For all its benefits, working remote— as most of our Mediacurrent team does— still has its challenges. The one that people ask me about the most is, "how do you keep any kind of work / life balance when your work and home are inseparable?" For me, the answer to this has been what I call my "shutdown ritual." It's basically just how I try to end my workday every day, but I've found putting some thought into a routine has helped a lot to make my evenings more relaxing and my mornings more productive. In this post, I'm going to cover:
What is a shutdown ritual?So first, what is a shutdown ritual?
I got this concept from an excellent book called Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, by Cal Newport. His core argument in the book is that the most valuable skill in our economy is deep focused work and that is becoming increasingly rare. If you want to set yourself apart, cultivating a deep work ethic is the way to go. He outlines several rules and guidelines you can follow to start cultivating this habit. One of the tools he recommends is the shutdown ritual. The bare outline of the shutdown routine that he outlines in Deep Work is:
Newport also discusses the shutdown ritual briefly on his blog: Drastically Reduce Stress with a Work Shutdown Ritual. Why do a shutdown ritual?One of Newport's biggest criticisms of modern workers is that we're always on, and because of this, our attention and energy is too dispersed. We can get notifications or just compulsively check Slack or email, even outside of work hours. But deep work requires disciplined attention and energy. If you want to do deep work during the day, you need to make sure you are not constantly doing shallow work (even off the clock). Benefit 1: A defined endingOne of the main benefits of the shutdown ritual is having a well-defined end of the workday. Once the shutdown ritual is done, work is done. Don't think about it. Don't worry about it. Don't check email. Don't look at Slack. If you want to be your most productive self, you need to take a complete break until the next work day. Now it's time to do all the relaxing evening things like feeding your kids and washing the dishes. When I tell people I work from home, a majority of them say something like, "You must feel like you're working all the time" or "How do you separate your work life from home life?" and I have certainly found it to be a bigger challenge to turn off at the end of the day since I don't really leave "the office." The shutdown ritual helps define the end of the workday and the beginning of being fully present at home. It has helped me be more productive during the day and helped me have more focused attention with the family after work. Benefit 2: Confidence in the endingThe important part about the steps in the shutdown routine is giving you confidence that everything you needed to do is done. If you're like me, you might be washing the dishes and still be debugging code in your head. Or you might suddenly remember an important email you were supposed to respond to and didn't. Or you might start thinking about a meeting on your schedule tomorrow that you're anxious about. But the steps of your shutdown ritual should help you capture all these thoughts before you end your workday. You want to capture them and write them down somewhere, so they aren't floating around in your brain all night. Sometimes, you might be in the middle of your shutdown ritual and remember something that can't wait until tomorrow. That's fine, go ahead and do it and then start your shutdown ritual over. Because once your shutdown ritual is over, and a work worry comes into your head, you want to be confident to say to yourself:
And move on with your night. Benefit 3: Having an anchor for other habitsThe last benefit I'll mention is that having a shutdown ritual at the end of the day can be a helpful anchor for other habits. If you have a well-established habit like a shutdown routine, you can leverage it to help establish other habits. James Clear calls this Habit stacking. The idea is that by pairing a new habit with one that already exists, you make it more likely to stick to a new habit. Some examples of habit stacking with the shutdown ritual:
A shutdown ritual can help you end your workday productively and launch a new habit or hobby to make the rest of your life even better as well! My Shutdown RitualHere's what my shutdown ritual looks like. At 5:15pm everyday, I get a friendly message from slackbot to start my shutdown ritual. You can set a reminder in Slack like this:
For me, this is actually about 45 minutes before the end of my workday. I used to have the reminder for 15 minutes before I signed off, but I could never get to a stopping point and do the shutdown in 15 minutes. 45 minutes gives me enough time to start looking for an exit in my current work and to go through the routine. Here is what is on my shutdown ritual list:
Reconcile Timesheets I take a look at my time tracking software and make sure all my time is accounted for. Check Email I go through my email inbox, responding to anything that is really urgent, and adding tasks to Todoist for anything that is not. My goal is to delete as many as possible. Check JIRA I open up JIRA to see what tasks are assigned to me, and add them to Todoist, if they aren't already there. I sometimes remember things I said I was going to do but didn't (like update a ticket or assign to someone else) so if I can quickly do that I will. Skim Todo lists This gives me a broad view of what's going on. Sometimes I notice a glaring error or remember something that completely slipped my mind, so I add that here. I also sometimes reorder things based on how priorities changed throughout the day. Check Calendar Next, I check my calendar for tomorrow. Do I have any meetings tomorrow that I have a deliverable for? Did I complete the deliverable? Any conflicts? Make a rough plan for the next day The last item on my list is making a rough plan for the next day. This really sets me up for success in the morning, and helps prevent a slow, groggy start to the work day. Sometimes I make my plan in Todoist just by setting due dates for todos for tomorrow and putting them in the order I want. Other times I have a simple text file where I make a list. It kind of depends on what projects I'm on and the kind of work I'm doing from week to week. Shut down I close all applications on my computer. I put the computer to sleep or shut it down. Sometimes I say "shutdown complete" Sometimes here I tidy up my desk. I start singing "It's a wonderful day in the neighborhood" and change into my house sweater and house shoes. The work day is done. I'll be back tomorrow. And that's how I end my days productively with the shutdown ritual. Originally from Drupal.org aggregator http://bit.ly/2wvoRmb
