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WhoisXML API, a self-proclaimed cyber intel provider, has launched a new white-label version of the company’s solution for domain brand monitoring and research. The launch is meant to expand the reach of WhoisXML API’s offering to include a more broad set of organizations.
The company notes that building custom Domain Name System (DNS) databases integrations can be time-consuming and expensive:
Last week, I published an opinion piece on the barrier to entry in the modern WordPress era. The article followed a tweet and post by Chris Wiegman that stated the current learning curve was extremely high, regardless of past experience. Members of the community responded with a flurry of articles, podcasts, and videos.
Because modern WordPress is primarily centered on Gutenberg, I reached out to the project’s lead, Matías Ventura. The goal was to bring some balance to the discussion. Unfortunately, he could not get back to me until a few days after the story was published. However, given his unique insight and perspective on the project, his views should be shared.
In our discussion, we covered the topic of the barrier to entry from multiple viewpoints. Depending on where a specific developer, designer, or user steps onto the ramp, each will have a different experience.
The block editor shipped with WordPress 5.0 in December 2018. We are closing in on three years, but it often feels like we are having the same discussions. One has to wonder why we have not yet moved beyond that point.
“I think this is a case of the size of the WordPress community, its diversity of perspectives, and the fact that we do still have a lot of work to do to continue to make things accessible,” said Ventura. “I’ve seen people that start with no prior WP knowledge get flying super quickly.”
He recounted one story of a popular block library that launched last year. The creators were designers but did not recognize themselves as developers. However, the APIs allowed them to build an entire plugin that would not have been possible with their previous skillset.
“To me, this was a triumph of the block APIs that are available for builders,” said Ventura. “But this is just one person’s perspective. It doesn’t invalidate PHP developers expressing frustration at the complexities of modern front-end tools.”
On the theme creation front, we were in agreement. There are new ways (and more on the way) for non-developers to ease into visually building various parts of a website without needing the entire weight of theme development knowledge.
Ventura began his WordPress journey with theme development after first being exposed to Flash in the early 2000s. He recalled downloading a bunch of PHP files and thought he could execute by opening them. It is safe to say that he has learned a lot since then.
“Being able to edit pieces of a theme is a crucial aspect of democratizing access to code,” he said. “I think we are going to be seeing a lot of people get started by diving into how templates work. Or by playing with the Query block, which used to be a hidden piece unless you knew a bit of PHP already.”
He mentioned that, in some ways, this aspect of the block editor allowed solo creators or small teams to build unique projects, pointing to Aino as an example.
“I’m seeing a ton of designers for whom contributing to WordPress was difficult or a gated experience,” he said. “There’s a lot of developer entitlement when we say things used to be easy. They were not easy for a large chunk of the population that might have been excellent contributors if there were more avenues to contribute.”
Patterns may be the first official stepping stone, one avenue among many that WordPress could facilitate in the future. Ventura envisions a possible .ORG-hosted visual theme builder that would allow users to create and publish without ever touching code. We are likely years from seeing such a project come to fruition, but lofty goals can lead to innovative ideas that we have yet to think of.
Block plugins are a different beast than themes. The barrier is undoubtedly higher, but how big is this hurdle for traditional WordPress developers?
“Going from contributing a pattern to building a block is a big leap right now,” said Ventura. “While there are folks that can learn it quickly, it’s still a big barrier for people. I think there are several layers to this: documentation could be an order of magnitude better in both organization and presentation. I hope we can do a lot more there.”
He is also curious about tools for building blocks, such as a blend of BlockBook and CodePen. He mulled over the possibility of blocks used for creating other blocks, a scenario in which developers might only need to write HTML with the tool interpreting features like Rich Text fields. At the very least, he believes we are barely scratching the surface of what the block-building experience could be.
“The biggest challenge is that there’s a tendency in PHP trained folks to neglect a bit the implications on the UX if it means the developer experience is simpler,” he said. “I think this is most visible in the shortcode/forms approach to UX as opposed to direct manipulation, which is hard to codify from a PHP set of APIs.”
Outside of building themes or plugins, the third and arguably the highest level of participating in the WordPress development ecosystem is direct contributions to the block system. Is contributing to core harder today than it was just a few years ago?
