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AI Chatbot Industry Evolving the World

November 18th, 2024 No comments

AI chatbots are creating a new way of transforming the customers’ experience. It is all about intelligent assistants, who are capable of transforming business operations, improving user experiences, and can bring innovation. 

The AI technology is taking the world by storm. These chatbots have all to offer from assisting individuals with their content requirements to availing the admiring solutions to customized issues. 

Let’s learn more about the benefits of AI chatbots with this blog. 

What are the Top Advantages of AI Chatbots?

Depending on the diversified industry and its project-oriented tasks, the AI chatbot has much to offer. 

Here is the series of benefits that AI Chatbots can avail. 

  • Quick Responses

In the fast-paced world, customers look for solutions that match their needs and can be found quickly. With AI Chatbot, users can find more fast responses that deal with their customized issues. 

Customers want fast and easy service, even during the peak hours. Thus, with instant support, the AI Chatbots eliminate the waiting time. 

Additionally, there are plenty of options available in front of them to get information from any source, thus avoiding AI chatbots at your service or any industry can be a task not to be ignored. 

  • Anytime, Anywhere Service

AI Chatbots solve the issues of the users anytime and anywhere. They interact with the customers according to their preferences. 

The users may interact with these AI Chatbots anywhere, whether over the webpages, via mobile, telephone, in-store kiosks, and diversified other tools. 

Based on six out of ten U.S. customer’s responses, 61% stated that the platform can be operated 24/7. With the help of the omnichannel approach, the AI Chatbot offers anytime service to the users.

  • Offers Personalized Responses

AI chatbots are designed in a way to provide customized services to users based on their issues and challenges. Here one of the only priorities is to provide the right prompt and users can get an effective answer that matches their vibe, Woohoo!

With the help of advanced algorithms, AI Chatbots can analyze the user’s data to provide personalized recommendations that will be valuable to the users’ needs. 

They are designed in a way to provide suggestions based on the customers’ browsing history and their changing purchasing behavior. 

  • Decreases Bounce Rates

The AI chatbots are far better to retain users. These chatbots with advanced technologies help to drive interaction by engaging the audiences and addressing the issues for which they have come over brand’s app or websites. 

This benefit completely favors the industries and companies offering diversified services in order to take the users on board. 

Such kind of engagement can assist the users over the website to stay longer and to improve customer care. Here AI chatbot assists in retaining the users by popping up when they are about to leave. 

  • Multilingual Conversation Support

With the assistance of an AI Chatbot, the users can have multiple language support. Bots are widely available in different languages that encourage the users to get responses and support to meet customer expectations. 

This feature of AI Chatbot is valuable for the customers along with the companies to provide the users with the type of assistance that they prefer to get and assist the brands to retain the users, effectively. 

With this feature, the users can explain the issue in their language more transparently and clearly. 

  • Reduces Operational Cost

AI Chatbots provide a much wider benefit in favor of industries and companies. Here they need not hire a customer service executive or can have it only for a more complicated procedure. 

Here being a brand or company, brands can optimize the processes that require human resources. Thus, it is a more effective step towards overcoming the operational expenses with a simple shift to AI Chatbots. 

Additionally, it will provide benefits to company’s staff and enhance the user experience by managing employee turnover. 

  • Improves Customer Satisfaction

AI Chabots provides fast and accurate services based on the users’ needs and demands. This benefit can be considered for installing or implementing this technology in the business. 

This technology is built to provide quick responses to customer queries, through offering personalized solutions that meet their needs. 

It is designed in a way to automate tasks such as lead scoring, follow-up reminders, and data entry. 

  • Lead Generation

It is a suitable benefit for industries, where they can get effective leads by responding to the customers on time with the personalized responses that they require. 

Here the users can identify potential customers, collect their detailed contact information along provide a boost to the products as well as services offered by the brand. 

Apart from these, AI Chatbots are developed for gathering valuable information for nurturing prospects via marketing. This will assist the brand to target the users and address their needs. 

  • Boost Sales

Through lead generation and connecting with prospective customers, the AI Chatbots are determined to boost sales and provide responsive services catering to users’ needs. 

Additionally, the chatbots are designed to boost responsive times by guiding the users to make a purchase and assisting them in addressing all their queries in the best possible manner. 

For developing complex purchases with the help of a multi-step sales funnel, the AI Chatbot is advanced enough to directly connect the users with the trained sales agent based on their diversified preferences. 

  • Eligible to Gather New Insights

With the assistance of AI Chatbots, the brands can collect valuable user insights about what kind of products or services, the users are interested in and how far they have come to take it from your company. 

Along with this, the AI Chatbots are developed in a way to deliver responsive recommendations based on these insights. 

Such Insights can further be useful in enhancing the customer experience and boosting brand connections with them. 

Conclusion

AI Chatbots have come a long way to provide customized user services, by offering the users personalized results that they seek. With this technology, the users can get a service anytime, anywhere. 

Additionally, this technology helps to gather valuable users’ data, analyze it, and then produce recommendations in their favor. It will provide effective leads, boost sales, and reduce bounce rates. Hence, implementing and using AI Chatbots can assist in driving a long way to success for the brands and customers.

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Top WordPress Migration Tools You Should Consider in 2025

November 15th, 2024 No comments

Are you looking to migrate your existing WordPress website?

Perhaps your current hosting solution is outdated. Or, you’re planning to scale and want to switch to a larger hosting provider. Regardless of the reason, migrating a WordPress website with all its data can be hard.

Without the right strategy or tools, WordPress website migrations can result in issues like slow performance, incomplete data transfer, or even bugs such as JavaScript errors that affect functionality. 

To prevent these issues and ensure a seamless migration, it’s important to use tools designed specifically for the task. Let’s take a look at them, along with their features and benefits.

Best WordPress Migration Tools in 2025

1. BlogVault

Source

BlogVault is a versatile migration tool that offers premium incremental backups, secure cloud storage, one-click restore, and much more. As of 2024, over 1,974 sites have used it. 

