Several years ago, pre-COVID, I wrote the article Developers are the New Kingmakers. Today, companies see the value of developers as being even greater.
Since the pandemic began, we've seen a renewed focus on digital transformation. Companies and industries are transforming two to three times faster than they were prior to COVID. Businesses have moved online and become more data-driven than ever before. This has created a demand for application development and data analytics skills.
If you’re building a microservice-backed application, a key benefit is separating the concerns of your application across individual microservices, each with its own ability to scale and encapsulate different functionality. The frontend—ostensibly a single-page application running in your user’s browser—will need access to the microservices that make up your web application. Each service could be directly accessible to the public web, but that adds security concerns.
An API gateway, however, allows for a centralized layer to handle concerns like authentication, traffic monitoring, or request and response transformations. API gateways are also a great way to leverage rate limiting and caching to improve the resilience and performance of your application.
Two types of widespread architecture exist in the market - Monolithic architecture and microservices architecture. While the latter is getting widespread recognition in the IT industry, does that mean you should jump into microservices architecture adoption? Is it the right solution for your business? This article will help you understand the core concepts of both the architecture to make an informed decision regarding the choice of architecture for your business.
What Is Monolithic Architecture?
Monolithic architecture puts all the functionalities of the software into a single codebase. The codebase, usually, is internally divided into layers, namely the presentation layer, business logic layer, and database layer. This codebase, consisting of layers, is deployed as a single jar/war file.
Its enforcement since 2018 led to varying effects in countries outside the EU, inspiring new data privacy laws around the world. Commercially speaking, it has become a trading measure for countries to do business with the EU. Especially if they want to get a piece of the EU’s data processing market, or want to sell to European residents, they will have to follow and comply with the rules and regulations set forth by the GDPR. Some countries incorporated GDPR’s provisions into their existing privacy laws, while others have enacted nationwide GDPR-like legislations.
The goal behind the Agile Development process is to facilitate the rapid delivery of software through an iterative process.
But development teams adopting the Agile development approach often find themselves shifting back to conventional software development practices due to the inappropriate distribution of roles and responsibilities in an Agile environment.
Apple recently announced changes to the way that it would evaluate inclusions in its App Store for potential removal based on outdated technology. This announcement led to confusion in the developer community and the company has published a clarifying statement intended to make expectations more clear.
I'm a digital marketer by profession. I've recently started a coupon website and I'm struggling to increase it's traffic and DA. I think it's because of the nature of website. I'm using SEO and guest posting as my main source of growth right now but people are asking way too much money for accepting guest posts. Any kind of help is appreciated.Thanks.
Do you want to add next / previous links in WordPress?
Next and previous links are dynamic links that allow users to view the next or previous post.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily add next/previous links in WordPress and how to make the most out of them.
What Are Next / Previous Links in WordPress?
Next / Previous links are dynamic links added by a WordPress theme that allow users to easily navigate to the next or the previous post. This can help to increase pageviews and reduce your bounce rate.
By default, WordPress blog posts are displayed in a reverse chronological order (newer posts first).
This means the next post is the one published after the current post a user is viewing, and the previous post is the one that was published before the current post.
The next/previous links allow users to easily navigate individual articles and blog archive pages. It also helps you get more pageviews for your blog.
Most WordPress themes come with built-in next and previous posts links which are automatically displayed at the bottom of each post. However, some themes don’t display them, or you may want to customize where and how they appear on your WordPress website.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily add next and previous links in WordPress.
Following is the list of topics we’ll cover in this article.
Upon activation, you need to visit the Settings » CBX Next Previous page. From here, you can choose where you want to show the next and previous links on your website.
The plugin allows you to show Next and Previous link arrows on single posts, pages, archive pages, and more.
To make your next and previous links more relevant, you can also choose to display the next and previous posts from the same category or tag.
The free version of the plugin only allows you to display arrows for next and previous articles. You can upgrade to pro version to unlock other display options such as slide-in popup.
If you choose to display next / previous posts from same taxonomy, then you need to switch to the Navigate by Taxonomy tab.
From here, you need to choose which taxonomy you want to use to select next and previous links.
Optionally, the plugin also allows you to track clicks using Google Analytics. To use this feature, you’ll need to first install Google Analytics in WordPress.
