#confused by complex social dynamics and protocols

[maybe-boys-do-love]

And what if I saw so many reasons to headcanon Boston as audhd??? What then??????

[securityguardsanbernardino]

Mall Security Guards: More Than Just Protection

When most people think of mall security guards, they picture someone walking the halls, checking doors, or deterring theft. But today’s security professionals do far more than just prevent shoplifting. In the dynamic and often unpredictable environment of a modern shopping mall, security guards play a complex, vital role that goes beyond protection—they are customer service representatives, emergency responders, conflict mediators, and ambassadors of safety.

Here's a deeper look at how mall security guards contribute to far more than just preventing crime.

Creating a Safe and Welcoming Atmosphere

Security guards are often the first and last people shoppers see when entering or exiting a mall. Their presence alone is enough to reassure guests that they are in a safe space. Beyond that, the way guards engage with the public—calm, approachable, and professional—sets the tone for the entire shopping experience. In high-traffic areas like food courts, entrances, and parking lots, guards act as visible deterrents to unwanted behavior, such as vandalism, theft, or harassment. But they also monitor for less obvious threats: unattended bags, suspicious activity, or aggressive behavior that could escalate. Their constant vigilance helps prevent incidents before they occur.

Moreover, guards often assist in non-security matters: giving directions, helping people find lost items or even accompanying guests to their cars late at night. By doing so, they create a more inviting and accessible environment, contributing to the mall’s reputation and customer satisfaction. Their visible presence provides psychological comfort to families, elderly visitors, and those shopping alone. In essence, guards help create a space where people can relax, shop, and socialize—without fear or tension.

First Responders in Emergencies

In emergency situations, mall security guards are usually first on the scene—often well before local authorities or emergency services can arrive. Whether it’s a fire, medical emergency, active threat, or natural disaster, trained guards are prepared to respond quickly, manage the scene, and coordinate with relevant services. Most malls require guards to be trained in CPR, AED use, basic first aid, and emergency evacuation procedures. If someone faints, has a seizure, or suffers a fall, it’s the guard who steps in first to assess the situation and provide critical support. Their ability to remain calm under pressure can make the difference between chaos and control.

In more serious incidents, such as a fire or active shooter scenario, guards play a pivotal role in triggering alarm systems, initiating lockdown or evacuation protocols, and ensuring people move safely and efficiently. Their knowledge of mall layouts, exits, and procedures is unmatched—even police or fire crews may rely on their guidance. The presence of a trained security team can dramatically reduce response time and risk in an emergency. For tenants, shoppers, and management alike, that presence is not just comforting—it’s potentially life-saving.

Customer Service and Public Relations

Security guards are also key players in the mall’s customer service ecosystem. Their role often overlaps with that of concierges or customer service desks, especially when it comes to assisting guests with directions, answering questions, or helping with accessibility needs. It’s not uncommon for guards to be asked for everything from bathroom directions to store locations and event details. Their visibility and approachability make them a go-to resource for confused or overwhelmed shoppers. A guard’s tone, body language, and helpfulness can enhance or detract from a guest’s overall impression of the mall.

Additionally, security guards often serve as liaisons between tenants and mall management. If an incident occurs in a store—whether it’s a dispute, a shoplifting attempt, or even a maintenance issue—guards are typically the first to intervene and report. Their ability to mediate calmly and document incidents professionally supports better communication and accountability. In essence, security guards do much more than patrol—they represent the brand and values of the shopping center. Their professionalism, empathy, and service orientation contribute directly to customer loyalty and repeat visits.

Loss Prevention and Asset Protection

While customer interaction is a major part of the role, security guards still perform the critical function of loss prevention and asset protection. Malls are hubs of high-value merchandise and cash transactions, making them targets for theft, fraud, and vandalism.

Security teams are trained to recognize suspicious behavior, monitor CCTV systems, and coordinate closely with retail tenants to prevent shoplifting or internal theft. Many guards conduct covert patrols, investigate incidents, and liaise with police when apprehending suspects or compiling evidence. Their presence deters not just casual shoplifters, but also organized retail crime groups that target commercial centers. In addition to physical goods, guards also protect infrastructure and digital systems. As malls become increasingly connected—with smart lighting, public Wi-Fi, and data-driven analytics—guards help prevent tampering with or unauthorized access to essential systems. Some even work with cybersecurity teams to prevent breaches of sensitive data or surveillance equipment.

Loss prevention isn’t just about stopping theft; it’s about ensuring business continuity, minimizing liability, and protecting the financial health of the entire mall ecosystem. Security guards are central to this effort, often working behind the scenes to keep risks at bay.

Managing Crowd Control and Special Events

Malls host a wide variety of events throughout the year, from holiday sales and fashion shows to community festivals and celebrity appearances. These events attract large crowds, and with that comes the need for meticulous crowd control and safety planning—roles that security guards are uniquely trained to manage.

Guards plan and execute access control strategies, enforce capacity limits, set up barriers or checkpoints, and work with event organizers to maintain smooth traffic flow throughout the property. Their goal is to ensure safety without disrupting the guest experience, which requires a keen balance of assertiveness and hospitality.

In times of unexpected surges—such as Black Friday sales or emergency evacuations—guards must react swiftly, communicate clearly, and direct large groups in a calm and orderly manner. They also watch for pickpockets, disturbances, or escalated conflicts that can arise in high-density scenarios. Beyond safety, guards help maintain the mall's positive reputation during events. Guests want to feel secure but not overwhelmed. By being visible yet discreet, helpful yet firm, guards enable memorable and safe experiences that keep shoppers coming back.

Adapting to Modern Threats and Technology

Today’s mall security teams must stay ahead of modern threats—including cybercrime, civil unrest, and health emergencies—all while adapting to new technology. Security guards now operate with the help of real-time monitoring tools, facial recognition software, biometric access systems, and mobile communication apps.

Many are trained to spot not just physical threats but cyber vulnerabilities too. For example, they may work with IT teams to monitor suspicious behavior around digital kiosks or customer data points. In the post-pandemic world, they’ve also been on the frontlines of public health enforcement, managing mask compliance, crowd limits, and sanitation checks. Tech-savvy guards are increasingly expected to operate CCTV drones, mobile apps, and AI-assisted surveillance tools. Their role is evolving into a hybrid of physical and digital oversight, blending street-smarts with technical expertise.

Importantly, technology doesn’t replace guards—it enhances them. The human element remains critical: emotional intelligence, decision-making, and interpersonal skills are irreplaceable in de-escalating situations or comforting a distressed guest. As malls evolve into multi-use destinations (offices, entertainment, co-working spaces), guards must be more flexible and tech-literate than ever before.

Conclusion: A Pillar of the Mall Experience

Mall security guards are no longer just enforcers of rules—they are integral to the guest experience, safety infrastructure, and operational success of modern shopping centers. From emergency response and theft prevention to customer service and tech monitoring, their responsibilities are wide-ranging and increasingly sophisticated. Their daily actions protect not just merchandise, but also people, reputations, and peace of mind. For mall management, investing in well-trained, well-supported security staff is not just a necessity—it’s a strategic advantage.

Next time you walk through a mall and see a guard, remember: they’re doing much more than watching—they’re caring, preventing, responding, and representing. They are the unsung heroes of retail safety and the evolving future of commercial security.

[ruchirathor]

Mastering Team Dynamics: Strategies for Effective Collaboration

In today's dynamic work environment, collaboration is no longer a luxury, it's a necessity. Businesses thrive on the collective power of teams, where diverse skill sets and perspectives come together to achieve shared goals.

However, fostering effective collaboration requires more than just assembling a group of talented individuals. Mastering team dynamics is the key to unlocking a team's true potential.

This article dives deep into the concept of team dynamics, exploring the factors that contribute to successful collaboration and outlining actionable strategies for building a high-performing team.

Understanding Team Dynamics

Team dynamics refer to the complex interplay of individual personalities, communication styles, working habits, and group behaviours within a team. It encompasses factors like:

Trust and psychological safety: Team members need to feel comfortable taking risks, sharing ideas, and offering constructive criticism without fear of judgment.

Communication: Clear, open, and two-way communication is essential for effective collaboration. Understanding different communication styles can bridge gaps and ensure everyone feels heard.

Roles and responsibilities: Well-defined roles ensure everyone understands their individual contributions and how they fit into the overall project.

Conflict resolution: Disagreements are inevitable. Effective teams have mechanisms for addressing conflict constructively and reaching solutions.

Shared goals and values: A clear understanding of the team's purpose and what motivates each member fosters a sense of unity and commitment.

Strategies for Building Effective Team Dynamics

1. Team Building Activities: Engaging team-building activities can help break the ice, promote communication, and build trust among team members. These activities can range from collaborative games and problem-solving exercises to social outings that allow people to connect outside of work.

2. Clear Communication Practices: Establish clear communication protocols that ensure everyone is on the same page. This includes setting expectations for email response times, meeting schedules, and preferred communication channels (e.g., email, project management tools, instant messaging).

3. Encouraging Open Communication: Create a safe space for open dialogue and encourage team members to express their ideas, concerns, and feedback without fear of reprisal. Active listening skills are crucial for fostering a culture of open communication.

4. Role Clarification and Goal Setting: Clearly define individual roles and responsibilities within the team to avoid confusion and ensure everyone understands their contribution to the project. Set SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) for the team as a whole, as well as individual milestones, to keep everyone accountable and motivated.

5. Celebrating Successes: Recognize and celebrate both individual and team achievements. This reinforces positive behaviours, boosts morale, and keeps everyone motivated towards achieving the common goal.

6. Diversity and Inclusion: Embrace diversity in terms of backgrounds, skills, and perspectives. Inclusive team environments allow everyone to contribute their unique strengths, leading to richer ideas and more innovative solutions.

7. Conflict Resolution Strategies: Equip your team with conflict resolution skills to address disagreements constructively. Encourage open communication, active listening, and a focus on finding solutions rather than assigning blame.

Conclusion

Building a strong team isn't about assembling a collection of talented individuals; it's about creating a well-coordinated unit where diverse strengths and perspectives harmonize towards a shared goal. 

Remember, effective collaboration is an ongoing journey. Embrace these strategies, celebrate successes, and learn from challenges. So, conduct the symphony of success – watch your team rise to the challenge and deliver exceptional results.

[fals-worldcenima]

DRY GROUND BURNING

The 2022 film "Dry Ground Burning," is a strong reaction cinematic experience that pushes the boundaries of storytelling and challenges traditional narrative structures. Directed by Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós, the film masterfully blends elements of documentary, fiction, and experimental filmmaking to create a unique and captivating viewing experience.

One of the outstanding aspects of "Dry Ground Burning" is its visual style. The directors engage a combination of stunning cinematography and fresh editing techniques to create a visually striking and mesmerizing world. The use of long takes and unusual camera angles adds to the film's sense of unease and confusion, the film invites the audience to question their own perception of reality.

The narrative of "Dry Ground Burning" is equally intriguing. The film explores themes of memory, identity, and the impact of social and political events on individuals. Through a non-linear storytelling approach, the directors skillfully weave together multiple narrative threads, blurring the lines between past and present, fact and fiction. This narrative uncertainty not only adds layers of complexity to the film but also encourages viewers to actively engage with the story and draw their own conclusions.

Also, "Dry Ground Burning" tackles social and political issues with a bold and unapologetic approach. The film dives into themes of social inequality, government corruption, and the effects of colonization on belittle communities. By intertwining these themes within the narrative, the directors shed light on the harsh realities faced by individuals living in belittled societies, ultimately challenging viewers to reflect on their own societal structures and power dynamics.

Another interesting aspect of "Dry Ground Burning" is its sound design. The directors utilize a combination of natural sounds, music, and dialogue to create a rich and enveloping audio experience. The soundscapes in the film not only enhance the atmosphere but also serve as a narrative tool, providing additional layers of meaning and emotion.

In conclusion, "Dry Ground Burning" is a visually stunning and intellectual film that pushes the boundaries of traditional storytelling. Through its original narrative structure, inspiring themes, and careful craftsmanship, directors Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós have created a cinematic experience that challenges viewers to question their perception of reality and confront the social and political issues of our time.

The film "Dry Ground Burning" and the film "Battle of Algiers" both relate to each other in some way. Both films explore social and political issues and challenge traditional storytelling protocol. "Dry Ground Burning" dives into themes of social inequality and government corruption, while the "Battle of Algiers" focuses more on the struggle for independence in Algeria. Although they tackle different historical contexts, both films shed light on the effects/impact of colonization and belittle communities fighting for justice. 

Overall I rate this movie an 8/10.

[whentherewerebicycles]

some thoughts that might seem unrelated but aren’t, i promise:

— in that atomic habits book I read a couple weeks back the author talks about using a specific, action-oriented question repeated throughout the day to help you build or break habits (like “what would a physically fit person do?” or “what would a sober person do?”).   

— the aging books i was reading last month noted that people who score high in conscientiousness (on the Big Five personality traits) tend to age most successfully ie enjoy the longest stretch of active years. to quote this article, conscientiousness is “a fundamental personality trait—one of the Big Five—that reflects the tendency to be responsible, organized, hard-working, goal-directed, and to adhere to norms and rules...Conscientiousness comprises self-control, industriousness, responsibility, and reliability. A conscientious person is good at self-regulation and impulse control. This trait influences whether you will set and keep long-range goals, deliberate over choices, behave cautiously or impulsively, and take obligations to others seriously.” I tend to score very high in openness but very, very low in conscientiousness. more on this in a bit...  