Features:

  • Incremental backups: The tool provides failproof incremental backups that create data copies every time there’s a change.  
  • Enterprise-grade data security: BlogVault ensures complete security for data backups, with encryption and authentication.
  • Reliable restores: This feature ensures seamless restores of up to 100 GB of data. 
  • Integrated staging environment: You can effortlessly create a staging site using BlogVault to test migrations and website changes. 
  • WordPress security: BlogVault gives you access to WordPress security features using the site’s plugin, so security is not compromised even when migrating.
  • Cross-platform support: Not just for WordPress, Blogvault can assist users migrating from other content management systems. For example, it offers Drupal to WordPress migration service, making the switch smoother while retaining all your site’s data and structure.

Pricing: BlogVault is available for free with limited features. However, it also offers a wide range of premium features starting at $199/year. 

2.  Duplicator Migration Plugin

Source

If you’re looking for a tool that offers secure backups, quick restores, and migration assistance, the Duplicator Migrator Plugin is a great option. 

Features: 

  • Solid backup options: This migration plugin tool allows an automatic backup schedule, ensuring timely storage of data. 
  • Large site support: It allows you to back up even larger WordPress Sites. 
  • Multi-site migrations: The tool extends support to multi-site migrations, so you can easily move all your WordPress sites at once.
  • Custom-search and replace: It replaces old URLs with new ones for your site post-migration. 
  • Server-to-server import: It supports transfers by utilizing the cloud servers, saving time.
  • SEO-friendly migrations: Using Duplicator alongside an SEO analyzer helps ensure your site’s SEO performance remains strong after the migration.

Pricing: The Duplicator Migration Plugin offers access to several features depending on its subscription plans, starting at $49/year

3. All-in-one WP Migration

Source

All-in-one WP Migration is the perfect tool for beginners and is entirely user-friendly. It’s known for its simplified migration process and efficient backup services. Plus, with reliability as its major advantage, this is one of the best migration tools you can choose. 

Features: 

  • One-Click Transfer: The feature eliminates the need to switch between multiple tools and offers single-click export. 
  • Fast and Personal Support: The team provides quick and fast support in case of any issues. 
  • Mobile Migrations: You can also carry out mobile website migrations easily. 
  • Secure and Reliable: The tool continuously updates the security features to ensure data safety.
  • Free of Code: This tool doesn’t require any coding for migration. You can migrate your website even with little to no technical knowledge. 

Pricing: The All-in-one WP Migration tool is available free of cost. However, it costs $69 if you need the unlimited extension to remove import size restrictions. 

4. WP Migrate DB

Source

WP Migrate DB primarily focuses on transferring WordPress databases between installations. If you want to test out migrations in multiple stages, this tool might be right for you.

Features: 

  • Push and pull databases: This tool makes performing varied tasks, such as pulling the live database from your older website, easier. 
  • Easy find & replace: It offers the option of finding and replacing URLs and datasets without corrupting any data. 
  • Bulletproof backup: WP Migrate DB specializes in providing solid backup services that are secure and easily accessible. 
  • Large site migrations: It primarily focuses on offering support to large site migrations. 

Pricing: This tool’s subscription starts at $49. It also offers a media and file migration add-on that costs $189 and exclusively requires a developer license. 

5. WPBackItUp

Source

If you’re on a budget, check out WPBackItUp. It’s a migration tool with over 30,000 users specializing in solid backup services, restoration, cloning, and site migration. This tool offers robust features at affordable prices. 

Features: 

  • Unlimited backups: This tool allows unlimited backups, eliminating any data loss concerns.
  • Safe and secure storage: It allows data to be stored safely in cloud providers such as Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. 
  • Backup compressions: This helps optimize storage by reducing the size of data backups, which in turn lowers storage costs. This way, you can significantly save space and make your storage strategy more efficient and cost-effective.

Pricing: This WordPress Migration tool offers access to premium features starting at $79/year.

6. Solid Backups 

Source

Solid Backups is one of the oldest and most reliable WordPress migration tools. It offers complete WordPress backups including external files, databases, and more. This tool boasts a solid customer base and has been around since 2010.

Features: 

  • Automated backup and restore: This migration tool offers automated backups and restore services. 
  • Malware scanning option: BackupBuddy grants access to a built-in malware scanner, to prevent any malicious activity during website migration. 
  • Deployment feature: This feature allows you to set up a WordPress staging site and connect it to your existing site with a few clicks. 

Pricing: SolidWP offers premium Solid Backup plans starting at $99/year.

7. UpDraftPlus

Source

UpDraftPlus is one of the premium migration tools, that allows quick and easier migration and cloning options. If you want a simpler option, this tool also offers an extension, UpDraftPlus Migrator, for website cloning. 

Features: 

  • Clone sites quickly: Using this tool, you can clone your sites within minutes without hassle. 
  • Remote storage: It provides cloud storage options, so you can store website backups remotely. 
  • Multisite backups: You can back up all your WordPress sites simultaneously, even if you have large data files.
  • Incremental backups: With UpDraftPlus, you can choose to back up only the data that has been changed to save server resources.

Pricing: The UpDraftPlus Migrator Premium starts at $49/year. 

Choose the Right WordPress Migration Tool for a Smooth Transition

Migrating your WordPress site doesn’t have to be a stressful, time-consuming process. With the right tools, you can seamlessly move your website, protect your data, and avoid downtime. An expert WordPress development company understands the importance of a hassle-free migration.

Whether you’re looking for a free, beginner-friendly option or a feature-packed solution for large-scale migrations, these seven tools offer everything you need to get the job done. So, pick the one that suits your needs, and make your WordPress migration as smooth as possible.

Featured image by Fikret tozak on Unsplash

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Drive Traffic and Sales: Why You Need to Hire PPC Experts

November 14th, 2024 No comments

PPC can be a brilliant strategy to boost your website traffic. However, it’s a complex endeavor, and you may lose money if you don’t have a precise plan. Many businesses choose to work with PPC experts to maximize their spending and conversions.

Once you choose to work with experts, they will manage your Pay-Per-Click campaign for you and suggest changes to maximize the effectiveness of your ad. Managing a successful PPC campaign requires a level of expertise and time that many ecommerce brands simply don’t have. That’s where hiring a PPC expert comes in.

Why Should You Use Pay-Per-Click Advertising?