After that, switch to the Google Analytics tab in plugin settings and enable click tracking options.
Once you are finished, don’t forget to click on the Save Settings button to store your changes.
You can now visit your WordPress website to see the next/previous links in action.
This method is easier but it does not give you much flexibility. For instance, the free version doesn’t display the next or previous post title.
If you need more flexibility, then continue reading.
Adding Next / Previous Links to a WordPress Theme
For this method, you’ll need to edit your WordPress theme files. If you haven’t done this before, then take a look at our guide on how to copy and paste code in WordPress.
Next, you’ll need to connect to your WordPress website using an FTP client or by using the File Manager app in your WordPress hosting control panel.
Once you are connected, you need to navigate to the /wp-content/themes/your-current-theme/ folder.
Now, you’ll need to locate the single.php file. This is the file responsible for displaying the single post items on your website.
Some WordPress themes may reference other files inside single.php file. These files are called template parts and are located inside the template-parts folder of your WordPress theme.
After that, simply copy and paste the following code at the location in the template file where you want to display the next and previous links.
<?php the_post_navigation(); ?>
You can now save your changes and visit your website to see Next / Previous links in action.
The above template tag will simply show the link to next and previous posts with post title as the anchor text. It doesn’t say that these are the links to the next and previous articles.
Let’s change this a bit and provide users some context about these links. We’ll do this by adding the available parameters for the the_post_navigation template tag.
This code tells WordPress to display next and previous posts in the same category. You can change taxonomy parameter to tags or any other custom taxonomy if needed.
Styling Next / Previous Links in WordPress
Now that we have learned how to add Next / Previous links in WordPress, let’s take a look at how to style them properly.
By default, WordPress automatically adds several default CSS classes to the post navigation links. You can use these CSS classes in your WordPress theme to style these links.
Here is some basic CSS that you can add to your theme.
If you are using a child theme, then you need to duplicate this particular template in your child theme and then delete the lines used to display next or previous links.
If you would rather just delete it in your parent theme, then you can do that as well.
Deleting the code will stop WordPress from displaying next and previous links.
Method 2. Hide The Next and Previous Posts Links
This method doesn’t really remove the next and previous links. Instead, it just makes them invisible to human readers.
Simply add the following Custom CSS to your WordPress theme.
nav.navigation.post-navigation {
display: none;
}
Don’t forget to save your changes and visit your website to see the navigation links disappear.
SVGs have become more and more popular in the past few years. For good reasons. They are scalable, flexible, and, most importantly, lightweight. And, well, they have even more to offer than you might think. We came across some magical SVG techniques recently that we’d love to share with you. From SVG grids and fractional SVG stars to SVG masks, fancy grainy SVG gradients, and handy SVG tools. We hope you’ll find something useful in here.
By the way, a while ago, we also looked at SVG Generators — for everything from shapes and backgrounds to SVG path visualizers, cropping tools, and SVG → JSX generators. If you’re tinkering with SVG, these might come in handy, too.
Generative SVG Grids
Generative art is a wonderful opportunity for everyone who would love to create art but feels more at home in code. Let’s say you want to create geometric patterns, for example. Generative art will take away the difficult decisions from you: What shapes do I use? Where do I put them? And what colors should I use? If you want to give it a try, Alex Trost wrote a tutorial on creating generative art with SVG grids that is bound to tickle your creativity — and teach you more about SVG.
The generative art that Alex creates is a grid of blocks with a random number of rows and columns. Each block has a randomly chosen design and colors from a shared color palette. Alex takes you step by step through the process of coding this piece: from setting up the grid and creating isolated functions to draw SVGs to working with color palettes, adding animations, and more. A fun little project — not only if you’re new to generative art and creative coding.
Generative Landscape Rolls
An awe-inspiring project that bridges the gap between a century-old tradition and state-of-the-art coding is {Shan, Shui}. Created by Lingdong Huan and inspired by traditional Chinese landscape rolls, it creates procedurally generated, infinitely-scrolling Chinese landscapes in SVG format. The mountains and trees in the landscape are modeled from scratch using noise and mathematical functions. Fascinating!
