Last week, WP Engine employees from our Limerick and London offices came together for the bi-annual All Hands event in Limerick. All Hands is a 2-day event where employees come to engage with, collaborate, and strategize with employees from other offices. This year’s theme was “Boldly Go” in honor of the famous sci-fi sagas Star Wars and Star Trek. In addition to discussing goals for the upcoming year and new strategies for success, the team took moment to have a good time.
Events on the agenda included team lunches, Q&A sessions with executives, information sessions, and a company party with a talent show. Next week, employees in US offices will come...
People of all skill levels are welcome to join in contribution to WCUS 2018 Contributor Day. The event will be held Sunday, December 9th at the Music City Center in Exhibit Hall B. Teams include Accessibility, Community, Core. Design, Documentation, Gutenberg, Hosting, Marketing, Meta, Mobile
Are there old shortcodes lingering around, bulking up your code? Do you still have widgets installed that you don’t use anymore? Perhaps your dashboard is full of comment spam. Maybe you need better analytics software or want to start reaching more audiences by adding more localized content
Diversity has long been an important topic for WP Engine. CEO Heather Brunner often says “diversity attracts diversity.” This means that as a company naturally attracts and retains diverse talent, that diversity is sustained from the inside by employee referrals. Ultimately, the
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’
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
Remote Ideation: Synchronous vs. Asynchronous
You can always blend the two methods! You could conduct a synchronous ideation kickoff meeting to talk through the issue at hand and perhaps capture some of the team’s initial ideas, then open up a shared document or thread for people to contribute additional ideas asynchronously for a designated
wp engine all hands spring 2019: emea
Centered Logos Hurt Website Navigation
The Library hotel website at 1024x768 pixels presents the logo in the center of the page, with a menu icon occupying the top left corner (where the logo would be in a more standard web design). Effects of Centered Logos on Navigation Success Positioning the logo in the center of the page on both
Brand Is Experience in the Digital Age
As his pillaging continued and Blackbeard grew in craftiness, he realized it would be prudent to extend the essence of his menacing nature from afar. He devised a tool to extend his message — an early version of the skull-and-crossbones pirate flag we all know well today. The flag served as
7 Tips for Successful Customization
You may want to allow users to select the background color of their interface, but is there adequate payoff or interest in that option to account for the additional cost of implementation? You may want to allow users to move content areas around a page to create a unique experience, but again, it
Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking
Our users are complex humans. It is natural (and extremely beneficial) to see juxtaposition between quadrants. You will also encounter inconsistencies — for example, seemingly positive actions but negative quotes or emotions coming from the same user. This is when empathy maps become treasure
Slider Design: Rules of Thumb
Use a slider only when the precise value won’t matter to the user, but rather only the approximate range. Make sure that the users can select that range correctly without having to struggle too much to hit a precise value. In addition, any slider labels must be displayed above or beside the
The Science of Silence: Intentional Silence as a Moderation Technique
The power of intentional silence is well-known and utilized among many professional groups: Sales people pause after their pitches for dramatic effect. Counselors practice waiting five seconds after a patient stops speaking before responding. Nurses and physicians employ intentional silence in
wp engine all hands spring 2019: emea
Maps and Location Finders on Mobile Devices
Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf mobile website: The placement of the map caused users to accidentally pan within the map when they intended to scroll the page. The “gutterless” design of this map (the extension of page elements to fill the entire width of the screen rather than leaving whitespace
The State of Ecommerce Search
These improvements are encouraging, and are likely due to a variety of factors. Some of the influencing factors responsible for these improvements are not directly related to search — advances in devices, displays, hardware, and connection speeds are helpful in improving online experiences
Killing Off the Global Navigation: One Trend to Avoid | Nielsen Norman Group
As with any popular web-design trend, it’s important to determine if a minimized global navigation is appropriate for your site, given your users, their usage patterns, and your goals. Mimicking mobile design on the desktop is not appropriate for all sites. Approaching this design pattern with
Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking
Our users are complex humans. It is natural (and extremely beneficial) to see juxtaposition between quadrants. You will also encounter inconsistencies — for example, seemingly positive actions but negative quotes or emotions coming from the same user. This is when empathy maps become treasure
Case Study: Iterative Design and Prototype Testing of the NN/g Homepage
This incremental approach also gives us the flexibility to learn as we go. If something isn’t quite right, we can make adjustments rather than getting too far down the road, potentially tripling the re-do work. (And there are always tweaks needed after any launch: if you do enough user testing
AI Learning Algorithms Find Your New Target Groups
Thus, both the value contribution of a channel and the necessary interaction of the channels to optimize the conversion can be calculated. Based on extensive customer journey data, the optimal media budget allocation can be determined over time. The final media plan including the organizational
13 Major Vulnerabilities Discovered in the Popular IoT OS FreeRTOS
The role of open source in IoT is that the majority of the vendors producing devices are like any other organization that is developing software in that they want to use high-quality, ready-made components to reduce the amount of code that their team has to produce in order to release a functional
29% of Internet Users Have Bought Things From Spam Email?? Say It Aint So!
The announcement of the study concludes with these funny lines, from Anstis again: “The other way to look at this situation is from a spammer’s perspective. There are approximately 250 million people out there who are interested in these kinds of products and have made purchases from
The Modern Shape and Trends of Employee Culture
Veronique James, CEO of the James Agency, an advertising, public relations, and digital marketing firm based in Scottsdale, Ariz., writes that there are things every executive can do on a granular level to ensure an upbeat environment. For example, her agency begins each week with a 15-minute
wp engine all hands spring 2019: emea
9 Steps to Assess Whether a Startup is Suitable for Investment
Also, keep in mind the presence of earning potential, sustainable competitive advantage and potential market share. Finally, the “what” is focusing on the questions regarding the list of top customers, strategic relationships. Suppliers need to be considered, as well as on the thorough analysis
Enterprises and AI Need to Connect Better – Here’s Why
Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic across the board. Everyone from developers, to data scientists, journalists, and general user-bases of all profiles are talking about it on a global scale. Entrepreneurs have taken notice of the benefits of AI in most areas of everyday life, whether
WP Engine All Hands Spring 2019: EMEA | Scrolling and Attention
Scrolling and Attention
First, it could be that, overall, designers are doing a good job of creating signifiers to counteract the illusion of completeness and to invite people to scroll. In other words, they are aware of the disadvantages of the long page and mitigate them to some extent. Second, it could mean that users
The Role of Enhancement in Web Design
If your software will run on several devices with different capabilities, then on some of these devices enhancements can be used to speed up the interaction. For example, if the device has a camera, it can quickly scan bar codes. But for those devices with no cameras, it should still be possible to
Beyond Blue Links: Making Clickable Elements Recognizable
With that said, the flat-design trend (a style of interface design that emphasizes 2-D flat illustrations and is well exemplified by iOS 7 and Windows 8) has some website designers taking the minimalist approach to the extreme. The idea behind flat design is to simplify the interface. However