You may be curious whether pay-per-click advertising is right for your business. Like any kind of digital marketing services, PPC comes with its advantages and disadvantages. Where consumer behavior shifts rapidly, the PPC advertising benefits extend beyond mere traffic generation; they include enhanced brand visibility, improved conversion rates, and a measurable return on investment. Ideally, PPC should only be a part of a much larger digital marketing campaign, allowing you to use it to its full potential. Here are the benefits of PPC advertising.

1. Improve Traffic and Sales

PPC improves traffic and sales significantly, boosting website visits and generating immediate engagement. This strategy directly translates to increased sales opportunities, helping businesses achieve their revenue goals quickly and efficiently.

2. Helps Analyze Customer Behavior

PPC campaigns provide valuable insights into customer behavior, enabling businesses to track interactions and preferences. This data helps refine marketing strategies, leading to more effective targeting and increased conversions.

3. Targeted Reach

With PPC advertising, you can precisely target specific demographics and geographic locations. This targeted reach ensures your ads connect with the right audience, maximizing the chances of engagement and conversion.

4. Enhanced Brand Awareness

Regularly appearing in search results and across various platforms boosts brand visibility. PPC advertising enhances brand awareness, making potential customers more familiar with your offerings and increasing overall market presence.

5. Performance Measurement

PPC allows for detailed performance measurement through analytics tools. By tracking key metrics, businesses can assess campaign effectiveness, make data-driven adjustments, and optimize their marketing efforts for better results.

Key Benefits of Working with a Professional PPC Expert

A PPC expert is crucial to maximizing the success of any digital marketing campaign. They ensure you have the maximum ROI on your investment, take care of your bid management, budget tracking, keyword insight, and analytics necessary to generate traffic and sales.

Their deep understanding of complex algorithms allows them to make the right decisions and make real-time adjustments. Partnering with a PPC expert results in a successful online presence.

PPC Marketing Strategy

Pay-per-click experts craft PPC marketing strategies by conducting thorough market research and analyzing competitor activities. They leverage real-time data to create campaigns that adapt to market trends, ensuring ads are timely and relevant to potential customers.

Immediate Results

PPC campaigns are designed to deliver immediate results by driving traffic to websites as soon as they are activated. This swift influx of visitors allows businesses to start generating leads and sales almost instantly, providing a rapid return on investment.

Targeted Reach

PPC allows for a highly targeted reach by enabling advertisers to define specific demographics, interests, and locations for their campaigns. This precision is crucial for maximizing the effectiveness of PPC for traffic and sales, ensuring that ads are shown to users who are most likely to convert.

Budget Control

PPC provides excellent budget control, allowing businesses to set daily or monthly spending limits. This flexibility means advertisers can allocate their budgets strategically and make adjustments based on performance, ensuring cost-effectiveness.

Measurable Outcomes

PPC offers measurable outcomes through robust tracking and analytics tools. Businesses can monitor key metrics such as click-through rates and conversion rates, allowing them to assess campaign effectiveness and refine strategies based on data-driven insights.

Brand Visibility

PPC significantly improves brand visibility by placing ads prominently in search results and across various platforms. This consistent exposure enhances brand awareness, making it easier for potential customers to recognize and trust the brand, ultimately driving future sales.

How to Choose the Right PPC Expert

You may easily find professional PPC services, but the real quest is which one you should consider. Before you connect with any service provider, be clear with your question, it will help you get answers and help you make a wise decision.

Other than this, there are several factors to consider when selecting a PPC agency.

1. Services

Find out whether the company can handle everything you need for a PPC marketing strategy. Their expertise and experience will help you decide whether they are the right choice for your paid campaign. Additionally, you can see what other services they offer to their clients. Digital marketing agencies offer comprehensive services, including SEO and SMO.

For example, an agency that offers both PPC and content marketing can create more cohesive campaigns that drive better results.

2. Location

Do you want to work with a local PPC agency, or does any location work for you? A local service provider or agency would be best if you would like a one-on-one session. Sometimes, it also holds you back. Email, video meetings, and phone calls are more transparent, and you will have records of your conversations. Also, video calls are great for connecting anytime.

For instance, partnering with a local agency can facilitate face-to-face brainstorming sessions, while a remote agency might offer more flexible scheduling options.

3. Transparency

Choosing one with a good market reputation will provide complete transparency. What will be the budget, how often will they post, and what will be the strategy? A complete breakdown gives precise answers from whoever you talk to from the agencies.

Additionally, agencies that use transparent reporting tools allow you to monitor campaign performance in real-time, ensuring you’re always informed about where your money is going.

4. Industry expertise

Expertise goes beyond knowing how to use different ad platforms, although that’s still pretty important. Unlike an inexperienced person, a professional has a strategy to make your brand’s digital presence. They understand the target audience, PPC strategy and specific phrasing to use.

For example, an agency with experience in the e-commerce sector will know how to optimize product listings and leverage seasonal trends effectively.

5. Cost

Be precise with the payment method of the agency, PPC agency rates might come as a flat fee or as a percentage of your ad spend. It’s not always the case that you get ROI on your PPC campaign. Think before you hire PPC professionals.

For instance, some agencies offer performance-based pricing, where you pay based on the results they deliver, which can align their incentives with your business goals.

Choosing the right PPC expert involves carefully evaluating these factors to ensure a good fit for your business needs and goals. By considering services, location, transparency, industry expertise, and cost, you can make an informed decision that will drive successful PPC campaigns.

Conclusion

Leveraging PPC advertising benefits, you can drive traffic and sales to your business. Hiring a PPC expert ensures your campaigns are strategically created and optimally customized for your business goals.

Choosing a professional will save time and resources that can be better spent on core business activities. Consider complementing your marketing efforts by choosing a comprehensive service provider offering SEO and SMO expertise.

Find the best agency and hire digital marketing experts to create a strategic approach that drives growth. Take the next step toward success and contact a pay-per-click expert today to unlock your business’s full potential!

Featured image by Austin Distel on Unsplash

The post Drive Traffic and Sales: Why You Need to Hire PPC Experts appeared first on noupe.

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Open-Source Meets Design Tooling With Penpot

November 14th, 2024 No comments

This article is a sponsored by Penpot

Penpot is a free, open-source design tool that allows true collaboration between designers and developers. Designers can create interactive prototypes and design systems at scale, while developers enjoy ready-to-use code and make their workflow easy and fast because it’s built with web technologies, works in the browser, and has already passed 33K starts on GitHub.

