Last week, WP Engine employees from all over the U.S. came together at our Austin headquarters for the first biannual All-Hands event of 2019. All Hands is a two-day event in which employees from other offices and teams around the country get the chance to collaborate and strategize with one another. This year’s theme was “Boldly Go” in honor of the famous sci-fi saga Star Trek. This event agenda was full of events to help nurture growth at both the individual level as well as company-wide. Not to mention, we got to have some fun!
Events on the agenda included team lunches, information sessions, inspirational speeches, a Hackathon, advice panels, trivia, and...
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
At WP Engine, we’ve realized this is just as important as the speed and SEO that helps you show up in search rankings, or the analytics and targeting features that help you cater to narrower sets of demographics. Great-looking websites are the basis of effective digital experiences, and with our
Domain Name Servers (DNS) are the equivalent of The Yellow Pages for the Internet. They store and maintain a directory of domain names and translate them to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Humans access information online via domain names like wpengine.com and web browsers communicate via IP
Decentralized P2P Lending Services vs Networks
In contrast, each network member in the transitive trust networks establishes his/her own trust lines with other users. And by doing go he/she evaluates and weighs all the risks. At the same time, other participants can use its trust lines (for example, when making multi-hop payments, etc.). A
Robotics and Big Data are Transforming Nursing: 4 Key Insights
In healthcare, the robot’s role is to take over tedious, time-consuming, and dangerous or dirty jobs for nurses. Very few nurses dream of sanitizing equipment or dispensing medication when they enter nursing school. They want to be working directly with patients, healing the sick and providing
5 Real Life Blockchain Implementations Outside of Cryptocurrency
Medicalchain aims to use blockchain technology to securely store medical records. Using a distributed ledger for healthcare is a godsend as it allows doctors, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacists, and health insurers to have more immediate access to health records, which could help save lives
Image-Focused Design: Is Bigger Better?
The entire Southwest homepage is designed to focus attention on the image: the top navigation links are small and have no background color; the search function is represented with a magnifying glass icon instead of an input box, and even the Book now call to action button is an understated outline
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques
In 2004, we wrote about the most hated advertising techniques based on research conducted by Christian Rohrer and John Boyd. Online advertising has changed significantly since then, giving us plenty of new formats to test and new questions to ask. With that, we decided to run a study to determine
Alternative Payment Methods Enable International Purchases
For example, users who opt to pay in person (via Oxxo or Boleto Bancario, for example) should be able to easily access the deposit details: the site could send the information via email or text message or might present it in a printable format. Or, customers who must use an external security token
Customization vs. Personalization in the User Experience
Customization works well under the assumption that users know best what their goals and needs are. Thus, it is based on natural intelligence (the users’) over artificial intelligence (the system’s). On the other hand, personalization is based on artificial intelligence (about a user or a group
Scrolling and Scrollbars
When pages feature both vertical and horizontal scrolling, users have to move their viewport in two dimensions, which makes it hard to cover the entire space. For people with poor spatial visualization skills, it's especially challenging to plan movements along two axes across an invisible plane
Instructional Overlays and Coach Marks for Mobile Apps
The Makr iPad app uses a series of tips each time the user reaches a new section of the app. Unfortunately, these tips are overly wordy, and present a multi-step workflow before the user has been able to do anything. Rather than learning-by-doing, users must memorize all of the steps before being
Typography Terms Cheat Sheet
Font widths may be specified within the font’s name, but not always. For example, Helvetica Neue Thin is more condensed by nature than Helvetica Neue Regular, however, the word “condensed” is not in the name. On the other hand, type foundries may purposefully condense a font for stylistic
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
UX Research Cheat Sheet
User-experience research methods are great at producing data and insights, while ongoing activities help get the right things done. Alongside R&D, ongoing UX activities can make everyone’s efforts more effective and valuable. At every stage in the design process, different UX methods can keep
Status Trackers and Progress Updates: 16 Design Guidelines
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) provide a status tracker for people applying for a green card or work permit. Following the creation of an account, applicants can log in to access the status tracker on USCIS’s website and see the status of their case. This feature is great to
Expandable Menus: Pull-Down, Square, or Pie?
Note that the time it takes to reach the first element in the menu is shorter than the time it takes to reach any other element in the menu — simply because the distance to that first element is shorter than the distance to the second element, which is shorter than the distance to the third
User Intent Affects Filter Design
Net-a-porter.com: The moment between when a facet is selected (in this case, Black) and the new results are displayed minimizes visual distractions; the entire results area dims and an animated spinner shows progress. Even with a fast system, designs should avoid visual changes that happen too
Service Blueprints: Definition
Actions that occur directly in view of the customer. These actions can be human-to-human or human-to-computer actions. Human-to-human actions are the steps and activities that the contact employee (the person who interacts with the customer) performs. Human-to-computer actions are carried out when
To Prevent Fraud, Healthcare Organizations Must Streamline Their Data Processes
Consider healthcare. In the past two years alone, 89 percent of healthcare organizations experienced some loss of control over their data, creating enormous costs. Across all industries, the average cost per compromised record is $148, but healthcare must contend with a staggering $408 per loss
The Key IoT Security Questions You Need To Ask
These questions only scratch the broad surface of IoT security. To learn more about securing your IoT solution, register for this free, one-day event. You’ll hear from the researchers behind The seven properties of highly secured devices and see an IoT solution come to life before your eyes
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
Trademark Protection for Startups
For many businesses, their brand is their most valuable asset. Through a few judicious steps in seeking trademark protection, monitoring use by others, and policing infringement, you can ensure that your company brand is secured and flourishes with the growth of your business. You can learn more
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
The 6 Biggest Risks Today’s Internet Entrepreneurs Must Battle
While you don’t face the risk of being eaten alive by a hungry tiger every time you walk outside your front door, you do face daily risks in your entrepreneurial pursuits. And even though you’re genetically trained to avoid risk, you find yourself in situations where you’re forced to confront
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
WP Engine All Hands Spring 2019: US | Kill the 53-Day Meme
Kill the 53-Day Meme
Unfortunately, it is proving to be almost impossible to stop writers (whether journalists or Usenet posters) from citing this number: it has taken on a life of its own, as people cite it based on secondary sources (earlier articles) instead of primary sources (direct interviews with me). The 53-day
The Fold Manifesto: Why the Page Fold Still Matters
By contrast, once the user starts scrolling, the Mod Notebooks site does a good job of encouraging further exploration. The site provides anchor-based navigational options to help users jump to topics of interest. On screens of a variety of sizes, text and images span across pages, leading the
UX Guidelines for Ecommerce Homepages, Category Pages, and Product Listing Pages
The most successful mergers of category and listing pages were those that highlighted available subcategories separately from other filters, most often above the product listings. This practice increased the discoverability of the subcategories and encouraged users to navigate to a more specific