“I think this is a good point, but I think it partially misses that contributing to WP internals like WP_Query was also very difficult,” he said. “We just got used to it. We have received more contributions to Gutenberg from people than what I have seen in Trac in my years there.”
Ventura did admit that GitHub could be a factor in the amount of contribution, which many developers tend to favor over Trac.
While building an editor is a difficult task and requires certain levels of expertise, other parts of the system, such as the component library or smaller packages, might offer alternative paths for some people to get involved.
“Apart from this, I do agree that there’s also a higher level of expectations for what software should be capable of doing these days that make contributing meaningfully a harder task than before,” he said.
Historically, other parts of WordPress that relied on the JavaScript model, such as the media library, have not had high levels of contribution.
“I don’t think this is a topic we’ll exhaust any time soon, and it’s important to not become complacent and just say ‘oh things are just hard’ because an important part of the WP project being open source is that users can modify said software, and for that, they need to understand it,” he said. “I think we can introduce a new generation of people to coding if we do things right and work together more.
The secondary aspect of this is whether there is a bus factor for WordPress. If so, what is the number? This is a common question around the most technically challenging pieces of software. If X number of contributors with the requisite knowledge of the most complex pieces of a project were hit by a bus (sorry for the grim imagery), would the development grind to a halt?
It is not something often discussed in WordPress circles because it has never seemed to be an issue. However, if contributing to core carries too high of a barrier to entry, is there a number where the project cannot continue?
“I think, in some ways, it’s more sustainable now,” said Ventura. “We have been a lot more open with contribution permissions on the Gutenberg repo, and it has resulted in a larger amount of folks contributing. I think we might see a split between contributors that are comfortable with the back-end side of WP and those that are more comfortable with the interactive pieces.”
One thing the team did not entirely anticipate was Gutenberg’s use in projects outside of WordPress. This can add to its sustainability factor. He pointed to the WordPress mobile app being an example where others can meaningfully contribute. And other mobile apps are wanting to use it for their tools. At Automattic, where Ventura is employed, they are also working on adopting editor technologies for Tumblr.
“I think a broader topic of discussion, in general, is that contributing meaningfully to WP has become the privilege of those sponsored to work on it full time,” he said. “I think that’s in some ways natural but also a bit of a tragedy.”
Every day, the ProgrammableWeb team is busy, updating its three primary directories for APIs, clients (language-specific libraries or SDKs for consuming or providing APIs), and source code samples.
Alex Standiford, a WordPress developer at AffiliateWP, has released a boilerplate for what he is calling a “nearly headless” WordPress theme. It uses Underpin ,Nicholas, and AlpineJS to provide an app-like experience for a website while providing the flexibility for rendering specific pages using PHP instead of Javascript.
In a post titled “Headless WordPress is Overrated: A Case for The Nearly-Headless Web App,” Standiford describes a few of the drawbacks of going fully headless.
One problem with fully-headless WordPress is routing. Behind the scenes, WordPress has a lot of logic built-in to handle routing, and with a headless approach you have to build something to handle that on the front end. Ultimately, you’re re-inventing the wheel, and it takes a lot of extra time to build.
Another problem with headless WordPress quickly becomes apparent the moment you try to use most WordPress plugins. The ugly truth is that you usually have to re-invent a lot of things just to get the plugin working properly.
Standiford’s nearly headless system is a product of his rethinking headless WordPress. He wanted to preserve the app-like feel as well as all of WordPress’ built in capabilities and those available through the plugin system.
The Nearly Headless WordPress theme uses AlpineJS for rendering, which Standiford says is light, easy-to-understand, and “plays exceptionally nice with PHP server-side rendering.” It is loaded around HTML template tags that source post content using WordPress’ REST API. The system uses session storage to keep things speedy and minimize the number of REST API calls.
Standiford’s WP Dev Academy learning site and his agency, DesignFrame Solutions, are both using beta versions of the nearly headless system. Since the time those sites were developed, Standiford has completely rewritten the system and made significant improvements based on what from what he learned from earlier versions. He has a live demo of the current version available at nearly-headless.dev.
