projects to facilitate the management.

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TablesNG — Improvements to table rendering in Chromium

When I blogged “Making Tables With Sticky Header and Footers Got a Bit Easier” recently, I mentioned that the “stickiness” improvement was just one of the features that got better for <table>s in Chrome as part of the TablesNG upgrade. I ain’t the only one who’s stoked about it.

But Bramus took it the rest of the nine yards and looked at all of the table enhancements. Every one of these is great. The kind of thing that makes CSS ever-so-slightly less frustrating.

Just the writing-mode stuff is fantastic.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

The post TablesNG — Improvements to table rendering in Chromium appeared first on CSS-Tricks. You can support CSS-Tricks by being an MVP Supporter.

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How to Show the Business Value of Your APIs with Embedded Metrics

When you’re providing APIs to your customers, you want to ensure they are getting value from them. At the same time, the best APIs are designed to be fully automated without requiring human intervention. This can leave your customers in the dark on whether your API is even being used by the organization and if you’re meeting any SLA obligations in your enterprise contracts.

Types of metrics to surface

Most API first companies have some sort of developer portal for customers to log into, manage API keys, and customize features. This area is a great way to also expose key metrics to your customers demonstrating how much value they are getting from your API. This can be as simple as a counter showing number of API transactions made within a billing period or provide additional metrics around what those transactions are. Each customer has different metrics they want to look at. Developers will want to look at access logs where as product and engineering leadership are more interested in usage and performance metrics. Finally, the finance department may need to look at billing usage for capacity and financial planning.

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#321: Six Million

A big milestone for us! We’re now well over that number of registered users on CodePen. It’s a fun number to watch — but we know it’s not a particularly useful or industry-standard metric. Monthly active users, for example, is much more meaningful. In this podcast, Marie and Chris reminisce a bit on the early days and reflect on what is different between then and now. You’d think we’d have way more support work to do, but we don’t. You’d think we’d have way higher server costs, but we don’t. We all feel it in different ways. We’re more boring in a very satisfying way. We’re more consistent, secure, stable, and reliable.

Time Jumps

  • 00:32 Building dashboards
  • 02:05 Audio blogging our graph
  • 04:34 Active users vs registered users
  • 08:19 Supporting our users has changed
  • 10:10 Sponsor: Secureframe
  • 11:49 What feels heavier now with more users?
  • 18:34 Changes to dev ops
  • 23:05 What scales with number of users?
  • 26:48 Dealing with the size and complexity of CodePen

Sponsor: Secureframe

Security compliance isn’t the biggest priority for startups…until it is. When it comes to enterprise deals, every large company requires a SOC 2 report. Secureframe allows companies to get SOC 2 compliant within weeks, rather than months and monitors 40+ services, including AWS, GCP, and Azure. Secureframe continuously collects audit evidence, runs security awareness training, manages vendors, monitors infrastructure, and more, all automatically.

Our customers save an average of 50% on their audit costs and hundreds of hours of their time. Learn more at secureframe.com

The post #321: Six Million appeared first on CodePen Blog.

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How to Integrate Identity Governance Into Your Business Strategy

A strong identity governance strategy enables enterprises to safeguard information, facilitate compliance, and streamline work processes. Despite the benefits, implementing these processes has been perceived as a complex, on-premises project that takes an army of consultants to deploy. While this can be true in some cases, 76% of enterprise organizations are looking to replace their existing identity governance and administration (IGA) system (Gartner). 

This number and other recent research proves we need to find ways to make identity governance more approachable in order for businesses to realize its true value. Fortunately, there are proactive steps companies can take to ensure identity governance is ingrained in their business strategy without the headaches. And it starts with four proactive approaches any business can take to achieve long-term, continual success.

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Selecting the Right Open Source DB for Your Workload

So. Many. Databases.

The latest DB-Engines ranking lists 370 databases according to popularity. That’s certainly a lot. And the sheer number may lead some to go back to what they know, or rely on other developers’ recommendations. The more intrepid may even spend some time researching.