— my sister and i were talking recently about different kinds of intelligence, and also about core values. one of hers is efficiency, a word that i have all kinds of negative associations with lol but that she explained in ways i found really intriguing. for her efficiency isn’t about, like, Maximizing Productivity for Capitalism but is about methodically searching for the most effective, least confusing or redundant, most easily-communicable-to-others way to solve complex problems. when she encounters a system that has all kinds of weird bottlenecks or inefficient, time-consuming ways of completing a task (esp if the rationale for those methods is just “well.. that’s how we’ve always done it”), she starts immediately examining the larger structures and workflows around those bottlenecks to see if the established ways of doing things can be rerouted or simplified, and then she constructs new protocols or tools for people to use instead of the old inefficient way of working. efficiency will never be a core value of mine, in part because i think my humanities-oriented brain accords more value than her STEM/medicine-oriented brain does to wandering, daydreaming, slowed-down thinking, doubling-back or retracing one’s steps, and other “inefficient” modes of thinking that slow down the process but can lead you in unexpected directions or spark unanticipated epiphanies that illuminate the larger structures differently. i think we both share a keen interest in systems-level thinking and in examining whether established ways of doing things are the most effective ways of doing things, but we prioritize different modes of thinking and problem-solving in figuring out how to alter or redesign those larger systems (which is probably a result of temperament differences + our field-specific training).

THAT SAID, i have been thinking a lot about how one area of my own intelligence i would like to sharpen/hone in both my professional and personal life is like... a mode of intelligence that is linked to rigor, a more methodical approach to problem-solving, and the ability to construct & more methodically test detailed mental schemas. not quite sure how to articulate that but i feel like my thinking has gotten a little fuzzier than i want it to. and I think maybe this sensed fuzziness in thinking is linked to some of my ongoing feelings of restless discontent re: work. I also just in general want to be more conscientious in how I approach and solve problems, or in how I tackle big and small projects.

— this is more tangentially connected but: i feel like one thing i’ve noticed this year is that a lot of the people i admire professionally are really good at seeking out & taking on lots and lots of additional challenges or commitments, and they can do this in part because they tend to be very conscientious people, ie people who have big-picture vision but are also very detail-oriented and good at managing their time effectively & doing things efficiently so they can take on multiple projects without feeling overwhelmed. i feel like my own low-conscientiousness means that i can’t take full advantage of my high-openness—often i want to take on new projects or challenges but i worry that i’ll overextend myself or that the project will become more time-consuming than i anticipate. i think is linked to a different sort of fuzziness, ie a lack of clarity about how long things take or how much time i have — all combined with a deeply ingrained sense of myself as someone with executive dysfunction issues (poor time management, poor planning skills, poor organizational abilities, etc.). i think of myself as a very inefficient and extraordinarily disorganized person, whether this is 100% accurate or not, and that can sometimes lead to me taking myself out of the running for opportunities or limiting the number of projects i take on out of a fear that i won’t be disciplined enough to see them through.

— another thing my sister and i were talking about recently is how within large families, siblings tend to get assigned a “role” or a personality within the family dynamic very early on, and then they get sort of locked into that over time. everyone in the family expects them to always behave in that way, and there’s often a lot of unconscious resistance to letting your family members change or grow or develop in ways that contradict the clearly defined family role that’s been assigned to them, or the family “story” that everyone else in the family tells about them. you can get locked into both positive and negative roles—or like, often the positive role has a negative flipside. we were talking about how within our family, i’ve been ���assigned” to be the “deep thinker” ie the introspective one who spends my life writing and thinking and daydreaming, whereas my sister has been assigned the role of being most like my father, ie very methodical, analytical, unemotional, and action-oriented (and therefore not introspective or inward-looking). and we were talking about how both of these have a negative flipside: my sister feels like she doesn’t get to be a “deep thinker,” or an introspective, emotionally intelligent person; whereas i feel like in my family’s story for me i am forever in “lalaland,” as my mom always says—head in the clouds, an ineffectual dreamer, the absentminded professor who has lots of big thoughts and feelings but is incapable of bringing any of my fantastical ideas to fruition because i have very little practical knowledge or stick-to-itiveness.  

— as i’ve said many times before, i feel like i can’t solve the big-picture issues with my job right now, since so many of them are linked to shitty pandemic realities. but i was thinking that maybe one way to begin laying the groundwork for this final year in my job might be to work on strengthening my conscientiousness at the micro-level, ie in small everyday habits and interactions. my hope is that maybe by practicing conscientiousness in lots of small, low-stakes situations, i can start strengthening those muscles and building trust in myself as “the kind of person who does ____” (which i feel like is necessary for me to begin challenging the family story i’ve internalized what i am like). i mean, there is a lot of truth to that family story! but i bet that those aspects of my personality are nowhere near as inflexible or as like, divinely preordained as i have often assumed they are. like, i bet that through practice & through building better habits i can actually become significantly more conscientiousness (reliable, responsible, hardworking, efficient, good at follow-through, self-disciplined, etc) than i am now. and while efficiency may never be as central a value for me as it is for my sister, i think there is probably a way for me to see efficiency and conscientiousness as linked to my own core values, if only because those qualities or traits will allow me to better enact/embody my core values. so i think i can see it not as working against the grain of my personality, but as working to build out less-developed parts of my personality to strengthen the parts of my character that i value most.

— anyway this is all to say that for the last week i’ve been asking myself aloud “what would a conscientious person do?” multiple times a day, really any time i find myself at a small crossroads where i have to make a small decision. do i pick up that piece of cardboard and put it in the recycling bin now or leave it till later? (what would a conscientious person do?) do i return that call from the plumber now or put it off until later? (what would a conscientious person do?) do i take two minutes to pay that $4 toll bill now or put it on the giant stack of “tasks i will definitely deal with when i’m in the mood to deal with them,” where it will inevitably become a $25 and then $50 bill because i forgot about it and now have to pay late fees? (what would a conscientious person do?) do i comment on that student’s draft now when i’d rather be on the couch scrolling through social media? (i could probably do it tomorrow, when i have another block of free time, but what would a conscientious person do?) i have no idea if it will work in the long term!! but it’s been an intriguing experiment so far, mostly because i think it is teaching me that many of the tasks i build up in my head as incredibly time-consuming are actually quite quick, and once you finish them you also free up all the mental energy you were putting into procrastinating on them, and are better able to move onto the next thing. i also feel like it is teaching me that uhh maybe a conscientious person is not like, a completely different species of human being, but just a person who has different habits or patterns of response to daily choices than i do. that feels important too: if we are what we repeatedly or habitually do, then changing what i habitually do can probably change the kind of person i am!   i’m finding that there’s something very useful about the simplicity of the question, too. deliberately posing the question to myself interrupts my habitual, unconscious response (which is always some version of “i don’t have the energy to deal with that / don’t want to expend that energy right now -- i’ll put it off till later”) -- it requires me to stop and focus my attention on the present situation instead of sliding right past it without thinking about it. and there’s also something quite satisfying about framing it as a choice or a decision: i get to choose what to do, ie i get to exercise agency, and exercising agency makes your brain feel happy (we like to feel in control! we like making choices!). so throughout the day i get to experience lots of little bursts of whatever gets released in the brain when you make a decision and immediately follow through with it, and i think/hope that this kind of positive reinforcement is helping to strengthen those circuits and lay down the groundwork for new patterns of habitual response. 

those are some thoughts this morning!! now i am going to allow myself a few minutes of sloth lol and then i’ll get up and exercise.

[enchantingdonutcheesecake]

Autism in children

Autism is a complex series of neurobiological and developmental disorders that most typically appears during the first 2 years of life. The diagnosis is made based on at least 6 out of 12 symptoms in three categories therefore it is known as autism spectrum disorder. Parenting and caring the kids with autism involves a lot of patience, knowledge and skills. The fundamental features of autism that represent the diagnosis are, social impairment, verbal or non-verbal impairment, and repetitive patterns of behaviour. In the majority of the cases, autism is a lifelong disorder with underlying difficulties in the interaction of the victim with his/ her society. Male children have 5 times more than that of female children in terms of rate of incidence. In approximately 75% of people suffering from autism, there is a clear evidence of cognitively handicapped state. Autism is seen in approximately 60 to 70 among every 10,000 live births.

                                        What are Autism Spectrum Disorders?

According to the traditional diagnostic criteria, a series of disorders were once thought to be separate conditions.  Modern diagnosis has clubbed all of them together to term them as spectrum disorders. There are 4 common disorders that includes Asperger's syndrome, Autistic disorder, Childhood disintegrative disorder and Pervasive developmental disorder. Asperger's syndrome is one of the disorder where children tend to have normal or above the average level of intelligence, but they manifest with social problems. Autistic disorder is not actually the autism as  most people think of , but it refers to those problems associated with poor social interactions, communication, and deprived play in children younger than 3 years. Childhood disintegrative disorder is a typical development disorder seen in age less than 2 years where children tend to lose some or most of their communication and social skills recently acquired. Pervasive developmental disorder  or atypical autism is characterized by some autistic behaviour including delay in the social and communications skills, but doesn’t fit into another category. Some of the typical dangerous signs in an early infancy that indicate the caution for autism may include

1.       No response while someone call by name or eye-to-eye gaze by 6 months.

2.      Absence of babbling by 12 months.

3.      No gesturing (pointing, waving, etc.) by 12 months.

4.      No sign of language development even after the age of  16 months.

5.      No two-word (spontaneous, not just echolalic) phrases by 24 months.

6.      Loss of any language or social skills, at any age.

 Characteristics of an autistic child

Autism is difficult to diagnose at the early stage and most of the parents feel confused as it resembles many other conditions. The symptoms first appears during infancy or early childhood which gradually progress into a steady course. It is a dynamic state with each child having varied symptoms but the principal aspect of the diagnostic criteria is the intelligence. Children tend to have the average, or even superior IQ than others. Symptoms become vivid after the age of six months from the time of diagnosis is made.  The triad of symptoms include disturbed social interaction, communication, and the repetitive behavior. Some kids appear strange in their choices, behaviors and manners such as atypical eating, sleeping speech etc.  Some of the characteristic features of an autistic child are:

1.       Difficulty in establishing social interaction. This is the most crucial area in which autistic children lose patience to obey the social norms which makes them difficult to comply with the social demands.

2.      Some children exhibit unusual interest in specific objects such as toys, pens of specific size and color, crayons etc.

3.      A strong tendency towards ritualism manifested by difficulty in changing the routine for instance, if a child is get used to brush at 6.30 a.m. they strongly stick to the same time, no matter whatever the case. Some kids want a specific type of bed to sleep while other express ritualism by eating a specific breakfast daily.

4.      Fortunately, some kids show extraordinary ability in one area but a great difficulty in another. For example few kids are extremely sportive while few shows interest in studies but not in anything else.

5.      Some show a strong reactions to one or more of their senses such as being turtled by loud noise or not able to withstand bright colours.

6.      Repetitiveness is characterized by repetition of thing over and over again. For instance, a child might keep on writing the same information over a page and again erasing it to repeat again.

7.      Talking constantly about specific things that interest them but not showing attention towards other aspects that don’t create curiosity in them.

8.     Children with ASD may have unusually intense and prolonged emotional reactions.

Parental skills to manage autistic children

Parents must have an individualized protocol when managing their autistic kids. It is important to remember that there is no cure for illness but children can be trained to adapt to the illness to achieve near normal life. Some of the tips that are helpful in managing autism are

1.       Understand and treat  the child as he/she is instead of comparing.

2.      Create a plan that is firm and consistent but not hard to achieve the objectives. It is imperative to find out from the child’s therapists about specific guidelines to manage that kid. Spend some time with the child on a daily basis.

3.      Use  non-verbal ways to stay connect to the child however encourage the verbal skills in a progressive manner.

4.      Set short and achievable goals and monitor them on a regular basis.

5.      It is very important to encourage children to play and interact with normal children. Guilt and fear are the major hurdles that an autistic child facing , it is important to counsel them to make them realize about their condition.

6.      Never isolate the kid as it can escalate the issue.

 Follow us at Innoclazz Academy for home tuition Bangalore

[ebenpink]

“Help! My client is in love with me!” How to establish boundaries in your coaching practice—and avoid all kinds of nasty situations. https://ift.tt/2ImLxO9

What do you do when your fitness client asks you out for a drink? Or texts you at 2am? Or slightly recoils from your touch during an assessment? When you’re a health professional working closely with people who need your help, things can occasionally get awkward. Use this guide to set professional boundaries, while still creating a trusting coach-client relationship.

++++

The details: A Precision Nutrition Certified coach—we’ll call her Sue—reached out to our private Facebook group for advice on a serious problem. Her client, also a coworker, had developed feelings for her.

Sue didn’t feel the same way.

She cared about this client and his goals. He’d already lost 50 pounds with her help.

But she didn’t want to be a caregiver or caretaker. His behavior had become an emotional drain.

When Sue tried to distance herself from the client, he lashed out and became self-destructive. His health habits regressed, and he went back to emotional eating.

As a coaching professional, Sue understood the dynamics. She knew the client’s reliance on her had become unhealthy. And she recognized that she herself was becoming more and more distressed.

Understandably, she felt stuck.

She’d have to confront difficult feelings: The client would be upset.

He’d regress: Asking him to change his behavior would cause a health-damaging backslide.

She was also caught in conflicting close relationships: They work together every day.

Tricky situations like Sue’s are very common in health and fitness coaching.

