Domain7

Hurdles

There’s no question that, to be successful, web designers and developers have to continuously learn and refine their craft. The web is a very different place than it was five years ago, and what’s expected of us today is different than it was then. Learning on the job is a no brainer. But what is the most effective time to learn?

I was working on a fun personal project in Rails for a few minutes before dinner last night. In the time span of about 30 minutes a bunch of concepts, conventions, and principles that are essential to understanding Rails clicked. It was a serious turning point. I’ve been trying to learn Rails off and on for a few years, and nothing was really sticking. At that moment I understood that in most cases, I approach my work and my learning wrong: I train while I’m running the race.

Wikipedia says this about hurdling technique: Generally, the efficient hurdler spends the minimum amount of time and energy going vertically over the hurdle, thus achieving maximum speed in the horizontal race direction.

Designers and developers should approach projects like a well-trained hurdler: thoroughly equipped for the race, able to go from start to finish with ease, prepared and anticipating the hurdles he needs to jump without slowing down.

Since forever, I have instead approached projects like this: Run as fast as you can, and when you get to a hurdle, stop to analyze it and figure out how best to jump over it. I’ve always thought it was a good thing to learn during a project, and I’ve always enjoyed accepting challenges for the sake of learning them.

I think I was horribly wrong in this approach for two reasons:

1. It’s easier and faster to train/learn when you’re not already out of breath. If you’re trying to train in the middle of the race, you’re already tired from running. When I was learning Rails last night, I wasn’t in the middle of a project… it was at my leisure, in my own “gym”, and because of that my training was far more productive.
2. Anticipation alone isn’t enough for accurate estimation. You can look down the track and see all the hurdles, but you’re still going to make guesses at the level of effort to jump over them if you haven’t already done so in the past.

Given these reasons, there emerged a few practical outcomes for work:

1. Projects are not always the right place for training. Clients need you at your peak performance to run the race without stopping.
2. Set aside dedicated training time. If you’re unencumbered by deadlines, requirement documents, feedback cycles, etc., the learning process is vastly more productive.
3. To the best of your ability, only take projects where you’re familiar with the hurdles. Swallow your pride. Few projects will be completely exempt from challenges, but don’t take on something you have no previous experience with at all. The fun part of engaging in a challenge should be in the time you’ve set aside for training. Tackling a challenge unencumbered by the various aspects of a real-world project will free you up to be more creative, flexible and innovative.

Is Drupal Hard to Use?

Recently a prospective client mentioned she had heard Drupal is difficult to use, and asked to see a dummy Drupal backend to explore the interface.

It’s surprising how frequently this “Drupal is hard” myth pops up. True, Drupal is very robust compared to some simple Content Management Systems, but from a management standpoint, it’s super user-friendly and makes it nearly impossible to mess up your site.

I enlisted the help of my Drupal-savvy teammate Kevan to accomplish the task, and he one-upped me when he created this handy little video.

Without fail, once our clients see their websites in action they quickly learn just how easy Drupal is to use, but we thought we’d share Kevan’s tutorial with you, to settle any question in your mind.

The bottom line: Drupal is easy!

Open Systems vs. Open Source

I often get asked about my philosophy on technology, and over the years my simple answer has always—confidently—been: “Open source!” According to the all-knowing font of wisdom (ahem, Wikipedia), Open Source is defined as: “practices in production and development that promote access to the end product’s source materials.”

This definition certainly holds true. But more recently, as we’ve been privileged to create websites and systems for a huge variety of clients, I’ve realized that we need broader terminology for our development philosophy.

Now my answer is: “I believe in Open Systems.”

I would define Open Systems as products that feature:

• Open Source technologies. All foundational technologies—like application frameworks—are open source whenever possible.
• Web Standards. The software is comprised of publicly vetted, web-standards-based technologies.
• Integration. Software is architected towards integration—not lock-in—whenever possible
• Transparent data. Data is exposed to technologists and non-technologists as much as security and budgets allow
• 100% customer-accessible code base
• 100% customer-owned data

Why is this important? Take the example of templating a website: In a Content Management System (CMS), templating looks at how the markup (HTML/CSS) combines with the deeper functionality of the CMS. In some cases, templating an open source CMS can be cumbersome, with specific nuances that are quite proprietary. Often, it’s challenging to do anything unique or different with the content and information stored in the CMS, without the significant technical debt of creating new templates.