Suffice it to say that it takes some navigation to understand the landscape across all the database flavors. And mere understanding doesn’t necessarily lead to the right choice. Martin Kleppman literally maps this out in his noteworthy book, Designing Data-Intensive Appplications, O’Reilly. (Highly recommend this read.)

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Using Performant Next-Gen Images in CSS with image-set

The CSS image-set() function has been supported in Chromium-based browsers since 2012 and in Safari since version 6. Support recently landed in Firefox 88. Let’s dive in and see what we can and can’t do today with image-set().

Multiple resolutions of the same image

Here’s what the CSS spec has to say about image-set():

Delivering the most appropriate image resolution for a user’s device can be a difficult task. Ideally, images should be in the same resolution as the device they’re being viewed in, which can vary between users. However, other factors can factor into the decision of which image to send; for example, if the user is on a slow mobile connection, they may prefer to receive lower-res images rather than waiting for a large proper-res image to load.

It’s basically a CSS background equivalent to the HTML srcset attribute for img tags. By using image-set we can provide multiple resolutions of an image and trust the browser to make the best decision about which one to use. This can be used to specify a value for three different CSS properties: content, cursor, and most useful of all, background-image.

.hero {
  background-image: image-set("platypus.png" 1x, "platypus-2x.png" 2x);
}

1x is used to identify the low-res image, while 2x is used to define the high-res image. x is an alias of dppx, which stands for dots per pixel unit.

Chrome/Edge/Opera/Samsung Internet currently require a -webkit- prefix. If you’re using Autoprefixer, this will be handled automatically. Safari no longer requires the prefix but uses an older syntax that requires a url() function to specify the image path. We could also include a regular old background-image: url() to support any browsers that don’t support image-set.

.hero {
  /* Fallback */
  background-image: url("platypus.png");

  /* Chrome/Edge/Opera/Samsung, Safari will fallback to this as well */
  background-image: -webkit-image-set(url("platypus.png") 1x, url("platypus-2x.png") 2x);

  /* Standard use */
  background-image: image-set("platypus.png" 1x, "platypus-2x.png" 2x);
}

Now users on expensive fancy devices will see a super sharp image. Performance will be improved for users on slow connections or with cheaper screens as their browser will automatically request the lower-res image. If you wanted to be sure that the high-res image was used on high-res devices, even on slow connections, you could make use of the min-resolution media query instead of image-set. For more on serving sharp images to high density screens, check out Jake Archibald’s recent post over on his blog.

That’s pretty cool, but what I really want is to be able to adopt the latest image formats in CSS while still catering for older browsers…

New image formats

Safari 14 shipped support for WebP. It was the final modern browser to do so which means the image format is now supported everywhere (except Internet Explorer). WebP is useful in that it can make images that are often smaller than (but of the same quality as) JPG, PNG, or GIF.

There’s also a whole bunch of even newer image formats cropping up. AVIF images are shockingly tiny. Chrome, Opera and Samsung Internet have already shipped support for AVIF. It’s already in Firefox behind a flag. This image format isn’t supported by many design tools yet but you can convert images to AVIF using the Squoosh app built by the Chrome team at Google. WebP 2, HEIF and JPEG XL might also make it into browsers eventually. This is all rather exciting, but we want browsers that don’t support these newer formats to get some images. Fortunately image-set() has a syntax for that.

Using new image formats by specifying a type

Browser support note: The feature of image-set that I’m about to talk about currently has pretty terrible browser support. Currently it’s only supported in Firefox 89.

HTML has supported the <picture> element for years now.

<picture>
  <source srcset="./kitten.avif" type="image/avif">
  <img src="./kitten.jpg" alt="a small kitten"> 
</picture>

image-set provides the CSS equivalent, allowing for the use of next-gen image formats by specifying the image’s MIME type:

.div1 {
  background-image: image-set(
    "kitten.avif" type("image/avif"),
    "kitten.jpg" type("image/jpeg")
  );
}

The next-gen image goes first while the fallback image for older browsers goes second. Only one image will be downloaded. If the browser doesn’t support AVIF it will ignore it and only download the second image you specify. If AVIF is supported, the fallback image is ignored.

In the above example we used an AVIF image and provided a JPEG as a fallback, but the fallback could be any widely supported image format. Here’s an example using a PNG.

