DevConf.US 2021 the 4th annual, free, Red Hat sponsored technology conference for community project and professional contributors to Free and Open Source technologies was a few weeks ago.
It was a lot of fun to share some of the below workshop experiences with the attendees virtually. Some of the fun I will share here as, believe it or not, I hosted the workshop online from the lovely island of Rhodes, Greece.
DIY DevOps, CI, and CD with GitHub, Docker and a VPS
I clearly remember my first Azure invoice. It was for a simple web app and a tiny MySQL server. Not particularly scaled either, just simple stuff. In fact, not only do I remember the invoice, I still have PTSS because of it, and if I my memory still serves me well, I think I said something roughly resembling the following as I got my invoice ...
$%^£#€@*&$^%£*I£@&$^%*^(%$&@£^@ ...!!!!!!!!!
Menu and Thumbnail Stack Animation
Today I’d like to share a little menu animation with you. It’s just a simple proof-of-concept to explore how to animate a vertical image stack into a horizontal one. This is incorporated in a menu that also expands its items letter by letter to add some interesting motion.
The initial view is the menu and when we hover an item, the vertical stack appears in the back of the menu with a glitch animation. It changes depending on the current item hovered:
When we click on an item, the letters and the decorative circle expand while the thumbnails of the stack rearrange from a column into a row of images:
The whole motion in action:
I hope you like this demo and find it inspirational!
The post Menu and Thumbnail Stack Animation appeared first on Codrops.
Welcome Easy Digital Downloads, WP Simple Pay, AffiliateWP, and More to the WPBeginner Family of Products
Today, I’m extremely excited to share that all Sandhills Development products are joining Awesome Motive, and they’re now part of the WPBeginner family of products.
This includes several popular WordPress plugins including Easy Digital Downloads, AffiliateWP, WP Simple Pay, Sugar Calendar, and many more.
These brands are very close to my heart because when I first started selling premium plugins in 2013, we used Easy Digital Downloads, and we still use EDD to power our eCommerce.
This is one of those rare life moments where things have come full circle, and I honestly feel like I’m living in a dream.
Introduction – Quick Overview of the Plugins
Unlike our other investments, this is an acquisition of a large portfolio of plugins, so I’ll give a quick overview of what each of them do.
Easy Digital Downloads makes it easy for you to sell digital products online such as eBooks, digital art, premium software, and just about any type of digital files.
We use EDD to manage and sell our popular premium plugins because it makes it easy for us to collect recurring subscription payments on our website, manage software licensing, protect premium file access (so only members can access it), and more.
AffiliateWP is the leading affiliate management software for WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, MemberPress, and other popular WordPress platforms. Simply put, it makes it easy for you to launch an affiliate program for your online store.
WP Simple Pay is a Stripe payment plugin that makes it easy for you to accept one-time or recurring payments on your website without setting up a shopping cart. It comes with a payment form builder and all the tools for you to securely accept payments on your site.
Sugar Calendar is a simple events calendar plugin for WordPress. It makes it easy to do event management, ticketing, and everything you need to manage / run an event. It also seamlessly integrates with WooCommerce, Stripe, and other solutions so you can sell event tickets and accept payments on your site.
Aside from that, as part of this deal, we’re also acquiring several free open source plugins such as the popular Transients Manager plugin that’s very helpful in debugging WordPress errors.
And most importantly, the entire team is also joining Awesome Motive, and we’re extremely excited because there are so many talented individuals that I have always admired for years who I’ll now get to work with on a daily basis.
Background Story
In 2013, when I launched OptinMonster, I needed a solution that made it easy for me to sell the premium plugin (digital download), restrict access & updates to only paying members, and most importantly accept recurring payments.
We ended up using Easy Digital Downloads because it helped us do all of that and more.
As we built more premium plugins like MonsterInsights, WPForms, etc they all used EDD.
Even the popular WordPress plugins we later acquired / invested in through the WPBeginner Growth Fund like Smash Balloon, SearchWP, Uncanny Automator, Formidable Forms, etc all used Easy Digital Downloads.
I can easily say that after WordPress, Easy Digital Downloads has a single largest impact on my online success.
This is why it has always had a special place in my heart.
Over the years, I became good friends with EDD / Sandhills Development founder, Pippin Williamson.
We first talked about joining forces back in 2015, but the timing wasn’t right.
After our acquisition of SearchWP in July, Pippin reached out, and we restarted the conversation.
After a few calls, we agreed that Awesome Motive will be the perfect home for Easy Digital Downloads and other Sandhills products given our vast experience in the WordPress industry.
I’m truly honored to have this opportunity to serve over 100,000+ users who use Sandhills Products to grow their online business.
What’s Coming Next?
Our work is just starting.
We will be leveraging the scale and knowledge of the Awesome Motive team to build more innovative solutions to help you grow your online business.
We have built a lot of internal tools to grow our eCommerce / digital product business that I’m really looking forward to sharing with the WordPress community.
We will be combining my vision + the vast knowledge of the Sandhills team to bring even more powerful features to you.
If you have suggestions on features you’d like to see in EDD, AffiliateWP, WP Simple Pay, or any of Sandhills plugin, then please let us know by sending us a message via WPBeginner contact form.
As always, I want to thank you for your continued support of WPBeginner. We look forward to bringing you more amazing solutions to help you grow your business.
Yours Truly,
Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner
P.S. Want to join our team and work alongside me in helping small businesses grow and compete with the big guys? We’re hiring.
We’re a fully remote team of over 200+ amazingly talented team members across 36 countries.
