#tedious length is my queue name

[wingedmagazinewombat]

Alistair’s Session - 10 Forms of Animation

Traditional Animation

Traditional animation involves producing drawings for each frame. The traditional approach is very interesting, if you’re a person who’s hands on. 2D animation involves creating numerous drawings, then merging it into plastic cells, hand painting them and creating the animating sequence on a painted background image.

2D Animation

Creating animations in the 2D dimension with the help of digital platforms. You don’t need digital models for animation. You just need to draw the frames. Then, drawing and animating the cartoons to show some kind of movement is technically known as digital 2D animation. Using Adobe flash, animators can limit the drawings created, which makes them easier to create digital 2D animation.

3D Animation

Digital 3D animation characters aren’t tedious to create, and they are quite popular in the movie making industry. Using a computer software 3D animated images are used to create many short films, full length movies and even TV commercials and a career in digital 3D animation is highly rewarding. 

Stop-motion Animation

Stop motion animation has been around ever since the modernisation of puppets. Using frame by frame animation, physical static objects are moved around and during the film production it is shown in a fluid movement.

Claymation

In this Claymation, pieces of clay are moulded to create characters. Clay can come water and oil based forms. Sometimes the clay is moulded into free forms or filled up in a wire like structure called armature. The animated characters are kept in a set and with only short movements, the whole scene is film. 

Zoetrope

Zoetrope is one of several animation toys which were invented in the 19th century, as people explored different ways of making moving pictures. It was invented in 1834 by William George Horner, and is one of the early forms of animations. Some still images are drawn on a drum and when turned in a circular way, you have an illusion of movement. The visual effect created by a zoetrope is still used today to create animated GIFs.

Puppetry Animation

Puppetry animation is created using the life like puppets. The film ‘The Humpty Dumpty Circus’ (1908) created by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert smith receives credit as the first stop-motion animation film that features puppets. Nowadays puppet animation is featured in children’s cartoons and films. An example of puppet animation used in cinema is in the film King Kong (1933).

Cut-out Animation

Cut – Out animation is probably one of the oldest forms of stop motion animations in the history of animation. The first cut-out animation was created by LotteReiniger in 1926 and it was named “The Adventures of Prince Achmed”. She used quite detailed paper silhouettes to express a narrative. In this method paper cut outs are moved under the camera lens to say a story. Ever since the development of computers, it was much easier to introduce the computerised cut images in a queue.

Cel Animation

This was the traditional method used to create 2D animations before the introduction of computers. Cel animation involves drawing a range of imagery that are slightly different and then tracing them onto transparent sheets called a cel. This method is mostly no longer produced, since it is far more time-consuming and costly to produce.

Animated Infographic

This is a motion graphic video that aims to explain, educate or inform based on a script. Infographic videos rely heavily on written information, rather than graphical information. Animation like this is packed with a lot of facts, data, numbers, charts, and other kinds of statistics. Having all this data animated is very helpful in avoiding making the viewer lack interest.

In Alistair’s lesson, I had to research 10 forms of animation to get me thinking about how it could be produced on Photoshop. I noticed in my research that some of these animations were used in the following videos:

‘Logorama’ Francois Alaux, Herve De Crecy (2009) - 2D Animation & Stop Motion

‘Darkness Light Darkness’ Jan Svankmajer (1989/90) - Claymation & Stop Motion

‘Little Dragon Music Video - Twice’ Johannes Nyholm (2009) - Puppetry, Stop Motion & Cut-Out animation

Plotagraph - An animated app that uses “looping” photographs. You start off with a single image (not a movie file), like a JPG, and then you use Plotagraph to “animate” it. The resulting image is a repetitive movie file that loops so smoothly, you can’t see the line. There’s also some crazy new tech on there, like morphing and more. It employs an animation technique that brings motion to still images. A cinemagraph uses a video clip and freezes a portion of the video while allowing other parts of the video to play forward.

Frame

- One of the many still images which create the complete moving picture.

References for findings: http://webneel.com/different-types-of-animation-styles

 https://www.gamedesigning.org/animation/different-types/

 https://breadnbeyond.com/articles/14-different-types-of-animated-explainer-videos/

https://improvephotography.com/49221/plotagraph-future-or-fleeting-trend/

https://www.stuckincustoms.com/plotagraph-review/

[ciathyzareposts]

Game 362: OrbQuest (1981)

I’m playing the second edition of the game. The first is not available anywhere.