.div2 {
  background-image: image-set(
    "puppy.webp" type("image/webp"),
    "puppy.png" type("image/png")
  );
}

In Chromium and Safari, specifying the type is not supported yet. That means you can use image-set today only to specify different resolutions of widely-supported image formats but not to add backwards-compatibility when using WebP or AVIF in those browsers. It should be possible to provide both multiple resolutions and multiple image formats, if you are so inclined:

.div2 {
  background-image: image-set( 
    "puppy.webp" type("image/webp") 1x,
    "puppy2x.webp" type("image/webp") 2x,
    "puppy.png" type("image/png") 1x,
    "puppy2x.png" type("image/png") 2x
  );
}

Hopefully browser support will improve soon.

Using <picture> for backgrounds instead

Maybe you don’t need background-image at all. If you want to use modern image formats, you might be able to use the <picture> element, which has better browser support. If you set the image to position: absolute it’s easy to display other elements on top of it.

As an alternative approach to using position: absolute, CSS grid is another easy way to overlap HTML elements.

The post Using Performant Next-Gen Images in CSS with image-set appeared first on CSS-Tricks. You can support CSS-Tricks by being an MVP Supporter.

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Things to Look Out for a Large-Scale Migration or Transition From Proprietary to Atlassian Toolchain

We all go through tough times while transitioning or migration projects in course of our experience. This drove me to write about a similar journey where our agile approach saved a lot of war room situations, and we were able to deliver a similar large-scale migration not once but twice without any problems. Below, I would like to share the same experience where I am going to cover the pain areas and how we were able to overcome the same using our Scalable DevOps Framework. This is also not a baked system or framework as we all know and understand the best fit is a fit that works for a situation. It might be a good starting point, but the end results will matter on a lot of variables.

Key Challenges in Migration

I would like to divide the core challenges into three categories primarily:

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It is okay to build a website for Artist?/Actors?

I am new to web development but I want to enhance my skills, so please be nice to me.

I build a blog already, using wordpress, but is there anyone here build a website for an artist/actor before?

Like, for real? Because i knew, we have a copyright for images, right? Unless you have or you are allowed to.

And we can't just use images even though they are actors/actresses? Any inputs?

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The Beginners Guide to Independent Contractors

Do you have a short-term project that requires a specific skill set, but you don’t have the budget to employ a full-time employee just for that task?

Or perhaps you run a small business and could occasionally use the assistance of an expert in certain areas of your business?

If either of these sounds like you, then hiring an independent contractor is the perfect solution.

Hiring an independent contractor or freelancer allows you to source the perfect person for the role while saving on overheads and time spent hiring a full-time employee for a short-term position.

This guide goes through all the important parts of hiring and working with an independent contractor, so you know exactly what you’re in for and how they can help your business thrive.

What is an Independent Contractor?

An independent contractor is someone with a specific skill set who works for themselves, not an employer. They are running their own business.

Independent contractors provide work services under a specific contract and are self-employed. They set their own rates for the work they do for your business. They work with your company, but you do not have to pay for additional benefits like insurance or 401(k) for them. They also pay their own taxes. Independent contractors are also known as freelancers and consultants.

If you choose to work with an independent contractor, they do not become an employee of your organization, and you aren’t liable for them in any way. Instead, you’ll enter into a contract with them for a specific project or task that usually has a set duration.

The Basics of Hiring Independent Contractors

If you’re a fast-moving organization, agile startup, or small business, hiring an independent contractor can offer increased flexibility and a range of benefits to your business.

Contractors aren’t suitable for every role. Here are some crucial points to consider before deciding whether hiring an independent contractor is the right move for you.

Find the Best Person for the Job

Becoming a contractor is an important life decision. Independent contractors have to give away the security of full-time employment to get their business off the ground. With this in mind, people who take up contract work are likely confident in their skills, with experience to match. They are experts in their field.

Therefore, when the short-term need for a specific skillset arises, you don’t have to go on the hunt for another full-time employee that can meet these skills. Instead, you can hire the best person for the job, for only the project’s duration.

