#if im doing it on web i can open a separate tab to see if they’re vetted + another separate tab for the gofundme

[sanguinewolves]

puter hates me today so no askbox clearout rn 😕

[wuffzilla]

((Personal Summary + Notes))

P1:  

Issue - get more people to find Tumblr.  (Good idea) Solution - No details about what making SEO "improvements" will do. Issue - How to get people to sign up. Solution - Want to show potential Users more things in a Logged out view of the blogs they find.  (Understandable.  BUT considering every site is copying each other, this will possibly be done in a really bad way that drives off potential Users.  EX: Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, ETC all putting these obnoxiously large elements in the way of the content the user is looking for thinking people will sign up to unblock the content when they'll just get annoyed & leave with a bad impression of the site.  Crossing all my fingers & toes that ya’ll don’t do this.)

P2: Issue - Showing Users HQ content every time they open the app (OK depending on how you do it). Solution - No explanation. (Im suspicious this involves forcing posts on the "Following" tab without permission.  Hopefully they will keep it on a separate tab that Users can choose to view if they want.)  Issue - Ensure searched for content is easy to find (Good) Solution - Making the search easier to see? Making search work better?? Unclear info.

P3: Issue - Conversations on posts are hard to follow. (Yeah) Solution - Make them easier to follow by putting replies in threads, Letting you reply to comments under posts, Adding the ability to collapse threads.  (Possibly good? is the about the Comment section under a post or comments made on reblogs? I can't tell which.)   Solution P2 - Stop showing Duplicates on the "Following" feed (Good idea, prevents obnoxious spamming)

P4: Issue - Make sure Users keep logging in to use the site (Understandable) Solution P1 - Make sure a Users posts can be seen & interacted with (Good idea) Solution P2 - Putting Users content on other Users Following tab (Horrible Obnoxious idea) "It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience." (Putting unwanted content on a Users "Following" Feed is the opposite of having "control of their experience".  Put them on the "For You" tab instead.  The promoted Users have a good chance of being blocked instead of getting more positive interactions.) Solution P3 - Prevent notification spam (Good idea) Solution P3 - Co-creating by embedding Tumblr links in posts (No clue what they think this will do, need more info.)

P5: Issue - Reminding users to keep returning to the site (Understandable) Solution - Audit the way they do promotional emails & notifications to be both useful & not spammy (Understandable but Good luck. Especially on making it not spammy.)

P6: Issue -The app is super buggy (True) Solution - Fix the app (Good idea but tbh my old client is abandoning apps to focus on Web.  It was more cost effective due to the different rules controlling apps on Android & iOS & also the many many MANY different phones and what version of an OS a User has on their phone and BLEUGH.  This also resulted in a ever growing huge Bug backlog. Just focus on Web for desktop & mobile my dudes.)

I see a lot of people saying don’t use algorithm to put posts on their timelines or change the order & I agree with that being a horrible idea.  But nothing ive read here mentions that happening, unless it was the parts that seemed unclear to me?

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[bawkrya]

ok so im just gonna pick at fr from a web designer pov because looking at this site on mobile will drive me into madness if they don’t fix it at some point. The rest of this post will go under a read more because it’s both super long and image heavy.

before i hit mobile though, I’m going to point out some things i just don’t personally like in general with the site design (and yes i am conscious that they are slowly updating to a new look)

this will come as a shock to no one, if you’ve seen previous web design related posts by others anyways, but i cant. stand this menu

[ID: A cropped screenshot of Flight Rising’s Main Menu]

fr, understandably, has a shit ton of links. it’s a petsite with lore and all that, whatever. The thing that bothers me specifically is the length of links and where some are placed.

1. i BELIEVE this counts as an accessibility issue where longer links kinda trap shorter links, goes into misclicks to other pages in the site, etc. etc.  2. i don’t think. the search link should be under library personally ? Maybe make it its own category. 

Dev Tracker & Media could go under this category, possibly add separate links to forum, player, and dragon searches with updated formatting

Dressing Room and Scrying Workshop could go under the “Play” category 

Forums can be it’s own category with possible subcategories being: Announcements & News, Help Center, and Flight specific discussion forum, maybe more 

Library category could then just be: Which Waystone, World Map, Game Database, and Encyclopedia.

Support should be it’s own category.

One thing on the shop category, and i hesitate to say this because im not CONFIDENT on this one, but I’m not sure Custom Skins exactly fits? or at least, it should be Purchase Gems -> Marketplace -> Custom Skins, not between crossroads and festive favors

Merch should probably go under purchase gems, and they should maybe uhh..... i guess change the name for it overall? because 1. “merch” alone does NOT look good with its placement, 2. its another actual money purchase thing and I think those should go on the same page

Along with that, in putting merch under that page, they could put previews of the merch with a button to go purchase instead of immediately going to their merch site (which to begin with it should open in a new tab if its going to a separate site?!!)

then this is a mix of both not liking it on laptop OR mobile, 

[ID: A cropped image of Flight Rising’s Clan Home page. The Bestiary link has a bright red box highlighting it]

Obviously these pages are old, but the graphics need to be updated, and there needs to be graphics for every link in the category-- seeing with this category alone there isn’t a graphic for the Bestiary already. On top of this they need to be in link order preferably. if they had a normal dropdown menu for mobile, mobile users wouldn’t be able to access the bestiary unless FR wanted to be STUPID and do further dropdown menus w their 200 links which would be STUPID and CLUTTERED

also in my opinion the Messages link isn’t necessary since we have the button at the top. If they put it there as an excuse for accessibility, they can just. add text to the buttons. like here’s a scuffed mockup but. 

[ID: Screenshot of Flight Rising’s Messages, Friend Requests, and Alerts icons edited to have Messages, Friends, and Alerts written next to the icons]

for the friends tab, they could prolly add friend requests at the top like they do for baldwin alerts, then have an online status thing for friends below with buttons to PM, trade, delete friend, etc. I think you’re already able to disable the online status thing with page visibility? but like, make those options separate if you dont wanna block off your entire page, but dont want to be seen online.

For mobile, they can just make the icons bigger.

then. i THINK. last thing on laptop site. 

[ID: A screenshot of Flight Rising’s Social Media links with old Logos to YouTube, Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and DeviantArt]

update these fucking icons they are personally killing me, none of these logos are in use anymore (ALSO UPDATE THE TUMBLR THEME JESUS CHRIST)

ok now for mobile. what this post was originally for.

-

as you all know, if you visit this site on mobile, there is literally no form of a mobile version for it. It is just a condensed version of the computer version of the site which is...Very Bad! 

Most of a sites visitors are going to be through mobile, i forget the exact percentage, but like it’s almost a given that people more readily have their phones with them than their laptop or tablet (which. im not going to bother with the tablet version, you can apply both computer and mobile criticisms to the site). in fact a lot of my time on FR is through mobile since I’m not at home 24/7 and I don’t tote my laptop around. Playing this game through it’s mobile site is Not Fun! 

I like, won’t be too pissy or anything bc like. it’s a petsite and I’m making this post for fun. but also like it was made in 2014? 2013? so I’m not going to be u kno. angry. but it nearing the point of ten years with this site and there still isn’t a mobile friendly version. that is lazy. If anything, if they wanted a site update to be the anniversary thing, they should’ve made that update be

Mobile update as primary thing, because designing the site for mobile is a shit ton of work with the amt of pages they have to work through.

Dragon Profile page update (*LOUD SIGH*)

Clan page update

Hoard update (i have thoughts on this too but i wont dive into it this post)

Purchase Gems page update

Dev Tracker update

Forums update

“but that’s a lot to update” well. that wouldve made the anniversary being a website update considerably more worth it, because in my opinion having the dragon profile pages be the ONLY thing to happen during the anniversary was a waste and a bad decision, because other website updates are just. normal whatever updates. it made the anniversary SUPER underwhelming especially bc the past ones (to my knowledge) have only been major game mechanic updates like the eye & ancients update and i believe? the color wheel expansion was an anniversary thing? someone can correct me on that I haven’t played this game as long as most LMAO

as for how i personally would situate the mobile site. shitty graphic time, bc im not putting too much effort into this (warning this will be LONG)

[ID: Image 1. A crudely put together screenshot of the top half of a Mobile View of Flight Rising with comments on either side. It ends with the Latest News segments “Riot of Rot” and “Hoard & Vault Revamp”

Comment 1, Left side: “no banner make it a solid color that matches the burger menu. size the logo correctly etc. Comment 2, Right side: “burger menu w ONLY the categories, goes to the homepages of the categories” Comment 3, Right side: “TWO latest news posts, maybe a button to go see earlier news (which may b something to add to comp too)” Comment 4, Right side: “center dates and comments maybe idfk”

At the bottom of the image there is an added “button” that says “more updates button”]

[ID: Image 2. The bottom half of the mobile view with comments on the left side. There is a put together white box that has the Plague Flight Logo and “plage dom !” written in it. Below it are the Site Status, Random Dragon, and Exalt Bonuses boxes from the site. Underneath that is a red box with “ad space” in the center, with a red footer at the bottom.

The footer contains, “social media! (specifally made icons for site)”, “better formatted links”, and “copyright”.

Comment 1: “idk what they would caption it but the flashy can go here.” Comment 2: “ONE site status update if they keep this format” Comment 3: “probably center these links. i dont know what they use to build the site but im sure you can make icons for social media on just about anything unless this is all handcoded. just. make small icons it takes two seconds and you can copy+paste”]

i dont even want to THINK about how the lair and all that would look on mobile, it was a chore doing the home page alone SOBS

anyways, in ref to these images though--

this is just slapped together and definitely wouldn’t be a final draft, it could use some tweaking

the flashy i refer to is the box that’s above the user box that says what flight is in dom, what festival is going on, etc.

when i mention building the site and “you can make icons for social media on just about anything” im referring to wordpress, wix, whatever is used to format the site. I really only have experience with wordpress thru elementor and divi (so far) so im not CERTAIN about other places but I feel it would be pretty common to have that tool. if not, making icons (or snatching some) is rlly not that hard, probably only costly depending on what their webdesigner(s) charge for icons

I’m not like certain on who does what, how the webdesigner(s) work with/price this site, etc. etc. this is just. going off of my own knowledge. and in general this whole post is my own knowledge abt shit i did no further research to FRs team specifically 

i think this is basically it, i’ll reblog with more if i think of anything, but feel free to add things yourself or in general discuss things. again this post was made for fun so im not taking it seriously or demanding for these changes to be made, just personal annoyances and preferences.

This is also my first time doing picture IDs for a post so if I need to correct anything or the like let me know and I’ll edit it in the post!

