The Craft CMS Podcast Michael Rog & Andrew Welch

In this episode, we wish you a Happy New Year and chat about some [mostly Craft-related] technologies and trends we're looking forward to in 2017: Craft CMS 3, Yii 2, the Craft plugin store, VueJS, Google AMP, Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News, content marketing, CMFs (content management frameworks), and a golden age of #perfmatters. We wrap up with some philosophical conversation about activism, empathy, and breaking out of your bubble.

Michael & Andrew interview two developers who have made the switch from Drupal to Craft CMS: Patrick Harrington and Marko Srdoč. Some very interesting discussion ensued about the strengths of Craft CMS, and also where Craft CMS could learn from Drupal. The unique perspective that two experienced Drupal developers offer on their take of Craft CMS is quite insightful, and provoked a nice discussion of how to pitch Craft to clients that have heard of Drupal, but not Craft CMS.

Andrew & special guest host Earl Johnston interview long time ExpressionEngine developer Sean Smith from http://caffeinecreations.ca/ , discussing his recent transition to using Craft CMS.  We cover both the moments of unbridled joy, and the moments of frustration as Sean discusses his approach to learning to use Craft, and the contrasts between it and ExpressionEngine.

Michael & Andrew continue the conversation about website performance, focusing on efficient Twig templating with Craft CMS.  Topics covered include how to code performant templates, using the {% cache %} tag efficiently, how to profile and optimize your front-end dev, and a good discussion of Eager Loading.  TTFT (Time To First Teet is also covered)

Michael & Andrew continue the conversation about website performance. This time we cover server-side performance, and the benefits of embracing performance-minded server tech like PHP7, Nginx, MariaDB, and HTTP2. As in our previous episode, we cover the practical implications, how to educate your clients about these technologies, and why you should build these improvements into your estimates and maintenance contracts.

Andrew Welch returns to the Craft Podcast, this time to talk about server and client-side performance practices. Performance is an afterthought to many designers, developers, and even clients, but it is a crucial part of creating a modern website. In the first part of this two part podcast, we discuss why performance is so important in terms of user experience, Google SERP rankings, conversions, and e-commerce. Andrew explains some best-practices for server setup and provides an intro to putting together a performance-focused front-end development workflow. In spite of a few technical glitches, the content here is solid, so buckle up and enjoy!