The nearly headless approach is comparable to a traditional headless approach in terms of performance, thanks to Standiford’s Nicholas library, which includes client-side caching and a routing layer as the application support for the theme.
“Nicholas will load content via REST, much like how a headless site does,” Standiford said. “In these cases, the load times are very similar to what you’d see on a headless site. In fact, they behave, and fundamentally work in the same manner. The key is Nicholas also stores the data in session storage after the page is visited, and any time that page is loaded thereafter, it is loaded instantly.”
How far can the boilerplate take you? Developers who use it should be ready to extend or replace the basic templates it includes to load WordPress. It doesn’t enqueue any CSS. Key functionality is broken into separate dependencies so users can stay up to date as the project evolves.
“For all intents and purposes, the boilerplate is a blank slate,” Standiford said. “You can think of the boilerplate as _s for the nearly headless approach. All of the dependencies, scripts, and items needed to run the engine are included in the boilerplate. All of the dependencies are packaged up in Composer or Node, so your theme can be updated as the system improves without re-writing your entire theme.”
Standiford has some major improvements planned for the future of the boilerplate. It is currently compatible with the block editor and many plugins but requires a compatibility mode.
“The big up-front improvement is going to be removing the need for compatibility mode on as many pages as possible,” Standiford said. “Many block libraries, forms plugins, and other things have specific scripts that they expect are loaded on the page that the app has no way to know about, and because of this, some plugins won’t work without turning on compatibility mode. It is possible to make these work, but I would benefit from help from plugin developers to help me understand what styles/scripts need to be included when the app runs.”
Standiford said he sees an opportunity to create npm packages that integrate other plugins, and ensure they work as expected.
“Yoast and other SEO plugins for example set the SEO information in the head of each page, and right now that doesn’t happen without writing another piece of middleware,” he said. “It’s not too difficult to add it, but it’s one of those things that could be packaged up and included instead of manually being written for every theme that uses this approach.”
Another item on the Nearly Headless WordPress theme boilerplate roadmap is improvements to how dependencies are compiled to better avoid plugin and theme conflicts. Standiford thinks this would make it easier to distribute themes built using this method on the WordPress.org directory, or even to sell them commercially. He has also been experimenting with automatically caching all the content on a page when it loads, without bogging down the browser or overloading the server with requests. The result would be instantaneous page loads with reduced server loads.
The Boilerplate for Nearly Headless WordPress Themes is available on GitHub and Standiford is also creating a course that will help developers build sites using this nearly headless paradigm. He anticipates it will be released in November 2021.
Branding is vital for businesses. It’s what sets you apart from your competitors and puts you at the forefront of potential customers’ minds.
Therefore, you should protect your brand with a trademark.
But if you’re a newbie to this kind of thing, then you probably don’t know what kind of protection you need or even what you can protect. Plus, when it comes to actually applying for a trademark, the process can be lengthy and complex.
So in this guide, we’ll explain everything you need to know about trademarks and help simplify the process.
A trademark is usually a word, phrase, symbol, or design that represents your brand. It belongs to you legally and differentiates your products or services from those of other companies. This means that other companies can’t use similar assets to sell their goods.
If you want to apply for a trademark, you need to be equipped with the right knowledge. It’ll make the process clearer and you’ll be less likely to get rejected. So here we’ll explain the ins and outs of trademarks and the trademark application process.
You may have assets that you didn’t realize you could trademark. It would be a shame if you didn’t protect them simply through a lack of knowledge. So let’s take a look at what you can and can’t trademark.
The most common trademarks, as mentioned above, are words and elements of design. More often than not, these are business names, product names, and/or logos. Think of the Nike swoosh or Amazon’s logo with the arrow under the name–not only are the names “Nike” and “Amazon” trademarked, but the visual elements of their logos are, too.
But you can trademark a number of things that distinguish your brand from another. These include, for example, the shape of goods or packaging, slogans, colors, and patterns. In the shipping industry, it’s not a coincidence that UPS has brown trucks while FedEx has white ones–those colors are trademarked to those companies.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are also words and symbols you won’t be able to trademark. This includes any kind of generic term or phrase like “the best XYZ company.”
