Mark Jaquith is one of the lead developers on WordPress.

I know developers of both sexes don’t have a reputation for being the most socially adept creatures. But would it hurt male developers like the aforementioned Mr. Jaquith to try to not piss female developers off by making sweeping and dismissive generalizations about us?

I feel Mr. Jaquith’s remarks are a symptom of a greater issue within the developer community, which until recently has been something of a boys-only affair. And I worry that this sort of open hostility to women, while not the norm, is certainly enough even in small doses to keep female would-be developers at bay.

Do you want to know why women stayed out of comics for so long? This attitude. I can attest to it. I lived through it in the comics biz, and I’m living through it again here in the web development world. It is the exact same shit only with different flies.

Women have a lot to offer both industries, and both industries constantly mewl and whine, “Where are all the women?” You want female comickers and developers. We make great presenters, fun coworkers, and we bring new perspectives. A gender-balanced community is a sane community. (And I’ll say what others are thinking: Isn’t it great to fall in love with someone who is passionate about the same things you are?)

It can be discouraging to women with weaker stomachs than mine. There’s a lot to… tolerate in this industry. I don’t like standing at the water cooler, pretending not to hear the “good old boys” next to me yucking it up at some poor woman’s expense. I am tired of shrugging and trying to move away when the Python developer next to me in the line for pizza starts railing about “why women have to get so angry when I try to hold the door for them.” I hate it when I’m at a conference or meetup, trying to talk to someone, and a man starts talking over me, completely hijacking the conversation.

But what can I do? I’m a minority here. Sometimes, I’m the only female who shows up at these events, the only one who comments on these blog posts. Do I just grin and bear it and wait for it to all get better? Somehow I don’t think that’s the best longterm strategy.

I want to make this a better place for women to work, a more welcoming environment. I desperately want more women coding next to me. So from now on, when I see this stuff going down, I am going to call you out on it. And I might not be pretty or friendly or sweet or nice while I’m doing it. I might not get popularity votes for telling it like it is. But someone has got to do it.

Update

The many comments from developers below have convinced me that we can, as a community of developers, go one step further. Guys, it helps when you call each other out. If women are the only ones who take offense, we get written off as “sensitive” at best–harpies or “feminazis” at worst. That will really help make make this community a more welcoming and fun place to be for everyone.

However, the rest of the Internet is not so enlightened. Other communities online are often not as legitimate as the ones we developers and designers use. Music and teen sites, for instance, have lots of “OMG I LUV YOU!” comments that do not add to the body of human knowledge nor express an opinion worth weighing.

The original often weighs more than its comments, and most comments cannot be interpreted without reference to that which they commented upon or the other comments surrounding it. If someone made a comment that was perfectly understandable without the context of the original article and encompassing discussion, they’d have essentially written a new article worthy of publication, filled with blockquotes, references, and citations. But this comment type makes up perhaps .05% of online discussion threads. It is the place of an editor to decide what is an is not an article, not the machine interpreting markup. The machine can only interpret hierarchy, not worth.

“Words are cheap,” as old folks say, “‘cuz everybody’s got ‘em.” You ever stumble onto a user group thread in a Google search? A single, stand alone comment, no context for what is being commented on, and only a small, hard to follow chain of links to other messages in the thread to go on. Maybe if you grew up using user groups you can navigate this train of thought. But for the majority of Internet users (myself, mother, sister and niece included), this is a fragment of thought, and it’s not very useful.

Then there’s what I call the “messiness” factor. As a front-ender, I have a hate-hate relationship with nested elements–lists specifically. If you’ve styled or parsed lists within lists, you know it is a pain in the arse. And if someone, like a human being, forgets to close a tag, two lists become a one list with a child list. Imagine what happens on a page with many articles. If someone leaves out but one closing tag for one of the articles, suddenly all the articles following it are interpreted as comments! To me this doesn’t fit with HTML5′s flexible, forgiving nature. HTML5 moves away from XHTML’s “all tags must be closed or self-closing!” demands. In HTML5, it’s okay if you don’t close your <head>, heck you don’t even need a <head>! This way we maintain forward-compatibility and don’t break the legacy half of the Internet. But you have to include closing tags for articles (although not for head or body tags) lest you run the risk of them being significantly misinterpreted. That’s not foolproof. That’s punishment!

Am I saying we need a comment tag? Not necessarily. But I think interpreting nested articles as comments will only cause trouble down the line. I’m not opposed to a comment tag. I think people would use the heck out of it, and it would give browsers, search engines, and machines in general a very useful hook to better understand data relationships on the page. That’s my rant! What’s your beef?