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In June last year, we changed our Drupal Association logo on social media platforms to add a little color for Pride Month and I am really happy to say we will be doing the same again this year. Since last year, we have introduced better tools for understanding the demographic groups in Drupal and I asked for a report on that. Quite rightly, I don’t have access myself - it is very much locked down. I was interested to see that, of those confirmed users who have filled something into the field (including “none” or “prefer not to answer”), 15.8% have indicated they identify as LGBTQIA. That’s far more than I expected! We would love to continue to improve our statistics; we're asking everyone to complete the data in the demographics field, even if that is to click “none” - it’s a totally valid and useful response. Go to your user profile, click edit, and find it in the “Personal information” tab. Finally, whilst the Drupal Association is an educational non-profit and does not advocate policy, I have been personally reminded this week of the extraordinary bravery, friendship, and sheer commitment to overcome challenges by people in the LGBTQIA community and I wanted to help celebrate that in any way we can. You are strong and you are beautiful. Thank you for being you. Originally from Drupal.org aggregator http://bit.ly/2Z0TNGO
Search and Facets and Queries, Oh My! Lindsey Gemmill Fri, 05/31/2019 - 15:24
Originally from Drupal.org aggregator http://bit.ly/2JLw6ig Drupal is a great choice for media websites. This is due to easy content editing, flexible moderation workflows, advanced media handling, and much more. And, of course, media and news websites on Drupal can enjoy unlimited content display options for. Today, we would like to show you one of them that we implemented for our customer’s Drupal website — so-called featured news collections, aka grouped news. Originally from Drupal.org aggregator http://bit.ly/2JR1bB8 Mediacurrent created the Rain Install Profile to build fast, consistent Drupal websites and improve the editorial experience. Rain expedites website creation, configuration, and deployment. The Mediacurrent development team is pleased to announce some new updates to the Rain distribution in version 3.0. We have now made Drupal project template easier to use and maintain by splitting Rain content features (all of which are optional) from the main “base” package. This allows developers flexibility in which features they use while still pre-configuring modules that jump-start development. There are some key changes that we will highlight here:
Note that the Drupal-project template is only used for provisioning new projects. Any project that currently uses the 2x version of the Rain distribution will not break or be forced to update. Updates to 2x will continue through to Drupal core 8.8 but then be sunset in favor of the 3x branch. Overall the process of updating from 2x to 3x should be relatively painless. If you experience any problems updating please file an issue in the official Rain project queue on Drupal.org: https://www.drupal.org/project/rain. Installing Rain 3.0To install the Rain distribution, we recommend you leverage our Drupal project template which includes a VM and Guardr security along with the Rain install profile and other tools. Our recent article entitled “Drupal 8 Rain & GatsbyJS Integration” covered how to install Rain using the project template so we will recap the first step here which remains the same in version 3.0. First you will want to create a repository wherever you typically host your Git projects (i.e. Github, Bitbucket or Gitlab). Once you have that setup you can clone Mediacurrent’s repo and point the origin back to your Git repo. Example:
Next, you will want to initialize the project. You can do that by running the following commands with your local host name and IP. Example:
Finally, to build the project and run the install you can simply run “./scripts/build.sh” which runs composer install as well as the Drupal install. Note that the project README has more detailed instructions but this will give you an idea how to get up and running quickly. Video Tutorial for Installing RainOriginally from Drupal.org aggregator http://bit.ly/2EMZuR4
Myths about OpenSource Technology Harshit Fri, 05/31/2019 - 17:32
