It’s the beginning of the first full week of 2015.
The holidays are over for another year and most of us are back at work today. After all the celebrations and days of relaxation the first Monday of the year is not everybody’s favourite day.
I think that makes this week the perfect time to remember what excites you about what you do, what you are building and what opportunities lie ahead.
If you use the web to share your creative work, collaborate with your peers or run an online business then you should be excited as the power and knowledge you have available at your fingertips is greater than it ever has been before.
Online resources, tools and web services are giving you an unprecedented opportunity to learn, share your work, connect with like minded people and reach your customers.
Here are a few things I am excited about for the future of Creative Transmissions this year.
WordPress Power
Over the course of the last year the majority of the web development jobs I have been working on have been adding new functions and capabilities to WordPress websites in the form of plugins.
Once a simple blogging platform, WordPress is currently the fastest to set up and easiest to use and most popular website content management system available.
Advances in the core WordPress platform along with wide adoption of plugin development best practises through the use of projects such as Tom McFarlin’s WordPress Plugin Boilerplate are making advanced functions easier to add in a robust way.
APIs Everywhere
APIs are a way for your website to connect to an online service. They are becoming more and more common and allow your website to automatically do things like:
- Post your latest blog post to all your social media accounts
- Connect your computers Dropbox folder to your website to upload photography
- Create custom Google Map tools to allow you or your members to map any kind of location data
- Order photography prints to be printed and delivered to anywhere in the world with services like Pwinty
- Join APIs together to automate business tasks with services like IFTTT
Many of my development jobs last year involved adding specific API access to WordPress websites turning these online services into easy to use tools you can set up from your control panel.
Fast JavaScript and CSS 3
JavaScript is what makes things happen on a web page. Any time you see something change or move on a web page without moving to a new page JavaScript is at work.
When I started running Creative Transmissions full time a couple of years ago web browsers were a lot slower than they are now and performance was a big issue.
Now the technology under the hood has been seriously upgraded and even mobile phone browsers are able to run full software applications directly on the web page.
We can now create our own powerful tools for ourselves or our clients to use on the desktop, tablet or even mobile phone.
What Else?
A lot more for me anyway!
To start with I will be sharing a lot more information, resources and how to guides on the Creative Transmissions website as well as featuring the work and websites of many clients, collaborators and creative people I admire.
What’s exciting you right now? What would help you in your business or online creative project?
Drop me a message on the contact page or leave a comment below and I’ll be happy to answer your question on the blog or point you in the right direction.
Have an exciting new year!