Not only does this save your business on overhead costs, but it also means that you’re not employing full-time individuals for situations that only arise occasionally.

Save Time on the Hiring Process

Hiring full-time employees is a longer process. You have to post the ad, source candidates, screen resumes, interview candidates, and wait while successful candidates serve their notice. This time-consuming and costly process is not ideal when you have a project that needs attention right away.

In contrast, you can hire an independent contractor within days, especially if you’ve worked with them previously.

Quick and convenient access to a skilled contractor means your problem can be solved promptly, allowing business to carry on quickly without losing time and money.

Organizational Flexibility

Independent contractors are extremely beneficial to industries that face significant peaks and troughs in business volume.

When you hire independent contractors, you can scale your workforce according to your workload. For example, instead of having full-time employees twiddling their thumbs during slow periods, you can decrease the number of workers on hand altogether.

You’ll also be able to quickly adapt to changing demands for skills without the cost of adding another full-time employee.

In a nutshell, hiring independent contractors can allow you to positively adapt both physically and financially to ever-changing market demands.

Lower Overheads

Independent contractors may cost you more on wages in the short term, but there are plenty of areas in which you’ll save in the long run.

When you hire an independent contractor, they’re not an employee. You don’t have to pay them holiday pay, sick pay, or superannuation. You also don’t have to provide them benefits such as health or dental insurance.

Independent contractors should also provide their own equipment, meaning you can save on items such as laptops, business software, and office facilities.

So although an independent contractor will demand a higher rate per hour than a full-time employee, you won’t be working with them for an extended period of time. You have the opportunity to lower your overheads in the long run by choosing to work with a contractor instead of hiring a full-time employee.

Ease of Termination

Organizations that operate in volatile industries need to consider their staffing requirements very carefully. When a slow period hits unexpectedly, they are stuck paying too many full-time employees due to contractual obligations.

However, when you work with independent contractors, getting out of your contract when an unexpected slow period strikes is much easier. You can use a get-out clause to end the contract with short notice and even without reason. Most independent contractors may even expect this sort of clause to exist within the contract.

Although this is undoubtedly a benefit of working with independent contractors, terminating a contract early and unexpectedly won’t earn you goodwill with the contractor should you want to work with them in the future.

On the other hand, if you only bring on the contractor for a specific project, you may not need to deal with getting out of the contract. The contractor simply ends working with you when the project is complete.

So it’s easy to see that there are many positive things to consider when hiring an independent contractor. However, there are times when using a contractor to fulfill your business needs is not ideal.

Some of these occasions include:

  • When you’re building a team of full-time employees
  • When you need long-term support
  • When you want to invest in the future of your business
  • When you want to develop key HR assets

If you are steering your business in any of the above directions, spending time working with independent contractors may take your attention away from these goals. Unless, of course, you manage to convince an independent contractor to sign on as a full-time employee, but that is a lesson for another day.

3 Tools to Assist You in Working with Independent Contractors

To help you successfully manage your full-time employees and independent contractors all in one place, you need robust software on your side. Here are a few of our top recommendations.

Zenefits

Zenefits is an all-in-one human resources powerhouse. It provides features for compensation packages, employee onboarding, PTO management and requests, and employee management.

Where it comes in handy for organizations working with independent contractors is its scheduling and time-keeping features. Zenefits allows you to track time and attendance for contractors, freelancers, and full-time employees side-by-side, so you always know where your team is and when.

Zenefits is also a great platform for collaborating with both employees and contractors. With Zenefits on your side, you can establish clear communication with your contractors, no matter where they are working from.

Deputy

Deputy is a savvy HR software with a primary focus on scheduling. It makes scheduling and time tracking a walk in the park for businesses in almost any industry.

You can even easily manage individuals that work remotely, including contractors. You can also share work schedules instantly with the entire team and capture work hours within Deputy’s mobile app.

Deputy also helps to maintain clear lines of communication across multiple teams at different locations. You can share important documents and post recorded announcements directly to Deputy’s newsfeed.

Zoho Projects

If you’re working on a large project with multiple independent contractors, a robust project management software like Zoho Projects is the tool for you.