Open source software has been receiving some serious criticism and some serious applauds from the tech community all across the world. People beg to differ on a lot of ideas about it, it has led to some serious publicity over these years. But hold on a second, with publicity comes myth and with myth comes some serious thoughts and people get mislead. Which at the end of the day hampers people’s thought process. Some think source software is totally free to use and some question its security quotient. Open source technology has made it nearly possible to do so much in literally no time. Let’s get into some myths about open source technology about back them with actual facts. Myth #1: Open Source is freeMany people get more inclined towards open source software because they are misled into thinking that open source software is free to use and there will be hardly any software run costs in the future. On the correct note, this is not true, open source means open source code and that you can easily access the source code of any system if you are enrolled in any given community. To break it into a more understandable concept: An Open Source Content Management System vendor can charge you for the services being provided around the open source software, And by far there is no link between the software license and the what you have to pay to get out of it. Take Drupal for example, it's free to download and use for personal purposes but the advancements have gone so far that you will need to seek expert services for utilising the software to it's very best potential. What's the free part? You are free to access the source code behind the functionality and alter it for your own use case but provided that you abide by the terms and conditions in the license agreement. Myth #2 - All open source software is Linux basedThis myth is one of the most common and it’s fair enough for people to believe, especially when they are new to the open source landscape or just starting off their careers. When OSS came into the picture, this was the most commonly When people mentioned OSS, the quick and common assumption about it is that OSS only runs on the Linux operating system. It is a quick and easy assumption to make as many open source programs are made with Linux availability as a prime motivator. MYTH #3: Contribution to OpenSource is only for startupsIn the government sector, open source contribution is strong and they have the deploy teams to be able to handle and make the best use out of the open source software. Hence they end up making more and more contributions in the process. On the other hand, the developers in the public sector do contribute to the code base but they have to expect some benefit out of it, either in the financial aspects or on the career trajectory aspect. Some state and federal agencies like code.ca.gov and code.gov are using code sharing and collaboration to help the government in cutting down the duplicacy costs. Drupal as an open source software is great for giving startups a heads up for showcasing their expertise and content. On the other hand, it is also one of the best solutions when it comes to enterprise requirements. You can custom build your content management systems which serve for a large scale content repository. Myth 4 : OSS is less secure than proprietary softwareSo, is open source software inherently more secure? Of course not. Before going for any open source solution, you should look into its security thoroughly. You can always review its version history and the frequency of security updates provided by the supporting community, you should also look for the amount of work being poured into its security segment and what is the word of mouth like? Maybe you’ll even find an independent agency vouching for a product’s security, or certificates proving its reliability, or a respected colleague who can assure you that it's the best option on the market. Additionally, you can see what tools your competitors, partners, and established companies in the industry are using. For instance, Ruby on Rails is used by 500px and Airbnb, and that alone is a great indicator that this framework is reliable enough for startups. Drupal is considered one of the most secure content management systems across the world. Why? Because of its dedicated security team and the frequent security releases which make the system more and more robust over time. Myth 5 - OSS is not scalableOpen source software is never designed to fit in everyone's shoe, the entire agenda of open source software is to make sure people can make it fit in their shoes with the help of respective expertise and their organisational requirements. Take Drupal for example, It is designed to be scalable and adaptable in comparison to its commercial competitors. It is supposed to be evolved by the community and hence meet enterprise expectations. Developers have been able to adapt projects to small and enterprise size requirements. Myth 6 - Open Source is not maintainableIt is a strong assumption that open source software is harder to maintain and it can lead to possible confusion among the user crowd. There is always a sense of responsibility and motivation to improve the code and better the software overall, not for monetary gain, not for any gain other than a feeling of social responsibility. Open Source softwares generally track all the upgrades, improvements and maintenance measures using paid tools to help maintain a record of the versioning and who was the code contributed by. See? The community has already got the maintenance concern or issue covered before it even gets started. One more strong foothold about open source is that it can be managed and the work can be overtaken by other technology service providers, in case your technical team decides to move on. So, you should now be sold on the idea that open source is maintained like a premier software. Myth 7 - OSS doesn’t have a support system in placeSince there is no one to hold accountable openly, people think open source software is less cared about or not supported so well in the industry. But things are the absolute opposite, the amount of care and support put in by the community support teams is enthralling and it can completely change your mindset about it. Companies which run on the software bring in their brightest minds to help provide support for their software so that they don't get shut down at the end of the day due to lack of sincerity in support and care. Final wordThere might be a ton of myths and rumors circulating within and outside the communities but one should always think and work this out before making any harsh assumptions. Myths often keep us from adopting or trying out a technology and this has to come to an end sooner or later because the technology and the community speak for themselves.
