Being Agile at a Small Agency

A small, growing agency is always searching for ways to work more efficiently and effectively. Agile approaches attempt to address a lot of the challenges a small agency might face. But one of the key aspects of an agile approach — an iterative process — can be challenging for a small team to adopt, and may not be immediately attractive to clients. 

This presentation explores some key agile principles and how our small web team has incorporated agile strategies into its process even in cases that fully iterative approach isn’t possible.

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Website Content Migration Tips

What? You say it’s time for a website redesign? Hooray! The prospects of a fresh new interface, responsive layout and new functionality make a redesign project really exciting. It’s easy to focus on the design and development aspects of the process, and just ignore that ugly, out-of-date, sorry excuse for an old website. But somewhere along the way you are going to have to deal with all that content on the existing site. That’s where a content migration plan comes in, and the sooner you start thinking about it the better off you’ll be. Here’s how to plan a website content migration.

 

What Version of WordPress Am I Running?

It may seem a silly thing, but for various reasons you may not be aware of what version of WordPress your are running on a particular website. Maybe you’ve taken over a site built by someone else. Or you are rebooting your own site that’s been neglected for awhile. Or maybe you are just being confronted by the seemingly ever-present ‘Please update now’ message in the WordPress admin.

Regardless of why, sometimes you need to look up what version of WordPress you are running, and the admin itself surprisingly doesn’t have the version listed anywhere. Here are some ways to look it up:

  • Admin Dashboard: This should suffice for most instances — on the admin Dashboard screen (usually the landing page when you login to the admin), look at the bottom of the Right Now widget. There should be text reading ‘You are using WordPress x.x.x’. If the Right Now widget is hidden, reveal it using the ‘Screen Options’ tab to the upper right of the screen.
  • Version.php: The WordPress core stores the version as a variable in /wp-includes/version.php. You can’t access this from the front-end, but you can go into the files and look at the code to find it.
  • Source Code: Some themes include the version in a meta tag in the source code. Look for
    <meta name="generator" content="WordPress 4.1" />

Incidentally, you don’t really want that tag displaying in your site code if you can help it since it can be a liability especially of you are running an out of date version of WP. Use a remove_action in your functions.php to remove that from your site.

remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');

How to Disable Email Notifications in Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook email delivery notifications can be set to provide audio and visual prompts every time an email is delivered. How helpful this feature is may depend on how you tend to work. For me, getting constant bings and pop-ups every time an email arrives is nothing but a distraction. The notifications themselves interrupt my work, and once I know an email has arrived I’m prone to go check it, which takes me out of my work flow and makes it very difficult to concentrate.

Outlook Notification SettingsI’d rather be able to work uninterrupted and check my email every hour or so, giving me the chance to build up some momentum as I work rather than multitasking all the time. It’s quite simple to customize or turn off Outlook’s notification features which are set to be on by default. Here’s how:

Disable Email Notifications in Outlook 2007

  1. Open the Outlook Options menu (Tools-Options).
  2. The Preferences tab should be active by default. Under the E-mail section, click ‘E-mail Options’
  3. Under the Message Handling section, click ‘Advanced E-mail Options’
  4. Adjust your notification settings under the ‘When new items arrive in my Inbox’ section. You may disable all notifications, or pick and choose from the available settings. ‘Desktop Alert Settings’ allows you to adjust the timing and transparency of the pop-up alert.
  5. Click ‘OK’ when complete.

Disable Email Notifications in Outlook 2010

  1. Open the Outlook Options menu (File-Options).
  2. Click the ‘Mail’ tab.
  3. Adjust your notification settings under the ‘Message arrival’ section. You may disable all notifications, or pick and choose from the available settings. ‘Desktop Alert Settings’ allows you to adjust the timing and transparency of the pop-up alert.
  4. Click ‘OK’ when complete.

Disable Email Notifications in Outlook 2011 for Mac

  1. Open the Outlook Preferences menu (Outlook-Preferences)
  2. Click ‘Notifications and sounds’
  3. Adjust your notification settings under the ‘Message arrival’ and ‘Sounds’ sections.  You may disable all notifications, or pick and choose from the available settings including notification sounds for events other than message arrival such as calendar reminders.

In non-Mac versions of Outlook, calendar alert preferences are set separately from message alerts. I prefer to keep Calendar alerts active. Just as shutting off message alerts is meant to keep me focused on the task at hand, calendar alerts are essential for reminding me when I need to break to do something else.