[beesmygod]

this is what riverdale is about (part 6)

part 1

part 2

part 3

part 4

part 5

and now...we come to the end of our journey...the final 4 episodes of the season. who killed jason blossom? you forgot that’s what we were doing, huh. you  were way too distracted by sex archie and the jughead/betty relationship (called ‘bughead’ in universe). 

i have a friend who has been watching riverdale because i have basically tricked him into doing so and frankly, what i am typing here was and is only the surface of this show’s nonsense. as he watched episodes, he reminds me of all the completely bananas shit that this show throws at you literally every second it is on screen and honestly its a relief to know that, as much as i can try to just give you some basic facts, watching the show itself is still a totally different transcendent experience. its really the only show of its kind; shamelessly stupid but unaware of it while openly delighting in all the silliest cliches presented as straight faced as possible. if these write up do anything for you at all, please, please. watch the show. you will be shocked at how much more there is to discover.

images are from the riverdale wiki

---

SEASON 1 (PART 4): 

the lost weekend: this is the one with a very special guest star in it: molly ringwald as archie’s mom! she and fred (luke perry) have been separated for some amount of time for an unknown reason. yay she’s so cute! i love her. oh uh, also they’re getting a divorce. the papers are going through. archie gets the bad news in the middle of a gaming sesh with jughead.

meanwhile, veronica meets with her dad’s lawyer (whose name is paul sowerberry?? he never shows up again despite his unbelievably silly name) and tells him she’s not giving him a good statement as to her father’s character to help him get a lesser sentence. “fuck you dad!” is the general sentiment before she stomps out to go to school.

oh man there’s a weird aspect of this show that i have neglected to mention. this isn’t something i’ve ever experienced in school so it was totally foreign and weird to me but the students have their own lounge that they mingle and talk in...at...some point during the school day?? jughead’s opening monologue of this episode makes great pains to talk about how every moment of their lives are scheduled from 8am to 3pm but there’s apparently plenty of sittin’ time where they can just laze about this random room talking about crimes they have or are going to commit. a great deal of talking happens in this room when usually you’d have to like, sneak a convo while getting shit out of your locker between classes. i dunno, it’s weird. this is where archie tells veronica about clifford blossom sending her dad to jail so he can jack the land everyone is fighting over.

archie and betty make plans to celebrate jugheads birthday by taking him to the movies, which i feel like is in poor taste given his movie house was just destroyed but whatever. with betty coming along it’ll be just like the three muskateers! betty replies “AcTuAlLy ThErE wErE fOuR mUsKeTeErS” and somehow he doesn’t beat her to death with his bookbag right there and then. betty then doubles down on the bad words flowing out of her mouth and proposes they hold a surprise party for jughead since, according to his dad, he’s never had one. i have no idea what would compel her to think he would want this. even i know he doesn’t want this and i only know him through a tv screen. on top of this she goes out of her way to invite his deadbeat alcoholic dad multiple times. i thought she was supposed to be the smart, observant nancy drew type but like...what the fuck betty. jughead does, in fact, get pretty pissed at archie just for telling his girlfriend that he even has a birthday. presumably instead of telling him he emerged fully formed from the leader of the black parade’s forehead.

after finding out from some files that her dad was receiving money monthly from clifford blossom for some unspecified reason before the arrest, veronica challenges cheryl to a dance off and wins. unfortunately, veronica cant come forward with what she knows because it would make it look like her dad put a hit out on jason in retaliation. dance off to relieve the pain.

jughead fucking hates his party and makes sure everyone knows it. this is something NORMAL people do and he is NOT normal!!! he leaves the party in a huff when cheryl shows up to get her dance off revenge by ruining the party by inviting the whole school. this is the episode where he does his famous “im a weirdo, i have a hat” speech, which is deliciously dumb. they get in a fight, while jughead’s dad talks to kevin’s boyfriend (who you will remember is a member of his gang he assigned to keep tabs on the progress of the teens looking into the whole land plot mess) while betty’s mom secretly listens in?!

cheryl activates chaos mode and locks everyone in the house so they can play a game called “secrets and sins” which is really just an excuse for her to ask everyone horrible questions to make them feel bad. veronica accuses cheryl of fucking her brother, dilton doiley tells everyone about grundy’s statutory rape of archie andrews and chuck tells everyone about dark mode betty drugging him for an impromptu bdsm session which causes jughead to go apeshit and try to throw a weak little baby punch. jughead’s dad, as the only adult who for some reason let all this happen, finally throws everyone out and tells them to go home.

archie and veronica sleep together, by which i mean, next to each other in the same room. veronica testifies on her father’s behalf and discloses to betty the link between jugheads dad and the serpents and her dad’s land plot dreams. molly ringwald appears for 20 seconds.

INHALES. OKAY.

to riverdale and back again: its homecoming babey! archie’s very supportive mother has a nice talk with him. :) veronica founds out that her dad only has to serve “a few more months” in prison for his various white collar crimes, further proof that riverdale takes place in america. jughead and his dad have a nice normal breakfast while fp sweats and asks him “hey uh, how come uh you’re writing about the uhhhh murder and investigating it and stuff” like a normal dad would. archie and veronica tentatively agree to start going out. 

penelopy blossom brings polly (betty’s pregnant sister, remember her? i didn’t) a strawberry milkshake in the most ominous way possible. veronica plans to sneakily find out if jughead’s dad is helping her own and for what purpose, ultimately. jughead accepts and invite to betty’s house for dinner, not knowing her mom is going to grill the shit out of him and his dad over the whole kid murder thing.

polly finds the ring jason proposed to her with back in penelope’s room while snooping, and has no idea how it wound up back in the hands of his mother. according to penelope, jason threw it in their face when he renounced his lineage, then gives her another milkshake.

the cooper family event is disrupted when betty, wise to her mother’s horseshit, invites her estranged dad to dinner too. all hell breaks loose when the subject of homecoming comes up and fp reveals that while alice and hal were crowned homecoming king and queen, they got in a knockout, drag-out fight backstage. alice flips out before he can reveal what it was about and betty and jughead flee for the dance. meanwhile archie and veronica try, and fail, to find something incriminating in fp’s trailer.

cheryl discovers the milkshakes are DRUGGED and polly is going to sleep through homecoming. she informs her parents that she has disposed of the ring (evidence) and they dont have to worry about it anymore. you can see where this is going.

jughead’s dad drops a bomb on him right before homecoming that they’re going to move to toledo to meet up with jughead’s mom and baby sister. jughead hates this bc he just got used to betty and he wants to write his murder book.

archie and veronica sing a truly terrible cover of “kids in america” that has to be seen to be believed.

meanwhile, sherrif keller tears up fp’s house with a search warrant and finds the gun that was used to kill jason blossom. WHAAAA??? BUT ARCHIE AND VERONICA JUST SEARCHED IT??? how could this happen.....jughead finds out about the web of deception weaved by the friends and tells them all to fuck off so he can go to toledo with his family. jughead literally turns around and is informed that his dad was just arrested for murder. his life is so hilariously bad.

the sheriff sucks so bad at his job because he tells his gay son everything who then spills the beans to archie and co (sans jughead) who learn that fp is being framed, because they already tossed the place before.

cheryl has the ring. at this point none of these things mean anything.

i cant believe i still have two more of these. i’m going to have to split this post after this one.

anatomy of a murder: as it turns out, archie discovers, information you discover during a breaking and entering won’t hold up in court. oops. meanwhile fp inexplicably confesses to kidnapping jason after his fake drowning at sweetwater river so he could use him as ransom after discovering he heir to all that sweet maple syrup money. according to fp, jason nearly escaped so they cut their losses and blasted a hole in him. he also confesses to torching the car and stealing the sheriff's files (which we, the audience, know hal cooper did, not fp). well. that’s that, i guess.

betty’s dad comes back to the family home to destroy the murderboard evidence all like “whoo hoo! fp took a bullet for me!” hal’s concern and his reason for stealing the files in the first place, as it turns out, was because the feud between the coopers and the blossoms is more complicated than we thought. the coopers WERE blossoms, until grand-pappy was murdered, so they packed their shit and left with a new name. so that makes polly and jason related. cool!

fp apparently used his his last phone call to call kevin’s boyfriend who, after some pressing by the gang, admits that while he didnt see fp pull the trigger, he did help him put jason’s body in a freezer. this tip leads them to the corpse of a serpent who had a sack of money in a monogrammed dufflebag with the initials “h.l.” (hiram lodge). this is a comically dumb move for a crime boss to make. it is shockingly stupid.

joaquin tells kevin about a secret stash he and fp set up before he bounces from town forever because riverdale sucks. in the stash is jason’s jacket. everyone puzzles over what it means until betty, noted brain genius checks the pockets. in it they find a usb drive.

they sit down and watch the usb and react like they’re watching a sad documentary and not a snuff film. betty calls CHERYL OF ALL PEOPLE and tells her what they just saw on the usb. cheryl, queen of chaos, confronts her dad and tells him that everyone knows what he did.

it turns out the video depicts jason tied up in the basement of the whyte wyrm, there the dead serpent watches over him. clifford blossom walks in and blows a hole in his kid. fp confessed to protect jughead, who was threatened by cliff as the heat poured on.

clifford dies surrounded by his greatest love, maple syrup, by hanging himself in the syrup barn. lol

the sweet hereafter: how the fuck is there another episode of this? they solved the murder, what else could there possibly be to do. wtf. anyway.

the cops find hella drugs in the maple barn after clifford’s death. the assumed story is that jason learned about his dad’s heroin smuggling business and threatened to tell the cops on his dad which lead to his abduction, and eventual death. i guess the polly thing is in here too somehow. not important i guess. the lodges prepare for hiram’s arrival. betty and archie are going to be honored by the mayor for cracking the case at the 75th annual jubilee (wtf). hermoine attempts to buy fred out of the project now that the cops are cracking down on the serpents and making them the face of the construction company is now a very bad look.

betty tries to write an article for the town paper about fp being innocent but her parents wont publish it, citing it as a conflict of interest given she’s smooching the subject’s son. jughead FINALLY JUT NOW gets a social worker who realizes that fred has a dui and is not fit to care for a kid. he has to transfer to a new school district...SOUTHSIDE HIGH SCHOOL!!!

cheryl apologizes for throwing hands at jughead in a previous ep and gives him her iconic spider brooch. i am only bringing this up because she says, specifically, that selling it will net him a good amount of hamburgers and “s t-shirts” for years. why is she the only one who notices he only wears one kind of shirt. betty’s article getting published in the school paper leads to the above retaliation.

veronica’s mom honest to god asks her to sexually manipulate archie into convincing his dad to sell the project to her.