You also can’t trademark a descriptive business name, e.g. The Gardening Company, or a name that includes a geographic location, e.g. Manchester Gardening. Nor can you trademark a word or symbol that’s considered deceptive or scandalous.
Trademarks protect your intellectual property, i.e. your unique, recognizable creations. You need to know exactly what this means and what kind of legal rights you have so that you don’t fall foul of copycats and thieves.
First off, another company can’t use your intellectual property without your permission. If you find that they do, you have the right to enforce the trademark (get them to stop using it) and take legal actions against the company if necessary.
Another important thing you need to know is that a name, symbol, design element, etc., doesn’t have to be exactly the same as yours to be considered an infringement. It just needs to be “confusingly similar.”
In other words, if a customer might not be able to distinguish two brands from one another because of the mark, it’s a problem. A mark can’t look or sound similar to another.
But this is only the case if both companies are in the same industry. For example, Delta Airlines and Delta Faucets can both exist because consumers are unlikely to be confused by what they’re purchasing from the company.
You couldn’t, however, have a sportswear company with a checkmark as the logo as it would be too similar to the Nike swoosh.
You should also know that even unregistered trademarks have some level of protection when you use the symbol 
. If you’ve used the trademark for a number of years and/or your business has a solid reputation, you have so-called common law rights.
This means you can enforce the trademark. However, you would need to provide evidence that your trademark is long-standing and recognized by the public, which might be difficult.
You can register a trademark online via the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). It’s convenient, but the application process is rather complex.
There are multiple steps and you must read the application form carefully to make sure you understand everything. There’s also in-depth research that you need to carry out before you even begin to fill in the form.
You’ll need to check that there aren’t any confusingly similar trademarks already in existence. This is called a clearance search. Use the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) to search for existing word and/or design marks.
If there’s already a similar mark and that company offers similar services or products to you, then you won’t be able to register the trademark.
If you have a new business you can go back to the drawing board. There’s no point in applying for a trademark that won’t be accepted as the application fee is non-refundable.
When you come to file your application through the Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS), you’ll be given a choice of the TEAS Standard application or TEAS Plus.
The main difference between the two is that the TEAS Standard is more expensive at $350 per class of goods but you can fill in certain sections of the form at a later date. So you might prefer this option if you don’t have all of the information and evidence you need ready to submit just yet.
Note that when you send in your application, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get the trademark. But your chances are good if you’ve done your research and filled in the form carefully.
It can take several months for the trademark to come through as USPTO performs its own checks and sends the application to an attorney who decides whether your application can move forward.
If the application process sounds overwhelming then you may wish to seek outside help. These companies will take care of the clearance search and trademark registration for you:
LegalZoom offers a range of business, financial, and legal services. As such, it’s launched over two million companies.
Plus the folks at LegalZoom have worked with over 320,000 customers on trademark applications. So it’s safe to say this company has a ton of experience.
It has a network of independent attorneys which allows it to specialize in creating untouchable trademarks and enforcing your legal rights.
The process of applying for a trademark with LegalZoom is simple. Just choose the right package to suit your needs.
The Do It Yourself package costs $249 plus the federal filing fee. With this package, LegalZoom performs a basic clearance search. Then you complete the application using their step-by-step guide. And finally, LegalZoom proofreads the application, completes it where necessary, and files it with USPTO.
The attorney-led package is much more expensive at $599 plus the federal filing fee. Yet it comes with a guarantee. If your first application gets rejected, they’ll complete a second application at no extra cost.
With this package, the attorney does all of the research and filing for you. All you’ll need to do is answer a few questions about your trademark.
MyCorporation is a business formation service that specializes in helping small businesses. What makes this company stand out is that they take care of all the legwork for you.
First, you’ll complete an online questionnaire with simple questions about your trademark. Or, if you prefer, you can speak to a member of the team and they’ll walk you through the questions.
Next, MyCorporation fills in the paperwork and files it with USPTO on your behalf. When your application is accepted they’ll send you all of the legal documentation you need.
The trademark application package costs $199 plus the federal filing fee.
You’ll need a separate package for the clearance search. As part of this package, experts conduct a comprehensive search of registered and pending trademarks in the database. This means you can be sure that your trademark is unique and you won’t risk having your application rejected.