I’m looking forward to working with the likes of Abe Crystal, Rick Cecil, Jackson Fox–it’s a sweet lineup and a small team. I’ll mostly be doing front-end development on Ruzuku, but this is also a great chance for me to see how a professional UX consultancy runs. I’m looking forward to putting my JavaSript and Ruby on Rails chops to the test.

What is “Ruzuku?”

Ruzuku is a tool that lets people build online courses, which they can then charge students to attend. We pride ourselves in having the best user experience of the online educational tools on the market and make it really easy for people to monetize their niche skills. If you’re interested in learning more, checkout our Ruzuku 101 course or drop me a line!

Smashing Boxes was great

My time at Smashing Boxes was invaluable. I met many great designers and developers and got my first exposure to agile workflow. Agency experience is experience in dog years: I learned a lot and did a lot in a short period of time, building other people’s dreams. Now I want to build just one dream.

Macbook Pro for sale!

With the change in jobs, I find myself in possession of a glorious 17″ Macbook Pro that need a new home. If you are interested, please do drop me a line!

The new RachelNabors.com

To celebrate these big life changes, I have overhauled RachelNabors.com to make it more of a personality/professional site. I will be shutting down ThePinkCrow.com and have already transferred all the content here. My reasoning is that when I started freelancing at the beginning of my career and the economic crisis four years ago, I didn’t have “a name.” My name was only recognized in comics, and I wasn’t sure how comics and web design would mix. I felt like I had to hide behind a business name.

But this past year I gave three talks five times, and each time I illustrated the talk in my own, quirky way. People in my professional circles had started recognizing me as “the cartoon girl.” So I figure that it is time to own my own name and my comic book heritage. My cartoons are as much a part of my personal brand and success as my code. You can find my comics and personal blog at RacheltheGreat.com and my work right here here at RachelNabors.com. (Designers, I totally see you resizing your browser window. You should try reading this on a Kindle! Pretty awesome, even with eInk!)

2012, here I come

I have some things planned for 2012, mostly writing and making new comics. I want to give some more talks, but for some reason I never find events until they’re almost upon me! If you know of some place I should be talking, do let me know (preferably more than a week beforehand!).

2011 was good to me. I hope 2012 will be good to us both. Put in the hours. Learn new things. Kick major ass!

So naturally I was a bit bewildered. What’s so bad about UXers? The reasoning went that good web design should naturally equate a good user experience, and that the user experience as a whole consists of more than what happens when you press x, y, or z. While it is great that we all feel responsible for the user’s experience, I feel this approach is flawed in two ways:

1. This argument assumes that UXers work within a very limited scope that does not encompass the entire system. While it is true that some specialists, like Information Architects, User Interface Designers, User Researchers, do limit the scope of their work, these people usually only live in larger design and development ecosystems which can afford specialists (DBA’s, copywriters, and others included). Many user experience designers/engineers draw on all these job descriptions to offer a broad range of skills in a more affordable package.
2. It also assumes that designers should take full responsibility for the wireframing, testing, user research, interviews, and information architecture that UXers customarily take upon themselves. By these standards, 98% of all current web designers are inadequate. So what should we do with them? Retrain them? Give them new job titles? Tell them to get out of the swimming pool and go back to print? I know plenty of fantastic, stunningly talented web designers who have no competency or interest in the sorts of tasks UXers perform. I personally cannot imagine telling them they are unqualified to do their job.

Perhaps, the user experience as a whole should be decided upon by the web site’s team. But it’s hard to imagine an entire team creating and testing wireframes, interviewing and researching users, hashing out the IA–I’m sure it can be done, especially on small projects. But as soon as you start looking at anything with more than 10 users or with any app-like qualities, you need someone to own this stuff or it will go to pot.

Designers, especially green ones, aren’t usually designing for users–they design for themselves or for the clients. The clients aren’t thinking about users. They’re thinking about their goals, budgets, and themselves. Developers just want to make the thing work so they can get on with it! There is no one representing the user in this model. And even if magically all parties had a consensus about what was best for the users and diligently tried to make that happen, they would still make a lot of newb mistakes that a seasoned UXer would sidestep.

Design is the hand. Development is the head. Between the head and the hand, there must be the heart, the advocate for the user. That’s what “UX” is about. It’s not a buzzword to be tossed around lightly, although many do. It’s a calling. It’s a fight. It’s an obligation. By all means, if you’re a designer or developer who wants to learn more and start with a users-first attitude, bully for you. But remember that there’s a lot more to it than good intentions and a few articles on UX Booth.