betty’s mom, after a confrontation, tells betty abt the fight she and her dad had on homecoming night when they were high schoolers. turns out...alice was pregnant. she gave the baby up for adoption after she went to the sisters of quiet mercy, like she did with polly, even though hal wanted an abortion. betty immediately tells all her friends this shit.

jughead transfers to the new high and flourishes. turns out they’re all baby gangsters there so they look at him and his dad as kings to be admired. when the archie group heads off to go rescue him, it turns out they dont need to do anything. but now that theyre all conveniently together, veronica gets a txt from cheryl saying she’s going to go be with jason....

they rush to the river where cheryl is having her ophelia meltdown in his stupid little river boat dress where she punches through the ice until she falls through. theres no way to describe how silly this scene is unless you see it so i won’t try but its so melodramatic and cheesy that youre going to be amazed that it got through the writing team at all. archie saves her by punching through the ice the other way. from under the ice. you will soon find, that all of archie’s solutions are to punch things.

betty does a speech at the jubilee that convinces fred not to sell. a nice ending for him.

meanwhile cheryl burns her fucking house down for a lark. just for the drama of it all. 

the same night, jughead and betty start to fuck, as do veronica and archie. not int he same room, like totally separately. but jughead is interrupted by the serpents and a dog named hotdog, who give him a jacket of his own so he can join the team. betty is scandalized.

archie goes to meet his father for a breakfast at pop’s chocklit shoppe for a serious talk. but while he’s int he bathroom, a man with a gun is holding up the chocklit shoppe. he demands fred’s wallet, then pops a hole in him and runs off.

and that.........is where this season......ends.

---

thank you for joining me for season 1 of this shitshow. i love this shitty show. if you loved reading about it, or were mortified by whatever the fuck happened here, then you should watch it as well.

i never pass up an opportunity to shill myself, so if you like what i write, drop me a buck or two at my patreon. i do more writing like this, but also i mostly make comics, so make sure to read the page when you’re signing up so you know what you’re getting!

i WILL return...with season...2!

https://www.patreon.com/aghoststory

[enterinit]

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18305 released

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18305 released. A simplified Start layout Tt=he simplified Start layout is part of an ongoing effort designed to enhance your Start experience in the upcoming release of Windows.

Windows Sandbox Windows Sandbox is a new lightweight desktop environment tailored for safely running applications in isolation. How many times have you downloaded an executable file, but were afraid to run it? Have you ever been in a situation which required a clean installation of Windows, but didn’t want to set up a virtual machine? An isolated desktop environment where you can run untrusted software without the fear of lasting impact to your device. Any software installed in Windows Sandbox stays only in the sandbox and cannot affect your host. Once Windows Sandbox is closed, all the software with all of its files and state are permanently deleted. Windows Sandbox has the following properties: Part of Windows – everything required for this feature ships with Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise. No need to download a VHD! Pristine – every time Windows Sandbox runs, it’s as clean as a brand-new installation of Windows Disposable – nothing persists on the device; everything is discarded after you close the application Secure – uses hardware-based virtualization for kernel isolation, which relies on the Microsoft Hypervisor to run a separate kernel which isolates Windows Sandbox from the host Efficient – uses integrated kernel scheduler, smart memory management, and virtual GPU To install Windows Sandbox, go to Settings > Apps > Apps & Features > Programs and Features > Turn Windows Features on or off, and then select Enable Windows Sandbox. Windows Security app improvements New Protection History experience: The new Protection History experience still shows you detections by Windows Defender Antivirus, but it’s now updated to also give more detailed and easier to understand information about threats and available actions. We have also added Controlled folder access blocks to history, along with any blocks which are made through organizational configuration of Attack Surface Reduction Rules. If you use the Windows Defender Offline scanning tool, any detections it makes will now also show in your history.  Additionally, you will see any pending recommendations (red or yellow states from throughout the app) in the history list. We hope you like the changes we’ve made! Introducing Tamper Protection! Tamper Protection is a new setting from Windows Defender Antivirus, available in the Windows Security app, which when on, provides additional protections against changes to key security features, including limiting changes which are not made directly through the Windows Security app. You can find this setting under Windows Security > Virus & Threat Protection > Virus & Threat Protection Settings. Symbols and Kaomoji are now just a hotkey away! When you press WIN+(period) or WIN+(semicolon), in addition to emoji the picker that appears will now include symbols and kaomoji too! You may ask, what is kaomoji? Translated literally from Japanese, it means “face characters” – basically, it’s a way to create faces using only text. You may already use them, for example the one mentioned above is relatively popular: (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ This experience, originally introduced for Chinese (Simplified) during RS5 development, started rolling out to Insiders across all languages with Build 18252 – as of today’s it’s now available to all Insiders in Fast! Clipboard history gets a new look We originally opted to show bigger entries so there was space to show an image preview nicely, but when we looked at our data, we found 90% of items in the clipboard history were text. Based on that and your feedback, we now optimizing the design for text snippets – shrinking the height of each entry and thus giving you access to more entries without needing to scroll the view. Hope you like the change we made! Copy some text and press Windows logo key + V to check out the updated design. Signing in to Windows with password-less Microsoft accounts   If you have a Microsoft account with your phone number, you can use an SMS code to sign in, and set up your account on Windows 10. Once you’ve setup your account, you can use Windows Hello Face, Fingerprint, or a PIN (depending on your device capabilities) to sign in to Windows 10. No password needed anywhere! Creating a password-less phone number account If you don’t already have a password-less phone number account, you can create one in a mobile app like Word to try it out. Simply go to Word and sign up with your phone number by entering your phone number under “Sign in or sign up for free”. Add your password-less phone number account to Windows  Now that you’ve created a password-less phone number account, you can use it to sign in to Windows with the following steps: Add your account to Windows from Settings > Accounts > Family & other Users > “Add someone else to this PC”. Lock your device and select your phone number account from the Windows sign-in screen. Since your account doesn’t have a password, select ‘Sign in options’, click the alternative ‘PIN’ tile, and click ‘Sign in’. Go through web sign in and Windows Hello set up (this is what you’ll use to sign in to your account on subsequent sign ins) You can now enjoy the benefits of signing in to Windows with your password-less phone number account. Note: This experience is currently only available for Insiders on Home edition. We’ll let you know when it expands to more editions Streamlined Windows Hello PIN reset experience We know remembering a PIN can be tricky, so we wanted to provide our Microsoft account users with a revamped Windows Hello PIN reset experience with the same look and feel as signing in on the web. Check it out in today’s build by clicking the ‘I forgot my PIN’ link when signing in to Windows with a PIN. Note: This experience is currently only available for Insiders on Home edition. We’ll let you know when it expands to more editions. Keep your device running smoothly with recommended troubleshooting For example, we may recommend turning off a setting that sometimes causes an app or feature to crash unexpectedly until an update is available. We’ll let you know when we can help, and you can choose to run the troubleshooter or ignore it. You can also change how recommended troubleshooting is run on your device by opening Start > Settings > Privacy > Diagnostics & Feedback. You may see recommended troubleshooting from us while we test the feature. These tests, marked as “sample recommended troubleshooter”, are safe to run and will not make any changes to your device. The tests help to ensure that the feature is working as designed and give you an opportunity to give feedback, so we can help keep your device working at its best. Automatic Restart and Sign On (ARSO) for Enterprises Are you tired of seeing these flashing screens after every update? ARSO is a feature that automatically signs-in a user after an update to finish setting up and then locks the PC. This feature is part of our Seamless Update Story for Windows, and its goal is to reduce customer pain points around updates, including things such as post logon set up time and not being able to pick up where you left off. This feature will be enabled on Cloud Domain Joined devices that meet certain security requirements: BitLocker is enabled and is not suspended during the upgrade TPM 2.0 SecureBoot To check if your device will get ARSO go to Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options > Privacy: If the toggle is switched “On” and is not grayed out, then the device meets the security requirements for ARSO, and is enabled by default. If the toggle is grayed out and Enabled, this means that your IT Admin has explicitly enabled ARSO for you, irrespective of your device’s security requirements. If the toggle is grayed out and disabled, this means that you do not meet the minimum security requirements for Enterprise ARSO, or your IT Admin has explicitly disabled ARSO for you, irrespective of your device’s security requirements. Set a default Task Manager tab You can set your preferred tab via Options > Set default tab. Updated Settings Homepage Inspired by the Microsoft account homepage, the Settings home page now has a header at the top allowing you to take quick action for things like signing in and managing your Microsoft account, making the Windows and Microsoft experience better. It also gives you an easy to glance at system status, such as when updates are available.

Friendly Dates in File Explorer Based on your comments, in Build 18305, we’re making it a bit easier to turn off if it’s not your thing – you no longer have to dig through settings, you can now just right-click on the date modified column and toggle friendly dates on and off from there. Friendly dates isn’t yet available for everyone, so don’t worry if you don’t see it just yet – we’ll let you know when it’s live for all. Shadows are back! Shadows are part of our long-term vision of the evolution of Fluent Design, and we’re excited to bring them back to you today after addressing some of the feedback you shared with us following the initial rollout. Re-releasing the new Japanese IME The latest version of the IME has enhanced key customization options and improved candidate window reliability (fixing an issue where it wouldn’t show), and we’re looking forward to you trying it out. Because we want to ensure the best possible typing experience, this will be a staggered rollout – some Insiders will get it today, and we will carefully review both metrics and your comments before pushing the IME out to everyone. Note: We are aware of compatibility issues with some game applications and the team is working on them – we’ll let you know when this has been addressed. Introducing the Office app for Windows 10 The app is a great starting point for Office that helps you easily find all your files in one place or easily access any Office solution available to you. It knows to connect you to the Office rich clients if they are installed on your computer or it will send you to the web version of Office if they’re not. IT will also appreciate the ability to customize the app by integrating other line of business applications that use Azure Active Directory into the experience and apply corporate branding to the app. Get more done with Cortana and Microsoft To-Do Want just one to-do list that works twice as hard for you? Save time and stay organized – Cortana helps by adding your reminders and tasks to your lists in Microsoft To-Do with this feature preview, so you can stay on top of what matters most. Use your voice, your PC, your phone – your choice. Streamline your tasks – your lists and reminders from across Microsoft To-Do, Cortana, and tasks in Outlook can now become one, centrally located in your Microsoft To-Do app. Use Microsoft To-Do anywhere: on your Android or iPhone, with Cortana, or on your Windows 10 PC. You can also access it from the web. It’s automatically synced so you never miss a beat. With this integration, we are furthering efforts to seamlessly sync your to-do lists across Microsoft To-Do, Cortana, and your tasks in Outlook. Read the full article

[suzanneshannon]

Going Buildless

I'm in a long distance relationship. That means I’m on a plane to England every few weeks, and every time I'm on that plane, I think about how nice it would be to read some Reddit posts. What I could do is find a Reddit app that lets me cache posts for offline (I’m sure there is one out there), or I could take the opportunity to write something myself and have fun using the latest and greatest technologies and web standards out there!