Yet while therapists, psychologists, and doctors are formally trained to navigate the boundary issues that arise in client-practitioner relationships, fitness professionals often aren’t.

So consider this your crash course for conduct, complete with practical tools you can use now, no matter how where you are in your career.

++++

The relationship between a client and a health practitioner is inherently intimate.

This is true whether you’re a strength coach, a group fitness trainer, a psychologist, a massage therapist, or a yoga instructor.

Deep feelings are discussed. Bodies are touched.

It’s “closeness,” even if it’s not romantic closeness.

As a result of this intimacy, it’s quite common (and natural) for coaches or clients to develop feelings (negative or positive) for each other. Feelings of friendship, tenderness, protectiveness, jealousy, anger, and/or frustration spill into the professional arrangement.

Without honesty, clear expectations, and mature, open communication, stuff gets messy.

Defining and upholding proper boundaries ensures that feelings don’t confuse the ultimate goal: to help the client achieve his or her health goals through self-empowered action.

When we don’t have well-defined and well-communicated roles, everyone is kinda standing around wondering, “What am I allowed to do here? And how are we supposed to interact?”

Anxieties, frustrations, and old hurts emerge, often vaguely and vexingly, and we feel pushed and pulled in many directions.

That’s why we need boundaries.

Boundaries are the invisible lines of division between the service provider and the client or patient, the social (and sometimes physical) norms and practices that define:

who is playing what role (e.g. who is coach and who is client);

what those roles involve (e.g. who provides direction and how); and

what the limits of that professional relationship are (e.g. how available the coach is for the client, or what’s discussed in sessions).

Good boundaries mean that clients:

feel safe and secure with their coaches, trusting they’ll act in their best interests.

understand the care a coach shows is the universal care of an invested, compassionate professional, and not a sign of romantic interest (or some other attachment).

are obligated to show up maturely and responsibly; to regulate their emotions, own their behaviors, and be consistent.

Good boundaries mean that coaches:

avoid ethical breaches or working outside of our scope of practice.

don’t take on more than our share of responsibility for client progress and change.

show our clients clearly who is doing what, when, and how.

recognize the potential power imbalance that is part of coaching, and respect our clients as autonomous individuals.

With clear boundaries, we have fewer misunderstandings and awkward situations.

Which is always good.

With well-defined, strong, healthy boundaries, our “emotional bank account” is freed up to invest in a robust coaching relationship that keeps us as coaches safe and sane, while helping clients reach their goals.

Appropriate behavior is context-dependent.

There’s a green zone: Totally cool almost all of the time. Like smiling and making eye contact as you greet a client.

There are “gray zones”: A little more blurry, and depends on the context and nature of the relationship. Like hugging a client after they just did their first pullup.

And there’s a red zone: Definitely—and always—a hard “no.” Like, “Don’t steal from clients” seems pretty intuitive.

But in real life, boundaries aren’t one-size-fits-all.

Therefore (and to make things more complex), the same action can be “green” with one client and “red” with another.

With a client you have a secure, trusting relationship with, it might be totally cool to exchange the odd gift.

But that newer client you suspect might be crushing on you? Exchanging gifts may send the wrong message and confuse the purpose of the relationship.

Context is everything.

With more experience, trust, and maturity you have more freedom—to get close, to joke, potentially to do or say “inappropriate” things.

With relationships that are newer, more fraught or confused, play by stricter rules.

In terms of ethical codes, health and fitness coaching is a little late to the party.

Other fields of service provision, such as psychology or social work, have clear codes of ethics they abide by.

Many mental and physical health care service providers receive ethics training as part of their certification, but coaches often don’t.

Yet part of your job as a coach is to behave ethically, which includes defining and maintaining clear boundaries.

So Precision Nutrition wrote its own Code of Ethics for the coaches we certify.

You can start with our Code of Ethics as a template, and add to it as you wish, according to your own value system, and the nuances of your practice.

PN Coaching Certification Code of Ethics

In your professional role as a coach:

Act in the client’s best interest. Prioritize their wellbeing, safety, values, goals, and comfort where possible.

Respect the worth and dignity of the clients you serve. Treat all clients with professional courtesy, compassion, and care.

Protect your clients’ privacy and confidentiality. This includes that you:

Follow standard data security protocols, such as protecting your personal logins and storing client data securely.

Be careful what you discuss about clients, and with whom.

Do not disclose personal or identifying details of clients.

Ask permission before sharing anything on social media.

Act with integrity. Make yourself worthy of your clients’ respect and trust. Don’t exploit your clients, financially or otherwise. Don’t seek personal gain from your client relationship (beyond your coaching fees, obviously).

Act with objectivity. Know the rules, regulations, and procedures expected of you, and follow them equitably and appropriately for each client.

Set clear, accurate, and reasonable expectations. Define the terms of the coaching arrangement (e.g. payment, frequency of meeting, how coaching works, etc.) immediately and reinforce them often. Be upfront about what results the client can realistically expect to see.

Have clear professional boundaries. Avoid multiple relationships (e.g. coaching friends or family members; becoming friends with clients) where possible. If you must have multiple relationships, recognize the inherent power imbalance in coaching, and be very clear what hat you’re wearing in a given situation.

Know the limits of your skills and scope of practice. If you can’t serve a client for reasons of ethics or expertise, refer them to another coach and/or care provider if possible.

Keep your skills current. Pursue professional competence, excellence, and mastery. Seek to be a credit to your profession.

8 tools to define boundaries in your coaching practice.

For coaches, there are lots of ways identify, establish, and maintain boundaries in your professional practice. We’ve got 8 to get you started.

The more tools you use, the more clear, comfortable, and secure your relationships will be.

Plus, less awkward situations.

1. Pay attention to your “emotional radar.”

Often, when boundaries get pushed (or trampled on), your body will tell you.

For example, you might notice that around a certain client, you feel tense, “icky,” or even repelled.

If you observe those sensations, check in with yourself.

Are roles defined and contracts clear?

Are you being asked to do things (either implicitly or explicitly) that make you feel uncomfortable?

Are you being exposed to some “TMI” material, either through the content of your client’s words, or images they sent to you?

If you can identify what’s bothering you, work to fix the situation:

Model appropriate behavior.

Communicate clearly, assertively, and maturely. (Keep reading for ideas on how to do this.)

Inform others about your boundaries and expectations for the working relationship. Don’t assume people “should just know” what appropriate behavior is. They might not.

2. Use body language to manage the space between you and your clients.

We “say” a lot without actually saying it.

Humans have a sort of sixth sense when it comes to expressing and reading body language. What we do with our bodies, and what others do, is worth a thousand words.

That means you can actually use your body as a tool to shape the coach-client relationship.

You can use your nonverbal cues to steer or “lead” clients.

For example, if a client is getting a little too close, you can lean or step back a little to increase the distance between you, or put an object between you (such as a desk or bench).

Without using words, this suggests, “This is a better amount of space between us.”

Other times, you may want to encourage closeness.

One simple way to do this is by “mirroring” your clients’ movements (subtly), and making eye contact. This demonstrates your attention and presence, and can foster a feeling of connection.

To convey confidence and authority, stand or sit tall, with good, but relatively relaxed posture. You’ll look like someone worth respecting and listening to.

3. Use your voice to show the right balance of care and authority.

Voices are powerful.

Your voice can command, cajole, calm, or control—and it can help you set and maintain boundaries too.

Generally, a warm, yet professional tone will signify interest and authority.

Speak clearly at a moderate pace, and unless you’re actually asking a question, be careful of a tendency to use a rising tone at the end of a sentence. (Which will make everything sound like a question? And it’ll imply that you don’t need to be taken seriously?)

Match your voice volume and cadence to your client’s to show attunement.

You can also use your voice to steer someone gently if you feel things should be going in a different direction: talking slower and lower to a client who’s gotten worked up and is talking fast and loud; speaking gently to a client who’s intimidated, scared, or defensive; or speaking firmly and clearly to a client who’s gotten a little too… friendly.

4. Write like a pro.

Even if your main jam is one-on-one sessions with clients, talking in an office or on a gym floor, you’ll probably do a fair bit of writing too: in emails or texts, handouts, contracts, and signs on the wall.

Your professional image is reflected in your writing, so cover the basics: Use proper punctuation, check your spelling, and get your message across clearly and concisely.

Make sure signs are clearly displayed and contracts are reviewed and understood, ideally before you begin your coaching relationship.

Signs and contracts tell clients what to expect, what their responsibilities are, and what you’re here for (and not here for). Articulate this up front, and you’ll have fewer problems later.

5. Make informed consent an ongoing conversation.

If you’ve ever joined a gym, had a massage, received psychotherapy, or joined a sports team, you might have had to go through some kind of informed consent and waiver-signing process.

An informed consent form usually covers things like scope of services and liability, and the potential risks to clients. It’s a good idea for every coaching practice to have one.

But it doesn’t have to stop there.

If made an ongoing conversation, the informed consent process can be an awesome, useful tool that helps define boundaries and helps clients feel heard, respected, and comforted.

Check in with your client on consent topics every few weeks. You can organize the conversation around themes like:

What’s happening for you as a client right now? Can you give me a “status update” about how you feel / think about our process, or your current situation?

Are you OK with what’s happening now? Does this match what you expected or wanted? Would you feel more comfortable doing something differently?

Do you understand what’s happening now? Do you as a client, comprehend why we’re doing something, and/or what the risks and benefits are? Do you understand how this activity connects to your goals?

Do you want to continue in this direction? Or do you need a break? Informed consent includes the client knowing that they have the right to say no to anything the coach proposes.

6. Protect your time.

Pop quiz: If a client texts you at 2am, do you respond?

Clients may email, text, or even call at all hours of the day or night. While you can have your business hours clearly displayed on your website, contracts, or signs around your office, clients may still pop in when it’s convenient for them.

That’s OK. (So long as they’re not banging on the door of your personal home at midnight. That’s “red zone” material.)

When and how quickly you respond to clients signals to them what you will accept, and what they should expect.

For example, if you start answering emails at 10:30 at night, a client may expect you to be available during those hours. If you always respond to texts within three minutes, a client may expect nearly immediate answers from you.

You get to decide what your boundaries are here, and what you’re comfortable with. If you don’t want your evenings to be crowded out by client emails, then turn the computer off before dinner, and respond to them in the morning.

Similarly, you get to set the tone for how time is spent during your in-person time with clients.

If a client is consistently late or missing appointments, or if they keep directing the conversation to who they went out with on the weekend instead of how their food journaling went, then it’s your job to gently but firmly call them out.

Sometimes an adult conversation needs to happen.

Like:

“Hey, I’ve noticed that you’ve been 20 minutes late for the last three appointments. Is this still a good time for you? If it is, let’s agree to start our session on time so we don’t have to cut into your appointment time.”

Or:

“It sounds like you had a fun weekend! But hey, I’d love to talk about your nutrition. I know one of your goals is to eat better, and I’m curious to know about how you’ve been doing. The more we focus our conversation, the better we can get both of our needs met.”

Approach these conversations as if you and your client are on the same team, rather than adversaries. Be friendly, and focus on the win you both want!

7. Dress sharp.

One perk of being a coach: You get to dress comfy!

One downside of being a coach: You get to dress comfy! Which means that sometimes, it’s hard to know what looks appropriate and also helps you demonstrate a squat or run a few agility ladders.

However, if you choose carefully, you can convey professionalism in athletic gear.

If you look professional, your clients will be less likely to treat you as a buddy or a potential hookup, and more likely to treat you as, well, a professional.

Make sure your clothes are clean and well-maintained, and that all your, um, parts are contained.

Your dress should also be appropriate to your environment. If you work at a gym, gym clothes are good. If you work in an office, “business casual” is likely the better dress code.

8. If physical contact is necessary, check in with your client’s experience of it often.

If you’re a personal trainer, massage therapist, yoga teacher, chiropractor, etc., body work is part of your job.

Make sure to have clients sign a form that provides consent to touch.

Even with contracts signed and squared off, always ask your clients for permission before you touch them, especially in potentially awkward or vulnerable areas. (This is especially important in situations where touch could be misinterpreted—for instance, a male personal trainer touching a female client’s glutes.)

If you’re a coach, here’s a handy checklist for considering boundaries when touching your client.

Does touching my client make sense in the context of our professional relationship? Am I, for example, a massage therapist or personal trainer legitimately touching my client in particular ways?

Does touching my client raise any issues given our social identities? That’s a fancy way of saying who are you, and who are they? Are you male, female, older, younger, the coach, the client (and so on)?

Does touching my client make sense in a cultural or social context? Different cultures have different norms on touch. And “culture” can be anything. For instance, your local MMA gym may consider it perfectly normal to choke someone with your thighs… but that’s not a good look at your average gym.

What are the benefits to touching my client? Am I helping teach them an exercise, giving them useful feedback, creating a genuine personal connection, and/or calming them?

What are the potential risks to touching my client? Might I be invading their boundaries, making them feel less comfortable, or sending signals that could be misinterpreted?

What are my motivations for touching my client? Is this to benefit them, or me?

Do I know my client’s personal history or level of comfort with touch? Some people have a history of physical or sexual abuse, or simply aren’t that comfortable being touched. Since you likely don’t know all clients’ personal details, start by assuming your client may have some kind of discomfort with touching. Proceed slowly with caution and assess their comfort as you go.

How am I letting my client know what to expect? A simple way to judge comfort is just to announce, then ask. For example, “I’m going to put my hand just underneath your left armpit to feel if your lat muscles are engaged. Is that OK?”