             OrbQuest

United States Alternate World Simulations

Released in 1981 for CP/M

Date Started: 10 March 2020

Date Finished: 15 March 2020

Total Hours: 25

Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

        Digital Research’s CP/M operating system only boasted two original RPGs, and it turns out that both of them were adapted directly from games on the PLATO mainframe. A year ago, I covered how Nemesis (1981) was just a microcomputer version of Oubliette (1977), and now it’s clear that OrbQuest is nothing more than a microcomputer version of The Game of Dungeons (1975), more popularly known by its file name, “DND.” Specifically, it is a direct adaption of the game’s fifth edition.           

Finding a treasure chest in the OrbQuest dungeon offers the same options as The Game of Dungeons.

           We’ve discussed at length how Daniel Lawrence based his own DND (c. 1976) on The Game of Dungeons, but OrbQuest is a far more literal porting of the code than Lawrence’s. Indeed, if I’d known about it when I won The Game of Dungeons, I might have been content to discuss OrbQuest in an addendum rather than playing it as a separate game. Among the things it shares in common:

             A goal to recover an Orb, held by a powerful guardian (a dragon in Game, a “dragon wizard” here)

Twenty 9 x 9 levels with the same system of movement (e.g., SHIFT to go through a door), secret doors, and one-way doors

No staircases, just “teleporters” that take you to the next and previous levels, and the teleporters are oddly spaced between squares rather than in them

The same attributes, with “piety” substituted for “wisdom” 

Experience based on monsters killed and gold retrieved

Most of the same spells, divided into cleric and mage, with slots given to the character upon leveling

The same combat options, including minimized importance of “fighting” and each enemy having a particular weakness to a particular spell

The same commands and results for opening chests, drinking potions, and reading books

Most of the same items of magical equipment to find

Most of the same monsters

On dungeon Level 1, monsters are never higher than Level 1 

Options to toggle on or off automatic collection of gold and automatic fighting of enemies below a certain level

         I’m assuming that Dirk Pellet and the other Game authors didn’t know about this attempt to monetize their work, or certainly they would have objected as strongly as they did to Lawrence’s. Relative obscurity must have helped: OrbQuest appeared only for a dying platform, and the creator notes on a message board that he only ever sold about 100 copies.            

The Game of Dungeons’ cleric spells were, in contrast, “Light Candle,” “Holy Water, “Exorcise,” “Pray,” “Hold,” “Dispell,” and “Datspell.”

                As to that creator, his name was Walter E. Donovan, and his company–existing only for this game, it seems–has an address in Milpitas, California. So far, I have not been able to tie Donovan directly to a PLATO campus (unlike Lawrence and the author of Nemesis), so I’m not sure how he was exposed to it, but it’s clear that somehow he got the source code or otherwise thorough documentation of its elements and mechanics.                

A nice cover leads the game manual, which is otherwise typewritten and photocopied.

            As usual, this is not to say that Donovan added nothing to the game. In fact, he smoothed away some of Game‘s most egregious imbalances and made the game less random. Gold is less plentiful, particularly on earlier levels, chests (and thus magic items) rarer, and traps less deadly. A player can no longer spend half the game just wandering the same corridors of Level 1 and picking up nearly every magic item along the way. Chests have only about 10 times the gold as random loot on their levels, not 1000 times. Chests aren’t trapped as often, and when they are, they rarely kill you unless you’ve delved too far too fast. Magic items are never trapped. Books and potions help more than they hurt, so it’s worth taking the chance on them.                

Potions and books are less deadly here than in the source game.

        The result is a game that is, even with permadeath, far more survivable than The Game of Dungeons but also less “gameable.” There aren’t any tricks to help you get rich quick (unlike in Game, you can’t cache gold, either) or otherwise bypass the long and tedious process of grinding yourself senseless for a several dozen hours. I’ve been doing it while clearing out my Netflix queue, but I can’t imagine that even back in the day, when it was the only game for my platform, I would have had a lot of fun with it.              

Collecting gold to raise my level. I have a pretty good set of equipment here.