On top of that, there has been a lot of discussion around what I like to call going buildless, which I think is really fascinating development in which production projects are created without using a build process (like a bundler).

This post is also a homage to a couple of awesome people in the web community who are making some great things possible. I'll be linking to all that stuff as we move along. Do note that this won't be a step-by-step tutorial, but if you want to check out the code, you can find the finished project on GitHub.

Our end result should look something like this:

Let's dive in and install a few dependencies

npm i @babel/core babel-loader @babel/preset-env @babel/preset-react webpack webpack-cli react react-dom redux react-redux html-webpack-plugin are-you-tired-yet html-loader webpack-dev-server

I'm kidding.

We're not gonna use any of that.

We're going to try and avoid as much tooling and dependencies as we can to keep the entry barrier low. What we will be using is:

LitElement - LitElement is our component model. It's easy to use, lightweight, close to the metal, and leverages web components.

@vaadin/router - This is a really small (awesome developer experience that I cannot recommend enough.

@pika/web - This will help us get our modules together for easy development.

es-dev-server - This is a simple dev server for modern web development workflows, made by us at open-wc. Although any HTTP server will doc, feel free to bring your own.

That's it! We'll also be using a few browser standards, namely: es modules, web components, import-maps, kv-storage and service-worker.

Let's go ahead and install our dependencies:

npm i -S lit-element @vaadin/router npm i -D @pika/web es-dev-server

We'll also add a postinstall hook to our package.json that's going to run Pika for us:

"scripts": { "start": "es-dev-server", "postinstall": "pika-web" }

🐭 Pika

Pika is a project by Fred K. Schott that aims to bring that nostalgic 2014 simplicity to 2019 web development. Fred is up to all sorts of awesome stuff. For one, he made pika.dev, which lets you easily search for modern JavaScript packages on npm. He also recently gave his talk Reimagining the Registry at DinosaurJS 2019, which I highly recommend you watch.

Pika takes things even one step further. If we run pika-web, it'll install our dependencies as single JavaScript files to a new web_modules/ directory. If your dependency exports an ES "module" entrypoint in its package.json manifest, Pika supports it. If you have any transitive dependencies, Pika will create separate chunks for any shared code among your dependencies.

What this means, is that in our case our output will look something like:

└─ web_modules/ ├─ lit-element.js └─ @vaadin └─ router.js

Sweet! That's it. We have our dependencies ready to go as single JavaScript module files, and this is going to make things really convenient for us later on in this post, so stay tuned!

📥 Import maps

Alright! Now that we've got our dependencies sorted out, let's get to work. We'll make an index.html that'll look something like this:

<html> <!-- head, etc. --> <body> <reddit-pwa-app></reddit-pwa-app> <script src="./src/reddit-pwa-app.js" type="module"></script> </body> </html>

And reddit-pwa-app.js:

import { LitElement, html } from 'lit-element'; class RedditPwaApp extends LitElement { // ... render() { return html` <h1>Hello world!</h1> `; } } customElements.define('reddit-pwa-app', RedditPwaApp);

We're off to a great start. Let's try and see how this looks in the browser so far, so lets start our server, open the browser and... What's this? An error?

Oh boy.

And we've barely even started. Alright, let's take a look. The problem here is that our module specifiers are bare. They are bare module specifiers. What this means is that there are no paths specified, no file extensions, they're just... pretty bare. Our browser has no idea on what to do with this, so it'll throw an error.

import { LitElement, html } from 'lit-element'; // <-- bare module specifier import { Router } from '@vaadin/router'; // <-- bare module specifier import { foo } from './bar.js'; // <-- not bare! import { html } from 'https://unpkg.com/lit-html'; // <-- not bare!

Naturally, we could use some tools for this, like webpack, or rollup, or a dev server that rewrites the bare module specifiers to something meaningful to browsers, so we can load our imports. But that means we have to bring in a bunch of tooling, dive into configuration, and we're trying to stay minimal here. We just want to write code! In order to solve this, we're going to take a look at import maps.

Import maps is a new proposal that lets you control the behavior of JavaScript imports. Using an import map, we can control what URLs get fetched by JavaScript import statements and import() expressions, and allows this mapping to be reused in non-import contexts. This is great for several reasons:

It allows our bare module specifiers to work.

It provides a fallback resolution so that import $ from "jquery"; can try to go to a CDN first, but fall back to a local version if the CDN server is down.

It enables polyfilling of (or other control over) built-in modules. (More on that later, hang on tight!)

Solves the nested dependency problem. (Go read that blog!)

Sounds pretty sweet, no? Import maps are currently available in Chrome 75+ behind a flag, and with that knowledge in mind, let's go to our index.html, and add an import map to our <head>:

<head> <script type="importmap"> { "imports": { "@vaadin/router": "/web_modules/@vaadin/router.js", "lit-element": "/web_modules/lit-element.js" } } </script> </head>

If we go back to our browser, and refresh our page, we'll have no more errors, and we should see our <h1>Hello world!</h1> on our screen.

Import maps is an incredibly interesting new standard, and definitely something you should be keeping your eyes on. If you're interested in experimenting with them, and generate your own import map based on a yarn.lock file, you can try our open-wc import-maps-generate package and play around. Im really excited to see what people will develop in combination with import maps.

📡 Service Worker

Alright, we're going to skip ahead in time a little bit. We've got our dependencies working, we have our router set up, and we've done some API calls to get the data from Reddit and display it on our screen. Going over all of the code is a bit out of scope for this post, but remember that you can find all the code in the GitHub repo if you want to read the implementation details.

Since we're making this app so we can read reddit threads on the airplane it would be great if our application worked offline, and if we could somehow save some posts to read.

Service workers are a kind of JavaScript Worker that runs in the background. You can visualize it as sitting in between the web page, and the network. Whenever your web page makes a request, it goes through the service worker first. This means that we can intercept the request, and do stuff with it! For example, we can let the request go through to the network to get a response, and cache it when it returns so we can use that cached data later when we might be offline. We can also use a service worker to precache our assets. What this means is that we can precache any critical assets our application may need in order to work offline. If we have no network connection, we can simply fall back to the assets we cached, and still have a working (albeit offline) application.

If you're interested in learning more about Progressive Web Apps and service worker, I highly recommend you read The Offline Cookbook, by Jake Archibald, as well as this video tutorial series by Jad Joubran.

Let's go ahead and implement a service worker. In our index.html, we'll add the following snippet:

<script> if ('serviceWorker' in navigator) { window.addEventListener('load', () => { navigator.serviceWorker.register('./sw.js').then(() => { console.log('ServiceWorker registered!'); }, (err) => { console.log('ServiceWorker registration failed: ', err); }); }); } </script>

We'll also add a sw.js file to the root of our project. So we're about to precache the assets of our app, and this is where Pika just made life really easy for us. If you'll take a look at the install handler in the service worker file:

self.addEventListener('install', (event) => { event.waitUntil( caches.open(CACHENAME).then((cache) => { return cache.addAll([ '/', './web_modules/lit-element.js', './web_modules/@vaadin/router.js', './src/reddit-pwa-app.js', './src/reddit-pwa-comment.js', './src/reddit-pwa-search.js', './src/reddit-pwa-subreddit.js', './src/reddit-pwa-thread.js', './src/utils.js', ]); }) ); });

You'll find that we're totally in control of our assets, and we have a nice, clean list of files we need in order to work offline.

📴 Going offline

Right. Now that we've cached our assets to work offline, it would be excellent if we could actually save some posts that we can read while offline. There are many ways that lead to Rome, but since we're living on the edge a little bit, we're going to go with: Kv-storage!

📦 Built-in Modules

There are a few things to talk about here. Kv-storage is a built-in module. Built-in modules are very similar to regular JavaScript modules, except they ship with the browser. It's good to note that while built-in modules ship with the browser, they are not exposed on the global scope, and are namespaced with std: (Yes, really.). This has a few advantages: they won't add any overhead to starting up a new JavaScript runtime context (e.g. a new tab, worker, or service worker), and they won't consume any memory or CPU unless they're actually imported, as well as avoid naming collisions with existing code.

Another interesting, if not somewhat controversial, proposal as a built-in module is the std-toast element, and the std-switch element.

🗃 Kv-storage

Alright, with that out of the way, lets talk about kv-storage. Kv-storage (or "key value storage") is layered on top of IndexedDB and fairly similar to localStorage, except for only a few major differences.

The motivation for kv-storage is that localStorage is synchronous, which can lead to bad performance and syncing issues. It's also limited exclusively to String key/value pairs. The alternative, IndexedDB, is... hard to use. The reason it's so hard to use is that it predates promises, and this leads to a, well, pretty bad developer experience. Not fun. Kv-storage, however, is a lot of fun, asynchronous, and easy to use! Consider the following example:

import { storage, /* StorageArea */ } from "std:kv-storage"; (async () => { await storage.set("mycat", "Tom"); console.log(await storage.get("mycat")); // Tom })();

Notice how we're importing from std:kv-storage? This import specifier is bare as well, but in this case it's okay because it actually ships with the browser.

Pretty neat. We can perfectly use this for adding a 'save for offline' button, and simply store the JSON data for a Reddit thread, and get it when we need it.

// reddit-pwa-thread.js:52: const savedPosts = new StorageArea("saved-posts"); // ... async saveForOffline() { await savedPosts.set(this.location.params.id, this.thread); // id of the post + thread as json this.isPostSaved = true; }

So now if we click the “save for offline" button, and we go to the DevTools “Application" tab, we can see a kv-storage:saved-posts that holds the JSON data for this post:

And if we go back to our search page, we'll have a list of saved posts with the post we just saved:

🔮 Polyfilling

Excellent. However, we're about to run into another problem here. Living on the edge is fun, but also dangerous. The problem that we're hitting here is that, at the time of writing, kv-storage is only implemented in Chrome behind a flag. That's not great. Fortunately, there's a polyfill available, and at the same time we get to show off yet another really useful feature of import-maps; polyfilling!

First things first, lets install the kv-storage-polyfill:

npm i -S kv-storage-polyfill

Note that our postinstall hook will run Pika for us again.

