Keeping your website safe with CMS security updates
Keeping your content management system (CMS) up to date is a crucial part of the ongoing maintenance of your website. This means making updates to th…
Oct 26Top 5 accessibility failures and how to check your website for them
It can be challenging and overwhelming to know where to start when ensuring your website is WCAG 2.0 compliant. If you're not fully up to speed, as o…
Sep 106 mistakes to avoid during a website redesign
At Industrial, we are fortunate to work with clients across all stages of projects and in varying roles. Although we love working on a project from d…
Jul 29
6 lessons learned from designing complex applications
In 2018, Industrial embarked on a multi-year design and front-end development project for a complex legal research application. The application requi…
Jun 08
eCommerce in 2021
What are your eCommerce needs? What are you selling? eCommerce can include a wide array of products from events, to courses, to membership, to …
Apr 302021 accessibility deadline: What it means for your website
The Ontario Accessibility 2021 deadline, now set to June 30, 2021 from December 31 2020, is fast approaching. If you have not already started the imp…
Feb 02Culture, Coffee, and COVID
As 2020 turned our lives upside down as we know them, we all learned how incredibly resilient we are as people and as companies. Industrial …
Jan 08
And the winner is...
When we launched this WIN A FREE WEBSITE competition, we had no idea what to expect. This isn’t anything we’ve ever done before but it just felt like…
May 25
NEWS RELEASE -- Ottawa digital agency, Industrial, launches competition to win a free custom website for one deserving Ontario-based organization
OTTAWA, ONT. -- Industrial is now calling for entries to its free website competition, where one winner will win a mobile-friendly, custom-designed a…
May 05It's time for Drupal 9
Drupal has been a long-term ally for those in the CMS world both on the development and consumer sides. Drupal 7 first emerged in January 2011, Drupa…
Apr 29
CSAE announces re-tooling of its technology systems
The Industrial team is ecstatic to be working along side our sister company Wicket Inc. and with the Canadian Society of Association Executives to re…
Nov 15Create a custom webform handler in Drupal 8
A question often asked is how to use webform submission data to perform some task once the form has been submitted. This could range from creating a …
Aug 14
Let's Encrypt with Certbot
Until recently, if you wanted to enable SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) on your site, you'd need to obtain and pay for a certificate from a CA (ce…
Sep 25
Drupal 8 RESTful Web Services
Drupal 8 now bundles into core the RESTful project. This is an exciting time to have this available as we start to build more decoupled solution…
Aug 03
Disney, don't exclude me
This weekend the movie Incredibles 2 opened at number one at the box office, giving it the top spot for the best opening weekend for an animated movie ever. Unfortunately, I can't see it.
Jun 18
Creating leads in Salesforce from Drupal using Webforms
Webforms as of Drupal 8 now has a cool new feature called "remote post" under the "handlers" section. What this does is allow form submission data to…
Jun 11
Command line tricks for Web Developers
One of the unspoken skill sets of a developer is having command line chops. This can cover service management, navigating around the file system…
Feb 16
Google Tag Manager
Google Analytics is a technology that is quite ubiquitous at this point in time on the web. People generally have a grasp of what it is and what…
Dec 20
Using MailChimp Templates: Pro Design Tips
MailChimp is a marketing automation platform and email marketing service that allows users and businesses to send custom designed emails that can be …
Dec 06Design feedback—a dreaded necessity
Design is a beautifully transformative process, filled with creativity and collaboration — though, collaborating can sometimes be the hardest part.&n…
Dec 05Moving forward with Drupal 8
As you gear up to build your next (or first) website, the process of landing on the tech that will be used can come about in different ways. A f…
Nov 27
Wireframes: An essential part of the design process
As a UX designer I spend a lot of time creating wireframes. They are an essential part of the design process because they allow me to visually commun…
Sep 28Anatomy of a performance issue
Recently (very recently), we suffered some performance degradation during a traffic volume spike with Wicket. As with most modern web applicatio…
Sep 27
Agile Estimation: Points vs Hours
In this post I discuss the notion of point estimation, highlighting its advantages over hour estimation. I explain one approach to doing point estimation in a professional services company, while addressing common concern from various stakeholders about the lack of time estimates
Aug 30
10 tips for Twig (in Drupal 8)
Here are some interesting tidbits pulled from our daily workflow using Twig. This was going to be a general twig topics article, but since we use it …
Aug 21
Why your company should have an office dog
Do you know that feeling you get when you walk in the front door after a long day and your four-legged friend is jumping with joy just to see you? We…
Jul 07Learning about Web Accessibility
Want to learn more about web accessibility? Quality Assurance Manager Ryan Knuth discusses the importance of it, and offers some great resources to start with.
