WordPress is restarting its in-person WordCamp program after more than six weeks of discussion on a proposal for how the WordPress community can return to hosting events. Applications are now open for in-person WordCamps, provided they meet the Community Team’s updated guidelines for organizing WordCamps during the pandemic.
Local communities that have hosted meetups prior to the pandemic are eligible to apply to host a WordCamp if public health authorities permit in-person gatherings in their region and the area passes the in-person safety checklist. If the checklist requirements cannot be met, organizers may still host a WordCamp, provided that vaccines or COVID tests are readily available in the community. In the event the location doesn’t pass the in-person checklist and also has limited access to vaccines and testing, organizers would need to opt for an online WordCamp.
The new guidelines have been simplified into a flowchart:
The Community Team expects that attendees will be fully vaccinated, recently tested negative, or recovered from COVID within the last three months. Attendance will be based on the honor system, as organizers will not be asking for proof as a condition of participation.
WordCamps are sorely missed by WordPress enthusiasts and professionals, and many are eager to return. This restart of the WordCamp program will need to attract more than just attendees – WordCamp organizers will need to get on board to be the first to test the waters.
Yep, the camps are where the community spirit is both sparked and inspired, and often times repaired. We need in real life Wordcamps
The fact that vaccinated individuals can still transmit the virus throws a wrench into things in areas where vaccine hesitancy runs high, making the entire population more susceptible to breakthrough infections. This combined with the prevalence of the more highly contagious Delta variant makes for a scenario where attendees at approved in-person WordCamps could unwittingly participate in spreading the virus to others.
When asked about requiring masks or other precautions, Community Team representative Angela Jin said organizers have a better opportunity to require more precautions beyond local guidelines if they work with a venue that has its own requirements.
“The Community team is asking organizers and attendees to follow local guidelines,” Jin said. “If organizers would like to have more precautions, the deputies would advocate for booking at a venue that takes those precautions, for example, a venue that requires masks while indoors. In this way, the ask of ensuring additional safety measures is not just on organizers (event organizers already have enough to keep an eye on!), but on venue staff as well.”
“I’ve been asked if I think there will be an in-person WordCamp Miami in 2022 once it’s allowed,” longtime WordCamp organizer David Bisset said. “No idea. But I doubt I’ll be involved unless the state of Florida changes dramatically. Plus, other reasons. As of now I’m not planning on attending any in-person WCs for quite some time. I have a ‘wait and see’ attitude.'”
One important consideration is that the Global Sponsorship Program does not currently include funding for WordCamps, so organizers will need to raise 100% of the expenses for their events. A group of Community Team deputies are working on a proposal for the 2022 Global Sponsorship Program, aiming to finalize it by the end of October. In the meantime, organizers will need to find a way to foot the bill.
As scientists consider the increasingly more likely possibility that SARS-CoV-2 becomes an endemic virus, WordCamps and other gatherings will need to find the right combination of precautions that will enable them to continue in this new era. The Community team has become skilled at hosting virtual events, but 18 months into this pandemic it is clear that the connections fostered at WordCamps are irreplaceable.
“The deputies and I know that many places around the world are not in a position to organize in-person WordCamps at this time,” Jin said. “The team will continue to support online events, and do not expect organizers to host in-person events if they are not ready to.”
Use New Relic with WPMU DEV hosting to identify and quickly tackle any performance issues on your WordPress site.
New Relic is a service that hones in on performance and availability monitoring for WordPress. And one of the best perks about it is — it’s free!
With New Relic, you can immediately comprehend application performance and get a complete overview of your operating environment. It’s all very understandable from a single screen — making it perfect for you and your clients.
Combined with WPMU DEV’s fully dedicated hosting, it’s a winning formula for complete Application Performance Monitoring (APM) across all spectrums of your WordPress site!
This article will have an overview of New Relic and how it incorporates with WPMU DEV hosting.
By the time you read this, you’ll see how New Relic and WPMU DEV can immediately benefit you and your WordPress business by monitoring and tackling any potential issues.
What New Relic Does and a Brief Overview
As I touched on, New Relic helps identify issues with your WordPress’s performance and get a nice glimpse of how smooth everything is operating.
New Relic has a lot of unique features.
In a nutshell, it’s made for Full-Stack Observability, which means it gives you the insight of knowing what’s happening in your digital system, plus why. It’s the entire picture that lets you enable your applications and devices to deliver value to your customers.