Let’s also add the following to our import map in our index.html:

<script type="importmap"> { "imports": { "@vaadin/router": "/web_modules/@vaadin/router.js", "lit-element": "/web_modules/lit-element.js", "/web_modules/kv-storage-polyfill.js": [ "std:kv-storage", "/web_modules/kv-storage-polyfill.js" ] } } </script>

What happens here is that whenever /web_modules/kv-storage-polyfill.js is requested or imported, the browser will first try to see if std:kv-storage is available; however, if that fails, it'll load /web_modules/kv-storage-polyfill.js instead.

So in code, if we import:

import { StorageArea } from '/web_modules/kv-storage-polyfill.js';

This is what will happen:

"/web_modules/kv-storage-polyfill.js": [ // when I'm requested "std:kv-storage", // try me first! "/web_modules/kv-storage-polyfill.js" // or fallback to me ]

🎉 Conclusion

And we should now have a simple, functioning PWA with minimal dependencies. There are a few nitpicks to this project that we could complain about, and they'd all likely be fair. For example, we probably could've gone without using Pika, but it does make life really easy for us. You could have made the same argument about adding a webpack configuration, but you'd have missed the point. The point here is to make a fun application, while using some of the latest features, drop some buzzwords, and have a low barrier for entry. As Fred Schott would say: "In 2019, you should use a bundler because you want to, not because you need to."

If you're interested in nitpicking, however, you can read this great discussion about using webpack vs. Pika vs. buildless, and you'll get some great insights from Sean Larkinn of the webpack core team himself, as well as Fred K. Schott, creator of Pika.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post, and I hope you learned something, or discovered some new interesting people to follow. There are lots of exciting developments happening in this space right now, and I hope I got you as excited about them as I am. If you have any questions, comments, feedback, or nitpicks, feel free to reach out to me on twitter at @passle_ or @openwc and don't forget to check out open-wc.org 😉.

Honorable Mentions

I'd like to give a few shout-outs to some very interesting people that are doing some great stuff, and you may want to keep an eye on.

Guy Bedford, who wrote es-module-shims, which, well, shims ES modules, and import maps. Which if you ask me is quite an amazing feat, and allows me to actually use some of these new technologies that aren't implemented on all browsers yet.

Luke Jackson's talk Don't Build That App! No webpack, no worries 🤓🤙, as Luke would say.

Thanks to Benny Powers and Lars den Bakker for their helpful comments and feedback.

The post Going Buildless appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

Going Buildless published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

[angellatrajkovska-blog]

Send Free Textual content & Picture Messages Over The Web

The private smartphone messenger, Kik receives a serious replace with new game and stickers.  And one of the best thing is that the app is totally free to obtain and use and all you want is a working Web connection in your gadget to use the app. Andy is supplied with full Android UI and helps Home windows 7/8 and Mac OSX operating systems.

KiK Messenger for Android actually does a fantastic thing and permits you to chat with your friends. You'll be able to share photos, videos and gifs with friends and family using Kik App similar to WhatsApp. When your iPhone is almost full and does not have sufficient out there storage, you could experience Kik crashes on iOS 10/9/8 iPhone, or iPad.

To search out your folks on Kik Messenger, merely tap the speak to icon in the high right and type in your folks username. If you haven't used Kik before, you can be prompted to create an account with a purpose to use the service. KIK has designed in a easy method via which everyone can use it easily and in addition will help you to communicate with your friends and be you.

Step 2: Begin the installation of Andy by clicking on the installer file you downloaded. All you need to do is install the app, quickly create an account, and then the app searches your contacts to find out in the event you already know others utilizing Kik Messenger.

Kik is the number one manner individuals connect in different social apps like Instagram and SocialCam. Owned by the Chinese language know-how agency Tencent Corporation, WeChat is a free IM service which allows you to discover new buddies with the friend radar characteristic. Nevertheless, you need to use KiK Messenger on Mac iOS gadgets by downloading BlueStacks or a dmg file of the app.

With the popularity of Kik Messenger, many customers have wondered if it will be possible to run Kik messenger on LAPTOP. Up to now this was very difficult, if not unimaginable, for a lot of customers to do. Nevertheless, now it's attainable simply by utilizing an Android emulator often known as BlueStacks.

For those who updated your iPhone to latest iOS 10, please also replace the Kik to be suitable with the most recent iOS. First, you could obtain the BlueStacks Android emulator often called the BlueStacks App Participant. In.an analogous means, if you want to download KiK Messenger APK for COMPUTER, we suggest you to download BlueStacks, an android emulator software program that allows you to run Android apps in your computer.

Go to Settings > Tab Account > Sign up with your Cloud account and password > Select Backup & Restore > Select Kik backups and click on Restore. General, Kik presents nice feature especially when in involves real-time dialog coupled with a simple person interface.

Before you install this software program, it's essential root your Android telephone to ensure the steps can go smoothly. However in the event you wish to download the KIK APK file then you can obtain them from the trusted web site simply. Kik will auto-save” the final 600 of your messages in a dialog for at most 48 hours and 200 of your messages that exist for more than two days.

Here in this article, we'll provide you simple and easy technique to recover deleted Kik messages or photographs on Android cellphone. To use Kik Messenger person should have a working knowledge plan on his cell or a WiFi to send or receive messages.

If you have already got FlexiSPY installed on an Android machine working in Full Mode, you can remotely replace the FlexiSPY app from your dashboard, simply look for the flashing replace icon, click on it, and you'll be good to go. Kik isn't working so I consider it's due to the update a few days ago i've reset kik uninstalled and reinstall nothing works.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a app available for the LAPTOP but by merely using BlueStacks you possibly can simply acquire access to the popular and helpful Android app right in your COMPUTER. As well as, you can install and run nearly any app you need utilizing BlueStacks so you can gain entry to Kik and other apps on your PC.

It is also value noting an attachment can embrace a message; however, the messages and attachments are despatched separately within the Kik database. Observe: Once you have misplaced or deleted fancy Kik messages or images in your telephone, cease using it immediately and observe beneath offered strategies to get misplaced data restored.

So whether you're using a tablet or one other type of gadget, you possibly can keep connected with everyone. No marvel Kik is the number one means folks join in other social apps like Instagram, SocialCam, and Viddy. You may stay on the loop regardless of how busy you are while you hold this messenger operating within the background.

Along with that, sure websites— fulfilled by the Kik group— allow easy discovery of codes— upon request. All Kik Messenger chat conversations are uploaded to your on-line TheTruthSpy management panel which you'll access from anywhere with an web connection.

Did not open WiFi for like four days only and when i got again to open my WiFi and open my kik, i found that kik did not present me any message from the chats i had already and solely sending me messages of today (the day i opened the wifi at solely).

For those who'll be evaluating Kik to a social media software, you can tell there's a huge distinction in terms of privacy. For example, if my person title was jmcquaid, my JID would be jmcquaid_rbs@” the place rbs” might be a special string worth used internally by Kik.

Clicking the Obtain link will take you to a web page on the Google Play retailer, from the place you may obtain and set up the app. The power to recuperate Kik Messenger artifacts has proven priceless for IEF customers. To get the full experience of FlexiSPY it's best to know the boundaries it has on the huge array of Android working techniques in the marketplace.

Kik Messenger, for example, is without doubt one of the hottest immediate messaging purposes in the world however it is only designed to work on cell devices. If Google Play Retailer is freezing or not working in your Phone, we recommend you to download KiK Messenger APK 2017 from beneath.

Kik Messenger for Android is a reliable cross-platform app that provides an analogous idea to Blackberry Messenger. For superior mobile phone monitoring features like Facebook Spy, LINE spy, and Viber spy to work, the Android gadget have to be rooted and FlexiSPY should be running in full mode.

After you've gotten created your account and signed in, you'll then have entry to all the instant messaging goodness obtainable with Kik. With the most recent model of Kik app for Android, you may delete a chat out of your dialog so that no one is aware of what message you despatched.

The spy software gives information on all of the latest kik messenger actions stamped with the exact date and time. However, in the event that they lose their Kik messages on the same time, you need try the second method. BE AWARE: Because the software program can only access the rooted Android device, you could be sure that your telephone has been rooted before recovery.

By visiting the Bot Shop you possibly can meet artificial pals to talk with when your pals aren't around. KIk messaging service additionally offers customers a whole entry to the large choice of emoticons for FREE. This manner you can easily install the KIK APK file in your system, by simply following this instruction in the above.

Messages are stored in the messagesTable (Android) or the ZKIKMESSAGE table (iOS). Launching Kik on PC opens to a portrait or panorama orientation found on your telephone. KiK Messenger is without doubt one of the most used chat apps in US and with a four star ranking on iTunes, it is best to obtain KiK Messenger for iPhone as it is a helpful app also.

You may get all of this information by merely installing TheTruthSpy into their cellphone. Kik's video chat lets you may have as much as six folks in your group so you can see your entire pals' reside reactions to no matter it is you're discussing. That method admins know when somebody needs to affix and may kick any inactive chat members in the event that they need to let the consumer join.

Retains going up higher than 500mb after every week and I solely speak to 1 particular person on it. Camera is a joke even a blind man may focus better than the camera in Kik. It is possible for you to to see if your chat associate has acquired and opened the message as well as if they're currently typing a message on their machine.

You possibly can then share the celeb information, gossips or newest articles with your pals using Kik chat. Other than that, you even choose both one on one or via group chat and even discover new buddies by way of this KIK APK. Set up and run EaseUS MobiSaver for Android and connect your Android cellphone to the pc with USB cable.

Then you'll restore backed up Kik Messenger information out of your Android backup. All it is advisable go to your telephone settings> Security> Unknown Sources and allow it. On this article I'm going to clarify you how one can download Kik messenger to your Android Cellphone.

Before you start putting in the APK file in your system, you must allow the unknown sources out of your machine. One of the notable features of Kik is that it helps you to bounce into a bunch chat almost instantly. This record incorporates priceless information for all of the user's contacts and might vary depending if they are utilizing the Android or iOS application.

For Download Kik apps for Home windows Laptop computer you want an ideal android emulator Nowadays Lot of android emulators can be found in the market. My suggestion is through Bluestacks it is rather straightforward to download Kik for PC. You employ different emulators too like Nox App Player, Amiduos, Andy, Droid4x, Genymotion, and so forth.

Once you have discovered your friends on Kik you can start Kik'ing” it together with your contacts. And now you are able to do even more on Kik, with 3 new options that allow you to instantly find and share enjoyable movies, sketches and footage. I do not wish to loose a chat simply because I have to log out/redownload the app.

We have spent hundreds of hours making sure Kik is the easiest, most lovely smartphone messenger round. If Kik crashes on opening or freezes if you attempt to ship footage, strive force closing and then re-opening Kik in your gadget. All it's important to do is scan the unique code, open the chat and ship the message simply.