The extensive clearance search costs $249. So if you want both the clearance search and the trademark application done for you, it comes to a total of $448 plus the federal filing fee.
Rocket Lawyer offers affordable legal services, specializing in personal, real estate, and business documentation.
Given the fact that documentation is their specialty, it offers a truly comprehensive trademark application service.
With Rocket Lawyer, you can get a custom package to suit your needs. Naturally, the company can take care of the clearance search and application filing with USPTO. But there are a few more useful services you may wish to take Rocket Lawyer up on.
You can get a consultation with a trademark attorney to create a trademark application strategy. Moreover, you can get priority processing to speed up your application. There’s also a trademark transfer service for those that need it.
Here are our best tips for making a strong trademark application and keeping your trademark secure in the long term:
If you want to apply for a trademark, don’t wait around to do it. It makes sense to protect your branding as soon as possible. Also, consider the fact that the process can take a while.
The good thing is that you can register a trademark that you intend to use with USPTO. So even if you haven’t started trading yet, you can submit an initial application to reserve your trademark.
The last thing you want is for your trademark application to be rejected. You should now have a good understanding of what you can and can’t trademark which is a good starting point.
Not only that, but you also need a strong, unique business name to represent your brand. If you can trademark a name like this then you’ll stand out from other companies and no one can hang on your coattails.
Traditionally, you’d choose a name that illustrates your product or service. But we know you’re unlikely to get a trademark for a descriptive name. So you need to think outside of the box.
You could invent a name from scratch by mashing up words. Netflix, for example, is a mash-up of “Internet” and “flicks”.
Or perhaps you could name your business after your inspiration. The name Reebok, for instance, comes from the company’s spirit animal, the rhebok, which is a species of antelope.
USPTO won’t look for trademark infringements. This is something you need to do yourself by keeping a watchful eye over others in your industry.
Make sure no other companies use any assets similar to those you trademarked. The reason being it’ll reduce the impact your brand has on the market.
So what do you do if you think another company is using your trademarked assets?
The first step is to figure out if there’s actually an infringement. Remember that there’s only an infringement if you and the other company offer similar products or services.
If you believe there is an infringement, seek legal help as soon as possible. An attorney will be able to send a cease and desist letter on your behalf. And take further action, e.g. taking the company to court, if they fail to act on your letter.
Applying for a trademark is just one item you need to check off the list in the early stages of starting a business.
The next thing you might need to do is get a federal tax number for your business. You’ll need it if you hope to open a business bank account or hire employees.
You may also be interested in creating a business website so that potential customers can find you online. Here’s how to buy a domain name that represents your brand.
And, finally, you should check out our guide to the best business formation services as they can help take care of all of the above for you.
In the video below, we take a closer look at what is Deque in Java? | Java Deque Introduction and Sample Programs | Deque in Java. Let's get started!
If you’re a marketing expert and know about SEO, you have surely come across the term Domain Authority. It’s a useful metric that many SEO professionals use to assess how likely content is to rank in the SERPs. Everyone interprets the relevance of domain authority differently. That makes the concept quite confusing. This blog post […]
The post How to Improve Domain Authority of Your WordPress Site appeared first on WPExplorer.
Dave points to Sarah’s post on Developer Experience (DX) at Netlify. Part of what Sarah did there is lay out what the role means. It’s a three-part thing:
I like it. You gotta define the thing to do the thing. Dave, though, writes about being a consumer of DX rather than a creator of DX. Another three-parter:
- Is it easy? Does this technology solve a problem I have better than I’m currently doing it.
- Can I get help? If I have a problem, can I talk to someone? Will I talk to someone helpful or someone shitty?
- Is the community healthy? If I do go all-in on this, is the community toxic or nice? If applicable, do good community extensions exist?
Another favorite of mine on this subject is Shawn Wang’s Developer Exception Engineering, which agrees with the basic premise of DX, but then digs a little deeper into the “uncomfortable” (yet honest and candid) aspects. Here’s one example:
Is your pricing predictable or do your users need a spreadsheet to figure out what you are going to charge them? If charges are unexpectedly high, can developers use your software to figure out why or do they have to beg for help? Are good defaults in place to get advance warning?