The UI feels intuitive and makes it easy to get things done, even for someone who’s not a designer (guilty as charged!). You can get things done in the same way and with the same quality as with other more popular and closed-source tools like Figma.

Why Open-Source Is Important

As someone who works with commercial open-source on my day-to-day, I strongly believe in it as a way to be closer to your users and unlock the next level of delivery. Being open-source creates a whole new level of accountability and flexibility for a tool.

Developers are a different breed of user. When we hit a quirk or a gap in the UX, our first instinct is to play detective and figure out why that pattern stuck out as a sore thumb to what we’ve been doing. When the code is open-source, it’s not unusual for us to jump into the source and create an issue with a proposal on how to solve it already. At least, that’s the dream.

On top of that, being open-source allows you and your team to self-host, giving you that extra layer of privacy and control, or at least a more cost-effective solution if you have the time and skills to DYI it all.

When the cards are played right, and the team is able to afford the long-term benefits, commercial open-source is a win-win strategy.

Introducing: Penpot Plugin System

Talking about the extensibility of open-source, Penpot has the PenpotHub the home for open-source templates and the newly released plugin gallery. So now, if there’s a functionality missing, you don’t need to jump into the code-base straightaway — you can create a plugin to achieve what you need. And you can even serve it from localhost!

Creating Penpot Plugins

When it comes to the plugins, creating one is extremely ergonomic. First, there are already set templates for a few frameworks, and I created one for SolidJS in this PR — the power of open-source!

When using Vite, plugins are Single-Page Applications; if you have ever built a Hello World app with Vite, you have what it takes to create a plugin. On top of that, the Penpot team has a few packages that can give you a headstart in the process:

npm install @penpot/plugin-styles

That will allow you to import with a CSS loader or a CSS import from @penpot/plugin-styles/styles.css. The JavaScript API is available through the window object, but if your plugin is in TypeScript, you need to teach it:

npm add -D @penpot/plugin-types

With those types in your node_modules, you can pop-up the tsconfig.json and add the types to the compilerOptions.

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "types": ["@penpot/plugin-types"]
  }
}

And there you are, now, the Language Service Provider in your editor and the TypeScript Compiler will accept that penpot is a valid namespace, and you’ll have auto-completion for the Penpot APIs throughout your entire project. For example, defining your plugin will look like the following:

penpot.ui.open("Your Plugin Name", "", {
  width: 500,
  height: 600
})

The last step is to define a plugin manifest in a manifest.json file and make sure it’s in the outpot directory from Vite. The manifest will indicate where each asset is and what permissions your plugin requires to work:

{
  "name": "Your Plugin Name",
  "description": "A Super plugin that will win Penpot Plugin Contest",
  "code": "/plugin.js",
  "icon": "/icon.png",
  "permissions": [
    "content:read",
    "content:write",
    "library:read",
    "library:write",
    "user:read",
    "comment:read",
    "comment:write",
    "allow:downloads"
  ]
}

Once the initial setup is done, the communication between the Penpot API and the plugin interface is done with a bidirectional messaging system, not so different than what you’d do with a Web-Worker.

So, to send a message from your plugin to the Penpot API, you can do the following:

penpot.ui.sendMessage("Hello from my Plugin");

And to receive it back, you need to add an event listener to the window object (the top-level scope) of your plugin:

window.addEventListener("message", event => {
  console.log("Received from Pendpot::: ", event.data);
})

A quick performance tip: If you’re creating a more complex plugin with different views and perhaps even routes, you need to have a cleanup logic. Most frameworks provide decent ergonomics to do that; for example, React does it via their return statements.

useEffect(() => {
  function handleMessage(e) {
    console.log("Received from Pendpot::: ", event.data);
  }
  window.addEventListener('message', handleMessage);

  return () => window.removeEventListener('message', handleMessage);
}, []);

And Solid has onMount and onCleanup helpers for it:

onMount(() => {
  function handleMessage(e) {
    console.log("Received from Penpot::: ", event.data);
  }
  window.addEventListener('message', handleMessage);
})

onCleanup(() => {
  window.removeEventListener('message', handleMessage);
})

Or with the @solid-primitive/event-listener helper library, so it will be automatically disposed:

import { makeEventListener } from "@solid-primitives/event-listener";

function Component() {

  const clear = makeEventListener(window, "message", handleMessage);

  // ...
  return (<span>Hello!</span>)
}

In the official documentation, there’s a step-by-step guide that will walk you through the process of creating, testing, and publishing your plugin. It will even help you out.

So, what are you waiting for?

Plugin Contest: Imagine, Build, Win

Well, maybe you’re waiting for a push of motivation. The Penpot team thought of that, which is why they’re starting a Plugin Contest!

For this contest, they want a fully functional plugin; it must be open-source and include comprehensive documentation. Detailing its features, installation, and usage. The first prize is US$ 1000, and the criteria are innovation, functionality, usability, performance, and code quality. The contest will run from November 15th to December 15th.

Final Thoughts

If you decide to build a plugin, I’d love to know what you’re building and what stack you chose. Please let me know in the comments below or on BlueSky!

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Anchoreum: A New Game for Learning Anchor Positioning

November 12th, 2024 No comments

You’ve played Flexbox Froggy before, right? Or maybe Grid Garden? They’re both absolute musts for learning the basics of modern CSS layout using Flexbox and CSS Grid. I use both games in all of the classes I teach and I never get anything but high-fives from my students because they love them so much.

As widely known as those games are, you may be less familiar with the name of the developer who made them. That would be Thomas Park, and he has a couple of CSS-Tricks articles notched in his belt. He also has a horde of other games in his CodePip collection of free and premium games for learning front-end techniques.

Thomas wrote in to share his latest game with us: Anchoreum.

I’ll bet the two nickels in my pocket that you know this game’s all about CSS Anchor Positioning. I love that Thomas has jumped on this so quickly because the feature is still fresh, and indeed is currently only supported in a couple of browsers at the moment.

This is the perfect time to learn about anchor positioning. It’s still relatively early days, but things are baked enough to be supported in Chrome and Edge so you can access the games. If you haven’t seen Juan’s big ol’ guide on anchor positioning, that’s another dandy way to get up to speed.