A fantastic example of an open system for templating is the open source project, Symphony. Symphony’s content model is based on a standards-based data model of XML, and templating is also standards-based through XSL. Considering the non-proprietary way data is accessible and interoperable, I sometimes wonder whether other best-of-breed Open Source tools have lost the heart of Open Systems through the cumbersome and non-standard templating models.

Domain7 designer/developer, Stephen Bau is a leading contributor within the Symphony community. He is currently working on a project entitled xpathr to show how a standards-based approach to templating enables collaboration with teams, using best practices of software development. xpathr gives teams the ability to collaborate with code repositories in Git and co-solve development problems in the managed XML data store and the respective XSL template transform.

So where does that leave Domain7? I know we’ll continue to carefully scrutinize the Open Source tools we recommend, based on the open nature of their architecture. My hope is that the communities that govern Open Source projects embrace a standards and the Open System approach and that we’ll see content and client liberation through these tools.

Domain7 as Our Client Day

On Friday we brought together the ENTIRE Domain7 team—across four time zones!—to plan for the future, and treat ourselves to the same strategy process we offer our clients. We used one giant Google Hangout for our large group gathering and then split off into teams to target specific topics.

As a business with offices across the country (a complete office in Washington, DC and team members in Halifax and Texas!) it was pretty amazing to bring everyone together, and to see how well it worked, thanks to some simple, free technology.

Plus, we’re pretty excited to implement all the big plans we dreamed up for Domain7!

Thanks to Kevan Gilbert for capturing some footage from the day.

Introducing KeyPunch

Like many companies, Domain7 deals with a lot sensitive information that needs to be shared securely across the entire organization. Wi-fi keys, social media passwords, analytics accounts, clients’ Content Management Systems (CMS)—on any given day our team members log in and out of at least a dozen online accounts, and every single one needs a user-name and password.

For some time, we puzzled over finding a centralized spot for all this information without blowing the bank on licensing costs. There are some pretty good solutions out there (for a fee) but none of them upheld both of our essential criteria for a great tool:

1. open source
2. web based

Plus, with team members in every corner of North America, we needed an affordable solution that would give access to multiple users across many locations.

So we took it into our own hands! The D7 Labs team has developed Keypunch with the following Domain7 team members: Stephen Bau, Shane Davies, Tom Fast, and Andrew Hawthorne.

Keypunch is an open-source, web-based, multi-user system that allows organizations to manage secure information across multiple users and groups. Keypunch has launched internally at Domain7, with an eye to public launch in early this year. Watch for more news in coming months!

15 years of Domain7

If our last two blog posts didn’t tip you off, we LOVE Christmas at Domain7. But this year there was a little extra jolly in our holly as we also celebrated 15 years in business!

Over 100 of our clients, partners and friends joined us at our Vancouver office for an occasion we like to call “Chr15tmas”. It was a classy affair—but far better than the canapés, wine and tunes, was seeing so many faces that have contributed to the success of Domain7 in the last 15 years. We look forward to working with you for another 15 plus!

To see all the party photos, visit our Flickr site.

The Christmas Cheer Generator

Sometimes, deep in the midst of interactive wireframes, prototypes, style boards, database configurations, css-ing, and brand implementation scrums, our team likes to step back and play with the web, old-school style.

So, after a few hours of keyboarding, some clever wordsmithing, and a flurry of instant messages between offices, we whipped up a simple bit of Christmas cheer for you.

And when we say simple, we mean it. As an homage to our founding 15 years ago, we bring you a toy that harks back to the novelty that was the World Wide Web circa 1997.

Ladies and gents, behold the Christmas Cheer Generator! Everyone needs to feel the love this time of year, so just give us your name and let us shower you with holiday joy.