What feedback am I getting? Read body language, and ask. If your client gives you a hearty handshake with a bro-back-slap while making eye contact and smiling, you’re probably good to do the same. If you hug them and they shrink back or go rigid, quit hugging them.

Have alternatives handy. If you’re trying to give a client proprioceptive feedback, you can often use some neutral object (like having their butt hit a wall when you’re teaching a hip hinge). If hugging is a no, you may be able to do a less-threatening touch of the upper arm, or just work your smile and wave game.

And this should go without saying, but we’re gonna say it anyway:

For heaven’s sake, don’t touch your clients inappropriately. If you don’t know what constitutes consent or assault, educate yourself.

What to do next

When your “boundary radar” goes off, pay attention.

Don’t wait or avoid a situation that’s bothering you.

If you do, it’ll often get worse.

Prevention is the best option here, but if that hasn’t worked, then sometimes you’ll need to deal directly with an uncomfortable situation.

If possible, prepare documentation—such as emails, text messages, or a written summary of what happened from your perspective—or discussion topics in advance, and consider your overall strategy before having a difficult conversation.

Remember: You never have to work with someone who’s abusive, aggressive, or otherwise violates your boundaries.

Whether it’s a persistent series of misunderstandings and misalignments; someone who constantly gives you the “ugh” or “uh-oh” feeling; or outright harassment, you never have to tolerate a physically or psychologically harmful situation.

Get out or refer out.

Want strategies to level up your coaching?

It’s no secret that master coaches develop over time, through education and consistent practice, usually under the guidance of a mentor or coach.

Precision Nutrition is the only company in the world that both works with thousands of our own nutrition coaching clients and teaches health, fitness, and wellness professionals our real-world methods for getting results.

And here’s some great news: Our next Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification Master Class kicks off on Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019.

Want to achieve total confidence in your coaching skills? Get (and keep) more clients? Grow and strengthen your practice? If so, the Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification is definitely for you.

It’s designed specifically for Level 1 students and grads who realize that knowing about the science of nutrition isn’t enough.

Part master class, part grad program, part mentorship, it’s the only course in the world designed to help you master the art of coaching, meaning better results for your clients and a better practice for you.

Since we only take a limited number of professionals, and since the program sells out every time, I strongly recommend you add your name to our VIP List below. When you do, you get the chance to sign up 24 hours before everyone else. Even better, you get a huge discount off the general price of the program.

[Note: The Level 2 Master Class is only for students and grads of our Level 1 Certification. So if you haven’t yet enrolled in that program, please begin there.]

Interested? Add your name to the VIP list. You’ll save up to 37% and secure your spot 24 hours before everyone else.

We’ll be opening up spots in our next Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification Master Class on Wednesday, April 3rd.

If you want to find out more, we’ve set up the following VIP list which gives you two advantages.

Pay less than everyone else. We like to reward people who are eager to get started and ready to gain mastery in their coaching practice. So we’re offering a discount of up to 37% off the general price when you sign up for the Master Class VIP list.

Sign up 24 hours before the general public and increase your chances of getting a spot. We only open the PN Master Class twice per year. Due to high demand and a very limited number of spots, we expect it to sell out fast. But when you sign up for the Master Class VIP list, we’ll give you the opportunity to register a full 24 hours before anyone else.

If you’re ready to take the next step in becoming a world-class coach, we’re ready to share our knowledge and help you master the art of coaching.

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References

Click here to view the information sources referenced in this article.

Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association. (2015). Standards of Practice (5th ed.) [PDF file]. Ottawa, ON. Retrieved from https://www.ccpa-accp.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/StandardsOfPractice_en_June2015.pdf

Canadian Association of Social Workers. (2005). Code of Ethics [PDF file]. Retrieved from https://www.casw-acts.ca/sites/default/files/documents/casw_code_of_ethics.pdf

Bryson, Sandy. Understanding Professional Boundaries [PDF file]. Retrieved from https://www.dsc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Understanding-Professional-Boundaries.pdf

The post “Help! My client is in love with me!” How to establish boundaries in your coaching practice—and avoid all kinds of nasty situations. appeared first on Precision Nutrition.

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[jmrphy]

Two cultures of radical politics

While many people on the left still pretend that “free speech” and “political correctness” are fake right-wing concepts, a number of us are beginning to realize the profound mistake of dismissive moral posturing. Get your popcorn ready now, because it’s going to be a fascinating mess as more and more people on the left begin to realize that the cultural politics of policing moral symbols has been fully exhausted and defeated.

The collective-emancipatory gains of genuine truth-seeking are now so massive compared to the rapidly diminishing marginal returns to the moral model, that there is no reason to spend much effort trying to convince the remaining moralists. First, If I am right that the truth-seeking model is better, then it will win because it is better, whether I convince anyone in a blog post or not. Second, I am practicing it, so if I am right then by simply thinking and doing what I am thinking and doing, you’ll see how it works in practice. If I’m wrong, my ideas will fizzle out and I’ll go away. In any event, what I would like to do here is simply unpack some of the notions I have been referring to in not-fully-explained shorthand. To begin, what do I mean when I refer to the “moral model” and the “truth-seeking” model?

The moral model vs. the truth-seeking model of radical politics

By “left moralism” or any of the other cognate phrases I sometimes use to this effect, I am referring to the model of political activism that seeks to change society by enforcing moral prohibitions. I think this is far and away the most widely held mental model of how progressive social change can and should be achieved, in moderate as well as radical circles. Make a list of words and ideas and types of behavior that are good, and try to get people to identify with them, talk about them, and go to meetings around them. Sometimes these words seem very concrete and action-oriented (such as “strike”) but nonetheless, if you observe like an anthropologist would, you find that an overwhelming portion of the energy is organized around identification with certain words and ideas believed to be in some sense normatively good or desirable. Always curiously lacking is impartial assessment of effects. Also, make a list of words and ideas and types of behavior that are bad and politics means discouraging these by whatever means necessary. Radical politics means really strongly discouraging these things. An important feature of this model is that what, exactly, should be on the list of bad things is a question that is not in principle open to question or debate. It is a characteristic of the moralist model that questioning its basic premises is itself one of the bad things to be discouraged; “good politics” means granting the goodness of the list and it’s enforcement, simply because that’s the moral thing to do. In practice, today, what’s actually on the list of bad things is generally determined through reverse dominance hierarchy in which deference is given to the most institutionally dominated individuals and groups you happen to be around. To be clear, I don’t think this is a totally unreasonable model. It kind of makes sense: society oppresses people unequally so give some priority to oppressed people in defining what is bad and everyone try to stop the occurrence of those bad things from happening. Not necessarily perfect but fair enough.

I use the phrase “truth-seeking” as an informal and intuitive name for what I could just as well call “scientific method.” The problem with “scientific method” is that for a lot of people this will sound too grandiose for thinking and acting around everyday cultural questions. Not to mention a lot of people think “scientific method” applied to social questions is impossible or harmful to begin with (it’s not, it’s just harder to apply to social questions than to something like physical objects). But most people agree that our ideas about the world around us can be more or less accurate, more or less consistent with how things actually work outside of us, and most people can admit they have an inner sense of when their ideas are proven true by reality (something works as you expect it to), and when their ideas are proven false by reality (something you are doing produces unexpected, undesirable outcomes).

So when I talk about “truth-seeking,” all I mean is informally but seriously subjecting all of one’s beliefs, opinions, and mental models of the world to the basic guidelines of scientific method in an everday, intuitive fashion. Basically: everything you think is just a theory, and everything you observe at all times is data you compare to what your theory would have predicted; you need to actively consider all plausible alternative theories and you update your mental models of the world accordingly. You can, and should, have unique background experiences and feelings and creative quirks; scientific method in no way discourages or disqualifies any of that, as it is popular for naïve humanists to suggest. Indeed, truth-seeking is actually the only way to remain loyal to your unique experiences and quirks: the scientific method provides the key for translating your unique data into power over your unique environment, by subjecting your thoughts to objective rules that are guaranteed to give you the best possible command of your unique situation. So this isn’t just an academic protocol; it’s the only way to live a basically honest and mature life, and I would argue it’s a basic pre-requisite for anyone who would hope to contribute to the elimination of oppression by complex social structures.

So the “truth-seeking” model of radical politics is fundamentally opposed to the moral model. The moral model says to begin with what is currently defined as morally bad (typically through reverse dominance hierarchies), and devote yourself to discouraging and generally reducing the prevalence of those things. The moral model requires specifically that nobody question the fundamental goodness of that model, or the wisdom of certain items being placed on the list of prohibitions, because the whole strategy is based precisely on forcing conformity to Goodness. The truth-seeking model’s only rule is that you must be honest about your data and how you’re making inferences from that data, but otherwise everyone should just do their best trying to understand how oppressive structures function and how to think/speak/act with others in the precise ways that will predictably overthrow those structures in favor of equality and liberation. The moral model’s final endgame is a world in which all badness goes away through mass conformity with moral criteria. The truth-seeking model’s final endgame is, through diverse and totally free experimentation, we collectively unlock our true functional relationships to oppressive social machinery while immanently rewiring them into correctly-functioning liberation machines.

Why the moral model will not go down without a fight

The reason the opening of a free-speech cleavage on the left is going to be really messy is that a large number of people have so long schooled themselves in the cultural politics of moralism, and have for so long avoided the very different protocols of truth-seeking (i.e. scientific method), that such a paradigm shift will understandably be experienced as a mortal threat to their identity. And we know that human beings will sooner go to war than reasonably reflect on anything that threatens fundamental dimensions of their identity. People have staked years of effort and many of their social relationships on a model that is suddenly obsolete, so it’s reasonable for such people to be confused and fearful about their place in the future of radical politics, let alone society. Fortunately, scientific method has an extraordinary egalitarian feature that goes woefully under-celebrated in radical circles: it’s equally demonstrable (ultimately) to anyone who is willing to work at understanding it.

The whole politics of left-moralism is actively anti-egalitarian because it’s logic is not readily and equally available to all interested parties. There are many social and economic factors that make access to scientific method unequally distributed, of course, but it has the uniquely egalitarian-emancipatory feature of at least being intelligible and employable by all who can find their way to it. The protocols of the left-moral model are not only beset by the same basic problems of unequal access (this is why educational privilege is curiously the single non-demonized privilege in left-moral culture), but the protocols of how to think and act politically on the left-moral model are not available to all in principle. They are unequally accessible by definition, so even if they start out noble and true, there is no way for large groups of humans to hold each other accountable to them in a fashion equally consistent with their truth. The magical techniques of being an ideal ally in the moral war—in which, one day certain words are declared good and the next day they are designated impermissible, according to a logic that does not exist out of the declarations of those groups and individuals who happen to be at the top of constantly shifting reverse dominance hierarchies—is therefore inegalitarian in principle. This is not to cry woe for the exclusion of white men from power (as will be the immediate rejoinder to my point here), it is to cry woe for anyone anywhere who might like to enter revolutionary movements for liberation from diverse starting points. The left-moral model is inherently illegible for anyone who is not able to go through narrow, fickle, local person-driven power dynamics to receive the day’s edicts on what is good and bad. Scientific method, while beset by problems of unequal access as with everything under capitalism, at least has the egalitarian virtue of being written down, basically unchanging, and citable to all.

The two models represent two different bio-chemical equilibria

I think a lot of smart and genuinely good people on the left operate on this model simply because, as a really-existing cultural structure, it can always inflict very real punishments they are not personally able to risk at the moment (ostracism) and it really delivers rewards they are not personally able to forego at the moment (social stability, standing and status in the in-group, efficacy, purity, etc.)

But the whole point of being a radical or revolutionary is to actively cultivate a higher tolerance for social punishment than bourgeois normies, and less reliance on the everyday psychological payoffs that bourgeois normies require to make their sad lives livable.

The revolutionary life, the life that genuinely risks itself in the name of what it believes, operates on a totally different equilibrium. Through cultivated attitude and iterating behavioral practice, we push our social punishment tolerance to the human maximum (but no more), our reliance on disingenous bourgeois psychological tricks to the human minimum (but no less), but we set our truth-seeking and truth-speaking/behaving high enough that it becomes a unique and inviolable source of two key resources. First, it provides motivation/energy replacing that which is lost by foregoing the convential bourgeois channels, because any genuine process of truth-seeking is by definition interesting, inspiring, and endless. Second, it provides actual power, for oneself and for whoever you wish to share it with, insofar as increasing your understanding over the social average unlocks concrete pathways to change the world around you despite that most people are content to leave the world as it is. Read the biography of any well-known revolutionary in history (anyone whose life itself participated in world-historical effects), whether it be a political revolutionary or creative/cultural revolutionary, and you will find they are not just different or more extreme than their contemporaries. You will find they organized their life on this fundamentally different equilibrium, a qualitatively different organization of energy inputs and ouputs, which provide the sustainable bio-chemical basis necessary for producing systemically transformative truths despite extreme social punishment and very little bourgeois subjectivity-maintenance.

Conclusion

The left-moralist model will protest the new school loudly and insistently until one day you just don’t hear from it anymore. This day is probably much sooner than most people think. Very soon the whole fashion of generalized moral condemnation will be so fully outed as an intellectually disingenuous and practically conservative tendency, that everyone will soon be pretending they never engaged in that embarrasing old fad. And the new cool kids on the block will be all those who are currently risking themselves on truth-seeking, those who were willing to take a little bit of heat from sad moralists in favor of seeking what really works for producing large-scale liberation dynamics. The reason I know this is not because I’m special; quite the contrary, it is because some version of this pattern characterizes all epochal transformations. A scientific outlook makes you larger by making you smaller, for it allows you to find a humble but real role in a set of infinitely larger objective processes.

from Justin Murphy http://ift.tt/2pISIls

[csrgood]

Simple Financial Reminders for Complex Times

As the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, personal finances and purchasing habits have changed abruptly and dramatically for nearly everyone. More people are working – and buying – from home. Many are spending more consciously, while others, sadly, are facing unemployment, furloughs or a reduced income.