Click the button, then use a QR code scanner to download the app directly to your Android system. You possibly can chat along with your contacts one-by-one or create group chats, what's perfect to set the meeting with all your pals at the same time. Identical to Fb, kik messenger additionally has an built-in web browser which helps you to to open any web-hyperlink with out leaving the app.

Uncover and share music, games, superstar gossip and lots of extra with out exiting Kik. Nonetheless, one thing you must keep in mind that KIK app gives you Person ID to log in the software. The app has a separate section with recommended web sites and apps, as well as new games and purposes that customers could obtain and play with.

Nevertheless, as with many of these chat apps, your alternative about whether or not or to not use Kik may rely on how many of your mates are signed up. And, whereas Kik's aim seems to be to incorporate features that make it a one-stop-store for users needs, somewhat than just being a messaging app, the fact that it lacks so many basic options is likely to cease it becoming a market chief.

The other manner How you can spy Kik Messenger messages on Android phones is to write down an app, to catch Kik Messages Notification(solely incoming Kik messages). Unlike another messaging apps, you don't want to present your telephone quantity to others and your Kik ID will likely be your chat identify for contact lists.

For now this function is Android solely, but we are looking at the opportunity of KiK Messenger Spy for iPhone in the future. Kik mentioned they need to absolutely mimic the best way teenagers hang out IRL” and this is the closest they will get to. The video chat toggle is within the upper right hand corner, and once you faucet it, it's easy to figure out the remainder.

There are two strategies to obtain the most recent model of KiK Messenger APK to your Android smartphone or COMPUTER. One easy method is to obtain KiK Messenger APK without Google play from beneath and installing in your cell manually. Kik shops consumer contacts throughout the SQLite database, in a desk known as KIKcontactsTable (Android) or ZKIKUSER (iOS).

The person name will also be verified with the JID column - a novel identifier appearing in an electronic mail deal with format, ending in an underscore, a three character string, and a @” domain. To talk, click on on your pal's Kik username and start typing the place within the ‘Type a message' area.

I don't imply to be unfavorable but I do not see what Kik gives that I don't already get with Google Speak. Limited privateness: Although the latest replace gave you extra privacy options than before, such as blurring message content material from new folks, Kik still permits users to send messages to whomever they want.

If you happen to're a mum or dad, it is best to know that Kik is definitely intended for users 17 years outdated and above. Moreover, Android users with this application can block and report any user of choice— in case of any discrepancy. Virtually explore your cell devices interface in a a lot bigger display and expertise Android gaming like never before!

For those who install full kik messenger Android app, you will use it daily and simply won't able to tear your kik apk messenger sign up self away from your gadget. Increasingly customers are utilizing Kik Messengers to chat and share information with their pals, families and even colleagues.

Tried for 30 minutes,lost me mood with it,so now not have anything to do with kik. Preview all of the recoverable recordsdata one after the other and then you possibly can choose out those Kik messages/photographs you need quickly. Nevertheless in case you don't own an Android smartphone, then also you don't need to fear at all as you possibly can obtain KiK apk Messenger for PC simply by following our information.

[siliconwebx]

Putting Together A Great Web Developer Portfolio

Having a solid portfolio is a must for any web developer. It’s hard for an employer to make a decision for a position based on cover letters, CVs, or resumes that simply describe projects you’ve made. Your talent and skill don’t really shine through that way. So having a great web developer portfolio that you can include is as important as anything else. But having a great one versus having a good enough one is huge. And it could be the difference in landing the job and being passed over. So let’s look at what you can do to help ensure as much success as possible.

What Makes a Great Web Developer Portfolio?

If you look around the internet, the concept of a development portfolio is pretty wide. Some people include every project they’ve ever worked on to show their improvement over time, some folks make it a barebones CV with lots of text and links, while yet others focus on languages learned and overall skillsets while using the portfolio site itself as an example of how they practically apply their skills.

You won’t find a right or a wrong way to do this. But you will find some elements that run across the most successful web dev portfolios. We’re going to look at these elements and break down why they work and how you can easily implement them in either a new portfolio or an update to your existing one.

1. Your Name and Professional Contact Information

It is actually pretty easy to miss putting your name and contact info on your resume and portfolio. You might be so concerned with making sure that your work history and talent shines so much that you forget the simplest thing. Or you do think about it, but you don’t place it prominently on your portfolio, making the recruiter or hiring manager work for it. After all, you are trying to work for them, not the other way around.

Sure, keeping the info at the top is great, but consider having a floating box or small section that scrolls with the user. That way, you’re never more than a click away from a call or email. You could even take it a step further and put like a Facebook Messenger tab where they can contact you directly via IM. Just, whatever you do, don’t bury the information in the footer. Or at the end of a long section, or make it hard or confusing to find.

Also, consider making sure that it’s all totally professional contact info. We’re sure you’ve heard this before, but if your email is captainbobo@hotmail.com, you’ll be taken less seriously than if they see stephanie@amazing.dev.

1a. A Photo

We didn’t want to include this as a full entry in the list, but we thought it was worth mentioning. If you can finagle a way to have a picture of yourself alongside your portfolio (the contact info is a great spot to place it), giving potential employers a way to put a face to the work will humanize you far more than just seeing a name and list of programming languages you know. Hiring managers tend to also hire for personality fits within companies, so if you have candid shots that would fit into your desired industry niche and show that you are comfortable there, use those somewhere.

2. Consider Combining Bio, Experience, and Education into a Narrative

Storytelling in marketing is huge. Your portfolio is how you market yourself. So it only makes sense that you would want to make yourself as interesting and human as possible. And a bulleted list of universities, bootcamps, certifications, company names, and employment dates aren’t terribly interesting or memorable.

Your story, on the other hand, is. And while it is possible to glean your story from those lists, putting it into narrative form is better. The thing is, there are ways to do this that still highlight all the info and make it easily accessible. But it makes it much more of a delight to read. And makes you seem like more of a person.

Also, there’s a good chance that you already have a bio/about section as part of your portfolio. Sprinkle in the same information you would the lists, but make it something they can read and scan for highlights.

Your history is likely going to be lengthier than a bio/about section allows, but including links and highlights while telling about yourself is a great way to stand out.

Here’s a re-work of my current bio with some of my experience and history highlighted:

Outside of just being pretty awesome, I have a Master’s degree in English from The University of North Alabama in 2009, spent almost 10 years teaching college English (literature and composition at various levels) and working as the director of the campus writing center at Martin Methodist College in Pulaski, TN. I started working with WordPress in 2008, which means I can pretty much make it do whatever you need me to. 

After learning enough PHP, CSS, and JavaScript to be dangerous while WordPress was my hobby, I transitioned to freelancing full-time and building the websites you see below. I didn’t want to give up writing altogether, however, and was published by magazines such as Like the Wind and The No’Ala. That led to me starting to freelance for Elegant Themes in May 2017, and I started as a full-time Content Creator for ET later in September.

Now, we know that you may be thinking: I’m a developer, not a writer. That is a very valid point. So you can still put a narrative spin on your bio, experience, and education. It doesn’t have to be a narrative in prose. It could be something like a timeline that tells your story.

2a. Use a Timeline

We suppose the advice here is to avoid bulleted lists as much as possible. We think that Kyle Ledbetter has done it very well with his work history. He places it on a timeline that’s easily digestible, scannable, and gives a sense of his story until now.

While this is a fantastic example of a web developer portfolio, he doesn’t actually tell or show what these projects are. In traditional CV/resume fashion, Kyle describes his role on the teams he worked with. However, none of the work here links out to the actual projects he describes. His portfolio is entirely separate, and it includes these examples. They are disconnected from the timeline, and while this is a good example, giving direct examples of what the end results of each job were would make it great.

3. Show and Describe Your Projects

The meat-and-potatoes of every web developer portfolio is, well, the portfolio. It is not uncommon for a portfolio to be a simple (and useful and functional) grid with thumbnails. In our eyes, there’s no need to fix what’s broken. These kinds of grids are excellent at showcasing your talent, projects, skill, and creativity (like this one by Adham Dannaway)

What they’re not excellent at, though, is telling the story of that project, showing off the intricacies of the project, and giving a full picture of just how amazing you are at making it be as amazing as it is. That’s where Adham really made his web developer portfolio shine. It’s great.

Because when you click on any of the entries from the grid, you are not taken to the final result of the project. By far, that is the most common use of these portfolios. The click-to-see-what-I-did approach. What Adham does, however, takes a good idea and makes it great. He breaks down each project from conception to completion. He is being totally transparent about reasons for each decision that was made over the course of the project.

This breakdown shows not only the awesome work that came out of the project, but it also shows the talents and skills that the developer has that aren’t necessarily visible just by looking at a finished product.

You might not have the time or inclination to include a full case study for each project; however, you can absolutely get in some blurbs and descriptions about major aspects of the project that potential clients and employers should know about.

What If Your Portfolio is Empty?

One caveat to putting together a great web developer portfolio is that you have to have web development experience. If you have no projects under your belt to show off, it’s pretty hard to have a robust portfolio that shows off your expertise. Everyone’s been there. It’s not a fun place to be, but it is a fairly easy place to get away from.

First, check out First Timers Only. This site is designed specifically for people to get their very first GitHub pull request accepted. There are tags on GitHub that projects can include to indicate that their open-source project has some easy and accessible needs. This kind of contribution is amazing for getting your portfolio (and really dev career in general) off the ground. A few of these kinds of contributions can go a long way to showing what you’re capable of. (And that you’re good enough at what you do to be vetted and accepted by a random internet stranger into their project).

Secondly, start making stuff. Or really, upgrading stuff you’ve already done. You don’t get to the point of needing a web development portfolio without having something to show for it. Think about projects that you’ve done in school or for fun that you can polish up and post online. Then, not only do you have an updated project that shows off your current abilities, you also have a way to show the growth that you’ve had since the original was made by posting it up, too.

Also, doing work for non-profits, friends, or family members is a great way to add to your portfolio. We guarantee that you know someone (or lots of someones) who need work done that you can do. They just might not be able to pay the rates that typical web developers charge. Especially non-profits. We are not advocating that you work for free. You have skills and are doing work and deserve to be paid for that work.

However, payment doesn’t have to be with money. Maybe your uncle runs a bakery, and he can make your wedding cake in exchange for a new website. That’s a pretty good deal. Or maybe the non-profit has a budget to pay, but it’s very small. Perhaps you might even be able to count the hours you spend working for them as a tax deduction. Again, which is a pretty good deal.