But oh wait, PS: what makes this decidedly un-1997 is that it is—awesomely—responsive (aka mobile-friendly). If it were solidly 1997 this little web toy would be locked into position with tables and scrolly bars and if you tried to pull it up on your “mobile device” (otherwise known as your nifty lead-weighted Nokia 9000 Communicator) you would have been, in a word, sad.

A Very D7 Christmas!

Last week the entire D7 West team came together in Abbotsford for a night of food and frivolity in honour of our favourite festive season.

We ate, we drank, we played silly games and we left filled with Christmas cheer and gelato.

Besides watching our bosses shake their booties, a highlight of the evening was a little game called “How well do you know your co-workers?” Each team member submitted a little-known fact about him/herself and the rest of us had to guess which fact could be attributed to whom.

Take a stab at it, and click through to find the answers!

• When I was 10 years old and at home sick from school, I used my mom’s sewing machine to sew an outfit for my cabbage patch kid. Who am I?
• I’m a retired magician and children’s birthday party entertainer. Who am I?
• Between 1994 and 2010, I went 16 years without throwing up. Who am I?
• I bought, and still enjoy, a Milli Vanilli CD. Who am I?
• My great-grandfather’s name was Vader. Eg. “_____, (loud, mechanical breath) I am your great-grandfather (loud, mechanical breath).” Who am I?
• I once built a 300-metre bobsled track through the forest in my backyard. Who am I?
• I’ve played in a state championship soccer game. Who am I?
• I had a chat with a guy at a football game and gave him a big pat on the back… Turns out he was Peter MacKay, our Minister of Defence. Who am I?
• I once tried to buy a chainsaw online. [Who am I?]{http://domain7.com/team/miriam-thomas/)
• I have represented my country in gymnastics at international festivals. Who am I?

Domain7 at the CFL Western Final (yay Lions!)

A dozen Domain7-ers (and loved ones) gathered at our Vancouver office last week and made the big trek across the street to the brand new BC Place, where we watched the Lions win the CFL Western Final. We liked to think our exceptional cheering was partly responsible for the win, but their subsequent Grey Cup performance proved that the Lions are just THAT good!

photos by the endlessly talented Tracey Falk

A slice of Facebook strategy

There’s a reason you don’t serve guests leftover pizza. When reheated in the microwave, the crust is soggy and the tomato sauce is lava, while the pineapples feel like they’re still in the refrigerator. Conversely, everyone loves pizza fresh from your oven or even from the local pizza shop. The same goes for your social media strategy. People don’t want to see the same rehashed content again and again. They want to feel special.

Crafting a Facebook status update is different from a Tweet—it’s meant to spur conversation rather than simply make a statement. When you recycle your one-sided Tweet on Facebook, people can spot your leftover pizza right away.

Here at Domain7 we’ve made a conscious decision to bake content for each social media platform individually, and because we know it’s where EVERYONE hangs out, we give special attention to Facebook. While we may serve the same information on all our channels, it’s intentionally prepared in a way that suits each setting.

Admittedly, this is a recent change for us. I’ve only been brought into the kitchen here at Domain7 in the last couple months, and since I have been entrusted with the keys to our Facebook Insights, our average number of ‘People Reached’ increased by about 200% per post—just by being intentional about the platform and turning off the RSS Feeders.

While managing your social media channels is a very important task, the person best-suited for the role could be your junior employees, because they’ve been raised on the stuff, and already know what works and doesn’t.

Why don’t you try it yourself?

Start with photos—just fun photos from around your workspace or recent events, and toss in a few new projects or products you’re proud of. They’re unobtrusive, and allow your fans to get back to their regular Facebook creeping.

This engagement with your followers or “likes” is extremely valuable. If your social media strategy is executed correctly, your fans will be engaged with interesting, original content, which leads to brand loyalty. When it comes time to release intentional action-spurring messaging, you already have a faithful audience, ready to act.

That’s a delicious leap in engagement, with minimal effort.