These dynamic and challenging times present a seemingly odd moment to recognize April’s Financial Literacy Month, which Alliance Data and Comenity Bank have championed for many years. The annual observance has historically been a time for us to educate our cardmembers and our own associates about ways to promote financial wellbeing.

But while the current financial environment has changed, we believe there is still a strong need for education at this time, perhaps even stronger. Our early response to the threat included emergency work-from-home protocols for the majority of our organization, enabling thousands of associates on our customer care teams to continue to serve our cardmembers with minimal disruption.

Our conversations with associates and customers over the last few weeks have reminded us how important understanding basic financial fundamentals is during these confusing and uncertain times.

Review your spending

Take the time to review your spending and create a budget.  This will help you prioritize necessities and savings that will put you in a stronger financial position for the short and long-term. Identify which expenses are fixed and which are variable, including entertainment and discretionary expenses. These expenses should be lower than your income and still leave room for emergencies and savings toward future goals, such as college, retirement or homeownership. Review your budget regularly and be prepared to make adjustments if your financial position changes.

Monitor your credit score

Your credit score is a reflection of your overall credit health. Many people only consider their credit score when they go to sign a lease, secure a mortgage or finance a new car. And while you may not be engaging in these transactions at the moment, it’s important to monitor your credit score in the meantime, as it determines your risk as a borrower and can impact the type of loan you qualify for. Keeping a low credit card balance and paying credit bills on time are two important factors in higher credit scores.

Keep your information secure

With more individuals making online purchases from home, it’s important to take steps to secure and protect your personal information. Ensure the passwords for each of your financial accounts are unique and strong. Never click on a link from a source you don’t know or trust, and always be on the lookout for phishing emails. If you receive any calls or digital communications asking for your banking information, never give account numbers or personal information without first confirming legitimacy. If something doesn’t seem right, stop the communication and reach out to your bank directly.

Don’t fall for a scam

Given the current financial climate and uncertainties many are facing due to COVID-19, scammers are looking to take advantage of those who are most vulnerable. Payday loan and “free financing” scams are increasing as more individuals experience constrained finances. It is critical to read the fine print and do your research when making any financial decision. As always, if an offer seems too good to be true, it probably is.

These tips are just a handful of the recommendations and other resources we have available for anyone to make smart, well-informed decisions about their finances.

These are challenging times, and we’re here to help. Please contact us or reach out on our social media channels for any customer needs, questions or suggestions on other personal finance tips to share. Any customers who are experiencing financial hardship due to COVID-19 can contact Comenity by calling the number on the back of their card. We have relief programs in place which are tailored specifically to our customers that are impacted by the pandemic.

And while we continue to champion financial wellbeing, above all, our wish is for the health and safety of our associates, cardmembers, clients and communities.

source: https://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/44734-Simple-Financial-Reminders-for-Complex-Times?tracking_source=rss

[cryptodictation]

Philosopher Francisco Bosco points out transitions, in the Covid-19 era

How to see the world in these days pandemic? Which lens to use to study and understand human and social relationships at this time? THE post office listened to the poet (doctor of literary theory at UFRJ) and philosopher Francisco Bosco on contemporary themes, such as the egosm of the Brazilian elite and the need to care for the soul. Program member Monday chat, on the GNT channel, Francisco, son of musician Joo Bosco and visual artist Angela Bosco, has a “heavily light” speech when talking about the effects of the new coronavirus on society. “There is a transition slow and garbled for socialization, the terms of which are not yet clear. This cathartic moment, when we will throw the masks up, we will embrace, dance and drink, all together, it shouldn't happen so soon, ”he analyzes.

The distinctive world that was fashion in literature became reality, with the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus. What

must changes occur in the human soul after all this is over?

Well, first of all, it is precisely the human “soul” that is suffering the most. From the perspective of the number of deaths, this pandemic has not yet spread to other epidemics, which have wiped out significant parts of populations in several countries. But human beings are social, our soul flourishes, quickens in close contact with other humans – and the virus has achieved this as no historical event has been able to do. Not only fear, as in wars (fear of the enemy, fear of the gun), but also anguish. In a certain philosophical and psychoanalytic tradition, anxiety is a diffuse affection, without a clear and determined object. Anguish is an affection triggered by debt, by indeterminacy. So it is difficult to talk about change, because we know very little about what the future will be like, in the short and medium term.

Human relations (or non-relations) suffered a blow. The digital bubble no longer satisfies people who have been forced to change the pace of life. I caught myself, for example, photographing an ant carrying a piece of bread that I dropped. I thought: this ant has been there for years and I never noticed it. What delusion is that? (laughs)

Well, digital social networks mainly mobilize two compulsions: for occupation and for recognition. These compulsions still affect us – see the fever of lives, for example. But social distance has created, at the same time, a nostalgia for the physical world, and a certain nausea for digital. In this context, ants are more likely to be noticed. (laughs)

Social networks that were crammed with frivolities, of the “unreal” image of people, today they show spaces for reflection, for solidarity. Should this continue after social isolation is over? What should be (if anything) in the essence of people?

Digital networks have always been complex phenomena. There is a whole dimension of frivolity, narcissism taken to the extreme, addiction to increasingly fragmented sensory stimuli. But there is also the dimension of public space, which is constitutively more democratic than the traditional public sphere, by the way – although this more direct democracy ended up strengthening populisms, which have a whole anti-democratic dimension. In times of external threat, the sense of collectivity is expected to deepen. This is independent of the digital world. But the other dynamic is no less true. As Trump's conduct shows, for example, prohibiting the export of inputs and confiscating PPE (personal protection equipment) directed to other countries. In these times of scarcity, there is a kind of return to civilization. In a minute, international regulatory bodies are abandoned and selfish sovereignty is defended. In this sense, the virus can be taken advantage of by anti-globalism. early to say what prevails.

In the pre-pandemic world, there was a growth of “ideas” contrary to scientific knowledge, culture, art … Can things change? Why did we get to this point? Has knowledge lost value?

We reached this point because of the failures accumulated by liberal democracies in the past 30 years. More liberal than democratic, these social forms failed to combat inequality, concentrated extreme power in the hands of elites, produced in societies a feeling of remote and helpless citizenship. These values ​​- science, art, knowledge – were associated with liberal elites, in which huge social contingents were not recognized. It was a long process, going back to the 1970s, in some ways. The 2008 crisis, in global terms, and the June 2013 crisis in Brazil, were the last straw. It will not be easy to reverse this process, because it is not merely rational. It involves affection, identity, profound subjective and social dimensions, which do not change overnight.

We watch people on the street and calling on others to leave social isolation at the height of contamination. How tonthropology analyze such absurd reactions?

In part, this is a consequence of the cognitive-affective structure that was formed around the figure of Bolsonaro. The base is binary and thinks in terms of simple oppositions. The virus came from China, communist China, communists are always conspiring to seize power, so one must deny the virus, protect freedom, etc. Congress, the Supreme Court, the intellectuals, the scientists defend social isolation. Now, these are the enemies, so we have to do the opposite. as soon as the bolsonarista base thinks. On the other hand, there are legitimate moral, subjective and social dilemmas in this behavior. Unfortunately, Bolsonaro vocalizes them in the worst way, and this spreads throughout his base. But this clamor for a return to social activities, although certainly wrong and irresponsible at that moment, in a few weeks or months will have to be discussed in a rational, scientific way, and probably involve very difficult moral decisions.

In the early years of the last century, Oswaldo Cruz was attacked for trying toto control epidemics in Rio de Janeiro, such as bubnica plague, yellow fever and smallpox. Created the position of buyer of rats (employee who collected the rodents and paid 300 iris per captured animal). But the Brazilian, instead of sand ally s the sanitarist’s ideas, started breeding rats to sell them. Has Brazil not changed?

Brazil, like many countries in the world, has a very weak sense of collectivity. Our institutional origin prevented this from forming. This country was above all a capitalist, exploratory project. Tocqueville, in its classic Democracy in America, notes that the persecuted Englishmen, who faced the Atlantic towards America, did so out of an idea: the idea of ​​equality (of course: they exterminated indigenous people and enslaved blacks, even after the revolution). We don't have that trace on our birth certificate. On the contrary, the letter of finding, from (Pero Vaz de) Caminha, ends with a request for favor. Nothing less republican. Finally, social egosm prevails in Brazil. It is not by chance that we have the most unequal country title in the world, perhaps alongside South Africa.

(Re) We discovered a feeling that has not been around for a long time by social networks: longing. After that all depression, there will be a lot of parties (laughs). How to deal with homesickness?

Look, unfortunately, except for an unlikely super-effective medication, this party will not be as we wish. There will be a slow and truncated transition to socialization, the terms of which are not yet clear. This cathartic moment, when we will throw the masks up, we will embrace, dance and drink, all together, it shouldn't happen so soon. On the other hand, a vaccine is likely to emerge in record time. Six months are already being talked about, which is unprecedented in the history of medicine. But it can happen, because the situation is such that it authorizes unspecified protocols, although risky.

As you see the Brazilian political scene, does it seem that ideological fundamentalism is more exacerbated? To make matters worse, public policies do not accompany ss social demands. Can this cause further disruptions in society?

The only quick response we had was to enact social isolation. We did this before several economically more advanced countries. As it was only a political decision, not requiring great coordination and execution efforts, it could be done. And it was done by governors. Moreover, almost everything oscillates between insufficiency, backwardness and precariousness. Economic measures took longer than they should have. Paulo Guedes resisted as much as he could convert to Keynesianism. It is no exaggeration to say that it was the last of the liberals to do so. Field hospitals have been built, but PPE is missing and it has been difficult to obtain. The testing of Brazil is one of the smallest in the world. And, of course, Bolsonaro, more paranoid than ever, does everything in the worst way. The scenarios ahead are worrying, in all aspects: economic, social, political and institutional.

The unpunished proliferation of fake news, the excess of irrelevant information confuses people. How to make this filter? How to be educated and vaccinated against this modern evil?

I do not believe that this can be fought only with measures taken by large technology companies. These companies must take responsibility, the Brazilian Judiciary also needs to debate more deeply and create laws punishing certain practices. But, again, fake news flourishes within a cognitive, affective, identity and imaginary context. As long as this context is not transformed, combating them will largely be like wiping ice.

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[mageguides]

Magento 2 Testing Framework to Cover All Parts of Your Websites

To run a Magento store efficiently, the store owner needs to be careful in checking and testing the website. 

To me, Magento 2 testing framework is not just making sure a website works; it is a continual focus on making sure the site is as good as it possibly can be. Magento 2 test applies to any aspect, whether that is usability, browser compatibility, performance, or functionality.

In this article, we will dig deeper into the testing framework for Magento platform.

Why Magento 2 Testing? 

Imagine that you are going to launch your fantastic new Magento 2 store and have high hopes for generating lots of new inquiries and customers. 

Before launching the site in the final moments, you need to spend a lot of time and effort clicking around to ensure that everything is in the right place, all the links are correct, and nothing bad happens. It must be when your website is ready to launch, and you can sit back to take a breather.

However, when the website is just launched, it does not run as smoothly as you may think. Customers browse your store and start hitting problems. For example, the website does not display correctly for these people, the Magento layout is broken, some images don’t load properly, and your visitors ultimately have a bad experience when using your site. 

You come up with some possible reasons for the issues. Your buyers may use different web browsers with several screen resolutions and different operating systems to the one you use. However, the problem can mostly come from your poor Magento 2 test.

Anyway, your customers may decide not to continue visiting your site and click away. It’s time you get real trouble with your Magento store and start posing some of the following questions.

Did you test where those forms send their essential information and that it correctly worked when someone fills in a contact form?

Your online shop has a problem with its payment processing and, therefore, people cannot complete their cart. How strictly did you test the checkout process?

Other visitors arrive at your website from search engines. Unfortunately, they hit 404 page not found errors. Did you save a list of pages that your previous website had and make sure that you correctly redirect visitors to your new pages?

The above are just a few examples of real problems that can easily occur when launching a new website through inadequate or incomplete testing before the website was launched.

In fact, testing websites is often not a fun task unless you have an obsession with a broken store. Plus, the testing process can be very time-consuming, but it is a necessary phase for any website project, which should be planned for and carried out to the best possible outcome.

Good testing can ultimately result in significant improvement in terms of shopping experience. For example, if the site can satisfy the overall user experience, more people will submit inquiries or make contact with your company. Moreover, customers who already bought products and services from you will possibly come back to your site again and again.

What is Magento 2 Testing Framework? 

Now, I’m pretty sure you got the picture that the Magento 2 test is vital to ensure the website is released to the world as it is intended to be viewed and used. Before diving into the benefits of Magento 2 testing frameworks, let’s clarify what a Magento 2 testing framework actually is.

“In general, a testing framework is a set of guidelines or rules used to create and design website testing cases.”

A framework can consist of a combination of practices and tools that are designed to help quality assurance professionals test more efficiently. These guidelines can include coding standards, object repositories, processes for storing test results, test-data handling methods, or the method to access external resources.