Right now I am the only woman at the startup I work for. I work with seven guys. They have Nerf guns. They have guy habits. Sometimes, they get on my nerves. I own that. But I know there are things about me that rub them the wrong way, like how I like to turn the lights on in the morning (as opposed to working in perpetual twilight–my eyes aren’t that good). But you know what? It doesn’t matter! Because we are there to get shit done! And guess what? I’ve worked with all female crews, and women can rub each other the wrong way just fine.

A startup is like a family. Nobody in a family gets along with everybody 100% of the time. What keeps a family together is how you work through your differences and hold tight when faced with big challenges (like looming deadlines). You have to be honest with each other, and acknowledge when you’ve messed up or the shit is hitting the fan or yes, that menu would totally work better horizontally and I’ll fix it right away. There is no room for pride, only love and acceptance.

And no family is just one gender. A gender homogenous startup could be likened to the lost boys of Neverland or, well, aside from My Little Ponies I can’t think of an all female Utopia that’s out of whack right now. Sure, it looks like paradise, but admittedly something is missing. Penelope said women distract men from work. Um, hello? Men distract each other just fine! (I’ve had to interrupt a few Nerf firefights to remind people to focus!)

I attend many all-male events, like JavaScript and Ruby meetups. I felt awkward about it at first, but someone (a man) told me, “We need more women at these events. Keeps us men civil.” Now I don’t feel so weird. And I’d like to think that one woman opens the door for others who may feel more shy. It’s true, mixed genders keep things balanced and keep things moving. It’s way too easy for humans to fall into “complacency mode” without another faction forcing them to their feet, to try harder, to walk the straight and narrow, and to persevere when shit goes down. That’s a family, that’s a startup.

I’ll be giving a workshop on extending WordPress as a CMS at function pink() in Raleigh on August 31st.

“In the past few years, WordPress has risen to dominate the blogging arena. But it’s not just for blogging anymore! Since version 2.8, all sorts of goodies have been added to WordPress’s core that let you expand its functionality from mere blogging software to robust CMS. Things that once required a slew of plugins can now be done with a few edits to your functions.php file.

In this talk, you will learn how to make a child theme and extend it with custom post and content types, custom taxonomies, menus, post images, and more. Once you learn these simple techniques, you can start configuring themes to do almost anything, from dynamic image sliders to art galleries. Before you consider another CMS, before you install a complicated plugin, check out what a little WordPress dev can do for you!”

September 17-18th 2011, NC Dev Con: ”Comics and Design: How to tell stories with pictures and words.”

Every site has a story. It’s our job to help translate that story into words and pictures, to hold the attention of  visitors and lead them to the “happy ending,” be that clicking “buy” or filling out a contact form. I used to make comics for a living, and I find that the skills I learned making comics help me tell better stories with my web designs. I’m thrilled to be talking about it at NC Dev Con! I hope I’ll see you there!

So when we must confront something negative, like letting a client down on a deadline, or telling a junior to get back to work on a task, we want to slither away and hide under a rock until… until what? The difficulty passes? It doesn’t pass. It just gets bigger and harder to avoid. That deadline keeps approaching, the junior keeps slipping behind. Eventually you’ll let them down because you couldn’t face them with the resolve they deserve.

We tend to think like little kids. We’ve spilled some milk, but we don’t want to tell Mom. She might get angry. But our stakes are higher. Where a child might get off with just a scolding, as adults we face possible job or client loss–or loss of face, which is worse than either.

It only feels safe and comfortable behind the monitor. But on the other side, real people are getting into real trouble, and it’s up to you to intervene in a timely fashion, even if it means having to break unpleasant news or be an unpleasant person.

The next time you have some unpleasant news to break, don’t just send a mealy-mouthed email at the end of the day. Go directly to the person, call them, look them in the eye, and honestly let them know what is going down. I can’t guarantee they’ll be happy you did, but you will garner more respect with honesty than with cowardice.

Personally, I do not think responsive design a the be-all and end-all solution for the mobile web, and by “mobile web” I mean “the web on small screens over sluggish connections.” But I think media queries are actually one of the best things to happen to web design in recent years, right up there with decent font embedding.

Why Responsive Design does not make a mobile experience

I’ll keep this short since full arguments and industry wank can be found in the comments on a post by Luke Jones. But here’s why I prefer building a mobile site for a mobile context as opposed to rearranging an existing content structure:

• Your desktop experience doesn’t take mobile context into account. (Do people want to scroll through excerpts from your 5 latest blog posts or glance at a list of links to your 5 latest blog posts when they’re on a subway trip with a bad connection?)
• Even if you hide large images and JS-heavy elements like slideshows with CSS, people’s devices will still download them… slowly, making your mobile experience slow.