           The game begins with random rolls of 3-18 for strength, dexterity, intelligence, and piety. After that, you begin on Level 1 of the dungeon. The 9 x 9 levels have a fixed layout but a random distribution of gold, chests, and other items, re-randomized every time you change levels or exit the dungeon. Encounters are completely random and also extremely variable. Sometimes, I walked 20 steps or more with no encounters; other times, I had three or four in the same square.                 

The limited character creation process.

             For the most part, you meet the same monsters on all levels, but the monsters themselves have levels. The monster’s level is far more important in determining his danger than the monster type; that is, a Level 3 ghoul is deadlier than a Level 1 dragon. On dungeon Level 1, monsters are never higher than Level 1 themselves. On other dungeon levels, their levels are randomized to a maximum of roughly 5 times the dungeon level for levels 1-10–unless you’re carrying gold, in which case their maximum level is something like 4 times the dungeon level plus 1 for every 5,000-10,000 gold pieces you carry.              

My maps of the first nine levels.

            OrbQuest lacks the “excelsior transport” from Game, but several of the levels have pits that take you directly to lower levels. The levels have varied layouts with secret doors, one-way doors, and such, but no special encounters until Level 10. Playing the game is a process of exploring downward, picking up gold until you start to encounter monsters you can’t handle, then hauling it back up to Level 1 and the exit in order to level up. The next time, you can go a little further and collect a little more gold.

There are 13 monsters in the game: balrogs, deaths, demons, dragons, evil curates, ghouls, green slimes, hirebrands, huge spiders, mindworms, specters, wizards, and zombies. A few of them have special attacks. If mindworms do any damage to you at all in combat, they’ll sap intelligence permanently. Same goes for specters and strength. Green slimes eat inventory items.                   

Despite my victory, the specter manages to eat a point of strength.

             As with Game, fighting here is a last resort except for enemies significantly below your level (you can set the game to auto-fight such enemies so you don’t even need to press “F”). Instead, you need to learn, through trial and error, each enemy’s weaknesses to various spells. For instance, balrogs are susceptible to the “Fatal Charm” mage spell. The cleric spell “Holy Water” deals with demons, evil curates, and zombies. As in Game, the cleric’s “Hold” and the mage’s “Sleep” work reliably against enemies below Level 5 and hardly at all after that. As long as the enemy isn’t more than three times your level, he should die immediately from the spell that works best against him. At higher levels, the spell might partly work (depending on the spell), leaving you to finish him off (or vice versa) in melee combat. Again, you can control the level of enemy you face by controlling the amount of gold you carry and the dungeon level you’re visiting.               

Combat options.

        The occasional potion or tome offers a chance to increase your attributes, and unlike the ones in Game, they don’t have an equal chance of decreasing attributes, although they do have an occasional negative effect like poison or a trap. “Clerical detection” reliably determines if the item is safe.

Chests occasionally deliver magic items. Swords, shields, helms (“haumes”), hauberks, Cloaks of Defense, and Belts of Healing are all initially found at +1, and as you find more, you gain additional pluses. Amulets of Revival will save the character from one death. Small Idols of Luck increase the amount of treasure that you find. Necklaces of Eyes allow you to see secret doors. I was never sure what Rings of Power or Glory did.              

The Belt of Healing is a useful tool that regenerates hit points.

            Level 9 has a bunch of one-way doors that funnel the player to one of the teleporters to Level 10. Immediately on arrival to Level 10, the character is attacked by Demogorgon. This is a test encounter to see if you’re strong enough for the lower levels, and you need to be around Level 100 to beat him. Once he’s dead, he never appears again.               

Killing Level 10’s Demogorgon is a key milestone.

           Levels 10-20 are a lot harder. Not only are the monsters much higher level, but there are more navigation obstacles. There are invisible walls, wrapping levels, lots more one-way walls and doors, and other difficult terrain. Downward teleporters sometimes skip two levels. Level 15, with a bunch of concentric squares, is a copy of Game of Dungeons‘ Level 11. Level 16, featuring a spiral of corridors, is a copy of Game‘s Level 15. And Level 17, with a bunch of featureless north/south corridors connected by secret doors, is a copy of Game‘s Level 20.

The Dragon Wizard is found somewhere on Level 20. The level has a couple of squares that halve your available spells and another one that blinds you. If you defeat the Dragon Wizard, you get the Orb and millions of gold pieces–which it would be sensible to immediately drop, as the Orb itself is going to attract enough high-level monsters. You then have to make your way back up 20 levels, apparently somewhere encountering The Grim Reaper, who’s even harder than the Dragon Wizard.