I like that good DX can be born out of clarity in the uncomfortable bits. Where are the rough edges? Tell me, and you earn my trust. Hide it, and you lose it.
The post DX, to Whom? appeared first on CSS-Tricks. You can support CSS-Tricks by being an MVP Supporter.
Agile software development enables an entrepreneur to launch a product in the market within a short span of time. For executives to know whether the agile methodology is right for them, we share information on basic principles behind agile, preferred team structure, and common methodologies such as Scrum, extreme programming (XP), dynamic systems development method (DSDM), and feature-driven development (FDD).
Agile is a unique approach to software development that considers different components such as client’s requirements, continuous learning and testing, iterative development, tangible value addition after every two weeks, and more.
This tutorial helps to integrate and run your Cypress tests with the Azure DevOps pipeline in an Easy Way
This tutorial explains the easy way to configure and run Cypress Test Automation Framework into Azure DevOps.
What’s that – You got a job interview?! Congrats, that’s awesome! Before we jump into maybe the next stress-inducing step of preparing for the interview, I want you to pause. Take a moment and celebrate! Order in your favorite meal,...
The post How to Prepare for a Job Interview appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
How do I pull ascii files or folders off a server I am remoted into?
For the first time in my life as a software developer I am tasked to remote in by VPN (sort of) to a server where ASP code resides. I want to copy and paste the text locally so I can do things like searches for function names and such. I can do it on the server perhaps but there is an issue with lag time. Also, the screen I remote into with is small.
I would like very much to cut and paste the ASCII text.
I can cut and paste via screen shots and piece it together and then use OCR software to convert into text. But that does not work.
Of course, cutting and pasting the ASCII does not work. The shared system memory does not work.
Things tried:
Now, not to get dark here, but, there IS some way to do this. And there IS such a thing as "friendly hacking". I mean, I have all seen youtube videos of people dialing into a remote server and downloading content somehow.
SaaS user management, basically, is the process you use to manage users, roles, and permissions on an ongoing basis. This means that you identify, authenticate, and authorize all users for the specific amount of access they’ve paid for or need. If you’re in the market for a user management solution that’s comprehensive, we can help. This tool comparison will focus on the best options for managing users in SaaS applications. This way, you can find the best choice for you. Let’s get started.
No longer can you provide everyone with a super-admin role. These days, user management in SaaS applications is necessary. Before getting started, learn about SSO user management roles and permissions handling in SaaS.
Azure App Service is one of the most used among the Azure offered services. When the requirement is to host web applications, REST APIs, and mobile back ends, the Azure App Service is the go-to HTTP- based solution. Apps hosted in Azure App Service can be integrated with on-premises or cloud services. It supports both the Windows and Linux-based environments to run and scale the applications.
Azure App Services are popular due to the following reasons:
Crowd testing is a growing technique QA (Quality Assurance) test which leverages a dispersed, short-term workforce to test apps effectively and rapidly. The Crowdsourced Test Market is anticipated to register a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 10.7% over the prediction period 2021 - 2026. Whilst traditional methods of software tests are performed within the organization, or through an outsourcing contractor or QA consultant, crowdsourced software testing is executed by various individual testers in distinct locations. Furthermore, it enables the user to rapidly outsource software tests to a global pool of expert testers, saving both money and time.
What is Crowdsouced Testing?
This is the 6th part of the JMS ActiveMQ with the Mule 4 series. You can read previous parts here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 In this post, we will learn about the durable topic and how we can use it in MuleSoft.
JMS topics are used to implement a pub-sub model where the same message is broadcasted to multiple subscribers. In simple words, A message published to a topic can be consumed by any number of subscribers. But a topic subscriber can only pick the message if it listens to the topic at the time of publishing of Message means the subscriber will miss the message if not listening to the topic.
One of the common misconceptions we have is that an agile coach role is similar to that of a project manager role. These two roles are fundamentally very different and come with a differing set of roles & responsibilities.
While a project manager is like a commander in control of his/her team, an Agile Coach acts as a guide, mentor, and facilitator to the teams.