This makes it simple, so you don’t have to rack your brain trying to understand your system. New Relic takes the complexity out of it (yippee!).
For the Basic User (free version), you have access to many features, including making custom charts, creating custom dashboards, automatic anomaly detection, running data queries, and enabling alerts.
The free version is excellent in many (or most) circumstances; however, you can always upgrade to activate the additional features. Check out this comparison between free and paid versions to get an idea of what works best for you.
Brief Overview of New Relic APM
We’ll take a look at some of the best features in New Relic APM. This is a quick walk-through of some assets of what’s included and what it can do. Then, we’ll take a look at how to install it with WPMU DEV’s hosting.
There’s a lot to New Relic, so these are just some of the highlights:
The Summary is made to provide you a 360-degree view of your WordPress site’s performance.
Here, you can view Transaction Types between Web (e.g. StatusCode) and Non-Web (PHP). You’ll see data for Response Time, Memcached, and MySQL.
Specify what data you want to display in the dropdowns.
Plus, the number of requests per minute is shown in the Throughput chart.
You can see it’s at 12.6 rpm.
Any errors appear in the Error Rate data. This indicates the ratio of errors to the total number of requests your site processes.
No errors are indicated.
There’s more in the Summary section, such as Apdex Score,Transactions, and Hosts.
The Summary is a great place to get an initial glimpse of your website’s performance and issues.
Service Maps
Service Maps are customizable visual representations of your WordPress site’s architecture. The maps show your app’s connections, plus dependencies. This includes applications, hosts, servers, databases, and more.
They can be accessed via the Explorer tab/Service Map.
You can see what is all connected to the account that I have set up.
These maps help you understand how apps and services in your architecture communicate and connect. Also, you can easily see the operational state of your environment.
If you see issues, you can troubleshoot and see what troubles it’s wreaking havoc on down the line with all of your connections.
With Transactions, you can look in-depth at your Top 5 web transactions, monitoring your web requests. Transactions are defined as one logical unit of work in a software application.
The two foremost transactions that are included are Web and Non-Web. There are also sub-types (e.g. C SDK, Java, and .NET) that can be viewed.
You’re able to code bottlenecks and more that make your site grind to a halt in the Transaction Traces area.
See all of the different graphs for your transactions — all in one place!
Customize this area by setting up custom instrumentation, so you can report additional transactions if you’d like.
More information about Transactions can be found here.
WordPress Plugins and Themes
The WordPress Plugins and Themes tab display how much PHP processing time the active themes and plugins are using. You monitor if a plugin or theme is consuming ample time and then handle the issue accordingly.
Sort from the dropdown:
Most time consuming
Slowest average call time
Function call count
In this example, our Defender plugin is the plugin that is most time-consuming.
There are numerous reasons for a plugin or theme to run a high processing time, everything from needing an update, bad installation, and more. It’s essential to investigate thoroughly before simply removing a plugin or theme, taking the most time.
Databases
There’s a lot to observe from the Databases tab. This area will enable you to identify the database tables and queries that take up the most time. It displays an application’s database and cache data.
You can see what all is taking up the most time on one page.
If any slow queries have been reported, they will be displayed when you select a transaction.
This area has three separate parts:
All-databases overview
Top database operations
Table with all database operations
Filter operations by database vendor, review top database operations, and delete traces.
External Services
With the External Services, you can easily view which external services are consuming an abundance of time. With this information, you can determine if the issue is speed-related or quantity, then resolve the issue.
You can see the Top 5 external services here.
In general, WordPress sites rely on several external services, so it’s important to keep tabs on any issues that occur from any of them.
And There’s More…
Keep in mind that there’s a LOT more to New Relic, including Events, Errors, Alert Conditions… The list goes on and on. Be sure to check out all New Relic features on their website. Or better yet, install it for yourself!
Quick Look at Identifying Performance Issues on Your WordPress Site
There are many ways to identify and take care of performance issues on your WordPress site with New Relic, as I touched on with its overview. Let’s take a look at an example.
For this instance, let’s say you’re checking out how your client’s plugins are performing.
You can see that WooCommerce is the most time-consuming.
As you can see, WooCommerce is taking up the most time in this WordPress ecosystem, followed by RankMath. Then, it’s followed by a lot of addons for WooCommerce.
Consider the options of removing any of these plugins. What plugins are essential? Any that aren’t? Is there anything you can do to help your client’s WordPress site’s performance by removing a plugin? Hmm…
In this case, Query Monitor is running. And it makes sense to disable it.