 

 

Local DNS Settings: Map a Domain to a Local IP Address

On occasion you may have reason to map a domain name to a specific IP address on an individual computer.  I find this most useful when developing locally so that I can use a website’s actual domain name but map it to the local dev version of the site.

Using a custom domain mapping is particularly important when developing with WordPress because the siteURL plays such a central role in creating links and resources in the WP structure. If you can use the actual domain during development, you’ll save yourself trouble later having to update the siteURL and any data that would have referenced the in-development domain.

Windows Hosts file

Local DNS settings allow you to manage custom domain mappings to IP addresses of your choosing. These may be internal IPs within your local area network, or public IPs outside your network. These mappings are set up by editing the “Hosts” file on Windows or Mac systems. Here’s how:

Edit the Hosts File in Windows

1. Open the Hosts file in Notebook or some other simple text editor editor. Where is the hosts file you ask? Depends on your setup, but for most Windows systems the directory path should be something like

\\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

Depending on your security settings, you may need to open your text editor in administrator mode (‘run as administrator’) in order to save your edits.

2. At the top of the file there are instructions for how to use the file, all preceeded by the # comment tags.

3. Below this are the actual mappings. The first column contains the preferred IP destination, while the second column contains the domain to be mapped. The domains in the second column will resolve to the corresponding IPs in the first column. A few important points:

  • Naked domains and subdomains (i.e., www.) must be mapped separately.
  • You must use an IP address in the first column, not another domain name.
  • Use hashes to disable mappings temporarily

4. Once you’ve made your settings, save the file.

5. Open the Command Prompt and update your system’s DNS cache with the command:

ipconfig /flushdns

6. All browsers should now follow these mappings for the domains listed in this Hosts file.

Edit the Hosts File on a Mac OSX

1. Open Terminal and open the hosts file using the following command:

sudo nano /private/etc/hosts 

2. You may be asked to enter your administrator password. Go ahead and do that to continue.

3. The Hosts file will open. Much like the Windows version, there are instruction comments at the top, followed by the mappings. The first column contains the preferred IP destination, while the second column contains the domain to be mapped. The domains in the second column will resolve to the corresponding IPs in the first column.

4. Add your new mappings. Just as with the Windows version, keep in mind that:

  • Naked domains and subdomains (i.e., www.) must be mapped separately.
  • You must use an IP address in the first column, not another domain name.
  • Use hashes to disable mappings temporarily

5. When finished save your changes by pressing Control-o, then hit return to confirm the filename, then Control-x to close the Hosts file.

6. Lastly, update your DNS cache from Terminal using the command:

dscacheutil -flushcache

7. All browsers should now follow these mappings for the domains listed in this Hosts file.

 

Making Fixed Nav Work with the WordPress Admin Bar

A fixed header is a good way to maintain a prominent position for the branding and navigation elements on your website. A normal inline header disappears once a visitor begins scrolling to see content lower on the page. A fixed header remains pinned to the top of the browser window so that it always remains accessible no matter where the visitor is on the page.

This approach works best with a low profile header that takes up a minimum of vertical space — taller headers already monopolize space on the default page view, so pinning them in place may negatively affect overall usability.

However, a minor problem arises when using a fixed header on a WordPress site. When logged in as an admin, the WordPress admin bar itself is also pinned to the top of the browser window. This leads to the admin bar overlapping the website header, in some cases obscuring part or all of the branding and navigation. This is particularly the case when the website header is already quite narrow, in some cases making normal site navigation impossible because the WordPress admin bar is given a z-index that always puts it on top.

How to Display Fixed Nav Below the WordPress Admin Bar

Thankfully, there is a simple solution to the issue.

When logged in as an Administrator, the body tag is given a class of ‘admin-bar’ which you can use to alter the style of your header to account for the presence of the admin bar. Modify your header when this class is present to be positioned enough pixels from the top by to account for the admin bar.

Here’s what works for this site:

body.admin-bar .header {
      position:fixed;
      top: 28px;
      z-index: 1000;
      height: 40px;
}

The z-index isn’t strictly necessary, but just in case it ensures that the website navigation bar will display on top of the WP admin bar (or anything else). Personally, I’d rather be able to navigate the site normally and use the full WP admin interface anyway.