Here is where I run into problems. Although I’ve explored them both multiple times, I cannot find the up teleporters from Levels 19 or 13. A “Teleport” spell that’s supposed to move you upward for one cleric and one mage spell slot absolutely never works. Thus, although I have managed to obtain the Orb, I can’t find my way out of the dungeon.              

I had the Orb at one point; I just couldn’t get it out.

           I haven’t been adhering to permadeath, of course. The game makes it easy to cheat. It saves your character with every level transition and doesn’t record his “death” until you acknowledge the death message. This is an opportunity for players to quickly remove the disk from the drive, or in my case kill the emulator. Reloading is a pain, though, so death still has consequences. Since I’m emulating the CP/M from within DOSBox, I have to restart two emulators with their associated commands and sit through a timer in the unregistered CP/M emulator. It was probably easier for a 1981 player to restart his game than it is for me.               

             Thus, having wasted an absurd number of hours on the game, I can’t show you a winning screen. But if I know my readers, one of them will eventually grow curious enough to poke around in the game’s code and let me know what I missed, and I’ll be able to come back with an addendum. For now, the game ties with Game for an 18, although the individual stories aren’t exactly the same. Game of Dungeons at least tried to make up a story about the dungeon, which OrbQuest doesn’t, but OrbQuest has a slightly better variety of equipment.              

OrbQuest gets some credit for slightly more gruesome combat language than its source.

            We’ll take our second look at Planet’s Edge next while I gear up to plan fan (and Addict) favorite Ultima VII. Replacing it on the “upcoming” list is Catacombs (1982) for the ZX81, for which I haven’t even found an emulator yet, so we’ll see.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-362-orbquest-1981/

[thetravellingvagrant]

Day 25- Zadar/Slunj: In Which I Am Spurned By Croatian Wario

For the third day in the row I found myself awake and as close to alert as I can get, before 8am. The previous two day's early rousings had put my circadian rhythm on a significantly earlier cycle than it had been, or indeed had any justifiable reason to be. This was irritating, especially today, as my bus to my next destination, the wonderfully named Slunj (though disappointingly pronounced Sloon) was at half past two in the afternoon. Thus, I found myself with seven hours to kill; three of which would be outside the confines of my flat, if Slavica was to be picky about check-out times.

I packed my things up and took care of various bits of admin with no less panic than I normally did, but at a definitively slower pace, even having time to have a panic-break to make and eat another round of pancakes (also successful). As I was finishing my starchy breakfast, there was a knock on the door. It was close to checkout time now, so I feared the worst. I answered it to Slavica's crumbling pre-historic face.

“heelo” she said

“Hi...” I replied, cautiously.

“I am leeveenk now”

I wondered if she had misspoken and had meant to say “you are leaving now” instead, but she continued.

“I have no more bookings, so you go when you like and leave keys on table. I wish you good luck with travels and with rest of life” and with that, she shook my hand and left. Aw. Slavica, Aw...

I shut the door warmed by her words, if not by the heating of the flat and celebrated not having to leave the apartment until the exact moment I needed to. Briefly. Even with the extra two hours, I was still basically behind schedule.

I gave myself a little extra time to get to the bus station and find my bus- of course I did. I 'm not an idiot- which ended up being a great move on my part as, unbeknownst to me, Zadar bus station doesn't have a departure board. You just have to sort of...know where your bus is going to be, by magic, I suppose, because it certainly isn't written on the ticket. In the end, with ten minutes until it was due to depart, I found my bus via a combination of luck,  witchcraft and asking someone. I approached the greasy, unpleasant looking conductor, so he could take my bag and put it in the hold.

He proceeded to take the bags of every woman, regardless of their position in the queue, before even thinking to touch mine and when he did, he threw it haphazardly and with some force and it landed awkwardly. He also charged me a 10 kuna baggage handling fee. What an absolute glans of a man.

I settled into my seat, irritated by this grotesque human chode and quickly and for the first time on this trip, the bus filled up. Fortunately my journey was only to take around 3 hours, so it wouldn't be that terrible. I could just settle into my seat, watch some trash and relax. Or I could have done, if the slimy little bagman didn't waddle his fat carcass up the bus to me, specifically to demand I come down to the front, for some reason. Miffed and slightly concerned, I obliged, with great effort, squeezing past my seatmate and everyone who had decided to sit in front of me's elbows and bags.