There’s a big difference between running system-layer benchmarks (e.g. New Relic) and running an application layer, like Query Monitor.
Query Monitor monitors and hooks all calls while WordPress is trying to execute them, so it can add more load time overall since you have to wait for its logging mechanisms to go to work.
Basically, it doesn’t need to be constantly used; therefore, it’s best to disable it.
New Relic features some more examples of identifying and handling performance issues on their blog. It’s worth checking out for another look at how the New Relic system works.
Installing New Relic with WPMU DEV Hosting
Now that you got your feet wet with what all New Relic has to offer, and a glimpse at how to identify and take care of performance issues, here’s how you can quickly and easily get it synced with a hosted site from The Hub.
Keep in mind that you need to host your site with us to use The Hub feature with New Relic. If you’re not hosting with us yet, check out our hosting plans and give us a spin. We have a 30-day money-back guarantee if, for any reason, you’re not happy with our hosting.
Set Up a Free New Relic Account
To get a free New Relic account, you don’t need a credit card or any means of payment put in their system. It’s entirely free unless you want to upgrade at some point.
Once you input your information, you’ll get a notification email, and you can set up a password. That’s it!
We’ll now hop into WPMU DEV’s The Hub and start the process from there, then get back into our New Relic account.
Connect a Site to New Relic From The Hub
Since you’re all set up with a New Relic account, connecting to a website that you have hosted in The Hub is a snap.
First off, go to the site that you want to connect to. The quickest way to access your hosted sites is to click the Hosting tab in the dashboard. That will immediately bring them all up.
You can also access your hosted sites under Sites, then Hosted.
On the site you want to include New Relic on, the green cloud icon will get you to where we need to go.
I named this website ‘New Relic’ — just for example purposes.
That will take you to a new dashboard, where you will click on the Tools button.
Tools is where you want to go.
Once clicking on that, scrolling down will get you to the New Relic Monitoring area. If you don’t have New Relic connected, it will indicate that it’s off.
You’ll need to scroll down quite a bit to get to this section.
Clicking in the Off area will open up a pop-up where you have options to Enable/Disable New Relic, add a License Key, and give it an App Name that will appear in New Relic once connected.
I’ll just name it Nate to keep it simple.
So, how do we go about getting the key? Leave this option open, and we’ll head back into New Relic in a new tab.
Getting the License Key
When logged into your New Relic account, obtaining a license key to add into The Hub and sync your account is just a couple of steps.
Simply go to your icon button in New Relic, that’s located in the upper right corner. When you click on it, it’ll bring up a dropdown that includes API Keys.
There’s a lot more you can do here, but we’ll focus on the API keys for now.
Clicking on API Keys displays all of your API keys. From here, you want to click on one that says LICENSE in it, tap on the ellipsis, and select Copy Key.
Be careful. Depending on how many keys you have set up, it’s easy to copy the wrong key or key ID.
Got the key copied? Great! Let’s move on to…
Activating New Relic in The Hub
The screen that we previously were on (Hosting> Tools> New Relic Monitoring) should be there waiting for you (unless, of course, you closed out that tab).
Simply paste the code where it says License Key and, if you haven’t already, give it a name. Once pasted, you’ll switch the Enable/Disable ON (it’ll turn blue) and click Save.
Name it anything that you’d like.
And now, you’re ready to…
See Your Data in New Relic
It doesn’t take long for data to start being collected in New Relic and appear on a lot of what we covered already (e.g. Transactions).
The App Name that you gave your website should appear in New Relic almost instantly! Go to the Explorer tab and click on APM. Your new account should appear, along with any existing accounts that you already have set up.
You can see the one labeled Nate is already on here in less than a minute.
New Relic will take it from here, letting you know of any performance issues so that you can stay on top of them with ease! They even have mobile app options for Android and iOS.
Out with the Old, In with the New Relic
The old way of looking at your WordPress’s performance, identify and take care of any issues is better than ever. Thanks to New Relic and its easy-to-understand platform, it’s not tough to do.
As you can see, it’s painless and easy to set up, implement, and take advantage of today.
To implement all that we covered in The Hub, be sure to check out our fully dedicated hosting if you’re not hosting sites with us currently.
Enjoy your NEW way of WordPress performance monitoring with New Relic.
Earlier today, Dion Hulse announced the results of a six-week survey on the WordPress.org theme upload process. The goal was to figure out if uploading a ZIP file was a “pain point” and see what other methods theme authors prefer. Then, move forward based on the feedback. In total, 256 people responded to the survey.