The objective is less on-the-nose than Flexbox Froggy and Grid Garden, which both lean heavily into positioning elements to complete game tasks. For example, Flexbox Froggy is about positioning frogs safely on lilypads. Grid Garden wants you to water specific garden areas to feed your carrots. Anchoreum? You’re in a museum and need to anchor labels to museum artifacts. I know, attaching target elements to the same anchor over and again could get boring. But thankfully the game goes beyond simple positioning by getting into multiple anchors, spanning, and position fallbacks.

Whatever the objective, the repetition is good for developing muscle memory and the overall outcome is still the same: learn CSS Anchor Positioning. I’m already planning how and where I’m going to use Anchoreum in my curriculum. It’s not often we get a fun interactive learning resource like this for such a new web feature and I think it’s worth jumping on it sooner rather than later.

Thomas prepped a video trailer for the game so I thought I’d drop that for reference.


Anchoreum: A New Game for Learning Anchor Positioning originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

Categories: Designing, Others Tags:

Tim Brown: Flexible Typesetting is now yours, for free

November 11th, 2024 No comments

Another title from A Book Apart has been re-released for free. The latest? Tim Brown’s Flexible Typesetting. I may not be the utmost expert on typography and its best practices but I do remember reading this book (it’s still on the shelf next to me!) thinking maybe, just maybe, I might be able to hold a conversation about it with Robin when I finished it.

I still think I’m in “maybe” territory but that’s not Tim’s fault — I found the book super helpful and approachable for noobs like me who want to up our game. For the sake of it, I’ll drop the chapter titles here to give you an idea of what you’ll get.

  • What is typsetting?
  • Preparing text and code (planning is definitely part of the typesetting process)
  • Selecting typefaces (this one helped me a lot!)
  • Shaping text blocks (modern CSS can help here)
  • Crafting compositions (great if you’re designing for long-form content)
  • Relieving pressure

Tim Brown: Flexible Typesetting is now yours, for free originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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How to Survive a Client Meeting When They Say ‘Make It Pop’!!!!

November 11th, 2024 No comments

Fear not, for this guide will arm you with the tools and humor needed to navigate these meetings with style (and sanity) intact.

1. Master Your Facial Expressions

First things first: when the client says, “Can you make it pop?”, your face is a canvas that needs to remain as neutral as Helvetica.

Resist the urge to roll your eyes so hard they’re at risk of orbiting the sun. Instead, master the subtle nod paired with a thoughtful “Hmm,” as if you’re a wise sage deciphering the mysteries of the universe.

Pro tip: Practice in front of the mirror so your face says, “I’m intrigued,” instead of “I’m Googling how to change careers.”

2. Decode the Pop Factor

What does “pop” mean? Good question! No one knows. In fact, ‘pop’ is a cryptid, somewhere between Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster in terms of actual sightings.

But that won’t stop clients from using it like it’s on page one of the design manual.

Here are a few common translations of ‘pop’:

  • Make it brighter: Double-check that your design isn’t already capable of blinding astronauts. If not, unleash a palette of neon.
  • Add more contrast: Prepare to juggle gradients and shadows like a circus act.
  • Something ‘fun’: Add confetti! No one can complain about confetti.

3. The Color Gauntlet

When a client asks for “more pop,” 99% of the time they want color. Lots of it. The kind of color that makes you question your entire aesthetic sensibility. You might have envisioned a clean, minimalist layout—something that whispers sophistication.

But now you need to bring in more saturated hues than a ’80s fashion show.

Your strategy: Open your design software, set your color wheel to “Unleash Chaos,” and make peace with the fact that subtlety is no longer in the building.

4. Add Unnecessary Sparkle

If things start to go south and the client still looks unconvinced, here’s a designer secret: add a glow, shimmer, or ‘futuristic’ shine.

The magic of unnecessary sparkles is that clients often don’t know what they want until they see something that distracts them long enough to forget their original request.

Disclaimer: Excessive sparkles may lead to existential questioning of your career choices.

5. The “Just One More Thing” Loop

Once you’ve ‘popped’ the design to within an inch of its life, the client will inevitably say, “It’s great, but can you add just one more thing?” This is a pivotal moment where you must embrace your inner zen master.

Mental exercise: Picture yourself as a superhero whose only power is to smile and say, “Of course!” while internally questioning how many ‘one more things’ it takes to reach creative enlightenment.

6. The Great Font Debate

If your design involves text, prepare for the client to request that the headline “pop” more. Suddenly, every typeface you suggest will be compared to a distant cousin’s wedding invite or an obscure 1992 music festival poster. And just when you think you’ve found the perfect font, they’ll say, “Can we try Comic Sans?”

Response: Take a deep breath, channel your best customer service voice, and gently guide them away from the abyss.

7. When All Else Fails, Add an Exclamation Point!

Nothing says “pop” quite like adding an exclamation point to everything. Your client might not know why it works, but they’ll be convinced it does.

It’s the design equivalent of yelling, “Ta-da!” after revealing a trick.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, remember that “popping” is an art form, a mystical dance between client expectations and your creative limits.

Sometimes, it means finding that perfect middle ground between tasteful and tacky. Other times, it means letting go and accepting that your carefully crafted layout now resembles a carnival flyer.

Smile, nod, and don’t forget—you’re not just a designer. You’re a magician, conjuring bursts of color, sparkle, and fonts into creations that ‘pop’ just enough to keep everyone happy—or at least not asking for Comic Sans again.

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The Different (and Modern) Ways to Toggle Content

November 8th, 2024 No comments

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Abraham Maslow

It’s easy to default to what you know. When it comes to toggling content, that might be reaching for display: none or opacity: 0 with some JavaScript sprinkled in. But the web is more “modern” today, so perhaps now is the right time to get a birds-eye view of the different ways to toggle content — which native APIs are actually supported now, their pros and cons, and some things about them that you might not know (such as any pseudo-elements and other non-obvious stuff).

So, let’s spend some time looking at disclosures (

and

), the Dialog API, the Popover API, and more. We’ll look at the right time to use each one depending on your needs. Modal or non-modal? JavaScript or pure HTML/CSS? Not sure? Don’t worry, we’ll go into all that.

Disclosures (

and

)

Use case: Accessibly summarizing content while making the content details togglable independently, or as an accordion.