I stood at the front of the bus as he admitted two more women onto it, just waiting for him to stop being a lech until he finally turned his attention to me. He asked for my ticket. I showed it to him and he scanned it. On his mobile fucking phone. Why not bring that with you to me at the back of the bus? Why did I have to scramble across a bus full of people just so you didn't have to carry a few grams of extra weight with you? Why are you such a fucking prick? My mind was awash with questions, though I realised I would not be given an answer. Instead, I gruffly snatched my phone back, rolled my eyes and made the arduous journey back to my seat. Wasteman.

The bus journey, although short, was hard, like a diamond dwarf. The sheer number of people on board had made it an uncomfortable experience in that I couldn't stretch or move my legs to the side, had no room to manoeuvrer my arms to effectively scratch or adjust my clothes and the excess heat and smell that all these people gave off, coupled with the gentle swaying of the bus had begun to make me feel quite sick.

Pleasingly, though, at around the half-way mark of the journey, all of a sudden the landscapes I was idly eyeing up from my window began to be covered by a brilliant blanket of white snow. Very pleasing to look at- from the window at least.

This snowfall continued, and indeed worsened to a slightly worrying degree and by the time I had arrived in Slunj, I stepped off the bus into shin deep drifts.

Artist’s impression.

I hoped that this wouldn't effect the remainder of my travel plans, though knowing that hope was my only weapon in this fight, I moved on to my next AirBNB regardless.  I alternated between walking on the road and, when confronted with passing cars or snow-ploughs (though crucially, no gritters...) wading into the drifts. Progress was slow, cold and wet and the ten minute walk doubled in length in short order. Eventually, though, I found the guesthouse, nestled in amongst about a million other guesthouses, I phoned the host and was let inside. I dumped my stuff and quickly connected to the wifi. It didn't work. Three in a row for broken wifi. Fan fucking tastic. I gave up all hope then and there and decided to fuck off for some food and just not think about it.

The mood I was in meant that I was really quite keen to get a burger to take back to the accommodation to sit, munching unhappily through in a state of undress, fuming silently as I did, however Slunj is just not a big enough town to boast frivolities such as takeaways, and so I was lumbered with the tedious task of eating in a restaurant. I guess that was fine.

I dragged myself back through the snow to the town centre and jumped in to the salty and it hurt my lips, but I was still happy to be eating. Now...not quite sated, but certainly not hungry, I dropped in to the local and seemingly only supermarket for some provisions for tomorrow night's dinner and, for the third time that day, made the same walk through now borderline waist-deep snow back to the apartment.

I had hoped that in the time I was gone, the internet might have sorted itself out, however this uncharacteristic hope was met with entirely characteristic disappointment, when I got back, because it just hadn't. With no internet and therefore no means to work on anything productive, such as, say, a blog, I had no choice but to keep watching the trash that I had previously downloaded, which, by this point, I was becoming far beyond sick of, and to head to bed very, early.

[connecticut-seo-adwords]

How to get developers to implement SEO recommendations

The hardest problem in doing SEO isn’t the algorithm updates. It isn’t having access to the enterprise tools. It’s not even whether or not you have the experience to determine where to focus your efforts.

No, the hardest problem in SEO is getting developers to actually execute recommendations.

We all walk into projects hoping to discover an internal champion that can take the developers to lunch and buy them beers in hopes that our suggestions get turned into actions, but sometimes that champion doesn’t show up. In some cases, getting things done may require social engineering. In other cases, it just requires a degree in engineering.

Let’s talk about how you can be better prepared to get developers to act on your recommendations and drive some results.

The Anderson-Alderson scale of developers

First, let’s meet the players.

I like to think there are two opposite extremes in web developers, and I use two of my favorite characters to personify them. One is Thomas Anderson, whom you may remember from “The Matrix” before he became Neo.

Here’s how his boss describes him in the film: “You have a problem, Mr. Anderson. You think that you’re special. You believe that somehow the rules do not apply to you.”

Anderson developers are the type of employees who live on their own terms and only do things when they feel like it. They’re the mavericks that will argue with you on the merits of code style guides, why they left meta tags out of their custom-built CMS entirely, and why they will never implement AMP — meanwhile, not a single line of their code validates against the specifications they hold dear.

