Royal Deer Design » Web Development

Stack Overflow Survey Results – How Do You Compare?

Sheuli — Sat, 18 Apr 2015 13:46:03 +0000

Stack Overflow, the question and answer site for programmers, has released the results of their annual survey of developers and programmers. While the survey is underrepresented by those who don’t like taking surveys in English, the results are still interesting.

Luxembourg has the highest number of per capita developers – 39.8 per 1000 people. The US accounts for 25% of the traffic to Stack Overflow, with India second at 12.5%.

The average developer is 28.9 years old, and 53% of developers are between the ages of 20 and 29
In the US, the average age is 31.6
92.1% of coders are male
20% have less than 2 years experience, 32.4% have between 2 and 5 years of experience and 47% have 6+ years in the field.
Of the women who code, 67% have been doing it less than 5 years and 37% less than two years
41.8% of coders are self taught, while 37.7% have a computer science or related bachelor’s degree
Javascript is the most popular technology (54.5%) followed by SQL (48%) and Java (37.4%)
Most coders use Windows 7 (33.8%), with a close race between Linux (20.5%), Mac OSX (21.5%) and Windows 8 (19.5%)
GIT is the go to app for source control (69.3%)
Norway takes the lead in caffeinated beverages per day (3.09)
When it comes to money, Russia sits at the low end of the scale with an average salary of $23,897. At other end of the spectrum is the US, with an average salary of $89,631
66% of programmers are employed full time, and 76% love or are somewhat satisfied with their job
29% work remotely at least part time, while 48% rarely work remotely
60% of survey respondents have provided answers on Stack Overflow, with 64% saying they do so because it feels good to help other programmers in need, while 6% don’t know why they answer, but they do so anyway.

Speed Up Your WordPress with WP Super Cache

Sheuli — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 01:39:26 +0000

Just a short post in which we would like to share some stats from how using WP Super Cache plugin can speed up your WordPress site.

Website tested (Royal Deer Design’s client): Agneyasingh.com
Tool used for testing: tools.pingdom.com

No caching:

Caching enabled:

Website tested (Royal Deer Design’s client): Agniputrafilms.com
Tool used for testing: tools.pingdom.com

No caching:

Caching enabled:

WordPress 4.0 Beta 2 is Now Available

Sheuli — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 01:26:06 +0000

If you are ready to try the latest and greatest WordPress beta release, then look no further as WordPress 4.0 Beta 2 is now available via the WordPress plugins. If you are feeling adventurous, you can select the “bleeding edge” option. You can also download a copy of WordPress 4.0 Beta 2 here.

Some of the changes with WordPress 4.0 include:

A grid view for the media library
Visual changes to the plugin experience
Formatting function changes along with the ability to select a language during the installation process

For a more complete list of changes and enhancements, check out this Beta 1 blog post.

As always, there is the option to post in the Alpha/Beta forum for any bugs you have found, or you can create your own bug report here.

Happy testing, and make sure to backup before you begin!

Why Your Mobile Website Needs an Upgrade

Sheuli — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 15:30:18 +0000

The good news is that responsive website design has a significant advantage over non-responsive sites, while the bad news is that very few websites are both responsive and fast, leaving plenty of room for improvement.

Software and services company Restive, LLC recently released a State of the Mobile Web report on their assessment of websites of the Fortune 1000 largest companies, based on revenue. Analysis of these company’s websites has provided valuable information on the current state of the Mobile Web.

Key Findings

36% of all assessed websites are responsive (customized to work on mobile devices)
Of the responsive websites, 60% are on dedicated mobile sub-domains, domains or sub-folders. Only 14.7% are responsive to their primary URL, requiring no mobile redirection
6% of all assessed websites are fast or high performance
3% of all assessed websites are both responsive and fast
53% of all assessed websites are larger than 1Mb and 57% require 40 or more HTTP requests to load
Majority of all assessed websites require significant performance optimization with 67% requiring GZip Compression and 83% requiring minification of Javascript, CSS or HTML
More time is spent on responsive websites than non responsive websites and more time is spent on fast websites than slow websites

Recommendations

While they only comprise 3% of all assessed websites, the benefits of a responsive and fast website more than make up for the costs and time involved with developing these sites. A better user experience across all platforms helps ensure more time is spent on responsive websites versus non-responsive, and more time is also spent on fast websites versus slow ones.

According to Obinwanne Hill, Founder and CEO of Restive LLC and author of the report, websites “…still have a long way to go to attain readiness for a world where the Smartphone or Tablet is the primary Web access device…Websites need to be both Responsive and Fast to deliver an awesome experience for mobile users and we’re currently working on user-friendly tools and technologies to help Web designers and developers make this happen sooner rather than later.”

For a copy of the full report, go to http://www.restive.io/insights/state-of-the-mobile-web-ee-Q1-2014.html

How Video Improves Websites

Sheuli — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 15:18:37 +0000

With 93% of internet marketers using some form of video on their website in 2013, video is here to stay. From simple iPhone and smartphone created videos to high end animations, there is no doubt that the use of video helps attract and retain an audience and convert browsers into customers.