Although these rules are not entirely compulsory and testers can still script or record Magento 2 tests without following them, using an organized framework provides additional benefits that would otherwise be missed out.

Benefits of Using Magento 2 Testing Framework

Taking advantage of a framework for automated and large-scale testing will increase a team’s test speed and efficiency. By testing with a framework, your test accuracy will be improved, and the test maintenance costs, as well as lower risks, can be reduced. 

They are essential to an efficient automated testing process for a few key reasons:

Lower maintenance costs 

Minimal manual intervention

Maximum test coverage

Reusability of code

Improved test efficiency

What Can Do with A Magento 2 Testing Framework? 

Ensure the website quality

Functional testing

Functional tests help you simulate customer behavior on a sample ecommerce website and check if everything on the frontend works flawlessly. 

Here is how it happens in practice. As one of the test scenarios, testers interact directly with page objects and try possible actions such as clicking Home or getting guest order code. Besides, they imitate the actions of a typical customer by placing an order on the website and check how successful and unsuccessful payments unfold from a customer’s perspective. 

Functional testing should be applied at each stage of the Magento store life cycle. Once a Magento website is configured, the overall performance also needs to be checked. If the developers add or change some functionality to your store, testing the changes don’t affect the normal operation of the store.

Integration testing

When giant companies choose to digitize their business workflows, we integrate Magento with external supporting technologies such as CRM, ERP, or PIM. 

The integration test comes to help to ensure seamless interaction between the platform and integration. Specifically, it checks if data flows correctly within store parts, and updates get reflected in all the systems involved. For example, we test if the product distribution process gets added to the employee’s database in ERP extension to ensure data synchronization functions well.

(You can also browse other Magento extensions that we have spent all our time carefully checking HERE!)

Integration testing plays an important role in projects with multi-component IT infrastructures and requires a good understanding of interconnections and dependencies between the ecosystem constituents. 

Our team mastered integration testing through collaboration with an omnichannel retailer – we built a complex IT environment with a Magento application connected to a number of business-critical systems and internal tools.

Web API functional testing

The purpose of Web API functional testing is to check the Magento Web APIs’ operation and reveal any deviations from the supposed performance. 

Magento 2 is optimal for both web service communication protocols – REST (Representational State Transfer) and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), so the test can be conducted with either REST or SOAP.

Despite being invisible for customers, multiple Web APIs on Magento websites act as connectors to third-party servers. We can take social marketing as an example. This marketing strategy has proved to be effective for customer acquisition. That is the reason why it is encouraged to reinforce the brand identity with social presence. 

For that, when the accounts via social Web APIs connect to Magento and synchronize the updates in most stores, Web API functional testing is crucial.

Ensure Magento Code Quality

JavaScript testing

JavaScript is undeniably one of the three main pillars in web development. 

Its responsibility includes creating a dynamic and interactive experience for users. Accordingly, most of the functionality on Magento 2 websites is JavaScript-powered ranging from dropdown lists, videos, animated page elements like resizing to relocating. 

Aiming at enhancing customer experience, all the features on the frontend can have precisely the opposite effect if crash. Having stumbled upon a single malfunction alone, customers may naturally question the website quality on the whole. Meanwhile, customers’ trust is undoubtedly the foundation for their loyalty. 

Thus, JavaScript testing ensures that all JavaScript elements in a Magento-based store function as expected. We can test JavaScript modules and other JavaScript portions of the UI. These tests are similar to the integration test used for server-side testing.

Static testing

The static test is always a rule to start with the Magento code audit when landing a new project. The test is to detect bugs and vulnerabilities before they result in website malfunctions and security breaches. 

The initial purpose of static tests is to check if PHP and JavaScript code corresponds to Magento 2 coding standards and best practices. Conveniently, static tests allow us to analyze code without running it. When extending the functionality of Magento websites, developers initiate static tests to detect code quality issues as soon as possible. 

Static testing in Magento consists of several tests to ensure the code stability and quality. In addition to JavaScript and PHP, more complicated integrity tests target complex scenarios like circular dependency or exception hierarchy. 

Unit testing

While conducting unit testing on Magento 2, developers focus on a single unit of PHP code to check a particular function or module. 

Let’s imagine that you have customized the checkout page and launched it even when untested. In the worst case, customers may run into issues while completing the purchase and abandon the process. To prevent these errors, we recommend testing each unit of the code during the development stage.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have covered every aspect of the Magento 2 test for ecommerce stores. We hope this guide will help you save time and effort in the testing process.

If you’re still confused about the process, don’t hesitate to drop your comments below or check out other posts on Mageguides. We will get back to you!

The post Magento 2 Testing Framework to Cover All Parts of Your Websites appeared first on Mageguides.

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[oovitus]

Boundary issues: What to do when a client is in love with you, and other sticky situations.

What do you do when your client asks you out for a drink? Or texts at 2am? When you’re a health and fitness professional working closely with people who need your help, things can occasionally get awkward. Use this guide to set boundaries, while still creating a trusting coach-client relationship.

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The details: A Precision Nutrition Certified coach—we’ll call her Sue—reached out to our private Facebook group for advice on a serious problem. Her client, also a coworker, had developed feelings for her.

Sue didn’t feel the same way.

She cared about this client and his goals. He’d already lost 50 pounds with her help.

But she didn’t want to be a caregiver or caretaker. His behavior had become an emotional drain.

When Sue tried to distance herself from the client, he lashed out and became self-destructive. His health habits regressed, and he went back to emotional eating.

As a coaching professional, Sue understood the dynamics. She knew the client’s reliance on her had become unhealthy. And she recognized that she herself was becoming more and more distressed.

Understandably, she felt stuck.

She’d have to confront difficult feelings: The client would be upset.

He’d regress: Asking him to change his behavior would cause a health-damaging backslide.

She was also caught in conflicting close relationships: They work together every day.

Tricky situations like Sue’s are very common in health and fitness coaching.

Yet while therapists, psychologists, and doctors are formally trained to navigate the boundary issues that arise in client-practitioner relationships, fitness professionals often aren’t.

So consider this your crash course for conduct, complete with practical tools you can use now, no matter where you are in your career.

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The relationship between a client and a health practitioner is inherently intimate.

This is true whether you’re a strength coach, a group fitness trainer, a psychologist, a massage therapist, or a yoga instructor.

Deep feelings are discussed. Bodies are touched.

It’s “closeness,” even if it’s not romantic closeness.

As a result of this intimacy, it’s quite common (and natural) for coaches or clients to develop feelings (negative or positive) for each other. Feelings of friendship, tenderness, protectiveness, jealousy, anger, and/or frustration spill into the professional arrangement.

Without honesty and clear expectations, stuff gets messy.

Defining and upholding proper boundaries ensures that feelings don’t confuse the ultimate goal: to help the client achieve his or her health goals through self-empowered action.

When we don’t have well-defined and well-communicated roles, everyone is kinda standing around wondering, “What am I allowed to do here? And how are we supposed to interact?”

Anxieties, frustrations, and old hurts emerge, often vaguely and vexingly, and we feel pushed and pulled in many directions.

That’s why we need boundaries.

Boundaries are the invisible lines of division between the service provider and the client or patient, the social (and sometimes physical) norms and practices that define:

who is playing what role (e.g. who is coach and who is client);

what those roles involve (e.g. who provides direction and how); and

what the limits of that professional relationship are (e.g. how available the coach is for the client, or what’s discussed in sessions).

Good boundaries mean that clients:

feel safe and secure with their coaches, trusting they’ll act in their best interests.

understand the care a coach shows is the universal care of an invested, compassionate professional, and not a sign of romantic interest (or some other attachment).

are obligated to show up maturely and responsibly; to regulate their emotions, own their behaviors, and be consistent.

Good boundaries mean that coaches:

avoid ethical breaches or working outside of our scope of practice.

don’t take on more than our share of responsibility for client progress and change.

show our clients clearly who is doing what, when, and how.

recognize the potential power imbalance that is part of coaching, and respect our clients as autonomous individuals.

With clear boundaries, we have fewer misunderstandings and awkward situations.

Which is always good.

With well-defined, strong, healthy boundaries, our “emotional bank account” is freed up to invest in a robust coaching relationship that keeps us as coaches safe and sane, while helping clients reach their goals.

Appropriate (and also creepy) behavior is context-dependent.

There’s a green zone: Totally cool almost all of the time. Like smiling and making eye contact as you greet a client.

There are “gray zones”: A little more blurry, and depends on the context and nature of the relationship. Like hugging a client after they just did their first pullup.

And there’s a red zone: Definitely—and always—a hard “no.” Like, “Don’t steal from clients” seems pretty intuitive.

But in real life, boundaries aren’t one-size-fits-all.

Therefore (and to make things more complex), the same action can be “green” with one client and “red” with another.

With a client you have a secure, trusting relationship with, it might be totally cool to exchange the odd gift.

But that newer client you suspect might be crushing on you? Exchanging gifts may send the wrong message and confuse the purpose of the relationship.

Context is everything.

With more experience, trust, and maturity you have more freedom—to get close, to joke, potentially to do or say “inappropriate” things.

With relationships that are newer, more fraught or confused, play by stricter rules.

In terms of ethical codes, health and fitness coaching is a little late to the party.

Other fields of service provision, such as psychology or social work, have clear codes of ethics they abide by.

Many mental and physical health care service providers receive ethics training as part of their certification, but coaches often don’t.

Yet part of your job as a coach is to behave ethically, which includes defining and maintaining clear boundaries.

So Precision Nutrition wrote its own Code of Ethics for the coaches we certify.

You can start with our Code of Ethics as a template, and add to it as you wish, according to your own value system, and the nuances of your practice.

PN Coaching Certification Code of Ethics

In your professional role as a coach:

Act in the client’s best interest. Prioritize their wellbeing, safety, values, goals, and comfort where possible.

Respect the worth and dignity of the clients you serve. Treat all clients with professional courtesy, compassion, and care.

Protect your clients’ privacy and confidentiality. This includes that you:

Follow standard data security protocols, such as protecting your personal logins and storing client data securely.

Be careful what you discuss about clients, and with whom.

Do not disclose personal or identifying details of clients.

Ask permission before sharing anything on social media.

Act with integrity. Make yourself worthy of your clients’ respect and trust. Don’t exploit your clients, financially or otherwise. Don’t seek personal gain from your client relationship (beyond your coaching fees, obviously).

Act with objectivity. Know the rules, regulations, and procedures expected of you, and follow them equitably and appropriately for each client.

Set clear, accurate, and reasonable expectations. Define the terms of the coaching arrangement (e.g. payment, frequency of meeting, how coaching works, etc.) immediately and reinforce them often. Be upfront about what results the client can realistically expect to see.

Have clear professional boundaries. Avoid multiple relationships (e.g. coaching friends or family members; becoming friends with clients) where possible. If you must have multiple relationships, recognize the inherent power imbalance in coaching, and be very clear what hat you’re wearing in a given situation.

Know the limits of your skills and scope of practice. If you can’t serve a client for reasons of ethics or expertise, refer them to another coach and/or care provider if possible.

Keep your skills current. Pursue professional competence, excellence, and mastery. Seek to be a credit to your profession.

8 ways to stay out of sticky situations.

For coaches, there are lots of ways identify, establish, and maintain boundaries in your professional practice. We’ve got 8 to get you started.

The more tools you use, the more clear, comfortable, and secure your relationships will be.

Plus, less awkward moments.

1. Pay attention to your “emotional radar.”

Often, when boundaries get pushed (or trampled on), your body will tell you.

For example, you might notice that around a certain client, you feel tense, “icky,” or even repelled.

If you observe those sensations, check in with yourself.

Are roles defined and contracts clear?

Are you being asked to do things (either implicitly or explicitly) that make you feel uncomfortable?

Are you being exposed to some “TMI” material, either through the content of your client’s words, or images they sent to you?

If you can identify what’s bothering you, work to fix the situation:

Model appropriate behavior.

Communicate clearly, assertively, and maturely. (Keep reading for ideas on how to do this.)

Inform others about your boundaries and expectations for the working relationship. Don’t assume people “should just know” what appropriate behavior is. They might not.

2. Use body language to manage the space between you and your clients.

We “say” a lot without actually saying it.

Humans have a sort of sixth sense when it comes to expressing and reading body language. What we do with our bodies, and what others do, is worth a thousand words.

That means you can actually use your body as a tool to shape the coach-client relationship.

You can use your nonverbal cues to steer or “lead” clients.

For example, if a client is getting a little too close, you can lean or step back a little to increase the distance between you, or put an object between you (such as a desk or bench).

Without using words, this suggests, “This is a better amount of space between us.”

Other times, you may want to encourage closeness.

One simple way to do this is by “mirroring” your clients’ movements (subtly), and making eye contact. This demonstrates your attention and presence, and can foster a feeling of connection.

To convey confidence and authority, stand or sit tall, with good, but relatively relaxed posture. You’ll look like someone worth respecting and listening to.

3. Use your voice to show the right balance of care and authority.

Voices are powerful.

Your voice can command, cajole, calm, or control—and it can help you set and maintain boundaries too.

Generally, a warm, yet professional tone will signify interest and authority.

Speak clearly at a moderate pace, and unless you’re actually asking a question, be careful of a tendency to use a rising tone at the end of a sentence. (Which will make everything sound like a question? And it’ll imply that you don’t need to be taken seriously?)

Match your voice volume and cadence to your client’s to show attunement.