Of the weighted results, uploading themes via a ZIP remained the most popular option. Committing via Git or integrating with GitHub came in second and third, respectively. Using SVN or a CLI tool also had support.
The next steps should include allowing theme updates to be submitted via SVN. Trac tickets will also be removed for updates, which the Themes Team no longer reviews. For theme authors who prefer Git, the plan is to encourage the use of a GitHub Action for automatic deployment over SVN.
There are no tickets for implementing the changes yet, but they are forthcoming. Hulse said he is awaiting any feedback on the announcement post or in the Themes Team September 14 meeting.
Nothing was said about the initial theme submission. This will likely remain the same.
The upcoming SVN access will have some limits in comparison to plugins. Updates will be stored via a strict /theme-slug/version scheme with a standardized version format. Theme authors will not be allowed to change any commits once an update is submitted. Like the ZIP upload system, they will need to bump the version number to send a new update. The goal is for the theme repository to merely be a deployment destination and not a place for development.
This should be a welcome change for those who have longed for alternative theme upload methods. As far back as I can remember, theme authors have asked for SVN access to the WordPress.org theme directory. It is a capability that plugin developers have long had. This was before the proliferation of Git and the rising popularity of GitHub. Every so often, themers would begin the discussion anew, but it would always end the same. Uploading a ZIP file was the only way to submit a new theme or an update to an existing one.
Eventually, those discussions included talk of Git. However, it seemed most of the passion for integrating with any version control system (VCS) had waned. Most just lived with the status quo.
This has not necessarily been a bad thing. Uploading a ZIP has kept the process simple. Theme authors could use their preferred VCS (or none) and ship the final product to WordPress.org.
As I viewed the survey and thought it over, I changed positions. Throughout my history as a theme author, I was clearly in the camp calling for VCS integration. I wanted SVN (eventually, GIT) access to my projects in the directory. However, I had long ago customized my development build process to incorporate a ZIP creation step. The extra 30 seconds or so that it took to upload that file via the theme upload form did not seem to matter so much anymore.
Like the plurality of others who responded to the survey, I now prefer uploading a ZIP file. Maybe it is what I am accustomed to, but it would not have been my answer a few years ago. I have come to appreciate the simplicity of the existing system.
However, opening the theme upload process up to other methods should improve things for more people. In particular, I could imagine theme shops incorporating something similar to 10up’s GitHub Action for plugin deployment in their release process. Essentially, the Action automatically sends an update to WordPress.org’s SVN repository when tagging a release.
I am using NixOs as a Development environment that is running on Google Cloud VM. NixOs official Web site does not provide an official GCP image. On the NixOs Wiki page, you can find an article how you can build your GCP NixOs Image that didn’t work well in the past but now seems all build image issue was resolved and now works well. NixOS Wiki page article also provides two GCP storage that you can find outdated GCP VM images that seem not actively maintained anymore.
nixos-images > gs://nixos-images
nixos-cloud-images > gs://nixos-images
In the below "HowTo," we will cover how you can build your images in GCP by using Google Cloud VM and store the images in your Google storage bucket.
Cross-platform mobile development can be significantly more expensive than developing for a single platform. This article will cover five steps to reduce cross-platform mobile app development costs to help you find the right solution for your business. Whether you’re looking to develop a new app or update an existing one, this guide will help you reduce the cost and save time and energy in the process.
Reduce Cross-Platform Mobile Development Costs
There are few industries that can grow as quickly and profitably as the mobile industry. More than 1.4 billion people use smartphones, and this number is likely to increase in the future. The problem with this growth, however, is that it’s expensive. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce cross-platform development costs so you can get ahead of the game.
In real-world applications on production systems; security is a top concern. This security concern is separated into two: Authentication and Authorization. Authentication mainly focuses on who can access to the application and authorization focuses on who can access which resources based on their authorities.
In this article I will share my experience with Spring Security on a demo purpose application of which source code is available on Github. In this project, I used LDAP Authentication method for authentication. For the token generation mechanism, I used a private/public RSA key method. Private key is used for token generation and public key is used for token validation.
Once you have your system up and running in a purely declarative way, the next step is to manage your personal configuration files located in $HOME /home folder. NixOs does not have any native implementation to manage user’s $HOME configuration folders and files. Few projects stepped in to help and manage users specific environments, and the most successful one is in Home Manager.
