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...
What is a child theme? A child theme works in combination with the parent theme. With regards to Genesis, child themes serve as a sort of skin that can change the way a theme looks, while relying on the functionality of its parent theme (in this case, Genesis). Child themes offer users the added
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
Created by the leading brands in WordPress digital experiences and cloud security, WP Engine’s Global Edge Security is a cloud-first, high performance, advanced security solution built on Cloudflare’s intelligent network, providing the best security protection against top Open Web Application
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
Past Bitcoin to Making Money from the Blockchain
As the cryptocurrency bubble has gone up and down there have been other developments in blockchain technology that warrant our attention. According to the Brookings Institution, blockchain based voting can reduce fraud significantly while increasing voter turnout thanks to the ability to vote from
Blockchain Trends that Everyone Should Watch Out For 2019
Art, property and fine wines are generally instances of venture resources that customarily were just a possibility for wealthy financial specialists with the advantage of having the option to place capital in this resources directly — and be in no rush for their speculation to satisfy. With
Experience Design: Bridging Brand Intention and Brand Interpretation
Remember, your job as a designer (whatever type of designer that may be) is not only to produce a good use experience on each isolated channel. It’s also to ensure that every experience you design is made up of components driven by Brand. With key components defined, as well as a clear framework
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
Usability 101: Introduction to Usability
To identify a design's most important usability problems, testing 5 users is typically enough. Rather than run a big, expensive study, it's a better use of resources to run many small tests and revise the design between each one so you can fix the usability flaws as you identify them. Iterative
Why WSJ Mobile App Gets ** Customer Reviews
A second reason to give print subscribers free access? They're the most valuable customers: print advertising is more effective than online advertising because broadsheet layouts have a stronger impact. Thus, a newspaper should encourage readers to maintain their print subscriptions by treating
Designing Effective Infographics
Statisticians and information designers have debated the details of scaling in charts for decades. One topic of particular contention is the starting point of the y-axis. Darrell Huff cautioned readers to beware of any chart that does not begin the y-axis with 0 in his 1954 book How to Lie with
Best Application Designs
For example, VitreaTeach both offers special access to cases from the user's own hospital and knows something about anatomy and pathology. Interestingly, one of the things that make the design cleaner than other medical systems is the simple tagging that provides much of the taxonomy support for
Assessing the Usability of a User Interface Standard
For the study of the developers, 15 developers from a total of seven different projects were visited and asked a number of questions using both a structured and a free-form interview. The participants were, unfortunately, selected with a bias towards developers with a higher than average interest
Wishlist or shopping cart? Saving products for later in ecommerce
Although many sites in our study featured wishlists that allowed users to save items for later, people were reluctant to use them because they expected a high interaction cost for setting them up (for example, due to having to register). Instead, most participants preferred to save products for
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
The Science of Silence: Intentional Silence as a Moderation Technique
The fact is, lack of back-and-forth chatter makes us uncomfortable. Research by Koudenburg, Postmes, and Gordijn has shown that, in the United States, it takes only four seconds before an extended period of silence becomes uncomfortable during conversation. Four seconds! Why the disgust for hush
3 Design Considerations for Effective Mobile-App Permission Requests
There are slight differences in how these requests are presented across mobile operating systems. As you can see from the example above, in iOS the user is asked for access to the microphone, whereas in Android the user is asked for permission to record audio. Moreover, in iOS, the modal dialog
10 Usability Heuristics Applied to Video Games
Subway Surfers, an endless-runner mobile game, does a nice job crafting error messages. After users lose mid-game, they’re prompted with a dialog that reads, Save me! (Which would not be a good dialog prompt in a productivity app, but is acceptable in the playful context of a game.) To continue
Expandable Menus: Pull-Down, Square, or Pie?
Marking menus are well suited for contextual use, being more efficient because users do not need to travel the whole route to the target, but they can just start moving towards the target. In expert mode, the menu also saves users an extra step (that of expanding the menu and inspecting the items
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
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Finally, Hathaway sees this as a unique opportunity for the United States to work with countries around the world, and with organizations on an extremely local level. “We cannot succeed if our government works in isolation,” she added. It requires “leading from the top” from
Nearshoring Basics for Software Development
Because of the close cultural ties, and even familial connections between countries, many people have stronger English speaking skills. Many countries in Latin America put a significant emphasis on English language instruction, which means that it’s easier to find people who can speak directly to
Discovering the threats below the surface on the Dark Web
One interesting case of picking up chatter in Dark Web chat rooms that produced surprising results was discussed in a 2012 study by the cyber security company Imperva. In their report detailing the most popular topics of conversation in Dark Web forums, they noted that SQL injection (SQLi) and DDoS
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
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
Blockchain Success Stories Show Valuable Opportunities
At the time of this writing, the system had already captured close to 254 million unique shipping events, making TradeLens one of the most-used commercial blockchain systems to date. It’s also one of the few blockchain platforms that have seen enough success to have already attracted
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 | Effective Use of Style Sheets
Effective Use of Style Sheets
Cascading style sheets (CSS) are an elegantly designed extension to the Web and one of the greatest hopes for recapturing the Web's ideal of separation of presentation and content. The Web is the ultimate cross-platform system, and your content will be presented on such a huge variety of devices
Flat Design: Its Origins, Its Problems, and Why Flat 2.0 Is Better for Users
The release of Microsoft’s Metro design language and Windows 8 in 2011 was particularly influential in popularizing flat design. Microsoft’s design documentation referred to its new style as "authentically digital" — a phrase that neatly captures the appeal of flat design for many designers
Effective Use of Style Sheets
Cascading style sheets (CSS) are an elegantly designed extension to the Web and one of the greatest hopes for recapturing the Web's ideal of separation of presentation and content. The Web is the ultimate cross-platform system, and your content will be presented on such a huge variety of devices