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Originally from Drupal.org aggregator http://bit.ly/2XhsCqV
Run to Glory: The Drupal Effect on High Performance Websites Shankar Fri, 05/31/2019 - 16:36
Usain Bolt, in his last appearance at the World Track and Field Championships in 2017, stood third by a narrow defeat in the 100m race leaving behind a yawning gulf. Bolt finished the race just a hundredth of a second later than his fellow competitors. Every (nano)second counts!
Visualise that it is the Mega Book Sale Day and the bookworms are thronging the best performing online stores that are selling the books of renowned authors. Coping with such a colossal turn-up, a site with much faster page load speed would be preferred over the ones that are a bit sluggish. Drupal offers a superb platform for an effective website performance optimisation thereby making it faster and user-friendly. The Significance of Website Performance OptimisationWeb performance optimisation involves monitoring the performance of web application analysing and assessing it, and identifying the best practices to improve it. Web applications are a combination of server-side and client-side code. To improve the web performance, both the sides need to be optimised. The client-side optimisation relates to the initial page load time, JavaScript that runs in the browser, downloading all of the resources etc. that are seen in the web browser. The server-side optimisation relates to database queries and other application dependencies to check how long it takes to run on the server for executing requests. Performance optimisation is significant because of the following factors: User retentionBBC found that they are losing out of 10% of users for every extra second their website took to load. Also, DoubleClick by Google found that if the web page took more than 3 seconds to load, 53% of mobile site visitors tend to abandon the page.
We all strive to make our users engage in a meaningful interaction with what we have built for the web. So, if it is an online store, you would like to see a prospective audience turning into buyers. Or if it is a social networking web application, you would want your online visitors to get ensconced in an arresting interaction with one another. High performing sites play a vital role in engaging and retaining users.
It costs 5 to 25 times more to attract new customers. So, even a 5% enhancement in customer retention can lead to increased profits of 25%-95%. By redesigning their web pages, Pinterest combated a 40% reduction in perceived wait times and witnessed a 15% increase in their search engine traffic and sign-ups. COOK, a provider of high-quality frozen meals, was able to address the average page load time and cut it down by 850 milliseconds which resulted in 7% in conversions, 10% increase in pages per session and 7% decrease in bounce rate. Improved ConversionsUser retention ultimately leads to better conversion rates. Slow sites can have huge repercussions on the business revenues. Better performance of sites can be highly profitable to shore up revenues. According to 2016 Q2 Mobile Insights Report by Mobify, 1.11% increase in session-based conversion was seen for every 100ms decrease in homepage load speed. Moreover, a 1.55% increase in session-based conversion was noticed for every 100ms decrease in checkout page load time. The outcome was an increase in the average annual revenue by approximately $530,000. Also, AutoAnything revved up their sales by 12-13% after decreasing their page load time by half. User experienceWhen sites ship tons of code, underwhelming performance persists as the browsers chew through megabytes of it on snail-paced networks. Even the devices with limited processing power and memory can find it hard to cope up with the modest amount of unoptimised code. With poor performance taking centre stage, application responsiveness and availability diminishes. Better optimised code lead to high functioning and better-performing sites which in return alleviate the digital user experience. Strategising the web performanceFormulation of strategies to improve web performance can be done in two ways: Bottom-up strategyAlso known as performance-by-design, the bottom-up strategy is the preferred approach to integrate performance as a core development principle. In this strategy, the performance optimisation principles are framed, applied and maintained. This is done right from the application design phase. The key stages that are involved in this approach are stated below:
Here's a chart by Infosys which explains it best: Top-down strategyIf an existing application needs to be optimised for performance, top-down strategy comes into play. This is a preferred option only when the legacy applications are being optimised for high performance. Also, this is not cost effective and the optimisation options are limited. Steps involved in this strategy are as follows:
In addition to these strategies, one must consider an important methodology called ‘Performance Budgeting’. It means setting a performance threshold that you aim to stay within. You can safeguard your site speed and detect any regression in the performance by setting up a performance budget to ensure continual eye on performance. This is how we do it! Expected load time and Google page speed score, as shown below, is the core of our perpetual and iterative development process. The above chart shows that, while applying performance budgeting methodology, we take note of:
Implementing Performance OptimisationHow to speed up my Drupal website performance? Drupal is loaded with an enormous amount of features which, when implemented smartly, can lead to superfast page loads. There are several techniques to make your website faster by leveraging the amazing features of Drupal. Keeping your site and modules updatedOutmoded modules can deter your efforts in speeding up your website. Thus, it is important to update every module enabled on your Drupal site. Uninstalling unused modulesLike those outdated modules, it is significant to keep a tab on least used or no longer used modules. The number of Drupal modules installed on the site is directly proportional to the time taken for code execution which affects page load time. Uninstalling unwanted modules can alleviate execution time. Optimising CacheOptimisation of native cache system ensures that all the web page components are stored in an easily accessible location after a user visits your site for the very time. So, whenever the user visits your site again, the page elements are loaded from the cache which leads to increased page load speed.