TLDR; Choosing the Right Mode for DynamoDB Scaling
Making sense of the multitude of scaling options available for DynamoDB can be quite confusing, but running a short checklist with a calculator can go a long way to help.
Follow the flowchart below to decide which mode to use.
If you have historical data of your database load (or an estimate of load pattern), create a histogram or a percentile curve of the load (aggregate on hours used) – this is the easiest way to observe how many reserved units to pre-purchase. As a rule of thumb purchase reservations for units used over 32% of the time when accounting for partial usage and 46% of the time when not accounting for partial usage.
When in doubt, opt for static provisioning unless your top priority is avoiding being out of capacity – even at extreme costs.
Configure scaling limits (both upper and lower) for provisioned autoscaling. You want to avoid out-of-capacity during outages and extreme costs in case of rogue overload (DDOS anyone?)
Remember that there is no upper limit on DynamoDB on-demand billing other than the table’s scaling limit (which you may have requested raising for performance reasons). Make sure to configure billing alerts and respond quickly when they fire.
The Long Version: Configuring DynamoDB Tables
Before we dive in, it’s useful to be reminded of DynamoDB different service models and their scaling characteristics: DynamoDB tables can be configured to be either “provisioned capacity” or “on-demand”, and there’s a cooldown period of 24 hours before you can change again.
I am slightly hesitant to write this post, as it might attract some criticism. Nevertheless, I told myself there is nothing wrong with sharing my point of view (even though it might not be well accepted). I would like to share my personal experience regarding yesterday’s Monolithic and today’s Microservice architecture in this post.
Yesterday’s Monolithic Application
20 years back, I was starting my career. At that point, I was working for a large financial corporation in N. America. This financial institution’s middleware platform was running in CORBA, C++ platform. Since CORBA was getting extinct around that time, the technology vendor decided not to support CORBA anymore. It was a huge risk for the enterprise to run its mission-critical middleware platform on unsupported technology. Thus, management decided to port their middleware application to platform-independent technology stack: "SOAP" and "Java," which was considered as the cool kid of the time.
The testing that is done to verify the interface functionality is called Interface testing. It is also defined as a software testing type that verifies whether the communication between two different software systems is done correctly.
Zoom has announced updates to the Zoom Developer Platform that the company intends to streamline innovation on the platform. These updates include a new app builder, a new CLI, and React Native support for the company’s Video SDK.
Zoom’s new app builder, which has been named Jumpstart, is designed to assist developers with implementation where only basic modifications are needed. The company outlined the application development workflow using Jumpstart:
My software development career began about 17 years ago. But only in about the last seven years did I really start to see a large boost in my software development career.
In this post, I'll share some of the things I wish I had known when I got started in the software development industry — things that would have made me more successful, much earlier, if I would have known them.
Current events have brought an even stronger push by many enterprises to scale operations across cloud-native and distributed environments. To survive and thrive, companies must now seriously look at cloud-native technologies—such as API management and integration solutions, cloud-native products, integration platform as a service (iPaaS), and low-code platforms—that are easy to use, accelerate time to market, and enable re-use and sharing. However, due to their distributed nature, these cloud-native applications have a higher level of management complexity, which increases as they scale.
Building observability into applications allows teams to automatically collect and analyze data about applications. Such analysis allows us to optimize applications and resolve issues before they impact users. Furthermore, it significantly reduces the debugging time of issues that occur in applications at runtime. This allows developers to focus more on productive tasks, such as implementing high-impact features.
Data is ubiquitous. Shiny from R Studio helps to build interactive web applications from R. But, performance testing is a little tricky. If you sniff the traffic, you don't get any network data. If you are working on Shiny apps performance testing, then this blog article is for you. This blog article explains load testing shiny apps using shinyloadtest package.
What Is Shiny?
Shiny is an R package that makes it easy to build interactive web apps straight from R. You can host standalone apps on a webpage or embed them in R Markdown documents or build dashboards. You can also extend your Shiny apps with CSS themes, htmlwidgets, and JavaScript actions.
Azure Service Bus is the cloud messaging service offered by Microsoft Azure. Azure Service Bus is mainly used in multi-tenant architectures which need messages to be transferred securely between different services.
Azure Service Bus gives a FIFO message model and a publish/subscribe to messaging model, queues for one-to-one asynchronous message processing, as well as topic and subscriptions for multiple subscribers.