They’re also the developers who roll their eyes to your recommendations or talk about how they know all of the “SEO optimizations” you’re presenting, they just haven’t had the time to do them. Sure thing, Mr. Anderssssson.

On the other end of the spectrum you have Elliot Alderson.

For those of you who don’t watch “Mr. Robot,” Alderson is the type of person who will come into the office at 2:00 a.m. to fix things when they break, even going as far as to hop on the company jet that same night to dig into the network’s latest meltdown.

Alderson-type developers are itching to implement your recommendations right away. That’s not because they necessarily care about ranking, but because they care about being good at what they do.

This developer type is attentive and will call you out on your b.s. if you don’t know what you’re talking about. So don’t come in with recommendations about asynchronous JavaScript without understanding how it works.

Aldersons will also help you brainstorm the actual execution of a strong idea and how to help you get your recommendations prioritized in the black hole that is the dev queue. They’re likely to be aware of Google’s documentation, but recognize that it may not always be up to date and respect your experience, so they’ll ask for your thoughts before implementing something they’re unsure of.

My greatest experience with a developer on the Alderson end of the scale was on a client project for a television show. We’d flown out to LA to meet with the team and walk them through our SEO Site Audit.

While we were explaining some of those recommendations, the developer was sitting there in the room, not taking notes. Rather, this gentleman was committing code as we were explaining what needed to be fixed. By the time the meeting was over, all of our high-value recommendations had been implemented.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember that guy’s name — but he is a legend.

Strategic vs. execution deliverables

Throughout the course of my career, deliverables from many agencies have come across my desk, and I’m always struck by the way some companies present their recommendations.

Many deliverables are either just screen shots of Google tools or prescriptions with little to no context. I always like to imagine a CEO having someone print out our work to read while they are riding in a limo to the airport. I want that person to feel that they understand what we’re suggesting, why it’s important, and how we’re doing a great job.

Additionally, I often find that there is no supplemental document to the strategy document that helps the client and its development team actually execute on these recommendations. It’s very much presented as, “Here’s a problem, you should fix it. Good luck.”

For example, when we deliver an SEO Site Audit, each set of problems is presented with context as to why it matters, an illustration of the issue and a series of recommendations, both with screenshots and code snippets. Each set is then prioritized with a score of benefit, ease and readiness of implementation.

All of the issues are coded with a number so that they can be represented in a spreadsheet. In that spreadsheet, there is a tab for each coded issue that highlights the specific URLs where that issue is happening, as well as any corresponding data that represents that issue.

As an example, for a list of meta descriptions that are too long, we will include the those URLs, their meta descriptions and their length.

The bigger issue lies in deliverables that are presented more for the client’s review and approval than for implementation by developers. We have a deliverable called “Content Recommendations,” wherein we take a client’s content and place it into a model in Word and track changes to update the body copy, metadata and internal linking structure.

This is great for a marketer to review what we’re doing to their copy and make sure that we continue to maintain the voice and tone. It’s also great if the client has a marketing coordinator who will be doing the manual implementation.

It’s horrible from a development standpoint, in that it requires them to do a very tedious job of going page by page to copy and paste new items, and no developer wants to do that.

That means implementation of the recommendations in that Word document requires a developer who’s high on the Alderson side of the Anderson-Alderson scale.

On the other hand, if we review the client-facing version of the Content Recommendations document with the client and then place the resulting changes into a spreadsheet, a developer could write a script that goes through every page and makes the changes we’re suggesting. More on that later.

This would place the implementation closer to the Anderson end of the Anderson-Alderson scale.

Getting developers to do things is all about scale

Generally speaking, scale is always something to be mindful of with SEO recommendations. Sometimes, though, there is no way to scale what you’re trying to accomplish.

For instance, if you’ve migrated a site and changed its taxonomy in such a way that there is no definitive pattern, you cannot write rule-based .htaccess entries for its redirects.

Developers have a series of tools on their end that enforce changes and/or make things scale. It is our job to make our recommendations through this frame to get devs to actually implement them. Otherwise, the dev team will always find a way to push back.

Common SEO implementation tasks on the Anderson-Alderson scale

Certain SEO-specific tasks require more dev effort than others and rate differently on the Anderson-Alderson scale, where placement on that scale indicates what type of developer you need to be working with in order for those recommendations to be implemented. The following illustrates where these common tasks generally fall on that scale.