CodePen Embed Fallback

Going in release order, disclosures — known by their elements as

and

— marked the first time we were able to toggle content without JavaScript or weird checkbox hacks. But lack of web browser support obviously holds new features back at first, and this one in particular came without keyboard accessibility. So I’d understand if you haven’t used it since it came to Chrome 12 way back in 2011. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

Here’s the low-down:

  • It’s functional without JavaScript (without any compromises).
  • It’s fully stylable without appearance: none or the like.
  • You can hide the marker without non-standard pseudo-selectors.
  • You can connect multiple disclosures to create an accordion.
  • Aaaand… it’s fully animatable, as of 2024.

Marking up disclosures

What you’re looking for is this:

<details>
  <summary>Content summary (always visible)</summary>
  Content (visibility is toggled when summary is clicked on)
</details>

Behind the scenes, the content’s wrapped in a pseudo-element that as of 2024 we can select using ::details-content. To add to this, there’s a ::marker pseudo-element that indicates whether the disclosure’s open or closed, which we can customize.

With that in mind, disclosures actually look like this under the hood:

<details>
  <summary><::marker></::marker>Content summary (always visible)</summary>
  <::details-content>
      Content (visibility is toggled when summary is clicked on)
  </::details-content>
</details>

To have the disclosure open by default, give

the open attribute, which is what happens behind the scenes when disclosures are opened anyway.

<details open> ... </details>

Styling disclosures

Let’s be real: you probably just want to lose that annoying marker. Well, you can do that by setting the display property of

to anything but list-item:

summary {
  display: block; /* Or anything else that isn't list-item */
}
CodePen Embed Fallback

Alternatively, you can modify the marker. In fact, the example below utilizes Font Awesome to replace it with another icon, but keep in mind that ::marker doesn’t support many properties. The most flexible workaround is to wrap the content of

in an element and select it in CSS.

<details>
  <summary><span>Content summary</span></summary>
  Content
</details>
details {
  
  /* The marker */
  summary::marker {
    content: "f150";
    font-family: "Font Awesome 6 Free";
  }

  /* The marker when <details> is open */
  &[open] summary::marker {
    content: "f151";
  }
  
  /* Because ::marker doesn’t support many properties */
  summary span {
    margin-left: 1ch;
    display: inline-block;
  }
  
}
CodePen Embed Fallback

Creating an accordion with multiple disclosures

CodePen Embed Fallback

To create an accordion, name multiple disclosures (they don’t even have to be siblings) with a name attribute and a matching value (similar to how you’d implement ):

<details name="starWars" open>
  <summary>Prequels</summary>
  <ul>
    <li>Episode I: The Phantom Menace</li>
    <li>Episode II: Attack of the Clones</li>
    <li>Episode III: Revenge of the Sith</li>
  </ul>
</details>

<details name="starWars">
  <summary>Originals</summary>
  <ul>
    <li>Episode IV: A New Hope</li>
    <li>Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back</li>
    <li>Episode VI: Return of the Jedi</li>
  </ul>
</details>

<details name="starWars">
  <summary>Sequels</summary>
  <ul>
    <li>Episode VII: The Force Awakens</li>
    <li>Episode VIII: The Last Jedi</li>
    <li>Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker</li>
  </ul>
</details>

Using a wrapper, we can even turn these into horizontal tabs:

CodePen Embed Fallback
<div> <!-- Flex wrapper -->
  <details name="starWars" open> ... </details>
  <details name="starWars"> ... </details>
  <details name="starWars"> ... </details>
</div>
div {
  gap: 1ch;
  display: flex;
  position: relative;

  details {
    min-height: 106px; /* Prevents content shift */
      
    &[open] summary,
    &[open]::details-content {
      background: #eee;
    }

    &[open]::details-content {
      left: 0;
      position: absolute;
    } 
  }
}

…or, using 2024’s Anchor Positioning API, vertical tabs (same HTML):

div {
  
  display: inline-grid;
  anchor-name: --wrapper;

  details[open] {
      
    summary,
    &::details-content {
      background: #eee;
    }

    &::details-content {
      position: absolute;
      position-anchor: --wrapper;
      top: anchor(top);
      left: anchor(right);
    } 
  }
}
CodePen Embed Fallback

If you’re looking for some wild ideas on what we can do with the Popover API in CSS, check out John Rhea’s article in which he makes an interactive game solely out of disclosures!

Adding JavaScript functionality

Want to add some JavaScript functionality?

// Optional: select and loop multiple disclosures
document.querySelectorAll("details").forEach(details => {
  details.addEventListener("toggle", () => {
    // The disclosure was toggled
    if (details.open) {
      // The disclosure was opened
    } else {
      // The disclosure was closed
    }
  });    
});

Creating accessible disclosures

Disclosures are accessible as long as you follow a few rules. For example,

is basically a , meaning that its content is announced by screen readers when in focus. If there isn’t a

or

isn’t a direct child of

then the user agent will create a label for you that normally says “Details” both visually and in assistive tech. Older web browsers might insist that it be the first child, so it’s best to make it so.

To add to this,

has the role of button, so whatever’s invalid inside a
Categories: Designing, Others Tags:

Protecting Your Unique Presentation Designs: IP Strategies for Creators

November 8th, 2024 No comments

The requirement of safeguarding original presentation designs has never been more crucial as presentations get increasingly interactive, visually appealing, and indispensable in both corporate and creative domains. Your work is valuable, whether you are a tech entrepreneur creating software that changes the way presentations are done or a designer creating fresh slide decks for customers. 

It also needs protection, much as any great asset.

Intellectual Property (IP) laws offer the legal structure to protect your ideas. From safeguarding the visual components of your presentation to ensuring the functionality of your program, IP techniques guarantee that your works remain yours—and stop others from replicating or profitably using them without your permission.

In this post, we will explore several IP techniques creators could apply to guard their original presentation ideas. We will go over how trade secrets, copyrights, trademarks, and patents might help you protect your work. We will also discuss how engaging with a patenting legal firm might enable you to negotiate the complexity of IP legislation to provide the best protection for your presentation designs.

Knowing Copyright Protection for Presentation Designs

Regarding presentations, copyright law is among the most often used kinds of protection available. Copyrights are perfect for protecting the design elements in a presentation since they guard original works of authorship, including written and graphic materials.