This video talks about an end-to-end flow, wherein an email content having a specific subject line will be read, the email body would be analyzed using Azure Cognitive Services (Sentiment analysis), analysis results would be saved in Azure Table Storage and finally, the chart would be drawn in Excel. All these steps include no coding at all.
Online shopping is becoming the prominent sales channel in the retail industry, even for the ones who are traditional with a brick-and-mortar history. This necessitates that the website provides the best in class user experience to the customers. User experience is not only about the layout and eye-catchiness of the website, but the responsiveness, optimally with sub-millisecond responses. Recent surveys indicate that 9 out of 10 users have responded that they will abandon a website if it is not responsive.
One of the major challenges for achieving great responsiveness is the bottleneck introduced by the data layer. It becomes very challenging to design the persistence storage layer to provide the required response performance. A proven way to enhance the data layer responsiveness is to introduce a caching layer on top of the persistence storage. Redis is the industry-leading enterprise-grade caching provider with great performance and scalability.
As a certified dog groomer, you might choose to do more with your talents than work for a grooming company or pet store.
In fact, you might want to start a dog grooming business of your own!
Starting a dog grooming business comes with the challenges that any business faces, but the initial setup can be the most confusing.
After that, you can tailor your company to your needs and create the life and business you’ve always dreamed of.
This guide breaks down the process of starting a dog grooming business, step by step, to get you on the way to becoming a successful business owner.
The Easy Parts of Starting a Dog Grooming Business
If you plan to start a dog grooming business, you’re likely already an excellent dog groomer—and that’s half the battle! You already know what you’re doing and how to make dog parents happy. And when you make dog owners happy, it’s easy to get referrals from your loyal customers to gain new business.
You should find that getting your business off the ground isn’t too challenging if you’re in a non-competitive area, as there’s always a need for a qualified dog groomer wherever there are dogs around.
Additionally, most states do not currently require a dog groomer to have professional training and licensing for them to run their business. Although certification and licensing can help set you apart, not having them usually won’t stop you from becoming a business-owning dog groomer, which can cut down on the time it takes you to get started. It’s more important to have experience as a dog groomer that gives you the skills you need to produce happy clients.
When it comes to managing your business, software like Gingr can make things much easier. The pet business software takes care of appointment booking, payment processing, pet report cards, and other aspects of a dog grooming business that take time away from your services. Groomers can take advantage of Gingr’s features for as low as $80 per month.
The Difficult Parts of Starting a Dog Grooming Business
Dog groomers can start small and grow their businesses as they gain new clients. Still, even small businesses aren’t all smooth sailing. You might face a few obstacles along the way, and understanding what they are now can help you prepare for them during the process.
As I mentioned, dog groomers don’t always need to have professional licenses. However, they do need business licenses through their state and, possibly, their locality. Business licenses come with additional fees and paperwork that you’ll need to have in place before beginning business operations.
Another challenge is the extensive startup costs that can go into this business. Dog groomers use a lot of equipment that can quickly add up, like bathtubs, grooming tables, crates, and possibly even a dedicated vehicle. Without a financial nest egg to get off the ground, you might find yourself in significant debt as you get moving.
Additionally, groomers need insurance to protect their business and their clients, and plans can be costly. However, liability insurance is non-negotiable, as it covers your business if a dog gets injured or lost while in your care. It can also protect your business if a customer or employee gets bitten or injured by an aggressive or anxious dog. Add to that property insurance to cover damage from dogs, nature, or accidents, and the expenses add up fast.
It’s in your best interest to check with your state about the required insurance for your business. An insurance agent can help you with this. But, consider going over bare minimums if you can afford it. Your plan should offer ample protection for your customers and business.
Finally, you might have difficulty finding trustworthy and skilled employees for your team. Not everyone can be a groomer, and not all excellent groomers have people skills that cater to your customer service needs. It’s a delicate balance to find the right people to fit your team.
You might try recruiting software to save time posting jobs and screening applicants. You can start with Recooty for free for one open job slot and posting to multiple job boards, scaling up to the $49/month plan as you grow.
Step 1: Plan Your Business
Planning is, quite possibly, the most important step you’ll take when launching a business, as it sets the tone for everything your business does now and in the future. Here’s what you need to do before getting those adorable pups through your door.
Get Certified
Getting a license or certification isn’t always required for dog groomers to start taking clients. However, it certainly doesn’t hurt, especially from a business standpoint. Think about it: Would you rather your dog visit someone who completed a grooming certification program or a person with no credentials to their name who says they can groom dogs?