Updating metadata. This process is typically quite tedious. Unless the copy is prepared where it’s easily extracted and placed into the page, it would require page-by-page updates in the CMS, or pulling from the document we prepare and placing it into the database.

Updating body copy or embedded structured data. Similar to updating metadata, this is also quite tedious and requires page-by-page updates. In cases where we’re talking about updating schema.org code that’s integrated within the content rather than placed in the using JSON-LD, this is a nightmare for a developer to implement.

Updating internal linking structure. This could potentially be done programmatically, but only if the the relationships are effectively identified. In most cases, SEOs present the recommendation on a page-by-page level, and a developer cannot effectively scale that effort.

Optimizing code for performance. Developers tend to be obsessed with speed, so much so that they shorten the word “performance” to “perf” so it can be said faster. However, they have an aversion to the critical rendering path recommendations that come out of the Google’s PageSpeed Insights. Of the SEO recommendations I make, these are the ones I tread the most lightly with because it’s an area in which developers are often defensive.Pro Tip: Use the DevTools Timeline and Network performance detail to get them on board with page speed optimizations. They tend to react better to those.

Generating XML sitemaps following site taxonomy. There are many tools that support the development of XML sitemaps, but developers tend to just let those rip. This leads to XML sitemaps like “sitemap14.xml” rather than those that reflect meaningful segmentation following the site taxonomy and are therefore useful to SEOs for managing indexation.

Generating HTML snapshots. Some JavaScript Single Page App frameworks such as Angular 1.x have historically had difficulty getting indexed. But developers have heard that Google is crawling using headless browsers, and they know that Angular is a framework developed by Google, so they sometimes are not compelled to account for its shortcomings.

Implementing redirects. Redirects can be scaled pretty easily, as they are often done on the server configuration level and written through a series of pattern-matched rules. It’s extremely rare (in my experience) that a developer will not follow through on these.

Fixing improper redirects. Conversely, when it comes to switching redirects from 302s to 301s, I have seen pushback from development teams. In fact, I was once told that the switch might break the site.

Clearly, we need to seek out better developers to work with, or we have to find a way to make our recommendations Anderson-proof.

Allow me to introduce you to task runners

Web development, primarily on the front end, gets more and more complicated with each passing day. One of the more valuable concepts that have been introduced in the past five years is task runners.

Task runners such as Gulp and Grunt allow developers to automate a series of tasks every time they push new code. A more recent addition, Webpack, also features task-running capability. This is largely to keep developers out of doing mundane or tedious processes the machine itself can do, and many web projects are leveraging these for that purpose.

Without going into the specifics of the tools themselves, communities have grown around Grunt, Gulp and Webpack; as a result, a series of plugins is available. Of course, custom modules can be written for each, but the less work you create for developers, the better.

Going back to the idea of updating metadata at scale, there is a plugin for Grunt called , which allows you to provide an XLSX file with changes to page titles, meta descriptions and open graph metadata.

Simply offering the file, developing a column mapping and running the task would then update all of the relevant pages on your site. Sure, what I’m suggesting applies more to flat files than content in a CMS, but of course there are task runners that run on the database level as well.

A developer could effectively modify this plugin to edit the database rather than editing files, or your Excel file could be converted to an SQL file quite quickly and run as an UPDATE across the database.

Finally, most modern content management systems have plugins or modules that allow developers to scale tedious tasks to similar effect. It’s up to you to do the research and know about them when preparing your recommendations.

Common SEO recommendations you can use task runners for

Grunt, Gulp and Webpack all have a series of plugins offering configurable functionality that allows a developer to quickly execute tedious SEO tasks. The following is a (non-exhaustive) list of SEO tasks and some plugins that can be used for them:

Code minification

Image compression

Automatic updates to XML sitemaps

AMP validation

AMP creation

Updating meta tags

Generating HTML snapshots

Page speed insights

Each of these plugins will allow you to prepare a specification (and, in some cases, support files). Then the developer simply has to configure the plugin to reflect it and run the tasks. You’ve effectively made their job quite easy by leveraging these tools.