What Copyright Protection Offers for Current Design Projects?

Copyright instantly protects your unique work, whether you make a presentation—a creative portfolio, a visually appealing instructional tool, or a set of slides for a commercial pitch. This implies that without your permission, the images, text, layout, and even some design decisions in your presentation cannot be lawfully duplicated or used by others.

For instance, copyright law guards the bespoke illustrations you have created for your slides. Should someone else attempt to use them for their own presentation without your permission, you are entitled to legal action to stop them.

Protection of copyright does not, however, cover the concept underlying your presentation. For example, even if copyright guards the particular design and substance of your slides, it does not stop others from presenting with a related idea or theme.

How might you strengthen your protection of copyright?

Although protection of copyright is automatic the minute you produce your work, it is advisable to register your presentation with the relevant copyright office. The U.S. Copyright Office would handle this in the United States. Not only does registering your work improve your legal position in case of infringement, but it also enables you to ask court for statutory damages should your rights be violated.

Creating a plan for registering your presentations and other visual works can help designers and artists who often generate high-value content add even more security, therefore safeguarding their intellectual property over time.

Patents: Guarding Novel Presentation Devices

Although copyright guards the linguistic and graphic components of your presentation, patents guard any new technology or technique you create or improve upon to use in presentations. 

Maintaining your competitive advantage may depend critically on obtaining a patent if your innovation is a tool or program offering a fresh approach to design, delivery, or interaction with presentations.

In the realm of presentational design, what is patentable?

Patents are meant to safeguard innovations; hence, the particular tools or techniques you create for presenting will be qualified for patent protection. These developments might be patentable, for example, if you have built a new software feature allowing users to edit images in a totally different manner during presentations or if you have established a novel interactive means of moving between slides.

For developers building presentable platforms or apps with distinctive capabilities, software patents might be especially valuable. With a patent, you have exclusive rights to commercialize your exclusive technology and guarantee that no one else may use or replicate it without permission.

Patenting Law Firms: Their Function

Especially for authors who might not be aware of the nuances of IP law, navigating the world of patents can be challenging. Working with a good patent law firm guarantees that your application is filed appropriately and that your idea satisfies legal criteria for patentability.

A patent attorney can help you negotiate the patent search process to guarantee that your invention is original. They will also assist in developing a strong patent application with a precise definition of the uniqueness and worth of your innovation. Avoiding typical mistakes that can result in patent rejections or upcoming conflicts depends on this legal knowledge.

Building and safeguarding your presentational brand: Trademarks

Although copyrights and patents defend the content and functionality of your presentation designs, trademarks are absolutely vital for preserving the brand identification of your presentations or the tools you use to produce them. 

Using trademark law will help you safeguard the name, logo, and any other unique marks of your company whether you are creating a presentation software platform or marketing presentation design services.

What unique qualities might help your presentation? Business trademarks guard the symbols, names, and other markers that set your business apart from competitors on the market. 

Registration of a trademark guarantees that no other company may use the same or a confusingly similar mark whether you have created a distinctive name for your presentation software or use a specific logo to market your design services.

You can register these as trademarks, for instance, if you established a design company concentrating on custom presentations for business clients and your company’s name or logo has become known in the field. This offers you special rights to use them in relation to your offerings and helps to stop rivals from confusing brands by applying a similar name or design.

Maximizing Trademarks for IP Protection and Marketing

Trademarks are a great marketing tool in addition to shielding your brand from copy-offering. Particularly in creative sectors like design, a well-known trademark helps consumers link your products with quality and creativity, therefore guiding their associations. Your brand’s reputation will grow more robust the more obvious and distinctive your trademark is, therefore fostering client loyalty and enabling you to stand out in a crowded market.

Registering your brand with the relevant government agency, including the U.S. Patent and brand Office (USPTO), helps to guard it. Stronger legal rights and simpler enforcement of those rights are obtained from a registered trademark should someone else attempt to use the name or logo of your brand without authorization.

Furthermore trademarks are oftentimes quite valuable assets in licensing agreements. Having a registered trademark lets you license your brand to other businesses while keeping control over how your name is utilized should your presentation tools or design tools go popular. 

This can open fresh income sources and increase the visibility of your business.

Trade Secrets: Maintaining Confidentiality about Own Procedures

Certain facets of presentation design—especially proprietary techniques or methods—may be best kept trade secrets. Trade secrets remain private, unlike patents, which demand public disclosure, therefore safeguarding the material for as long as it is not shared.

When should one use trade secrets in reference to presentation designs?

Keeping this knowledge as a trade secret would be the wisest course of action if your design company has established a particular methodology or procedure that provides you a competitive edge, such a proprietary way for building interactive presentations or a workflow that substantially lowers design time. Trade secrets guard the private data of your company without having to register formally for intellectual property rights.

For instance, suppose your company has created a special technique for expediting the design process, enabling you to show excellent presentations ahead of rivals. Protecting this technique as a trade secret will help you instead of patenting it, which would have you reveal how it operates. This helps you to keep your competitive edge as long as the procedure is kept private inside your business.

Effective Protection of Trade Secrets

Maintaining trade secrets calls for tight control of your own procedures. This covers putting confidentiality agreements into effect with partners, contractors, and staff members who handle private data. Verify that any important procedures, tools, or client information is kept safe and only distributed to those who absolutely must know.

Having legal agreements in place helps you to defend your rights in the case of a trade secret breach—that is, when a former employee shares your patented method with a competitor.

Combining IP Approaches for All-around Protection

Although every type of intellectual property (IP) protection—copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets—serves a different use—combining them will provide your presentation designs and the tools you produce complete protection. For a new technology or process you have created to enhance presentations, you might secure a patent; for the individual slides or design components of a presentation, you might employ copyrights. Trade secrets can be utilized to secure intellectual property that offers a competitive edge; a trademark will help your design company or software to maintain its brand identity.

Layering these kinds of security guarantees that your company’s creative assets as well as its financial ones are safe from several directions. This approach not only safeguards your creative output but also increases the value of your brand, therefore laying a solid basis for expansion and creativity in a cutthroat market.

