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Estimates and estimation

Thorsten Ott on June 8, 2017

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
–Dwight D. Eisenhower

Why we estimate

Suppose you’re preparing for a trip and deciding which suitcase to take. You have a small suitcase that you like because it’s easy to carry and will fit into an airplane’s overhead storage bin. You also have a large suitcase, which you don’t like because you’ll have to check it in and then wait for it at baggage claim, lengthening your trip. You lay your clothes beside the small suitcase, and it appears that they will almost fit. What do you do? You might try packing them very carefully, not wasting any space, and hoping they all fit. If that approach doesn’t work, you might try stuffing them into the suitcase with brute force, sitting on the top and trying to squeeze the latches closed. If that still doesn’t work, you’re faced with a choice: leave a few clothes at home or take the larger suitcase. —Steve McConnell, Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art

As an engineer, nothing pleases me more than rolling up my sleeves and writing code. But before doing that, a sense of how to approach a task and the required resources (people, time, software licenses, third-party API access) need to be determined. These details support clear project expectations, which are foundational to the great client experiences we strive to create. Estimates, give all project stakeholders—internal and external—a chance to agree on a few key things before work is begun:

That we understand what is being asked for;
That we have a plan to efficiently deliver quality results;
That we’ve asked (and answered) all project team questions;
That we’ve considered all the risks, edge cases, and alternatives;
That we’ve considered the effects on usability, accessibility, and SEO;
That the available budget and desired timeline support the approach.

Get to know New Relic Reporting for WordPress

Vasken Hauri on May 31, 2017

New Relic is a SaaS product that offers application performance monitoring (APM), which provides developers with real-time data for use in proactive diagnostics as well as debugging. This data—including basic information about WordPress hooks, plugins, and themes—can be queried and visualized using the New Relic Insights dashboard.

Seeing an opportunity to maximize the utility of APM and Insights, we created New Relic Reporting for WordPress, which supplements out-of-the-box data collection with additional WordPress-specific information.

Christine Garrison on May 12, 2017

I’m excited to be presenting “An Introduction to Test-Driven JavaScript Development” at Syntax Code and Craft Conference on May 18. SyntaxCon, held in Charleston, SC, is a multi-day, full stack code conference for developers and engineers. My talk introduces the concept of test-driven development (TDD) when working with JavaScript, highlights its benefits, clarifies some common misconceptions, and provides examples of how to implement TDD into your everyday workflow.

Introducing WP Docker

Taylor Lovett on April 27, 2017 • 12 Comments

Back in 2013, 10up introduced Varying Vagrant Vagrants (VVV), a project led by then 10upper Jeremy Felt. One of the first popular WordPress development environments based on Vagrant, VVV has since been moved out of 10up’s GitHub and into its own, where it continues to thrive as a community-led project.

Now, Docker and container-based server architectures have emerged as powerful tools for creating and managing development environments. Last year, we partnered with Joyent to release a scalable, production-ready Docker environment for WordPress. Today, we’re proud to release WP Docker: an open source Docker configuration optimized for local WordPress development.
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How to become a WordPress Core contributor with one line of code

Derrick Koo on April 27, 2017 • 1 Comment

[To better illustrate our core value of community service, we are sharing an internal post from Senior Front End Engineer Derrick Koo, who recently made his first code contribution to the WordPress project. We hope his story encourages more people who are “on the fence” about contributing to take the plunge and start giving back to the WordPress community. —Jake Goldman, President & Founder]

Contributing code to WordPress Core can be intimidating for a first-timer. With thousands of tickets out there, it can be hard to know where to begin. With development out in the open, it takes a lot of courage to submit a first WordPress patch.

For the benefit of new and aspiring contributors, I’m sharing my experience making my first code contribution to WordPress. Starting with little knowledge of the Core contribution process, I embarked on a journey that resulted in one line of CSS, and my first Core props.
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Christine Garrison on March 15, 2017

We were featured in Time’s Money “10 fully remote companies that are hiring” roundup. Joining team 10up means that—with reliable internet access and a drive to serve clients on their timeline—you can work from anywhere in the world. Interested in joining our team? Take a look at our Careers section and find your next professional opportunity.

Keeping your WordPress options table in check

on March 10, 2017 • 7 Comments

When troubleshooting a slow WordPress site, an often overlooked culprit is the wp_options database table. This table houses a variety of crucial site data, including:

permalinks
site settings
scheduled posts
widget data

In fact, nearly every WordPress page—from the front end to the admin screens—executes the query SELECT option_name, option_value FROM wp_options WHERE autoload = 'yes'. If this query does not run efficiently, the results can be devastating to a site’s speed.
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John Eckman on March 2, 2017

On March 9th, join me at A Day of REST Boston: a conference devoted to exploring the WordPress REST API in-depth. My lightning talk, 5-10 Use Cases in 10 Minutes, describes various ways organizations are using the REST API in their digital projects.

In Backbone & the REST API: A Love Story, Lead Web Engineer Adam Silverstein explains how Backbone is used in WordPress core and walks through the core REST API JavaScript client, started and led by 10up. As a follow-up to this session, on March 10th, Adam is leading a half day workshop on developing with Backbone and the REST API.

Six years of 10up

Jake Goldman on February 13, 2017

If we spent our first five years pioneering and staking our claim in the world, in our sixth year we cultivated the organization and culture we pioneered. We rallied around trends and shifts in our industry and redoubled our investment into telling our story.

The initiative to better express our story culminated in a refresh of our company website, prominently featuring a new mission statement, proudly summarized by a promise to deliver “finely crafted websites and tools that make the web better.” We reinvigorated our project case studies, moving to a layout that better celebrates the challenges we’ve conquered with our clients. And we completely overhauled our Careers section, taking deliberate strides to better represent our culture of diversity and inclusion.

All this while growing our revenue by 12%.

Here are some of the ways we adapted to a shifting landscape and embodied our new mission since our last company anniversary:
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Meet ElasticPress.io: a hosted search and query engine for ElasticPress

Jake Goldman on February 10, 2017

We’re proud to announce ElasticPress.io: a hosted service that integrates with ElasticPress, our popular plugin, to provide a fast and flexible search and query engine for WordPress.

We built ElasticPress to overcome higher-end performance and functional limits posed by the more traditional, structured (SQL) database underpinning WordPress. Storing content in a modern (noSQL) query engine like Elasticsearch empowers us to produce superior keyword search and related content results, and supercharge the performance of complex queries like a filter on multiple product properties or a location. Smarter and faster content makes for a better web and, not accidentally, is important to search engines and visitor retention / conversion.

While our plugin made it simple for WordPress-savvy engineers to talk to Elasticsearch, the need to manage Elasticsearch hosting added friction and complexity, at odds with the simple user experience 10up strives for. As we prototyped exciting use cases involving private content, we realized that end-to-end security added even more complexity.

ElasticPress.io solves all of that—making it dead-simple to start using enterprise-caliber search and query technology with WordPress. It enables innovative features like accelerated admin performance that require end-to-end control and security.