Outside of the Grunt, Gulp, Webpack setups, a dev could use Webcheck to automate a series of other checks for several other SEO issues as highlighted in this StackOverflow thread. The idea is that the developer could write build tests that wouldn’t allow them to deploy the new site unless everything checked out. You can find more plugins by searching the npmjs.com.

Other ways to get developers to implement SEO recommendations

Task runners are certainly not an be-all-end-all; rather, they are another tool in the SEO’s toolbox for interfacing with developers effectively. There are many smaller touches that can help you get the development team to take action.

Understand the tech stack, and frame your recommendations within it. Consider a scenario where you’ve suggested 301 redirects for your client. It turns out they are running Nginx instead of Apache. Do you know that Nginx does not employ an .htaccess file? If you don’t, you may suggest placing the 301 redirects there, and the developer may ignore everything else that you’re saying. Tools like BuiltWith.com will give you a general determination of what technologies are in use. A better idea is to look at the HTTP headers in Chrome DevTools.No matter what you do, you should spend the time to get a detailed understanding of the tech stack when your engagement begins.

Give granular detail in your recommendations. If it requires the developer to look elsewhere outside of your document for the solution, you are far less likely to get them to implement the recommendation. Instead, explain the context and implementation in line within your deliverable rather than linking out to other people’s explanations. Although developers tend to never trust other people’s apps, some developers tend to respect your findings from DevTools more than many SEO tools. My guess is that this is due to the combination of granular detail and it being the tool they use every day.

Give one solution, but know the other ones. Often an SEO issue can be solved a number of ways, and it can be hard to fight the desire to fill up your SEO documents by exhaustively highlighting all available options. Fight harder and only deliver one possible solution. Eliminating the need to make a decision will lead to developers being more likely to implement. However, if the development team shoots that one solution down, have another solution ready. For instance, if they can’t move the site from subdomains to subdirectories, then suggest a reverse proxy.

Business cases and prioritization. This is perhaps the most valuable thing you can do to get buy-in up and down the organization, which leads to added pressure on the development team to get things done. Applying a dollar figure to the value of your implementations makes the idea of action more compelling. Prioritizing recommendations through this lens helps as well. Granted, we all know no one can truly predict the size of an opportunity, so do it with some sort of understandable methodology so you can get things to happen.

Understand their development methodology. Whether it’s agile, waterfall, XP, some combination, or some new thing that only one team in the world does, look to understand it. Listen, I can’t stand when someone runs up on me at my desk while I’m in deep concentration to ask me a question they could have Googled. Similarly, developers hate when SEOs come to them and tell them they need to disrupt how they normally operate to accommodate an SEO recommendation. So if that team works in sprints, find out from their Scrum master when the sprint cycle ends and when the best time is to get your requirements into a subsequent sprint. You should also be working directly with this person to develop the recommendations into stories to place into their project management solution so the team can adhere to their standard workflow rather than needing to translate your work into how they operate.

Develop a relationship with the development team. It seems obvious, but the soft skill of becoming friends with the development team will go a long way in their being more likely to work with you. In most cases, the relationship between SEO and technical teams is very transactional, so they only hear from you when you want something. Instead, if you take the time to have a genuine interest in these people, you’ll find they are just people trying to do the best they can, like you and me.

Appeal to their self-interests. To the previous point, there are opportunities to align what you’re trying to do with what they are trying to do. For example, a recent client of ours had a development team looking to optimize page speed, but they were looking more closely at an internal metric rather than the external ones that Google is looking at. It was far easier getting buy-in on that subset of recommendations than any of the other ones because it supported the mandate that the person had been given by his bosses. So it was more valuable for me to focus in on that when speaking to him than on things like redirects. While that required some reprioritization of what I believed to be the most valuable tasks, it did help shift the focus on the page speed effort a bit to ensure that the items that I highlighted got prioritized. You lose some, you win some — as long as the outcome is income!

Do what you can to balance the scale

As a developer, I can tell you that even if you were to become one, it will always be difficult to get development teams to make things happen. However, when you speak their language and take more interest in bringing them the right detail-oriented solution, you will get a lot farther than those that do not.

Improving your deliverables, leveraging task runners, developing business cases, prioritizing effectively and taking a genuine interest in who you’re dealing with will get you much closer to complete implementation and better organic search performance. Best of luck converting your Andersons into Aldersons!

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

Source

http://searchengineland.com/get-developers-implement-seo-recommendations-280318