The Function of a Patenting Law Firm in Preserving Novel Presentation Ideas

Knowing the nuances of intellectual property law can be daunting for a creator or entrepreneur, particularly if your main priorities are operating a company or creating artistic output. Working with a patenting law company can help to make all the difference here. Expert patent lawyers may assist you to determine which facets of your work qualify for protection and walk you through the difficult procedure of obtaining that protection.

Apart from handling the legal aspects, a patenting law company will also offer strategic guidance on how to optimize the value of your intellectual property. Legal professionals make sure your IP portfolio is strong and enforceable whether your goal is to trademark a new software product or defend the brand identification of your company.

Working with IP experts lets you concentrate on your strongest suit—innovation and creation—knowing that your intellectual property is under protection.

Wrapping it up

Within the field of presentation design, your most significant assets are your own ideas and works. Maintaining your competitive edge and making sure your work is not plagiarized or utilized by others depend on securing those assets by intellectual property (IP) rules. 

You can develop a multi-layered defense for your company by using copyrights to guard design aspects, patents to guard technological discoveries, trademarks to strengthen your brand, and trade secrets to shield private processes.

Working with a patenting law firm guarantees that you negotiate the legal complexity with simplicity, thereby providing peace of mind and freeing you to concentrate on developing your design company. Protecting your intellectual property is not only a legal need but also a major long-term success and growth strategy in an industry where innovation and creativity rule.

Understanding and implementing these IP methods will help you to boldly defend your original presentation ideas, enhance your brand, and provide new chances for expansion in the very competitive design scene.

Featured image by Tierra Mallorca on Unsplash

The post Protecting Your Unique Presentation Designs: IP Strategies for Creators appeared first on noupe.

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Alternatives To Typical Technical Illustrations And Data Visualisations

November 8th, 2024 No comments

Good technical illustrations and data visualisations allow users and clients to, in a manner of speaking, take time out, ponder and look at the information in a really accessible and engaging way. It can obviously also help you communicate certain categories of information and data.

The aim of the article is to inspire and show you how, by using different technical illustrations and data visualisations, you can really engage and communicate with your users and do much more good for the surrounding content.

Below are interesting and not commonly seen examples of technical illustration and data visualisation, that show data and information. As you know, more commonly seen examples are bar graphs and pie charts, but there is so much more than that!

So, keep reading and looking at the following examples, and I will show you some really cool stuff.

Technology

Typically, technical illustration and data visualisations were done using paper, pens, pencils, compasses, and rulers. But now everything is possible — you can do analog and digital. Since the mainstream introduction of the internet, around 1997, data (text, numerical, symbol) has flourished, and it has become the current day gold currency. It is easy for anyone to learn who has the software or knows the coding language. And it is much easier to do technical illustrations and data visualisation than in previous years. But that does not always mean that what is done today is better than what was done before.

What Makes Data And Information Good

  • It must be aesthetically pleasing, interesting, and stimulating to look at.
  • It must be of value and worth the effort to read and digest the information.
  • It must be easy to understand and logical.
  • To convey ideas effectively, both aesthetic form and functionality need to go hand in hand, as Vitaly Friedman in his article “Data Visualization and Infographics” has pointed out.
  • It must be legible and have well-named and easy-to-understand axes and labels.
  • It should help explain and show data and information in a more interesting way than if it were presented in tabular form.
  • It should help explain or unpack what is written in any surrounding text and make it come to life in an unusual and useful way.
  • It must be easy to compare and contrast the data against the other data.

The Importance Of Knowing About Different Audiences

There are some common categories of audiences:

  • Expert,
  • Intermediate,
  • Beginner,
  • Member of the public,
  • Child,
  • Teenager,
  • Middle-aged,
  • Ageing,
  • Has some prior knowledge,
  • Does not have any prior knowledge,
  • Person with some kind of disability (vision, physical, hearing, mobility).

Sara Dholakia in her article “A Guide To Getting Data Visualization Right” points out the following considerations:

  • The audience’s familiarity with the subject matter of your data;
  • How much context they already have versus what you should provide;
  • Their familiarity with various methods of data visualisation.

Just look at what we are more often than not presented with.

So, let us dive into some cool examples that you can understand and start using today that will also give your work and content a really cool edge and help it stand out and communicate better.

3D Flow Diagram

It provides a great way to show relationships and connections between items and different components, and the 3D style adds a lot to the diagram.

Card Diagram

It’s an effective way to highlight and select information or data in relation to its surrounding data and information.

Pyramid Graph

Being great at showing two categories of information and comparing them horizontally, they are an alternative to typical horizontal or vertical bar graphs.

3D Examples Of Common Graphs

They are an excellent way to enliven overused 2D pie and bar graphs. 3D examples of common graphs give a real sense of quality and depth whilst enhancing the data and information much more than 2D versions.

Sankey Flow Diagram

This diagram is a good way to show the progression and the journey of information and data and how they are connected in relation to their data value. It’s not often seen, but it’s really cool.

Stream Graph

A stream graph is a great way to show the data and how it relates to the other data — much more interesting than just using lines as is typically seen.

3D Map

It provides an excellent way to show a map in a different and more interesting form than the typically seen 2D version. It really gives the map a sense of environment, depth, and atmosphere.

Tree Map

It’s a great way to show the data spatially and how the data value relates, in terms of size, to the rest of the data.

Waterfall Chart

A waterfall chart is helpful in showing the data and how it relates in a vertical manner to the range of data values.

Doughnut Chart

It shows the data against the other data segments and also as a value within a range of data.

Lollipop Chart

A lollipop chart is an excellent method to demonstrate percentage values in a horizontal manner that also integrates the label and data value well.

Bubble Chart

It’s an effective way to illustrate data values in terms of size and sub-classification in relation to the surrounding data.

How To Start Doing Technical Illustration And Data Visualisation

There are many options available, including specialized software like Flourish, Tableau, and Klipfolio; familiar tools like Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint (with redrawing in software like Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, or CorelDRAW); or learning coding languages such as D3, Three.js, P5.js, WebGL, or the Web Audio API, as Frederick O’Brien discusses in his article “Web Design Done Well: Delightful Data Visualization Examples.”

But there is one essential ingredient that you will always need, and that is a mind and vision for technical illustration and data visualisation.

Worthwhile Practitioners And Links To Look At

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