Jun 09
Warning: Tunnel Vision Ahead. Design with Caution.
We’ve all heard it before: If you focus too much on features you will lose sight of the big picture. In other words, you develop tunnel vision. Th…
Jun 08Industrial is now bullfrogpowered® with green energy!
Today is World Environment Day and, in celebration, Industrial is happy to announce that we are now powered by bullfrogpower®! This means that Bul…
Jun 05
Industrial Injury List
How about that local sports team? As annual season seat holders and long-time Ottawa Senators fans, our team at Industrial has definitely taken …
May 30
How the 3 Little Pigs Helped us
We’ve had a couple great retrospectives lately, so I thought I would share two of the exercises that really garnered some good discussion. I’ve po…
May 16
Getting ready to migrate your content
Over time, the goals and needs of a website change and the question of redeveloping or updating comes up. Using real estate as an…
May 07
Tips for conducting better stakeholder interviews
In my ideal world every design project would involve extensive research. I would study the inner workings of an organization and its employees…
Apr 11Upgrading from Rails 4 to 5
There's no secret here: we love Rails. The ability to get an application up and running quickly, using well established conventions and design p…
Apr 08
Setting up Sublime for rapid Rails development
Recently I was having some issues with Sublime. My snippets weren’t expanding reliably and a few things just seemed “off”. Time had built up a level of crud, much like the family minivan accumulates crackers in every conceivable crevice. I recently re-installed Sublime and thought I would write about how I set it up and which packages help the most when writing Rails apps.
Apr 05Eight questions to ask before deciding on a platform for your Communities of Practice
I was recently asked by a client to provide some guidance on best practices and considerations around the rollout of a Communities of Practice discussion platform. In this post I cover the top 8 questions to ask yourself before choosing a software solution.
Mar 27
How we use board game design to learn about experience design
Ever since enjoying Stephen Anderson’s presentation on What board games can teach us about designing experiences, I’ve wanted to try board game …
Mar 24
Freedom in the Cloud: A Modern and Flexible Approach to Technology for your Association
Join me at Engaging Associations Forum 2017 from July 19-21 in Ottawa for a discussion on how your association can and should embrace cloud-based technologies
Mar 17
6 Ways to FAIL at Introducing a New Process
Throughout my years in Operations, I’ve learned some lessons on how to unsuccessfully introduce a new process or tool. Conversely, this means I’ve le…
Mar 15
Getting setup with Apache Solr
An introductory look at getting setup with Apache Solr. Also a look at comparing it with Elasticsearch and how it might fit into a Drupal website.
Mar 09
Top 5 technology trends for association / non-profit leaders
The digital tech landscape is constantly changing. Non-profits and associations face key decisions as they navigate the vast options that they in front of them to ensure they are maximizing their return on technology investments.
Feb 23
Sorting through your maze of content: Improving navigation with user-centric tools
Your website’s navigation is the map to your content. It tells visitors what information they can find on your website and more importantly how to na…
Feb 21Elasticsearch Snapshot and Restore
A backup strategy to use with your elasticsearch indexes
Feb 14
Process - Welcoming Change Through Story Mapping
Industrial has grown its team. It’s 2017, we have 17 staff members and we just turned 17 years old. Be right back, going to buy a lottery ticket! As …
Feb 07
Private files in Drupal 8
A strategy for mixing public and private file systems with a focus on private files being managed within CKeditor using IMCE
Jan 09
Collaborative Face Drawing
Lately I've been trying to run a fun "energizer" activity to play with the team before we get into the nitty gritty of retro. This gives everyone the…
Nov 03
Technical Debt
The term "Technical Debt" was coined by Ward Cunningham as a metaphor of financial debt whereby you're paying later for decisions your making no…
Sep 19
Dream Jobs Do Exist
Your first job can be extremely important in deciding whether or not you have made the right choice for your career. Many students graduate thinking …
Jul 04
Rebuilding relationships
My sister-in-law needed a laptop, and we offered to meet her at the Apple store. I knew that she had never bought a Mac before, and I assumed that sh…
Jun 28
Everyone’s a Critic
Throughout my career in the creative field I have learned that critiquing creative work is a skill, and can be challenging for clients and internal t…
Jun 21