Now, if you’re asking yourself how something as complex might work, you’re not alone. Victor Shepelev wanted to get behind the secret of {Shan, Shui}* and made it his advent project to understand how it works. And, indeed, it took him 24 days to fully dig into the code. He summarized his findings in a series of articles.
SVG Paths With Masks
SVGs have a lot of benefits compared to raster images. They are small in size, scalable, animatable, they can be edited with code, and a lot more. You can’t get the textured feel that raster graphics can provide, though. However, we can combine the strengths of vector and raster to create some charming effects. Like Tom Miller did in his Silkscreen Squiggles demo.
Silkscreen Squiggles is an animation where squiggles fill a rectangular canvas. What makes the squiggles special is that they appear to have a paintbrush texture. The secret: a mask with an alpha layer that gives the simple squiggly paths their texture. Alex Trost dissects how it works. Inspiring!
Grainy Gradients
Noise is a simple technique to add texture to an image and make otherwise solid colors or smooth gradients more realistic. But despite designer’s affinity for texture, noise is rarely used in web design. Jimmy Chion explores how we can add texture to a gradient with only a small amount of CSS and SVG.
The trick is to use an SVG filter to create the noise, then apply that noise as a background. Layer it underneath your gradient, boost the brightness and contrast, and that’s already it. Potential use cases could be light and shadows or holographic foil effects, for example. The core of this technique is supported by all modern browsers. A clever visual effect to add depth and texture to a design.
Adding Texture And Depth
“Analog” materials like paint and paper naturally add depth to an artwork, but when working digitally, we often sacrifice the organic depth they provide for precision and speed. Let’s bring some texture back into our work! George Francis shares three ways to do so.
The techniques that George explores are quite simple but effective. Tiny random shapes added to a canvas at random points, solid shape fills with lines, and non-overlapping circles distributed evenly but randomly with an algorithm. Inspiring ideas to tinker with.
Cut-Out Effects With CSS And SVG
In a recent front-end project that Ahmad Shadeed was working on, one of the components included a cut-out effect where an area is cut out of a shape. And because there are multiple ways to create such an effect in CSS or SVG, he decided to explore the pros and cons that each of the solutions brings along.
In his blog post “Thinking About The Cut-Out Effect”, Ahmad takes a look at three different use cases for a cutout effect: an avatar with a cut-out status badge that indicates that a user is currently online, a “seen avatar” that consists of overlapping circle avatars that are indicators that a message has been seen in a group chat, as well as a website header with a cut-out area behind a circular logo. Ahmad presents different solutions for each use case — SVG-only, CSS-only, and a mix of both — and explains the pros and cons of each one of them. A comprehensive overview.
Fractional SVG Stars
Are you building a rating component and you want it to support fractional values like 4.2 or 3.7 stars but without using images? Good news, you can achieve fractional ratings with only CSS and inline SVG. Samuel Kraft explains how it works.
The component basically consists of two parts: a list of star icons based on the max rating and an “overlay” div that will be responsible for changing the colors of the stars underneath. This is the magic that makes the fractional part work. The technique is supported in all modern browsers; for older browsers, you can fall back to opacity instead. Clever!
Generative Mountain Ridge Dividers
When Alistair Shepherd built his personal website, he wanted to have section dividers that match the mountain theme of the site. But not any mountain dividers, but dividers with unique ridges for every divider.
Instead of creating a variety of different dividers manually, Alistair decided to use a combination of SVG and terrain generation, a technique that is usually used in game development, to generate the dividers automatically. In a blog post, he explains how it works.
If you’re up for some more horizontal divider inspiration, also be sure to check out Sara Soueidan’s blog post “Not Your Typical Horizontal Rules” in which she shows how she turned a boring horizontal line into a cute “birds on a wire” divider with the help of some CSS and SVG.
Flexible Repeating SVG Masks
Sometimes it’s a small idea, a little detail in a project that you tinker with and that you can’t let go off until you come up with a tailor-made solution to make it happen. Nothing that seems like a big deal at first glance, but that requires you to think outside the box. In Tyler Gaw’s case, this little detail was a flexible header with a little squiggle at the bottom instead of a straight line. The twist: to make the component future-proof, Tyler wanted to use a seamless, horizontal repeating pattern that he could color with CSS.
