In an effort to help the WordPress community grow and prosper as well as expand and add value to the WP Engine Digital Experience platform, WP Engine recently acquired StudioPress. For our customers, this means, in addition to the Genesis framework, they’ll have access to 35 premium themes. All StudioPress themes are built using the Genesis Framework, are professionally designed, mobile-responsive, and built for seamless use, right out of the box.
Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to get readers to take action, investigate a product, or change a behavior. The success of your email marketing, however, comes from your email list. If you need to generate...
Sifting through the thousands of themes in existence today is a daunting task, and finding the right one for your website is just part of the challenge. No one wants to trust their portfolio, online magazine, or e-commerce site to just any formulaic theme. Making sure it’s well designed, well
At WP Engine, we believe our people are the core of every success, award, milestone and every achievement. That’s because employees who truly feel empowered and validated by their workplace are energized to delight and inspire the customer in every interaction. When new employees walk through the
When it comes to facilitating a truly enjoyable and productive workplace, it takes more than just the promise of perks and ping pong. Employees want their workplaces to reflect what they value and expect out of the company they work for: trustworthiness, morality, and the opportunity to grow both in
CSS conversion of my Radio weblog
The hardest thing about the re-design was integrating the tableless CSS design into Radio Userland. I had to do some jiggery-pokery with the Radio Userland templates and macros, and the CSS implementation is not yet complete. I’ve had to temporarily remove my blogroll and topicroll, along
9 Blockchains Transforming the Way We Pay, Play, and Work
Look past digital currencies’ nosebleed pricing volatility, and you’ll discover a robust, decentralized, secure database. Brands and technologists are quickly figuring out how to put this powerful ledger to good use. Here are several real-world examples that demonstrate cryptos’
2 Billion Downloads Later, Apple’s App Store is Still Going Strong
It would be nice if Apple gave us a better breakdown of the kinds of apps it actually delivers (free vs. paid, games vs. utilities, etc.). This kind of transparency is obviously not in Apple’s DNA, so we depend on data from third-party services like AdMob for this information. According to
Remote Ideation: Synchronous vs. Asynchronous
Asynchronous ideation avoids the tricky scheduling issues that synchronous sessions suffer from. People can share their ideas whenever they have time. That means each teammate can work around their own scheduling conflicts and deadlines, while still being able to contribute. Asynchronous ideation
studiopress theme spotlight: generate pro
Brand Is Experience in the Digital Age
Before a siege, Blackbeard dressed himself in a dark heavy coat and captain’s hat to accentuate his domineering stature. He strapped pistols to his chest and tucked lit, smoking fuses under his hat and in his beard to create an image reminiscent of the devil himself having just emerged from some
Centered Logos Hurt Website Navigation
Based on these observations, it’s clear that left-aligned logos are better than centered logos for supporting user navigation to the homepage. Note that the left-logo sites in this study still caused some homepage-navigation errors (although far fewer than the centered-logo sites). This is
UX Mapping Methods Compared: A Cheat Sheet
Low-fidelity maps are unpolished and often created with sticky notes in a flexible, unrefined manner. These maps are best in an early part of the process. Low fidelity means little commitment or creation effort and empowers people to collaborate, revise, and update as needed. Use sticky notes
Progress Indicators Make a Slow System Less Insufferable
Sadly, many websites and other computer systems take the opposite approach and don’t show any feedback until they’re completely done processing the user’s input and can display the final answer. This creates a great deal of anxiety as the user is uncertain as to whether the computer even
Customization vs. Personalization in the User Experience
Designers often have many good ideas for things that can be provided to users, from ideation, feature requests, and other sources. It’s tempting to throw all these options into the system and rely on customization or personalization for pruning the screens into a manageable level of complexity
Cognitive Maps, Mind Maps, and Concept Maps: Definitions
When it comes to representing physical space, there are many types of possible maps: topographic maps, geologic maps, pedestrian maps, street maps, and so on. They are all flat representations of the surface of the earth, but highlight different properties of this surface. Cartographers apply
studiopress theme spotlight: generate pro
Is Poor Usability Killing E-Commerce?
In 1997, I predicted that specialized sites will generate most of the Web's value. My assumptions then were somewhat too optimistic: I assumed that Web advertising would generate one cent per page view, and that the Web economy's total value would amount to $1.3 trillion by now. As it turns out
Contextual Menus: Delivering Relevant Tools for Tasks
Having the right tools available in any given situation makes all the difference, especially when it comes to correctly and efficiently getting things done. Without the relevant tools, we waste time and are left feeling frustrated, lost, and confused. Just as bad: when there are too many tools
Journey Mapping in Real Life: A Survey of UX Practitioners
Pulling stakeholders into the actual mapping activities will go a long way in generating buy-in early in the process, and it will ensure that multiple perspectives are used as resources for knowledge. After the journey map is created, don’t stop. Share the journey map with others, using those
Killing Off the Global Navigation: One Trend to Avoid | Nielsen Norman Group
On the WHSmith website, fitting all 12 product categories in a global navigation menu would be difficult, but pushing them all down into a drop-down menu is not the answer. For most sites, explaining the brand offerings is simply too important to be relegated to a secondary menu; even if visitors
Which UX Deliverables Are Most Commonly Created and Shared?
Interactive prototypes offer an interactive experience that’s most reflective of the final product, and, thus, are a powerful tool for showing what the user experience will ultimately be like. Usability reports and other research information were also found to be an especially useful with
Data Science Careers: From Fragmentation to Necessity
Over the past decade — the concept of being a data scientist has become a “normal” occupation title. It is no longer an unusual way to phrase the job description in data analytics. Now this to the industry standard term for a swath of data careers. Data Science. Like any career
Profiling Hackers: Defining the Good, Bad, and Ugly Personas
There are many methods hackers use to test and identify vulnerabilities that let them get to the desired data. The first is a penetration test, which stimulates a cyber attack to see what might happen. A network penetration test focuses on potential vulnerabilities in firewalls, routers, and any
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
She explained that the original design of the Internet was driven more by considerations of interoperability rather than security, and as a result we are now faced with almost insurmountable issues. Some examples include online criminals who steal our information, mass bandits who have the ability
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues
studiopress theme spotlight: generate pro
The Role of IT or an IT Consultant Provider for Business Growth
As bussinesses and the web move forward we witness many modifications in IT and the support it offers. There are many new pieces of hardware and software that we expect our IT staff to evaluation for our companysecurity. This includes new security systems and devices, and updated processes
For Startups, a SaaS Solution is an HR Killer App
That’s part of the reason that startups have been so quick to embrace robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI). In truth, there is no end to the ways that startups can gain an advantage by turning to technology in their daily operations. One of those ways has to do
For sure, saying that page parking is characteristic of younger adults doesn’t mean that older adults don’t do it. However, we observe page parking substantially more often in user research with Millennials than with other age groups. Conversely, of course, many Millennials are power users and
Are Chinese Websites Too Complex?
The sessions were conducted with the think-aloud method, with each user asked to complete two tasks on 8 websites from a list of 14 websites chosen to span a range of design complexity from simple, one-column responsive patterns to busy, high-density portal-like ones. The Chinese users verbalized
Priming and User Interfaces
If you plan or facilitate usability studies, you probably know that a good test must not bias participants in any way. There are many opportunities for influencing people in a user study — ranging from the task wording to the facilitator’s behavior. When tasks use terms already present in the