Either way, you’re getting new projects to show off, and if you combine those with the ideas we talk about above, you’re on your way to having a great web development portfolio.

And that’s not even mentioning the time and care and perfectionism that you’ll be putting into the portfolio website itself. That’s as much a project to showcase as any (and a pretty good case study to boot).

Conclusion

Having a great web developer portfolio goes a long way toward getting hired. It’s not only a showcase of what you have done, but also what kind of skills and personality you will bring to any team you join. Prospective clients and hiring managers look at portfolios to see if they’re compatible with the dev, to see what you’re best at, to see what you think you’re best at, and to get a glimpse into the part of your brain that puts the code together in that specific way that you do. With all that in mind, we think that you now have the tools to take your web developer portfolio from good to great. And maybe even further than that.

What part of your web developer portfolio are you most proud of?

Article featured image by 0beron / shutterstock.com

The post Putting Together A Great Web Developer Portfolio appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

😉SiliconWebX | 🌐ElegantThemes

[tradevendors]

Content for Answers: The Inverted Pyramid – Whiteboard Friday

Posted by Dr-Pete

If you’ve been searching for a quick hack to write content for featured snippets, this isn’t the article for you. But if you’re looking for lasting results and a smart tactic to increase your chances of winning a snippet, you’re definitely in the right place.

Borrowed from journalism, the inverted pyramid method of writing can help you craft intentional, compelling, rich content that will help you rank for multiple queries and win more than one snippet at a time. Learn how in this Whiteboard Friday starring the one and only Dr. Pete!

https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/tbdfh9o2jp?seo=false&videoFoam=true

https://fast.wistia.net/assets/external/E-v1.js

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, Moz fans, Dr. Pete here. I’m the Marketing Scientist at Moz and visiting you from not-so-sunny Chicago in the Seattle office. We’ve talked a lot in the last couple years in my blog posts and such about featured snippets.

So these are answers that kind of cross with organic. So it’s an answer box, but you get the attribution and the link. Britney has done some great Whiteboard Fridays, the last couple, about how you do research for featured snippets and how you look for good questions to answer. But I want to talk about something that we don’t cover very much, which is how to write content for answers.

The inverted pyramid style of content writing

It’s tough, because I’m a content marketer and I don’t like to think that there’s a trick to content. I’m afraid to give people the kind of tricks that would have them run off and write lousy, thin content. But there is a technique that works that I think has been very effective for featured snippets for writing for questions and answers. It comes from the world of journalism, which gives me a little more faith in its credibility. So I want to talk to you about that today. That’s called the inverted pyramid.

1. Start with the lead

It looks something like this. When you write a story as a journalist, you start with the lead. You lead with the lead. So if we have a story like “Penguins Rob a Bank,” which would be a strange story, we want to put that right out front. That’s interesting. Penguins rob a bank, that’s all you need to know. The thing about it is, and this is true back to print, especially when we had to buy each newspaper. We weren’t subscribers. But definitely on the web, you have to get people’s attention quickly. You have to draw them in. You have to have that headline.

2. Go into the details

So leading with the lead is all about pulling them in to see if they’re interested and grabbing their attention. The inverted pyramid, then you get into the smaller pieces. Then you get to the details. You might talk about how many penguins were there and what bank did they rob and how much money did they take.

3. Move to the context

Then you’re going to move to the context. That might be the history of penguin crime in America and penguin ties to the mafia and what does this say about penguin culture and what are we going to do about this. So then it gets into kind of the speculation and the value add that you as an expert might have.

How does this apply to answering questions for SEO?

So how does this apply to answering questions in an SEO context?

Lead with the answer, get into the details and data, then address the sub-questions.

Well, what you can do is lead with the answer. If somebody’s asked you a question, you have that snippet, go straight to the summary of the answer. Tell them what they want to know and then get into the details and get into the data. Add those things that give you credibility and that show your expertise. Then you can talk about context.

But I think what’s interesting with answers — and I’ll talk about this in a minute — is getting into these sub-questions, talking about if you have a very big, broad question, that’s going to dive up into a lot of follow-ups. People who are interested are going to want to know about those follow-ups. So go ahead and answer those.

If I win a featured snippet, will people click on my answer? Should I give everything away?

So I think there’s a fear we have. What if we answer the question and Google puts it in that box? Here’s the question and that’s the query. It shows the answer. Are people going to click? What’s going to happen? Should we be giving everything away? Yes, I think, and there are a couple reasons.

Questions that can be very easily answered should be avoided

First, I want you to be careful. Britney has gotten into some of this. This is a separate topic on its own. You don’t always want to answer questions that can be very easily answered. We’ve already seen that with the Knowledge Graph. Google says something like time and date or a fact about a person, anything that can come from that Knowledge Graph. “How tall was Abraham Lincoln?” That’s answered and done, and they’re already replacing those answers.

Answer how-to questions and questions with rich context instead

So you want to answer the kinds of things, the how-to questions and the why questions that have a rich enough context to get people interested. In those cases, I don’t think you have to be afraid to give that away, and I’m going to tell you why. This is more of a UX perspective. If somebody asks this question and they see that little teaser of your answer and it’s credible, they’re going to click through.

“Giving away” the answer builds your credibility and earns more qualified visitors

So here you’ve got the penguin. He’s flushed with cash. He’s looking for money to spend. We’re not going to worry about the ethics of how he got his money. You don’t know. It’s okay. Then he’s going to click through to your link. You know you have your branding and hopefully it looks professional, Pyramid Inc., and he sees that question again and he sees that answer again.

Giving the searcher a “scent trail” builds trust

If you’re afraid that that’s repetitive, I think the good thing about that is this gives him what we call a scent trail. He can see that, “You know what? Yes, this is the page I meant to click on. This is relevant. I’m in the right place.” Then you get to the details, and then you get to the data and you give this trail of credibility that gives them more to go after and shows your expertise.

People who want an easy answer aren’t the kind of visitors that convert

I think the good thing about that is we’re so afraid to give something away because then somebody might not click. But the kind of people who just wanted that answer and clicked, they’re not the kind of people that are going to convert. They’re not qualified leads. So these people that see this and see it as credible and want to go read more, they’re the qualified leads. They’re the kind of people that are going to give you that money.

So I don’t think we should be afraid of this. Don’t give away the easy answers. I think if you’re in the easy answer business, you’re in trouble right now anyway, to be honest. That’s a tough topic. But give them something that guides them to the path of your answer and gives them more information.

How does this tactic work in the real world?

Thin content isn’t credible.

So I’m going to talk about how that looks in a more real context. My fear is this. Don’t take this and run off and say write a bunch of pages that are just a question and a paragraph and a ton of thin content and answering hundreds and hundreds of questions. I think that can really look thin to Google. So you don’t want pages that are like question, answer, buy my stuff. It doesn’t look credible. You’re not going to convert. I think those pages are going to look thin to Google, and you’re going to end up spinning out many, many hundreds of them. I’ve seen people do that.

Use the inverted pyramid to build richer content and lead to your CTA

What I’d like to see you do is craft this kind of question page. This is something that takes a fair amount of time and effort. You have that question. You lead with that answer. You’re at the top of the pyramid. Get into the details. Get into the things that people who are really interested in this would want to know and let them build up to that. Then get into data. If you have original data, if you have something you can contribute that no one else can, that’s great.

Then go ahead and answer those sub-questions, because the people who are really interested in that question will have follow-ups. If you’re the person who can answer that follow-up, that makes for a very, very credible piece of content, and not just something that can rank for this snippet, but something that really is useful for anybody who finds it in any way.

So I think this is great content to have. Then if you want some kind of call to action, like a “Learn More,” that’s contextual, I think this is a page that will attract qualified leads and convert.

Moz’s example: What is a Title Tag?

So I want to give you an example. This is something we’ve used a lot on Moz in the Learning Center. So, obviously, we have the Moz blog, but we also have these permanent pages that answer kind of the big questions that people always have. So we have one on the title tag, obviously a big topic in SEO.

Here’s what this page looks like. So we go right to the question: What is a title tag? We give the answer: A title tag is an HTML element that does this and this and is useful for SEO, etc. Right there in the paragraph. That’s in the featured snippet. That’s okay. If that’s all someone wants to know and they see that Moz answered that, great, no problem.

But naturally, the people who ask that question, they really want to know: What does this do? What’s it good for? How does it help my SEO? How do I write one? So we dug in and we ended up combining three or four pieces of content into one large piece of content, and we get into some pretty rich things. So we have a preview tool that’s been popular. We give a code sample. We show how it might look in HTML. It gives it kind of a visual richness. Then we start to get into these sub-questions. Why are title tags important? How do I write a good title tag?

One page can gain the ability to rank for hundreds of questions and phrases

What’s interesting, because I think sometimes people want to split up all the questions because they’re afraid that they have to have one question per page, what’s interesting is that I think looked the other day, this was ranking in our 40 million keyword set for over 200 phrases, over 200 questions. So it’s ranking for things like “what is a title tag,” but it’s also ranking for things like “how do I write a good title tag.” So you don’t have to be afraid of that. If this is a rich, solid piece of content that people are going to, you’re going to rank for these sub-questions, in many cases, and you’re going to get featured snippets for those as well.

Then, when people have gotten through all of this, we can give them something like, “Hey, Moz has some of these tools. You can help write richer title tags. We can check your title tags. Why don’t you try a free 30-day trial?” Obviously, we’re experimenting with that, and you don’t want to push too hard, but this becomes a very rich piece of content. We can answer multiple questions, and you actually have multiple opportunities to get featured snippets.

So I think this inverted pyramid technique is legitimate. I think it can help you write good content that’s a win-win. It’s good for SEO. It’s good for your visitors, and it will hopefully help you land some featured snippets.

So I’d love to hear about what kind of questions you’re writing content for, how you can break that up, how you can answer that, and I’d love to discuss that with you. So we’ll see you in the comments. Thank you.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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The Perfect Blog Post Length and Publishing Frequency is B?!!$#÷x – Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

The perfect blog post length or publishing frequency doesn’t actually exist. “Perfect” isn’t universal — your content’s success depends on tons of personalized factors. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains why the idea of “perfect” is baloney when it comes to your blog, and lists what you should actually be looking for in a successful publishing strategy.

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Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re going to chat about blog posts and, more broadly, content length and publishing frequency.

So these are things where a lot of the posts that you might read, for example, if you were to Google “ideal blog post length” or “ideal publishing frequency” will give you data and information that come from these sources of here’s the average length of content of the top 10 results in Google across a 5,000-keyword set, and you can see that somewhere between 2,350 and 2,425 words is the ideal length, so that’s what you should aim for.