The first option is who you’d probably pick. Your customers will also prefer their dog’s groomer to be able to prove their expertise, and certification can help. Certification is especially crucial if you plan to specialize in specific services, like grooming for dog shows, or breeds, like curly-haired dogs.
The National Dog Groomers Association of America (NDGAA) sets the standard in this area with workshops and a certification program that’s recognized across the country. Members can also benefit from professional liability insurance, discount programs, and tax and legal assistance.
Identify Your Clients
What type of clients are you interested in bringing on board?
Some groomers are open to grooming all kinds of dogs, while others prefer to specialize in small breeds, large breeds, or show dogs. Mobile pet groomers cater to owners who cannot leave their homes or work varied schedules outside of traditional business hours. Dog salons tend to be for high-end clients willing to pay big bucks to have their pooch pampered.
Figure out your niche now so you can more easily target your ideal clients once you’re ready to open.
Nail Down Services and Pricing
Generally, dog groomers offer bathing, flea and tick removal, nail trims, and haircuts. Some groomers add more off-beat services that dog owners look for, like de-matting, hair styling, teeth brushing, and winter coat stripping.
First, consider what you know how to do best. Start with those services that show off your skills and keep customers happy. You can always expand what you offer later as you learn more or add new team members and have a larger client base with a need for those services.
Once you determine your services, start to explore pricing. Check competing dog groomers in and around your service area to understand what going rates are. Remember to consider your target clients; those looking for monthly trims aren’t going to be willing to pay the same rates as customers interested in high-end, spa-quality grooming.
Find a Location
Dog groomers have several location options to consider, each of which can play a role in their monthly expenses and how many clients they can handle at a time.
While mobile grooming vans are affordable, easy to get started with, and convenient for customers, they usually can only hold 2-3 dogs at a time. Other affordable but potentially size-restrictive options include running your business in a salon rental space or from your home.
Renting space in a shopping or strip mall could offer more room but will also be costlier. The priciest option is buying your own space, but it can also provide long-term security and a bit more control over how you run your business.
Speak with a realtor in your area that specializes in commercial properties to help you in your search.
Step 2: Set Up Business Software
From scheduling appointments to accepting payments, a lot more goes into a dog grooming business than simply grooming dogs. Business software specifically designed for pet-focused businesses can streamline all the extra tasks on your plate to give you more time to make money doing what you do best.
Sign Up for Gingr
Gingr is a full-service software for pet businesses, like dog groomers. Groomers can use the software to set their schedules, allow online customer booking, and accept payments, including tips. Dog parents can even receive a pet report card detailing everything you did for their pup during their stay.
Gingr takes care of the business side of things, too. Manage your employees’ schedules, track inventory with Gingr’s retail management features, and take advantage of automated pricing that keeps invoicing simple.
Choose the Right Plan
Dog groomers can choose from three Gingr plans starting at $80/month when paid annually. For most groomers, the lowest-tier plan, Pet Spa/Train, should do the trick. It features an online portal, automated email and SMS reminders for customers, card payments, an employee time clock, and appointment scheduling.
The only time you’d need to opt for a different plan is if you plan to offer dog daycare or boarding services in addition to your grooming services. These plans add prepaid daycare packages for customers to book and a lodging calendar to view your clients’ reservations at a glance.
Step 3: Legally Set Up Your Business
Your grooming business now has a plan in place to welcome furry clients. But before you do, there are a few legalities to get situated.
Choose a Business Structure
A business structure details how a business will operate. Some entities are straightforward to set up, while others require more paperwork and planning. Your options as a dog groomer include:
Sole proprietorship: This is the simplest business setup. As a sole proprietor, you can file your business and personal taxes together using tax form Schedule C, and you won’t need to file your business with the state. However, you’ll also be personally responsible for any business debts you incur, and it can be challenging to get loans or credit lines for your business.
Partnership: This is similar to a sole proprietorship but with another partner who shares the business responsibilities. You and your partner will both be responsible for any business debts and taxes.
Limited liability company (LLC): LLCs must file their business with the state. However, the process in most states is simple and affordable. An LLC separates business from personal liability, meaning that if your company gets sued or incurs debts, you won’t personally be held responsible for any monetary connection. LLCs can still file their taxes with their personal tax return.