Optimising databaseWebsite coding is not the sole thing that can be optimised. Optimising database by regularly cleaning up the data and removing the unwanted piece of information. Memcache API and Integration module, help in the integration of Drupal and Memcached. It stores your data in active memory for a limited period of time thereby making it faster to access. So, instead of making queries to the database constantly, the information is readily available. Such a system also works on the shared web hosting plans. Incorporating a Content Delivery Network (CDN)Components like CSS, JavaScript and media are hosted by CDN and served to the online visitors from the nearest location. This can help in mitigating the page load time by rapidly delivering web page components. Drupal module, CDN, helps in the integration of Content Delivery Network for Drupal websites. It changes the file URLs so that files like CSS, JavaScripts, images, videos, and fonts are downloaded from the CDN instead of your web server. Optimising bandwidthAggregating all CSS and JavaScript files to make them load together is what bandwidth optimisation refers to. Such a parallel processing ensures that all the page elements can be seen by the users almost immediately. Optimising imagesDrupal 8 core is loaded with image optimisation feature to set the compression ratio of the images and fine-tune the page performance. Moreover, the size of the images for screen sizes of different devices can be optimised in Drupal 8 to enhance the page load speed. Handling 404 errorsWhenever something on the website breaks to cause a 404 error, it can lead to sluggishness. For instance, a failed image can damage the performance of the site. Drupal 8 provides a module called Fast 404 which utilises the resources better and whitelists files and verifies pathways of problem. Managing the use of CSS and JavaScriptCSS and JavaScript provide wonderful methods for customisation and flexibility. But, too much of good things can be troublesome for your websites. Avoiding excessive use of CSS files and JavaScript use and keeping the code to a minimum can improve performance. Using lazy loadingLazy or on-demand loading is a perfect way to optimise your site’s performance. In this method, you split your code at logical breakpoints and then load it once the user has done something that requires a new block of code. Basically, in traditional websites, all the images and content are preloaded into the web browser when someone accesses the site. Lazy loading loads these elements as soon as a user scrolls to view a content. Blazy, Drupal module, provides the functionalities of lazy loading and multi-serving the images to save bandwidth and server requests. Better web hostingIt is of consummate importance that, while implementing every possible tips and trick and utilising the Drupal’s amazing features, you chose the best web hosting provider that will decide your site’s ultimate speed, stability and security. Upgrading the server hardwareServer scaling is of paramount importance in order to optimise the website. And to do so, you can either upgrade the server hardware by scaling vertically or by scaling horizontally. When you scale vertically, more resources are thrown at the same server and is considered the simplest approach of scaling the hardware. And when you scale horizontally, more servers are added to separate the load. This approach, when executed well, can minimise the load that any single server receives. In case, you have multiple app servers for Drupal, you will need a method of deploying code to each server concurrently. For example, plartform.sh and pantheon.io can manage the entire hosting setup for you but if you are handling it by yourself, you would require rsync setup or git push to each of your servers etc. Case StudyThe Drupal website of the Farm Journal’s MILK was optimised for high performance and better search engine rankings with a help of carefully drafted audit report by Opensense Labs. In this section, we will focus on how we used our Drupal expertise to resolve the performance issues. Project highlightsPreviously segregated CSS and JS files cached separately which escalated the page load time. We aggregated all these files and put them in one place which assuaged the page load time. Moreover, we used Advanced CSS/JS Aggregation Drupal module to minify CSS, JS and HTML and reduce load time. In addition to these, we enabled Redis, used as a database, cache and message broker, so that it can be used as the backend instead of MySQL. This allowed cached items to be retrieved swiftly and improved performance. Project outcomeOn testing the performance metrics on tools like PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom, we witnessed significant improvement. PageSpeed Insights
Pingdom
ConclusionSpeed can be the determining factor in the amount of time an online user spends on your website. It’s important that you remove the sluggishness from your website and inculcate betterments in its performance. Drupal 8 can help by incorporating wonderful features to make your site a high performing space. Feel free to reach us at [email protected] for developing a high performing Drupal website
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Originally from Drupal.org aggregator http://bit.ly/2EMpvQz
The team at WishDesk explores the most popular marketing automation tools that integrate with Drupal 8.
Originally from Drupal.org aggregator http://bit.ly/2Xo7S0Y
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