You can also use your voice to steer someone gently if you feel things should be going in a different direction: talking slower and lower to a client who’s gotten worked up and is talking fast and loud; speaking gently to a client who’s intimidated, scared, or defensive; or speaking firmly and clearly to a client who’s gotten a little too… friendly.

4. Write like a pro (or at least a good middle school student)

Even if your main jam is one-on-one sessions with clients, talking in an office or on a gym floor, you’ll probably do a fair bit of writing too: in emails or texts, handouts, contracts, and signs on the wall.

Your professional image is reflected in your writing, so cover the basics: Use proper punctuation, check your spelling, and get your message across clearly and concisely.

Make sure signs are clearly displayed and contracts are reviewed and understood, ideally before you begin your coaching relationship.

Signs and contracts tell clients what to expect, what their responsibilities are, and what you’re here for (and not here for). Articulate this up front, and you’ll have fewer problems later.

5. Make informed consent an ongoing conversation.

If you’ve ever joined a gym, had a massage, received psychotherapy, or joined a sports team, you might have had to go through some kind of informed consent and waiver-signing process.

An informed consent form usually covers things like scope of services and liability, and the potential risks to clients. It’s a good idea for every coaching practice to have one.

But it doesn’t have to stop there.

If made an ongoing conversation, the informed consent process can be an awesome, useful tool that helps define boundaries and helps clients feel heard, respected, and comforted.

Check in with your client on consent topics every few weeks. You can organize the conversation around themes like:

What’s happening for you as a client right now? Can you give me a “status update” about how you feel / think about our process, or your current situation?

Are you OK with what’s happening now? Does this match what you expected or wanted? Would you feel more comfortable doing something differently?

Do you understand what’s happening now? Do you as a client, comprehend why we’re doing something, and/or what the risks and benefits are? Do you understand how this activity connects to your goals?

Do you want to continue in this direction? Or do you need a break? Informed consent includes the client knowing that they have the right to say no to anything the coach proposes.

6. Protect your time.

Pop quiz: If a client texts you at 2am, do you respond?

Clients may email, text, or even call at all hours of the day or night. While you can have your business hours clearly displayed on your website, contracts, or signs around your office, clients may still pop in when it’s convenient for them.

That’s OK. (So long as they’re not banging on the door of your personal home at midnight. That’s “red zone” material.)

When and how quickly you respond to clients signals to them what you will accept, and what they should expect.

For example, if you start answering emails at 10:30 at night, a client may expect you to be available during those hours. If you always respond to texts within three minutes, a client may expect nearly immediate answers from you.

You get to decide what your boundaries are here, and what you’re comfortable with. If you don’t want your evenings to be crowded out by client emails, then turn the computer off before dinner, and respond to them in the morning.

Similarly, you get to set the tone for how time is spent during your in-person time with clients.

If a client is consistently late or missing appointments, or if they keep directing the conversation to who they went out with on the weekend instead of how their food journaling went, then it’s your job to gently but firmly call them out.

Sometimes an adult conversation needs to happen.

Like:

“Hey, I’ve noticed that you’ve been 20 minutes late for the last three appointments. Is this still a good time for you? If it is, let’s agree to start our session on time so we don’t have to cut into your appointment time.”

Or:

“It sounds like you had a fun weekend! But hey, I’d love to talk about your nutrition. I know one of your goals is to eat better, and I’m curious to know about how you’ve been doing. The more we focus our conversation, the better we can get both of our needs met.”

Approach these conversations as if you and your client are on the same team, rather than adversaries. Be friendly, and focus on the win you both want!

7. Dress sharp.

One perk of being a coach: You get to dress comfy!

One downside of being a coach: You get to dress comfy! Which means that sometimes, it’s hard to know what looks appropriate and also helps you demonstrate a squat or run a few agility ladders.

However, if you choose carefully, you can convey professionalism in athletic gear.

If you look professional, your clients will be less likely to treat you as a buddy or a potential hookup, and more likely to treat you as, well, a professional.

Make sure your clothes are clean and well-maintained, and that all your, um, parts are contained.

Your dress should also be appropriate to your environment. If you work at a gym, gym clothes are good. If you work in an office, “business casual” is likely the better dress code.

8. If physical contact is necessary, check in with your client’s experience of it often.

If you’re a personal trainer, massage therapist, yoga teacher, chiropractor, etc., body work is part of your job.

Make sure to have clients sign a form that provides consent to touch.

Even with contracts signed and squared off, always ask your clients for permission before you touch them, especially in potentially awkward or vulnerable areas. (This is especially important in situations where touch could be misinterpreted—for instance, a male personal trainer touching a female client’s glutes.)

If you’re a coach, here’s a handy checklist for considering boundaries when touching your client.

Does touching my client make sense in the context of our professional relationship? Am I, for example, a massage therapist or personal trainer legitimately touching my client in particular ways?

Does touching my client raise any issues given our social identities? That’s a fancy way of saying who are you, and who are they? Are you male, female, older, younger, the coach, the client (and so on)?

Does touching my client make sense in a cultural or social context? Different cultures have different norms on touch. And “culture” can be anything. For instance, your local MMA gym may consider it perfectly normal to choke someone with your thighs… but that’s not a good look at your average gym.

What are the benefits to touching my client? Am I helping teach them an exercise, giving them useful feedback, creating a genuine personal connection, and/or calming them?

What are the potential risks to touching my client? Might I be invading their boundaries, making them feel less comfortable, or sending signals that could be misinterpreted?

What are my motivations for touching my client? Is this to benefit them, or me?

Do I know my client’s personal history or level of comfort with touch? Some people have a history of physical or sexual abuse, or simply aren’t that comfortable being touched. Since you likely don’t know all clients’ personal details, start by assuming your client may have some kind of discomfort with touching. Proceed slowly with caution and assess their comfort as you go.

How am I letting my client know what to expect? A simple way to judge comfort is just to announce, then ask. For example, “I’m going to put my hand just underneath your left armpit to feel if your lat muscles are engaged. Is that OK?”

What feedback am I getting? Read body language, and ask. If your client gives you a hearty handshake with a bro-back-slap while making eye contact and smiling, you’re probably good to do the same. If you hug them and they shrink back or go rigid, quit hugging them.

Have alternatives handy. If you’re trying to give a client proprioceptive feedback, you can often use some neutral object (like having their butt hit a wall when you’re teaching a hip hinge). If hugging is a no, you may be able to do a less-threatening touch of the upper arm, or just work your smile and wave game.

And this should go without saying, but we’re gonna say it anyway:

For heaven’s sake, don’t touch your clients inappropriately. If you don’t know what constitutes consent or assault, educate yourself.

What to do next

When your “boundary radar” goes off, pay attention.

Don’t wait or avoid a situation that’s bothering you.

If you do, it’ll often get worse.

Prevention is the best option here, but if that hasn’t worked, then sometimes you’ll need to deal directly with an uncomfortable situation.

If possible, prepare documentation—such as emails, text messages, or a written summary of what happened from your perspective—or discussion topics in advance, and consider your overall strategy before having a difficult conversation.

Remember: You never have to work with someone who’s abusive, aggressive, or otherwise violates your boundaries.

Whether it’s a persistent series of misunderstandings and misalignments; someone who constantly gives you the “ugh” or “uh-oh” feeling; or outright harassment, you never have to tolerate a physically or psychologically harmful situation.

Get out or refer out.

Want strategies to level up your coaching?

It’s no secret that master coaches develop over time, through education and consistent practice, usually under the guidance of a mentor or coach.

Precision Nutrition is the only company in the world that both works with thousands of our own nutrition coaching clients and teaches health, fitness, and wellness professionals our real-world methods for getting results.

And here’s some great news: Our next Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification Master Class kicks off on Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019.

Want to achieve total confidence in your coaching skills? Get (and keep) more clients? Grow and strengthen your practice? If so, the Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification is definitely for you.

It’s designed specifically for Level 1 students and grads who realize that knowing about the science of nutrition isn’t enough.

Part master class, part grad program, part mentorship, it’s the only course in the world designed to help you master the art of coaching, meaning better results for your clients and a better practice for you.

Since we only take a limited number of professionals, and since the program sells out every time, I strongly recommend you add your name to our VIP List below. When you do, you get the chance to sign up 24 hours before everyone else. Even better, you get a huge discount off the general price of the program.

[Note: The Level 2 Master Class is only for students and grads of our Level 1 Certification. So if you haven’t yet enrolled in that program, please begin there.]

Interested? Add your name to the VIP list. You’ll save up to 37% and secure your spot 24 hours before everyone else.

We’ll be opening up spots in our next Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification Master Class on Wednesday, April 3rd.

If you want to find out more, we’ve set up the following VIP list which gives you two advantages.

Pay less than everyone else. We like to reward people who are eager to get started and ready to gain mastery in their coaching practice. So we’re offering a discount of up to 37% off the general price when you sign up for the Master Class VIP list.

Sign up 24 hours before the general public and increase your chances of getting a spot. We only open the PN Master Class twice per year. Due to high demand and a very limited number of spots, we expect it to sell out fast. But when you sign up for the Master Class VIP list, we’ll give you the opportunity to register a full 24 hours before anyone else.

If you’re ready to take the next step in becoming a world-class coach, we’re ready to share our knowledge and help you master the art of coaching.

jQuery(document).ready(function(){ jQuery("#references_link").click(function(){ jQuery("#references_holder").show(); jQuery("#references_link").parent().hide(); }); });

References

Click here to view the information sources referenced in this article.

Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association. (2015). Standards of Practice (5th ed.) [PDF file]. Ottawa, ON. Retrieved from https://www.ccpa-accp.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/StandardsOfPractice_en_June2015.pdf

Canadian Association of Social Workers. (2005). Code of Ethics [PDF file]. Retrieved from https://www.casw-acts.ca/sites/default/files/documents/casw_code_of_ethics.pdf

Bryson, Sandy. Understanding Professional Boundaries [PDF file]. Retrieved from https://www.dsc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Understanding-Professional-Boundaries.pdf

The post Boundary issues: What to do when a client is in love with you, and other sticky situations. appeared first on Precision Nutrition.

Boundary issues: What to do when a client is in love with you, and other sticky situations. published first on https://storeseapharmacy.tumblr.com

[packersandmoversinsurat-blog]

Build a site like Housing

Website development is a relatively broad term that many of us use without fully understanding what it means. Since the birth of social media and the growth of online marketing, there are many companies around the globe claiming to specialise in this area. But what exactly does it mean, and how could it help your business?

Website (or web) development basically covers the work involved in creating an online site. The components involved in this process can range from developing a single, static page to advertise a company's contact details or place, and could extend to the most complex, web-based internet applications and network services.

Since the commercialisation of the internet, this has been a growing industry that has allowed people to work remotely from all corners of the world. It has catered to a growing demand, with many businesses needing to outsource technical experts to help them get their website up and running.

As well as a number of web development and design services, an agency may be able to help increase your brand's visibility in other ways - by managing your social media platforms or helping you develop an effective online marketing strategy.

Not only are they technical experts, people who work in this kind of role with have in-depth knowledge of the modern consumer market, so will have a mind for online business. They should also have a creative eye, so will be able to help make your company advertising stand out against other competitors on the market.

You will find a number of digital marketing companies online who you can contact directly to help you enhance your online profile. Be sure to check out customer reviews to find out which ones are the best. You should also be able to view earlier examples of their completed work on their company website.

Web development is an extensive description of various actions pertaining to the creation of website for the internet of intranet. This may comprise e-commerce business development, web content development, web design, web server configuration, client-side or server-side coding. Still, according to web experts, web development pertains merely on non-design features of creating websites such as writing markup as well as coding. Web development may begin from creating of uncomplicated static sole page consisting of plain text up to the highly complex web-oriented internet applications, social network services or electronic businesses.

To huge corporations and businesses, web development groups may include hundreds of web developers. Minimal organizations may just necessitate for a sole and permanent or contractual web developer, or alternative task associated with the work positions like graphic designer or information systems support.

The latest web development tools are employing strong advancement of Linux, PHP, MySQL and Apache as well as Microsoft.NET technologies in order to administer the website as a medium to make use of applications on the internet. Web professional today assist to distribute applications to be web services that are conventionally accessible application though an offline computer.

Rather employing executable code through a local pc, users are connecting through applications on the internet to develop a new content. This has made way for latest methods to communicate and permit various chances to disperse information as well as media delivery. End users now have the capability to access applications coming from various areas, rather than being stocked on a particular location.

n into legal consequences. Mark Cuban Not to be confused with WebCite. A NASA.gov homepage

A website[1], or simply site, is a collection of related web pages, including multimedia content, typically identified with a common domain name, and published on at least one web server. A website may be accessible via a public Internet Protocol (IP) network, such as the Internet, or a private local area network (LAN), by referencing a uniform resource locator (URL) that identifies the site.

Websites have many functions and can be used in various fashions; a website can be a personal website, a commercial website for a company, a government website or a non-profit organization website. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, ranging from entertainment and social networking to providing news and education. All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web, while private websites, such as a company's website for its employees, are typically a part of an intranet.

Web pages, which are the building blocks of websites, are documents, typically composed in plain text interspersed with formatting instructions of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML, XHTML). They may incorporate elements from other websites with suitable markup anchors. Web pages are accessed and transported with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which may optionally employ encryption (HTTP Secure, HTTPS) to provide security and privacy for the user. The user's application, often a web browser, renders the page content according to its HTML markup instructions onto a display terminal.