Zoho Projects is a cloud-based project management software that helps you plan your projects, track work efficiently, and collaborate with your team from anywhere. You can use Gantt charts to build your project plan and track your task schedule, allocating tasks to contractors as you need.

Where Zoho Projects stands out the most is that you’ll have the capability to share all kinds of files, collaborate over documents and spreadsheets, and build beautiful presentations together. A software like this will make your life working with independent contractors a dream.

3 Tricks for Hiring an Independent Contractor

Getting started with an independent contractor is relatively straightforward. But when you are ready to find the right contractor, here are a few things you can keep in mind to help you along the way.

Enlist an Integrated HR Software

Enlisting an integrated HR or project management software is vital in ensuring you and your independent contractors are on the same page. Which one you choose will depend entirely on the nature of your business.

If you already utilize HR or project management software, look into ways it can assist you in building a relationship with an independent contractor. Key features you’ll need include scheduling tools, documentation and file-sharing capabilities, and performance management tools.

The objective of enlisting an integrated software is to make your relationship easy by keeping lines of communication open, regardless of project size.

Hire Carefully

Just because you need to hire an independent contractor quickly doesn’t mean you should rush the hiring process. At the end of the day, independent contractors are self-employed, which means there is not always an existing reputation to support their skillset.

Take the time to source the best contractor for the job by interviewing them, checking or testimonials, and looking over previous work. You could even contact previous companies they’ve worked with to ensure they live up to their reputation. Ensure all your boxes are ticked regarding skills, experience, attitude, and ability before proceeding.

Doing your due diligence here will ensure that you avoid hiring the wrong person for the job. The wrong contractor could result in a waste of all the money you’ve saved on overheads when you need to hire another contractor to fix the previous person’s work.

Get Everything in Writing

Just as you have a contract with all your full-time employees, it’s vital to have a contract in place with each of your independent contractors.

It doesn’t have to be as all-encompassing as an employment contract. But it should outline the key elements of your relationship, such as:

  • The expected duration of the contract/project/work
  • The schedule to which the contractor should adhere to
  • The compensation provided and when it is expected (i.e., after the job is done, weekly, monthly, at specific milestones/intervals, etc.)
  • The nature of the role and expected tasks to be performed

You could also include a get-out clause in case the contractor is not performing to the expected standard, but this is not always necessary.

In a nutshell, getting everything in writing aims to demonstrate the validity of your relationship and protect both parties in the case of any legal disputes surrounding the work.

What to Do Next

Working with independent contractors allows you to find the best person for the job, save time on the hiring process, lower company overheads, and provides greater organizational flexibility. And once you connect with one great contractor, you’ll find the door to a myriad of other experts will open to you.

In the process of working with your first contractor, it’s important to hire carefully and put your agreement in writing. You can even take it a step further by initiating a background check on the independent contractor before doing business with them. If you’re interested in enlisting this type of process, check out our list of best background check companies to get you started in the right direction.

If you’re hiring multiple independent contractors to work on large projects, it’s vital to have the right collaboration and communication software in place to help you manage your team. One of the best software out there for this is Zoho Projects. But if you’d like to explore alternative options, we put together a list of our top recommendations of best project management software to assist your research.

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Is Progressive Delivery Just Continuous Delivery With Feature Flags?

If your organization has established an efficient CI/CD pipeline and you’ve made a successful transition to DevOps culture, you probably already understand the benefits of doing DevOps. Your teams share information and collaborate efficiently, and you’ve seen measurable increases in software delivery speed and quality. Aside from continuing to do what you’re doing, though, where do you go from here? How can your teams reach the next phase of DevOps maturity?

Once you’re comfortable with continuous integration and continuous delivery practices, the next step is to get really good at progressive delivery.

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[DZone Live] Episode 4

Join us live today on Wednesday, June 30th, at 11:00 am EDT

Join us live today for the fourth episode of DZone Live, where we bring in various DZone guests, contributors, and industry professionals from around the world. This event features a question and answers at the end.

Engage Live with #DZoneLive

Reply in the comments to any live feed to ask for comments or send feedback. You can also use the hashtag #DZoneLive throughout. See below for all the different ways you can watch live.