To get the job done, Tyler settled on flexible repeating SVG masks. SVG provides the shape, CSS handles the color, and mask-image does the heavy lifting by hiding anything in the underlying div that doesn’t intersect with the shape. A clever approach that can be used as the base for some fun experiments.
Swipey Image Grids
When you think of “SVG animation”, what comes to your mind? Illustrative animation? Well, SVG can be useful for much more than pretty graphics. As Cassie Evans points out, a whole new world of UI styling opens up once you stop looking at SVG purely as a format for illustrations and icons. One of her favorite use cases for SVG: responsive animated image grids.
Cassie doesn’t build her image grid on CSS Grid but uses SVG’s internal coordinate system (which is responsive by design) to design the grid layout. She then adds images to the grid and positions them with preserveAspectRatio. clipPath “swipes” the images in. The final animation relies on GreenSock to ensure that the transforms work consistently across browsers. If you want to dig deeper into the code, be sure to check out Cassie’s blog post in which she explains each step in detail.
Animated SVG Debit Card Illustrations
What if you could animate a debit card design? Probably not on an actual physical card, but rather for a landing page where you’d like to drive interest towards the card’s design or features? Well that’s an unusual challenge to tackle, and Tom Miller decided to take it on.
In a series of SVG debit card animations, Tom uses GreenSock to animate SVG paths and shapes smoothly, so every card literally comes to life on its own, transforming, rotating, and scaling beautifully, alongside just a few lines of JavaScript. A wonderful inspiration for your next landing page design!
Raster Image To SVG Converter
You need to quickly convert a raster image into an SVG? Then SVGcode is for you. The progressive web app converts image formats like JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP, and AVIF to vector graphics in SVG format.
To convert an image, drop your raster image into the SVGcode app, and the app will trace the image, color by color, until a vectorized version of the input appears. You can choose between color SVG and monochrome SVG and there also are a number of customization settings to improve the output further, by suppressing speckles and adjusting the color, for example. If you install the PWA, you can even use it as a default file handler on your machine. A real timesaver.
Download SVGs From Any Site
A handy little tool to enhance your SVG workflow is SVG Gobbler. The browser extension finds the vector content on the page you’re viewing and gives you the option to download, optimize, copy, view the code, or export it as an image.
When you click the browser extension, it shows you all SVGs detected on the site. You can quickly download the ones you like or copy them to your clipboard. When you view the code, you can toggle optimization options from SVGO — to beautify the markup or clean up attributes or numeric values, for example. And if you need a PNG version of an SVG, you can export it in any size you want. A fantastic addition to any developer’s toolkit.
Scaling SVGs Made Simple
Scaling svg elements can be a daunting task, since they act very differently than normal images. Amelia Wattenberger came up with an ingenious comparison to help us make sense of SVGs and their special features: “The svg element is a telescope into another world.”
Based on the idea of the telescope, Amelia explains how to use the viewBox property to zoom in or out with your “telescope”, and, thus, change the size of your <svg>. A small tip that works wonders.
Wrapping Up
We hope that these techniques will tickle your curiosity and inspire you to try some SVG magic yourself. If you came across an interesting SVG technique that left you in awe, please don’t hesitate to share it in the comments below. We’d love to hear about it. Happy creating!
Do you need a modal popup on your website when a user clicks a link or button? We typically see these in use for logins, newsletter signups, advertising, and more. Most often they are created using a bit of JavaScript trickery, but these days they can relatively easily be coded with only CSS. In this post we’ll show you 15 examples of various ways this can be accomplished. Let’s have a look!
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In a survey done by Accenture, 65% of consumers said that they would prefer to manage their finances through digital devices rather than bank branches.
The banking market is set to change drastically.we've researched the latest stats, consulted with analysts and executives, and combined years of experience in digital solutions for financial institutions to outline what's coming down the pipeline for digital banking in 2022.
It is estimated that the digital banking space would touch above $10 trillion by 2022. With the growing popularity of technology in our day to day life, it's only natural for people to trust technology for their banking needs.
This growth can be attributed to a shift in behavior of consumers from traditional banking to digital banking.
Here are the top trending trends for 2022
1.Rise of the neo-banks and fintech.
2.The shifting balance of power with tech giants
3.Ubiquitous cloud, SaaS, APIs, data analytics and AI.