The post Welcome Easy Digital Downloads, WP Simple Pay, AffiliateWP, and More to the WPBeginner Family of Products appeared first on WPBeginner.
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6 Best JavaScript Frameworks to Use In 2021
JavaScript (JS) is a dynamic web programming language that can update and alter both CSS and HTML. It conforms to the ECMAScript specifications and is used to manipulate, validate, and control data. JavaScript frameworks are basically tools that make it easy to work with JavaScript. They provide developers with pre-built templates that make common programming patterns reusable. This saves developers time when it comes to writing code for every new application.
How to Choose the Best JavaScript Framework for Your Team
Figuring out the best JavaScript Framework to use can be a bit daunting since there’s so many to choose from. However, to get you started, here are some factors that you should keep in mind.
- Backend compatibility: For your JavaScript Framework to work effectively, you must use a back-end that supports it.
- Level of complexity: Pick a framework that can handle the complexities of your apps and websites like a pro. Using lighter frameworks for complex apps might result in a number of problems in the long run.
- Size and performance: This goes hand in hand with the type of system you’re building. The more complex the app the bigger the framework and vice versa. Remember balance is key!
- Familiarity: If your team is familiar with a particular framework, be sure to stick to it. Some of the most common are angular, react and vue. These frameworks can be adjusted depending on what your desired outcome is.
Here’s a list of the top 6 best JavaScript frameworks to use in 2021.
React
React is an open-source framework that was created in 2013 by Facebook. It quickly gained popularity among e-commerce website developers because of its dynamic user interface that can withstand high traffic.
Some of its key features include:
- It is made up of a number of components that can be used more than once.
- It uses componentDidMount and render to enhance code execution at some points.
- It’s rendering boosts app performance while saving the developer from more work in recalculating page layout.
Pros
- It’s relatively smaller in size.
- Easy to learn and use.
- Promotes performance enhancement.
Cons
- You have to use it with other frameworks.
- Has constant upgrades.
Angular
Angular is a powerful, efficient, and open-source JavaScript framework. This type of framework is not recommended for beginners and needs a deeper understanding of JavaScript. Global companies like Forbes and Google use this platform.
Some of its key features include:
- High cross-platform performance.
- Offers feedback options and quick error detections.
- Offers an advanced form of API.
- Offers a number of in-built services.
Pros
- Has the capacity to separate data and view.
- All changes are quickly displayed in view.
- Perfect integration between model and view.
Cons
- The framework is more complex for beginners.
- Requires the developer to learn Model View Controller (MVC).
Ember.js
Ember.js was first introduced to the market in 2015. Popular sites like LinkedIn, Yahoo, and Netflix use this platform.
Examples of popular tools that integrate with Ember.js are Node.js, Semantic UI, and Bootstrap.
Some of its key features include:
- It’s reusable and easy to maintain.
- Can be used in large teams.
- Has more than 1500 add-ons.
- Offers CSS and HTML development models.
- Has tools for debugging applications.
Pros
- Has client-rendering services.
- A great URL support.
Cons
- Not as fast as other frameworks.
- Complicated to learn.
Polymer
Polymer is a popular open-source JavaScript library that was created by Google developers and contributors on GitHub. Polymer helps you create custom elements or HTML tags as per your requirements. Apps like Google Maps and Youtube are built with Polymer.
Some of its key features include:
- Supports new web standards and open-web technologies.
- Onboarding is faster.
- Supports DOM and shadow.
- It’s the best JavaScript when it comes to progressive web apps.
- Used for creation of reusable widgets in web applications and documents.
- Has polyfills that allow creation of re-usable and customized elements.
Pros
- Developers can create customized elements using HTML, CSS, and JSS.
- Connecting to third-party libraries is quick and easy for developers building applications.
- Polymers allow both one-way and two-way data binding.
- Easy onboarding.
Cons
- Low performance on mobile platforms.
- Difficulty in handling large scale applications.
Node.JS
Node.js framework is a platform that developers use to enhance back-end development. Node works well across platforms and is open-source. It shows JAVA’s properties like packaging, looping and threading using the JavaScript Runtime environment.
The framework is mostly used in industries like IT and healthcare.
Some of its key features include:
- It’s fast when it comes to code execution because it is built on the V8 Javascript engine of Google Chrome.
- It does not buffer any data.
- It is open source.
- It is highly scalable.
- Follows a single thread mode.
- Has been licensed under MIT.
Pros
- Easy to learn.
- Offers high performance.
- Supports a large and active community.
- Offers freedom to develop apps and software.
- Offers extended support for commonly used tools.
Cons
- Lacks a strong library support system.
- The Application Programming Interface (API) keeps on changing at frequent levels.
Vue.js
The Vue.js framework is known to create strong Single Page Applications (SPAs). It’s commonly used in developing apps that work well across platforms.
Some of its key features include:
- It’s simple design makes it easy to understand and use.
- Has in-built components that help with animations and transitions.
- Has a data binding feature that allows it to manipulate HTML attributes.
- Has a virtual Document Object Model (DOM) that’s cost effective.
Pros
- Flexible and can be easily manipulated.
- It’s relatively smaller in size.
- Easy to integrate.
Cons
- Not recommended for extensive scaling.
- Doesn’t have essential plugins.
- Language barriers.
Conclusion
To find the best JavaScript frameworks to work with, it’s important that you know exactly what you’re looking for. This requires taking into consideration the capabilities of your team and desired functions of your app or website. JavaScript frameworks make work easier for developers and promote productivity.