Youtube is currently the third most popular site on the web (behind Google and Facebook) and the question is no longer “should you use video?” but instead is “what type of video?” should you put on your website.

So Many Video Options

Tutorial – these are prevalent on How To sites such as About.com, eHow and Wikihow. How To videos show viewers how to complete a task – from fixing a blemish in photoshop to laying a tile floor. A tutorial video establishes authority and helps create your business or brand as an expert in a given field.
Informational – sometimes you want to give information or training that does not follow the traditional “step a, then step b” of a tutorial video, but instead is loaded with ideas and stories to help illustrate the problem being addressed. Informational videos can be a quick tip that runs from thirty seconds to a few minutes, or can last an hour or more as in some webinars and online trainings. Ted Talks are also a type of informational video.
Testimonial – social proof is an important part of today’s marketing in today’s world as people want to buy from people they know, like and trust. One of the easiest and quickest ways to create trust is through the feedback of others. Any business owner looking to gain new clients should pull out a smart phone every time they hear positive feedback and get that feedback on video.
Animation – with sites like Wideo, Goanimate and Moovly, anyone can jump on the animation bandwagon. Animation is a fun and easy way to explain what your company does and more importantly, what benefits your client will receive from your product or service. Animated videos, done properly, tell a complete story about you and your business, often in as little as a minute.

Incorporate Your Online Video

To add video to your website, you need to follow a few simple steps.

Create the video. This can be done relatively easy with a smart phone device, and simple editing software is often included or available online.
Host the video. The video must reside somewhere, from Youtube to Vimeo to your own hosting service. There are plenty of options for where the video will reside. Do not use videos embedded with Flash or Silverlight, as this will limit your design options. The video host should support HTML5’s video tag, which allows for easy manipulation on the web page.

Do You Need Video?

The short answer is YES, you do. Video is a fun and engaging way to interact with your potential clients, tell your story and show how you can solve a problem. Videos can inform and entertain and tell a story in a way not available with text. Whether a quick iPhone created testimonial or a more detailed animated clip, video is where you need to be.

[Solved] Removing your IP from the Gmail Blacklist – Step by Step Solution

Sheuli — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 03:29:24 +0000

Being blacklisted by Gmail is relatively easy, especially if you use WordPress and do not worry much about the security of your site. Being listed on a Gmail Blacklist means your emails do not reach Gmail recipients, or your messages (sent via blacklisted server IP) go straight to the Spam folder. Google’s Blacklist is different than other blacklist and it is not easy to be de-listed.

Our long story short: we host sites of some of our clients on dedicated servers. One account on one of the servers was hacked (reason: not updated WordPress, weak admin password or some unknown plug-in installed) and started sending thousands of spam emails. The server was getting down (huge CPU and Memory usage) and of course our IP got listed on few blacklists. We took action and cleaned up our name (read IP), below you can read how we fixed the problem.

Step by step solution:

Cleanup your server. Detect the issue, remove the problem, and change passwords for your FTP and admin panel. Ask your hosting provider to scan your server searching for malwares and viruses. Monitor the site and logs for few days.
Create an account on mxtoolbox.com, check your IP. There you should be listed on some of those blacklists. Make sure to be removed from all lists – you need to work with each case separately. For some of them you need to simply wait and they will keep monitoring you for a week or so to see if your IP is still spamming. For others you need to send a request for removal and explain that you cleaned up your hacked server. You probably do not need a mxtoolbox paid account, because a free account should be sufficient.
IFF (only and only if) you are 100% sure your server is clean and mxtoolbox.com show that your IP is not listed anywhere, you can contact Google. You need to fill out this form – Report a delivery problem between your domain and Gmail.

Very important:

You need to answer all the questions there. Most of them are very technical and require an access to your server logs and settings. For some of the questions you may not have an exact answer, but provide there as accurate information as you can. If you are not a developer, find one :), or ask tech support of your hosting provider to answer those questions.
Be polite in your respond, say ‘thank you’ in the “Additional Information” section
Provide as much accurate information as possible.

It takes at least 1 month for Google to look into this and action. Unfortunately, you will not be notified about that, so you should set up some simple script that will send you an every day an email from your banned server IP. If one day you see this email in your Inbox, you know what that means :).

How to prevent being listed on blacklists:

Don’t spam :)
Keep a high security on your server, which starts with as simple task such as keeping your passwords difficult and periodically changed.
Make sure to update your CMS (such as WordPress) and plug-ins you use
Do not use unknown plug-ins or themes for your site. Buy them from well-known companies (such as themeforest.net).
Don’t host your site on shared-hosting. Always use good quality hosting providers. Forget about all those cheap GoDaddy for $3 per month solutions. If you are serious about your business, you will need to spend at least $50/month on a quality hosting.
If your website sends a lot of emails (password reminders, registration emails etc.), you should use mandrill.com.