Corporation: There are two types of corporations: S corporation and C corporation. Corporation business owners do not get held personally responsible for business debts, but these business structures are more complicated to set up. With a C corporation, you’ll typically qualify for more tax deductions. However, they can be costly to set up, and business owners must file business taxes separately from personal. An S corporation allows Schedule C filing, making it a potentially simpler entity than a C corporation for dog groomers.
It’s important to check with an experienced business attorney before choosing your business entity. They can guide you on the best option for your business, along with ensuring that you meet any local regulations.
Get Accounting in Order
Keeping personal and business finances separate is ideal when tax time rolls around. Your grooming business should have a separate business bank account for accepting payments and purchasing things for your business. BlueVine is excellent for brand-new small businesses, as it has no monthly fees and no minimum deposits.
Speaking of tax time, consider hiring an accountant as soon as possible. An accountant experienced in business taxes can help you navigate tax breaks, sales tax, and other necessary financial aspects of running a business.
Get Pet Groomer Insurance
Insurance is more of a necessity than an option for pet groomers. Most states will require you to have, at minimum, liability insurance for your business. This covers most accidents that can occur at your business, such as a dog biting you or a customer slipping on the floor.
If you plan to have employees, you’ll also need workers’ compensation, which protects employees that suffer from an injury or illness at work. Property insurance is also important to consider, as it covers weather events, theft, and other uncommon occurrences that could affect your business location long-term.
Step 4: Set Up Shop
With a legal business now ready to go, you can transition to setting up your grooming spot with all the essentials.
Purchase Grooming Tools and Equipment
Getting your grooming business off the ground is more important than packing it full of everything you might not need right away. Instead, start small. Depending on your location size, you might start with just two grooming tables and one bathtub, for example. You can always scale later; right now, it’s about having the essentials to begin bringing in customers.
As a dog groomer, the following tools and equipment are just some of what you might need to get started:
Shop-cleaning supplies
Bathtubs
Grooming tables
Dog crates
Shears, clippers, brushes, and combs
Shampoo and conditioner
Scented sprays
Towels
Fur dryers
Nail clippers
Gloves
Dog treats
Bandanas and bows
Ear and teeth cleaning products
Table and chairs for the break room
Seating for the waiting area
Pricing board
Set Up a Phone System
Having a phone at your location is essential for customer communication. Many groomers call customers when their furry friends are ready to get picked up. And, even if you have business software like Gingr in place for booking, many customers will still prefer to call for booking or changing appointments or to ask questions about your pricing or services.
Ooma Office is one of the most affordable phone systems for small businesses, but other office phone systems might also be good options for you.
Consider Payment Types
Although accepting cash is the easiest way to take payments, it’s probably not the best long-term solution for your business. Some customers will prefer to make credit and debit card payments for services or even pay through an app. Gingr can make your payment processing easier with contactless payments, automatic subscriptions, and more.
Every payment your customers make through the Gingr system will be recorded right in their accounts for their convenience, too. Payment processing is available on any Gingr plan.
Step 5: Market Your Business
To start getting customers through the door, you’ll need to market your business and continue promoting it to scale your grooming company.
Promote Your Business Locally
For your initial influx of customers, it might be best to start local. Tap into local advertising sources, like radio, newspaper, or mail adverts. You can also set yourself up with social media accounts, like Facebook and YouTube, for people in your area to learn more about you and share your posts with their friends.
Also, add your grooming business to local directories. Google My Business is one of the best, allowing people searching for a groomer in your area to find you easily. You can also try Foursquare, Yahoo! Local, and Yelp.
Finally, consider partnering with other local companies for cross-promotions. For instance, you might ask your local vet clinic if you can offer each other’s business cards to customers. Or, leave flyers that give the clinic’s dog owners a 10% discount on their first appointment at your shop.
Launch a Website
Make a presence for your grooming business online with a website. It doesn’t need to be complicated, but it should provide your basic information, like contact and pricing details.
Adding a blog to your website can also drive traffic to your business page through search engine optimization (SEO). WordPress, Squarespace, and Wix are among the best website builders for people without website design experience who want to get their site and blog up and running quickly.
Get Repeat Customers
Making the customer experience as simple as possible is one of the best ways to ensure that they return to you. Using Gingr can help you do that with simple booking, service subscriptions, and automated notifications and reminders.
Leverage your current customer base by asking for referrals, too. When a customer sends someone new your way, you can offer special pricing on their first appointment or a free service, like nail trims, to encourage them to come. For your current customer, provide an enticing incentive, like 25% off their next appointment, to thank them for their referral.
