The adventures of Matt Lawrence and Mike Karan through the world of web development, web design, and small business management. As web development agency owners for the better part of a decade, they’ve worked with all sorts of technologies, through the rise of responsive web design, the revolution of serverless computing, and the popularity gain of many no-code tools for small business owners. They commonly discuss foundational web development technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - including popular frameworks and tools such as Tailwind CSS, Svelte, WordPress, Vue, and more.
Episodes
Wednesday Aug 22, 2018
Wednesday Aug 22, 2018
In this episode we dive deep on how to tackle projects, whether they be something for the company, or something for a client. We take a look at the tools we use to organize it all, and how we stay on top of working in a small team.
Segment 1 - Idea Filtering
- Brainstorming and how to track it all
- Jot down informal notes, even if ideas are obviously bad
- Sleep on your ideas - don't develop them too much too quickly or you'll get ahead of yourself
- Sometimes you get a "packed idea" that needs attention immediately
- Bouncing ideas off of technical and non-technical people
- Live prototyping of easy to try ideas
- Having meetings to filter the good from the bad
- Grilling each others ideas - will the product make it in the market?
Segment 2 - Planning With and Using Tools
- Using a variety of tools for communication and organization
- Examples: Slack, Twist, Monday.com, Asana, Git (gitlab, github, bitbucket), email/contacts/calendar, trello, etc.
- Our procedure on handling projects that we do for ourselves (for Digital Dynasty Design)
- Day to day tools including things like: Google Hangouts, Git, OneDrive, Trello, Asana
Segment 3 - Client Work vs Personal Projects
- Matt works on small business client work as well as any projects that Digital Dyansty Design has running
- Mike focuses on client works and assists with Digital Dynasty Design projects whenver he can
- We treat client projecs differently than our own projects
- Get client objectives written down crystal clear
- Cost analysis
- Deadlines
- Design suggestions and comparative materials
- Daily Meetings
- Dealing with client and personal schedule needs
Segment 4 - Completion and Accountability
- Accountability is difficult when you're your own boss
- Need dicipline and hard deadlines that you need to keep
- Sometimes deadlines need to be changed due to project changes or other issues, but don't make a habit of it
- Fill out a log book to keep track of the work you do on a daily basis
Web News - Stress When Deploying to Production
- Even senior developers get stress when they are pushing to production
- Make backups, make an easy recovery path if possible
- Test everything you can to prepare
You can find us on...
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Wednesday Aug 15, 2018
Wednesday Aug 15, 2018
In this episode we discuss our journey from static and CMS driven sites to reactive frameworks, specifically Vue.js.
Segment 1 - Static to Reactive
- Started by creating simple static sites - no need for reactive elements
- When dynamic/reactive content was needed we would use document.createElement
Segment 2 - CMS to Reactive
- We would use Wordpress, CouchCMS, or Webflow for any content management that our users would need
- Eventually elements became too varied and a dynamic solution was needed - reactive frameworks
- The "Hub" presented a unique issue of not having a standard layout while still being "posts" (the episode clarifies this point)
Segment 3 - How We Plan to Use Vue.js
- Quick start guide for people to get up and running
- HexDash a collaborative project that people can contribute to
- Vue.js components - great for reusability
- Vue.js will be used in the making of the HTML All The Things website
Segment 4 - Matt's Experience Getting Quickly Started with Vue.js
- Moving over from a typical experience using vanilla HTML/CSS/JS, SASS, Bootstrap, Webflow, or CouchCMS
- Prior experience with CLI and NPM
- First time using Visual Studio Code
Web News - Trendy & Loud vs Silence
- NodeJS vs PHP
- Big frameworks vs old ones
- WordPress power 31% of the internet (Source: https://wordpress.com)
- WordPress vs Webflow
- Workflow conflicts
- Are freelancers using bleeding edge technology, while the rest of the industry (specifically big enterprise) still using "old" tech?
Wednesday Aug 08, 2018
Wednesday Aug 08, 2018
In this episode we explore our failures and shortcomings on a variety of our projects ranging from a stock photo resource to a fully-fledged Chrome App game.
Show Layout
Segment 1 - Starting Up
- Originally going to be an IT company
- Opportunity caused us to pivot before the opportunity fell through
- Decided to continue working in the web development and design field
Segment 2 - Lists by Design
- Product Page: Link
- First Chrome extension
- Was mean't to be a bookmarks replacer
- Added a lot of functionality that bookmarks don't have
Segment 3 - Clicks to Riches
- Product Page: Link
- Clicker/Idle game in the form of a Chrome App
- Was supposed to be a smaller version of a larger project
- Designed to generate revenue whilst working on the larger project
Segment 4 - Free Photos Hamilton
- Website: Link
- Free stock photo resouce
- Designed to offer free photos, focussing on the local area of Hamilton, Ontario
Segment 5 - Dealing and Mitigating Failure
- How to deal with failure and get ready for it before it even happens
- Always learn new things even if a project has failed totally
Web News - Windows vs MacOS
- The age old argument, who will win?
Social Links
Wednesday Aug 01, 2018
Wednesday Aug 01, 2018
In this episode we discuss our different workflows individually and collaboratively as a company.
Segment 1 - Infrastructure
- Started out using OneDrive
- Later started using BitBucket and GitHub
- Version control was needed more as projects grew in productivity
Segment 2 - Mike's Workflow
- Primary IDE is VS Code
- Xcode and Android Studio whenever a project calls for it
- Asana and Todoist
- Xampp
- Daily routine
Segment 3 - Matt's Workflow
- Notepad++
- CMD
- Chrome
- Testing browsers
- Balsamiq Cloud
- Workflow for small business basic site
- Workflow for projects
Segment 4 - Working Together/Collaborative Workflow
- Working together on OneDrive
- Dividing up parts of projects
- Code reviews/peer reviews
- Project management software
- Whiteboard project management
Web News - App Overload
- Discussion on how to manage app overload
- There are so many solutions to every problem and many of them have apps, this can cause app overload if you work on several projects.
Wednesday Jul 25, 2018
Wednesday Jul 25, 2018
In this episode we explore how to get started in web development and web design. We discuss some of the methods we used to get up and running and share some stories on our initial experiences in the field.
Topics covered in this episode include:
- Segment 1 - Mike's Beginnings
- Original exposure to code & first projects
- Segment 2 - Matt's Beginnings
- Original exposure to code & first projects
- Segment 3 - Libraries & Frameworks
- SASS - Official Site
- Bootstrap - Official Site
- Tailwind CSS - Official Site
- jQuery - Official Site
- Lightbox - Official Site
- NodeJS - Official Site
- Vue - Official Site
- Flutter - Official Site
- Segment 4 - When to Choose a Premade Solution
- Website builders
- Service providers
- Snippets & Plugins
- Examples include:
- Webflow - Official Site
- Podbean - Official Site
- Carrd - Official Site
- CouchCMS - Official Site
- Segment 5 - Web News
- Flutter
You can find us on...
Tuesday Jul 17, 2018
Tuesday Jul 17, 2018
In this episode Matt Lawrence and Mike Karan discuss their professional experiences that led them to today. These experiences form a foundation for future podcasts and act as a reference moving forward.
Topics covered in this episode include:
- Personal Introductions
- Segment 1 - Synopsis of Today
- Digital Dynasty Design
- Web design and development business
- Passive income projects
- Segment 2 - Education
- College and University educations and experiences
- Mohawk College
- McMaster University
- Segment 3 - Work Experience
- IT and administration
- Electrical drafting
- Co-ops
- Segment 4 - HATT
- What is HTML All The Things?
You can find us on...
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