People on mobile phones don’t want to see all the same junk that’s on their desktop site. There’s just no room, no time, no processing power, and usually no interest. You have to restructure your information as well as design differently for the mobile web. Merely restyling a page could be likened to shaving an Afgahn hound to enter it into the toy poodle championship.

Of course there are cases when it makes sense to use responsive design, but you must carefully weigh your decision. Time spent making a special stylesheet could be put toward structuring a better mobile experience.

The real power of Responsive Designs: Widescreen layouts

Mobile aside, I think the real power of media queries shines when applied to widescreen layouts.

Not long ago, the web design world was a-twitter with “liquid layouts” and “flexible font-sizes.” But the typographers and designers of the industry balked that such techniques gave far too much power to the user, sometimes resulting in decreased legibility (who would want to read a paragraph with a short line-height stretch across 1000 pixels after all?) Such techniques would distort designs at extreme resolutions or font-sizes. But now we can couple those techniques with media queries to present a phenomenal design at most resolutions–especially the upper end. For instance, if half your visitors have screens wider than 1072 pixels, and assuming that half of those people view their browser at full screen width (extremely common for Windows users and older users), does it not make sense to make use of that space rather than letting it go to waste at the edges of your 960 pixel-wide centered column of content? You could put ads there, or move author content from an article’s footer to a new sidebar.

Here’s another practical application: My PC laptop is a widescreen of exceedingly short stature. Sometimes I would visit a site with a fixed vertical navigation column, but I would be unable to get to the lower reaches (contact, etc) of the options because I was unable to scroll to them (the definition of fixed positioning is that it doesn’t scroll with the browser window). You could use media queries to “unfix” that navigation column for people with low-slung widescreens and resolve that usability issue.

You can take Responsive Design too far

Here’s the question, what do you get for putting so much effort into the appearance of your site? Will your visitors notice or care if they get a more convenient sidebar? Will you lose visitors if you don’t use this? Will you gain them if you do? Will you improve their experience and make them happier with this investment, or would you gain more from putting that time and money into a promotional campaign or redesigning your signup process?

No one will ever come to your site and say, “I can’t use this. It’s got too much space around the edges!” or “It’s not resizing when I change the shape of my browser. This other site does. I’ll visit that one instead.”

As designers and developers, it’s easy for us to get caught up in the “how” and lose track of the “why.” Every time we do something, we need to ask ourselves, “How am I benefitting people with this?” If you’re only impressing your peers or your coworkers, you need to step back and re-evaluate your approach. There are lots of ways to make the Internet a better place. It pays to pick and choose your battles.

Other WordPress Security Resources

• Block snoopy bots with Jeff Starr’s list of 6 great .htaccess bot-blocking techniques at Digging into WordPress
• Move your WordPress installation out of your root directory with Jeff Starr’s tutorial at Digging into WordPress
• Password Management software: 1Password or KeePass (free)

Featured WordPress Security Plugins

• Update Notifierwill email you every time there’s a new WP or plugin update to install.
• Limit Login Attempts prevents brute force attacks.
• WP Security Scan looks through your WordPress installation and identifies common insecurities. It is super easy to understand and implement.
• AntiVirus keeps an eye on your theme files and emails you if anything changes them–like a hacker adding malicious code.

Code snippets

Prevent directory browsing

Turn off directory listing by adding this code to your .htaccess file:

Options -Indexes

Hide your wp-config file

Block all external access to your config file by adding this code to your .htaccess file:

<files wp-config.php>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</files>

Defend against injection.

Protect against any attempt to modify your PHP GLOBALS and _REQUEST variables by adding this code to your .htaccess:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (<|%3C).*script.*(>|%3E) [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=|[|%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=|[|%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [F,L]

From http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/07/01/10-useful-wordpress-security-tweaks/

Hide your WordPress version

Remove your WordPress version number from your header by adding this code to your functions.php:

remove_action('wp_head','wp_generator');

Credit to Jeff Starr: http://digwp.com/2009/07/remove-wordpress-version-number/

Don’t show login errors.

Hide login errors from hackers. Add this code to your functions.php:

add_filter('login_errors',create_function('$a', "return null;"));

I’ll be covering three things:

1. Why security is important (surprisingly, at WordPress meets, people seem more interested in hearing about plugins than securing their sites–this is why hackers don’t feel bad about ruining their digital lives)
2. Simple things your grandpa can do to lock down his WordPress install
3. DIY WordPress security, for more advanced users who aren’t afraid of a little FTP, htaccess files and tweaking their databases.

Come, join me, and we shall make the Internet a safer, less hackable space!