Articles, Thoughts, Updates & Musings.
In other words this is our blog. Read on to find out what we are up to and what we are thinking about current trends and strategies.
![[updated] Diagrams to live your life by](https://b2209735.smushcdn.com/2209735/wp-content/uploads/DiagramsTLYLB-Choice-vs-happiness-paradox-400x250.jpg?lossy=2&strip=1&webp=1)
[updated] Diagrams to live your life by
As part of our Practically Academy Sam shared a whole series of diagrams that help in the strategy work that he does, and beyond.
12 days of design thinking
Our 12 days of design thinking released for Xmas 2024. A whimsical way of explaining some of the ways we approach design and strategy. Remember – Design thinking is not just for Christmas. Ho Ho Ho.
Our inaugural FedEx Day
We here at Practically took 24 hours out of client work to do our first FedEx day – so called because you deliver something the next day. We wanted to show off the creativity, technical process and breadth of what our small team made.
What is a business web application?
This Whitepaper is jointly written by Job Bains of Obsolete.com and Sam Collett at Practically.io. See more about us at the end of this document.
ASCALi Renaming Project
ASCALi is a rebranding and renaming project – that of Logistics Consulting.
![[diagram] Level up Cache in WordPress – a Practical Guide](https://b2209735.smushcdn.com/2209735/wp-content/uploads/pexels-brett-sayles-2881229-400x250.jpg?lossy=2&strip=1&webp=1)
[diagram] Level up Cache in WordPress – a Practical Guide
Speed with websites is largely about caching of resources. We explain what, why and how we do things at Practically.
Cookie Consent Pop-ups in 2024
You may have noticed that we have no cookie consent popups on our site. We, as designers and web practitioners, have some real problems with those annoying cookie popups. And we are not alone…
A letter to creative students – the class of 2024
A rather personal message to design students of this year, musing on youth, AI, design careers, tribes, community and what makes us humans happy.
Digital for charities: Website Content Template for Charities
One of the big problems for small charities sites is knowing where to start with a new or upgraded website. Read on for top tips, a checklist & free to download templates for your content.
Digital for Charities: Encouraging adoption & responsible pet ownership?
In the first of a series of posts about digital capability for charities, designer Agate Madara Brice shares her dissertation discussing how she would help a local dog home gain more adoptions and gain awareness in general…
What’s the state of the pawnbroking industry in provincial towns?
Exploring the current state of the pawnbroking industry in medium sized UK towns, examining its history, consumer perspective, response to changing demands, and potential for growth. We look at the challenges faced by pawnbrokers in these areas and focus on a specific example in our hometown – Cheltenham.
Web design in Cheltenham – 46 agencies compared
There are a surprising amount of small to medium web design firms operating in this Cotswold town. This is not an exhaustive list but one created from our network and experience.
Why is ChatGPT and generative AI okay for industry but not for education?
Or, Why is ChatGPT and generative AI okay for industry but not for education?
GCSE Prepper scientifically proven to get better grades
Scientific study proves a ‘Statistically strong correlation between time spent on GCSE Prepper and GCSEs results.’
Perennial Blog Posting Strategy
A blogging strategy that will save you time, increase your SEO health, make that content calendar easy to deal with and help with your sanity.
Start a new development project on the right foot
Multiple times in Web Development you will go through the process of creating a new repository for a new application or project that you are tasked to build. We think it is really important to get the order of tasks correct at the start of a new application…
Accessibility Web Design Rules – Our upgraded website for NHS
Things we learnt by creating highly accessible website designs for the NHS & university sectors. Recent pitches and web briefs have put accessibility high on their list of needs, which is a great sign. However accessibility, just like GDPR, needs to be taken in context…
WWW – A tool for any creative. What, Who & Why is your work good?
Or not of course. An evaluation tool for any marketing creative piece – a poster, a website, a flyer, a brand. Most of all a piece of SEO copywriting.
Divi alt tags done right (in functions.php)
DIVI for WordPress. Load Alt tags in Divi directly from the Media Library, pull alt tags in automatically even when these are added or changed from the WordPress Media Library.
Growth Hacking – implementations, ethics & effectiveness
Stu Carter discusses the death of the term Growth Hack. Another of our dissertations from the archives…
Yii2 application static analysis with Psalm
Practically has developed a Psalm Yii2 plugin as a static analyser for making sure your object types are refined and defined.
Teaching Excellence Through a Year of Challenge & Change
Our very own Sam Collett presented at the University of Worcester’s Leaning and Teaching Conference 2021, whose theme this year was Maintaining Teaching Excellence Through a Year of Challenge and Change.
Service Broker Introduction
A service broker is a way of provisioning services and binding them to applications. With a service broker you can provision a database and bind it to a deployment.
Cathedrals, Memes, Advertising, God and Liverpool
During a session with some of our third year students, Sam’s old dissertation came out as a key reference source. So we thought we would dig this beast out of the archives…
Mkcert all the things
After Ade Attwood’s recent dive into TLS and creating server certificates with a root ca. This is a much simpler way with mkcert…
“We are going to tell you your baby is ugly. And you are going to thank us for it.”
This rather rude quote came up in conversation & it got us thinking about how we approach UX, strategy, design and projects in general…
Yii2 stream responses
In your Yii2 controller, it is quite common practice to return the stream of a file to the browser for your user to download. However, it’s not so well documented you can set any stream reference as the content of your response.
Named regex matches in php
When dealing with those pesky regular expressions trying to get our matches by their index, making your code that little less readable.
The dirty secret of Pay Per Click advertising (or how lockdown has opened our eyes)
Covid lockdown has given us a unique and unexpected experiment; what happens when online ad spend stops across the board in a sector?
Up and running with Kubernetes and Microk8s
Canonical have been doing some awesome work with Microk8s. This program makes it super simple to get up and running fast with Kubernetes.
Git Repository Clean Up
After you have been developing a project for some time your local git repo can become detached from the repository on ‘origin’. Here are a few commands you can run to clean things up a bit when you feel things are getting cluttered.
The Design Diamond
Simply stated, it aims to convince design students of the process of design. That without one of the four corners of the diamond then a design presentation (a crit or critique) will be weak.
Phenotype Definition
The word ‘phenotype’ is a biological term and is best explained by examining the differences between the ‘phenotype’ and ‘genotype’ of living organisms…