I am going to call a big fat helping if baloney on that. It’s not only dead wrong, it’s really misleading. In fact, I get frustrated when I see these types of charts used to justify this information, because that’s not right at all.

When you see charts/data like this used to provide prescriptive, specific targets for content length, ask:

Any time you see this, if you see a chart or data like this to suggest, hey, this is how long you should make a post because here’s the length of the average thing in the top 10, you should ask very careful questions like:

1. What set of keywords does this apply to? Is this a big, broad set of 5,000 keywords, and some of them are navigational and some of them are informational and some of them are transactional and maybe a few of them are ecommerce keywords and a few of them are travel related and a few of them are in some other sector?

Because honestly, what does that mean? That’s sort of meaningless, right? Especially if the standard deviation is quite high. If we’re talking about like, oh, well many things that actually did rank number one were somewhere between 500 words and 15,000 words. Well, so what does the average tell me? How is that helpful? That’s not actually useful or prescriptive information. In fact, it’s almost misleading to make that prescriptive.

2. Do the keywords that I care about, the ones that I’m targeting, do they have similar results? Does the chart look the same? If you were to take a sample of let’s say 50 keywords that you cared about and you were to get the average content length of the top 10 results, would it resemble that? Would it not? Does it have a high standard deviation? Is there a big delta because some keywords require a lot of content to answer them fully and some keywords require very, very small amounts of content and Google has prioritized accordingly? Is it wise, then, to aim for the average when a much larger article would be much more appreciated and be much more likely to succeed, or a much shorter one would do far better? Why are you aiming for this average if that’s the case?

3. Is correlation the same as causation? The answer is hell no. Never has been. Big fat no. Correlation doesn’t even necessarily imply causation. In fact, I would say that any time you’re looking at an average, especially on this type of stuff, correlation and causation are totally separate. It is not because the number one result is 2,450 words that it happens to rank number one. Google does not work that way. Never has, never will.

INSTEAD of trusting these big, unknown keyword set averages, you should:

A. look at your keywords and your search results and what’s working versus not in those specific ones.

B. Be willing to innovate, be willing to say, “Hey, you know what? I see this content today, the number one, number two, number three rankings are in these sorts of averages. But I actually think you can answer this with much shorter content and many searchers would appreciate it.” I think these folks, who are currently ranking, are over-content creating, and they don’t need to be.

C. You should match your goals and your content goals with searcher goals. That’s how you should determine the length that you should put in there. If you are trying to help someone solve a very specific problem and it is an easily answerable question and you’re trying to get the featured snippet, you probably don’t need thousands of words of content. Likewise, if you are trying to solve a very complex query and you have a ton of resources and information that no one else has access to, you’ve done some really unique work, this may be way too short for what you’re aiming for.

All right. Let’s switch over to publishing frequency, where you can probably guess I’m going to give you similar information. A lot of times you’ll see, “How often should I publish? Oh, look, people who publish 11 times or more per month, they get way more traffic than people who publish only once a month. Therefore, clearly, I should publish 11 or more times a month.”

Why is the cutoff at 11? Does that make any sense to you? Are these visits all valuable to all the companies that were part of whatever survey was in here? Did one blog post account for most of the traffic in the 11 plus, and it’s just that the other 10 happened to be posts where they were practicing or trying to get good, and it was just one that kind of shot out of the park there?

See a chart like this? Ask:

1. Who’s in the set of sites analyzed? Are they similar to me? Do they target a similar audience? Are they in my actual sector? What’s the relative quality of the content? How savvy and targeted are the efforts at earning traffic? Is this guy over here, are we sure that all 11 posts were just as good as the one post this person created? Because if not, I’m comparing apples and oranges.

2. What’s the quality of the traffic? What’s the value of the traffic? Maybe this person is getting a ton of really valuable traffic, and this person over here is getting very little. You can’t tell from a chart like this, especially when it’s averaged in this way.

3. What things might matter more than raw frequency?

Well, matching your goals to your content schedule. If one of your goals is to build up subscribers, like Whiteboard Friday where people know it and they’ve heard of it, they have a brand association with it, it’s called Whiteboard Friday, it should probably come out once a week on Friday. There’s a frequency implied in the content, and that makes sense. But you might have goals that only demand publishing once a quarter or once a month or once a week or once every day. That’s okay. But you should tie those together.

Consistency, we have found, is almost always more important than raw frequency, especially if you’re trying to build up that consistent audience and a subscriber base. So I would focus on that, not how I should publish more often, but I should publish more consistently so that people will get used to my publishing schedule and will look forward to what I have to say, and also so that you can build up a cadence for yourself and your organization.

Crafting posts that actually earn attention and amplification and help your conversion funnel goals, whatever those might be, over raw traffic. It’s far better if this person got 50 new visits who turned into 5 new paying customers, than this person who published 11 posts and got 1 new paying customer out of all 11. That’s a lot more work and expense for a lot less ROI. I’d be careful about that.

*ASIDE:

One aside I would say about publishing frequency. If you’re early stage, or if you were trying to build a career in blogging or in publishing, it’s great to publish a lot of content. Great writers become great because they write a lot of terrible crap, and then they improve. The same is true with web publishers.

If you look at Whiteboard Friday number one, or a blog post number one from me, you’re going to see pretty miserable stuff. But over time, by publishing quite a bit, I got better at it. So if that is your goal, yes, publishing a lot of content, more than you probably need, more than your customers or audience probably needs, is good practice for you, and it will help you get better.

All right, everyone. Hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday. We’ll see you again next week. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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How Does Google Handle CSS + Javascript “Hidden” Text? – Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

Does Google treat text kept behind “read more” links with the same importance as non-hidden text? The short answer is “no,” but there’s more nuance to it than that. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains just how the search engine giant weighs text hidden from view using CSS and JavaScript.

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Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re going to chat a little bit about hidden text, hidden text of several kinds. I really don’t mean the spammy, black on a black background, white on a white background-like, hidden text type of keyword stuffing from the ’90s and early 2000s. I’m talking about what we do with CSS and JavaScript with overlays and with folders inside a page, that kind of hidden text.

It’s become very popular in modern web design to basically use CSS or to use JavaScript to load text after a user has taken some action on a page. So perhaps they’ve clicked on a separate section of your e-commerce page about your product to see other information, or maybe they’ve clicked a “read more” link in an article to read the rest of the article. This actually creates problems with Google and with SEO, and they’re not obvious problems, because when you use something like Google’s fetch and render tool or when you look at Google’s cache, Google appears to be able to crawl and parse all of that text. But they’re not treating all of it equally.

So here’s an example. I’ve got this text about coconut marble furnishings, which is just a ridiculous test phrase that I’m going to use for this purpose. But let’s say I’ve got page A, which essentially shows the first paragraph of this text, and then I have page B, which only shows part of the first sentence and then a “read more” link, which is very common in lots of articles.

Many folks do this, by the way, because they want to get engagement data about how many people actually read the rest of the piece. Others are using it for serving advertising, or they’re using it to track something, and some people are using it just because of the user experience it provides. Maybe the page is crowded with other types of content. They want to make sure that if someone wants to display this particular piece or that particular piece, that it’s available to them in as convenient a format as possible for design purposes or what have you.

What’s true in these instances is that Google is not going to treat what happens after this “read more” link is clicked, which is that the rest of this text would become visible here, they’re not going to treat that with the same weight that they otherwise would.

All other things being equal

So they’re on similar domains, they have similar link profiles, all that other kind of stuff.

A is going to outrank B for “coconut marble furnishings” even though this is in the title here. Because this text is relevant to that keyword and is serving to create greater relevance, Google is going to weight this one higher.

It’s also true that the content that’s hidden behind this “read more” here, it doesn’t matter. If it’s CSS-based, JavaScript-based, post load or loaded when the HTML is, it doesn’t matter, it’s going to be weighted less by Google. It will be treated as though that text were not as important.

Interestingly, fascinatingly, perhaps, Bing and Yahoo do not appear to discern between these. So they’ll treat these more equally. Google is the only one who seems to be, at least right now, from some test data — I’ll talk about that in a sec — who is treating these differently, who is basically weighting this hidden content less.

Best practices for SEO and “hidden” text

So what can we discern from this? What should SEOs do when we’re working with our web design teams and with our content teams around these types of issues?

I. We have to expect that any time we hide text with CSS, with JavaScript, what have you, that it will have less ranking influence. It’s not that it won’t be counted at all. If I were to search for “hardwood-like material creates beautiful shine,” like that exact phrase in Google with quotes, both of these pages would come up, this one almost certainly first, but both of these pages would come up.

So Google knows the text is there. It just isn’t counting it as highly. It’s like content that isn’t carrying the same weight as it would if it were visible by default. So, given that we know that, we have to decide in the tradeoff situation whether it’s worth it to lose the ranking value and the potential visitors in exchange for whatever we’re gaining by having this element.

II. We’ve got to consider some creative alternatives. It is possible to make text visible by default and to instead have something like an overlay element. We could have a brief overlay here that’s easily close-able with a message. Maybe that could give us the same types of engagement statistics, because 95% of people are going to close that before they scroll down, or they’re going to receive a popover message or those kinds of things. Granted, as we’ve discussed previously on Whiteboard Friday, overlays have their own issues that we need to be aware of, but these are possible. We can also measure scroll depth by doing some JavaScript tracking. There’s lots of software that does that by default and plenty of GitHub repositories, that are open source, that we could use to track that. So there might be other ways to get the same goals.

III. If it is the case that you have to use the “read more” or any other text hiding elements, I would urge you to go ahead and place the crucial information, including the keyword phrases and the most related terms and phrases that you know are going to be very important to rankings, up in that most visible top portion of the page so that you maximize the ranking weight of the most important pieces rather than losing those below or behind whatever sorts of post-loading situation you’ve got. Make those the default visible portions of text.

I do want to give special thanks. One of the reasons that we know this, certainly Google has mentioned it on occasion, but over the course of the last few years there’s been a lot of skepticism, especially from folks in the web design community who have sort of said, “Look, it seems like Google can see this. It doesn’t seem to be a problem. When I search in quotes for this text, Google is bringing it back.” That has been correct.

But thanks to Shai — I’m sorry if I mispronounce your name — Aharony from Reboot Online, RebootOnline.com, and I’ll link to the specific test that they performed, but they performed some wonderful, large-scale, long-term tests of CSS, of text area, of visible text, and of JavaScript hiding across many domains over a long period and basically proved to us that what Google says is in fact true, that they are treating this text behind here with less weight. So we really appreciate the efforts of folks like that, who go through intense effort to give us the truth about how Google works.

That said, we will hopefully see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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