Hyperlinking between web pages conveys to the reader the site structure and guides the navigation of the site, which often starts with a home page containing a directory of the site web content. Some websites require user registration or subscription to access content. Examples of subscription websites include many business sites, news websites, academic journal websites, gaming websites, file-sharing websites, message boards, web-based email, social networking websites, websites providing real-time stock market data, as well as sites providing various other services. As of 2016 end users can access websites on a range of devices, including desktop and laptop computers, tablet computers, smartphones and smart TVs.

Main article: History of the World Wide Web NASA.gov homepage as it appeared in April 2015

The World Wide Web (WWW) was created in 1990 by the British CERN physicist Tim Berners-Lee.[2] On 30 April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to use for anyone.[3] Before the introduction of HTML and HTTP, other protocols such as File Transfer Protocol and the gopher protocol were used to retrieve individual files from a server. These protocols offer a simple directory structure which the user navigates and chooses files to download. Documents were most often presented as plain text files without formatting, or were encoded in word processor formats.

Websites have many functions and can be used in various fashions; a website can be a personal website, a commercial website, a government website or a non-profit organization website. Websites can be the work of an individual, a business or other organization, and are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose. Any website can contain a hyperlink to any other website, so the distinction between individual sites, as perceived by the user, can be blurred. Websites are written in, or converted to, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and are accessed using a software interface classified as a user agent. Web pages can be viewed or otherwise accessed from a range of computer-based and Internet-enabled devices of various sizes, including desktop computers, laptops, PDAs and cell phones. A website is hosted on a computer system known as a web server, also called an HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) server. These terms can also refer to the software that runs on these systems which retrieves and delivers the web pages in response to requests from the website's users. Apache is the most commonly used web server software (according to Netcraft statistics) and Microsoft's IIS is also commonly used. Some alternatives, such as Nginx, Lighttpd, Hiawatha or Cherokee, are fully functional and lightweight.

Main article: Static web page

A static website is one that has web pages stored on the server in the format that is sent to a client web browser. It is primarily coded in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML); Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are used to control appearance beyond basic HTML. Images are commonly used to effect the desired appearance and as part of the main content. Audio or video might also be considered "static" content if it plays automatically or is generally non-interactive. This type of website usually displays the same information to all visitors. Similar to handing out a printed brochure to customers or clients, a static website will generally provide consistent, standard information for an extended period of time. Although the website owner may make updates periodically, it is a manual process to edit the text, photos and other content and may require basic website design skills and software. Simple forms or marketing examples of websites, such as classic website, a five-page website or a brochure website are often static websites, because they present pre-defined, static information to the user. This may include information about a company and its products and services through text, photos, animations, audio/video, and navigation menus.

Static websites can be edited using four broad categories of software:

Static websites may still use server side includes (SSI) as an editing convenience, such as sharing a common menu bar across many pages. As the site's behaviour to the reader is still static, this is not considered a dynamic site.

Server-side programming languages repartition on 28 April 2016. Main articles: Dynamic web page and Web application

A dynamic website is one that changes or customizes itself frequently and automatically. Server-side dynamic pages are generated "on the fly" by computer code that produces the HTML (CSS are responsible for appearance and thus, are static files). There are a wide range of software systems, such as CGI, Java Servlets and Java Server Pages (JSP), Active Server Pages and ColdFusion (CFML) that are available to generate dynamic web systems and dynamic sites. Various web application frameworks and web template systems are available for general-use programming languages like Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby to make it faster and easier to create complex dynamic websites.

A site can display the current state of a dialogue between users, monitor a changing situation, or provide information in some way personalized to the requirements of the individual user. For example, when the front page of a news site is requested, the code running on the web server might combine stored HTML fragments with news stories retrieved from a database or another website via RSS to produce a page that includes the latest information. Dynamic sites can be interactive by using HTML forms, storing and reading back browser cookies, or by creating a series of pages that reflect the previous history of clicks. Another example of dynamic content is when a retail website with a database of media products allows a user to input a search request, e.g. for the keyword Beatles. In response, the content of the web page will spontaneously change the way it looked before, and will then display a list of Beatles products like CDs, DVDs and books. Dynamic HTML uses JavaScript code to instruct the web browser how to interactively modify the page contents. One way to simulate a certain type of dynamic website while avoiding the performance loss of initiating the dynamic engine on a per-user or per-connection basis, is to periodically automatically regenerate a large series of static pages.

Early websites had only text, and soon after, images. Web browser plug ins were then used to add audio, video, and interactivity (such as for a rich Internet application that mirrors the complexity of a desktop application like a word processor). Examples of such plug-ins are Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Flash, Adobe Shockwave, and applets written in Java. HTML 5 includes provisions for audio and video without plugins. JavaScript is also built into most modern web browsers, and allows for website creators to send code to the web browser that instructs it how to interactively modify page content and communicate with the web server if needed. The browser's internal representation of the content is known as the Document Object Model (DOM) and the technique is known as Dynamic HTML. A 2010-era trend in websites called "responsive design" has given the best of viewing experience as it provides with a device based layout for users. These websites change their layout according to the device or mobile platform thus giving a rich user experience.[4]

While "web site" was the original spelling (s[5]ometimes capitalized "Web site", since "Web" is a proper noun when referring to the World Wide Web), this variant has become rarely used, and "website" has become the standard spelling. All major style guides, such as The Chicago Manual of Style[6] and the AP Stylebook,[7] have reflected this change.

Websites can be divided into two broad categories—static and interactive. Interactive sites are part of the Web 2.0 community of sites, and allow for interactivity between the site owner and site visitors or users. Static sites serve or capture information but do not allow engagement with the audience or users directly. Some websites are informational or produced by enthusiasts or for personal use or entertainment. Many websites do aim to make money, using one or more business models, including:

There are many varieties of websites, each specializing in a particular type of content or use, and they may be arbitrarily classified in any number of ways. A few such classifications might include:

Some websites may be included in one or more of these categories. For example, a business website may promote the business's products, but may also host informative documents, such as white papers. There are also numerous sub-categories to the ones listed above. For example, a porn site is a specific type of e-commerce site or business site (that is, it is trying to sell memberships for access to its site) or have social networking capabilities. A fansite may be a dedication from the owner to a particular celebrity. Websites are constrained by architectural limits (e.g., the computing power dedicated to the website). Very large websites, such as Facebook, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google employ many servers and load balancing equipment such as Cisco Content Services Switches to distribute visitor loads over multiple computers at multiple locations. As of early 2011, Facebook utilized 9 data centers with approximately 63,000 servers.

In February 2009, Netcraft, an Internet monitoring company that has tracked Web growth since 1995, reported that there were 215,675,903 websites with domain names and content on them in 2009, compared to just 19,732 websites in August 1995.[9] After reaching 1 billion websites in September 2014, a milestone confirmed by NetCraft in its October 2014 Web Server Survey and that Internet Live Stats was the first to announce—as attested by this tweet from the inventor of the World Wide Web himself, Tim Berners-Lee—the number of websites in the world has subsequently declined, reverting to a level below 1 billion. This is due to the monthly fluctuations in the count of inactive websites. The number of websites again grew to over 1 billion in March 2016, and has continued growing since.[10]

[makeupartistinmumbai-blog]

Build a site like Housing

Website development is a relatively broad term that many of us use without fully understanding what it means. Since the birth of social media and the growth of online marketing, there are many companies around the globe claiming to specialise in this area. But what exactly does it mean, and how could it help your business?

Website (or web) development basically covers the work involved in creating an online site. The components involved in this process can range from developing a single, static page to advertise a company's contact details or place, and could extend to the most complex, web-based internet applications and network services.

Since the commercialisation of the internet, this has been a growing industry that has allowed people to work remotely from all corners of the world. It has catered to a growing demand, with many businesses needing to outsource technical experts to help them get their website up and running.

As well as a number of web development and design services, an agency may be able to help increase your brand's visibility in other ways - by managing your social media platforms or helping you develop an effective online marketing strategy.

Not only are they technical experts, people who work in this kind of role with have in-depth knowledge of the modern consumer market, so will have a mind for online business. They should also have a creative eye, so will be able to help make your company advertising stand out against other competitors on the market.

You will find a number of digital marketing companies online who you can contact directly to help you enhance your online profile. Be sure to check out customer reviews to find out which ones are the best. You should also be able to view earlier examples of their completed work on their company website.

Web development is an extensive description of various actions pertaining to the creation of website for the internet of intranet. This may comprise e-commerce business development, web content development, web design, web server configuration, client-side or server-side coding. Still, according to web experts, web development pertains merely on non-design features of creating websites such as writing markup as well as coding. Web development may begin from creating of uncomplicated static sole page consisting of plain text up to the highly complex web-oriented internet applications, social network services or electronic businesses.

To huge corporations and businesses, web development groups may include hundreds of web developers. Minimal organizations may just necessitate for a sole and permanent or contractual web developer, or alternative task associated with the work positions like graphic designer or information systems support.

The latest web development tools are employing strong advancement of Linux, PHP, MySQL and Apache as well as Microsoft.NET technologies in order to administer the website as a medium to make use of applications on the internet. Web professional today assist to distribute applications to be web services that are conventionally accessible application though an offline computer.

Rather employing executable code through a local pc, users are connecting through applications on the internet to develop a new content. This has made way for latest methods to communicate and permit various chances to disperse information as well as media delivery. End users now have the capability to access applications coming from various areas, rather than being stocked on a particular location.

n into legal consequences. Mark Cuban Not to be confused with WebCite. A NASA.gov homepage

A website[1], or simply site, is a collection of related web pages, including multimedia content, typically identified with a common domain name, and published on at least one web server. A website may be accessible via a public Internet Protocol (IP) network, such as the Internet, or a private local area network (LAN), by referencing a uniform resource locator (URL) that identifies the site.

Websites have many functions and can be used in various fashions; a website can be a personal website, a commercial website for a company, a government website or a non-profit organization website. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, ranging from entertainment and social networking to providing news and education. All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web, while private websites, such as a company's website for its employees, are typically a part of an intranet.

Web pages, which are the building blocks of websites, are documents, typically composed in plain text interspersed with formatting instructions of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML, XHTML). They may incorporate elements from other websites with suitable markup anchors. Web pages are accessed and transported with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which may optionally employ encryption (HTTP Secure, HTTPS) to provide security and privacy for the user. The user's application, often a web browser, renders the page content according to its HTML markup instructions onto a display terminal.

Hyperlinking between web pages conveys to the reader the site structure and guides the navigation of the site, which often starts with a home page containing a directory of the site web content. Some websites require user registration or subscription to access content. Examples of subscription websites include many business sites, news websites, academic journal websites, gaming websites, file-sharing websites, message boards, web-based email, social networking websites, websites providing real-time stock market data, as well as sites providing various other services. As of 2016 end users can access websites on a range of devices, including desktop and laptop computers, tablet computers, smartphones and smart TVs.

Main article: History of the World Wide Web NASA.gov homepage as it appeared in April 2015

The World Wide Web (WWW) was created in 1990 by the British CERN physicist Tim Berners-Lee.[2] On 30 April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to use for anyone.[3] Before the introduction of HTML and HTTP, other protocols such as File Transfer Protocol and the gopher protocol were used to retrieve individual files from a server. These protocols offer a simple directory structure which the user navigates and chooses files to download. Documents were most often presented as plain text files without formatting, or were encoded in word processor formats.

Websites have many functions and can be used in various fashions; a website can be a personal website, a commercial website, a government website or a non-profit organization website. Websites can be the work of an individual, a business or other organization, and are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose. Any website can contain a hyperlink to any other website, so the distinction between individual sites, as perceived by the user, can be blurred. Websites are written in, or converted to, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and are accessed using a software interface classified as a user agent. Web pages can be viewed or otherwise accessed from a range of computer-based and Internet-enabled devices of various sizes, including desktop computers, laptops, PDAs and cell phones. A website is hosted on a computer system known as a web server, also called an HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) server. These terms can also refer to the software that runs on these systems which retrieves and delivers the web pages in response to requests from the website's users. Apache is the most commonly used web server software (according to Netcraft statistics) and Microsoft's IIS is also commonly used. Some alternatives, such as Nginx, Lighttpd, Hiawatha or Cherokee, are fully functional and lightweight.

Main article: Static web page

A static website is one that has web pages stored on the server in the format that is sent to a client web browser. It is primarily coded in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML); Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are used to control appearance beyond basic HTML. Images are commonly used to effect the desired appearance and as part of the main content. Audio or video might also be considered "static" content if it plays automatically or is generally non-interactive. This type of website usually displays the same information to all visitors. Similar to handing out a printed brochure to customers or clients, a static website will generally provide consistent, standard information for an extended period of time. Although the website owner may make updates periodically, it is a manual process to edit the text, photos and other content and may require basic website design skills and software. Simple forms or marketing examples of websites, such as classic website, a five-page website or a brochure website are often static websites, because they present pre-defined, static information to the user. This may include information about a company and its products and services through text, photos, animations, audio/video, and navigation menus.

Static websites can be edited using four broad categories of software:

Static websites may still use server side includes (SSI) as an editing convenience, such as sharing a common menu bar across many pages. As the site's behaviour to the reader is still static, this is not considered a dynamic site.

Server-side programming languages repartition on 28 April 2016. Main articles: Dynamic web page and Web application

A dynamic website is one that changes or customizes itself frequently and automatically. Server-side dynamic pages are generated "on the fly" by computer code that produces the HTML (CSS are responsible for appearance and thus, are static files). There are a wide range of software systems, such as CGI, Java Servlets and Java Server Pages (JSP), Active Server Pages and ColdFusion (CFML) that are available to generate dynamic web systems and dynamic sites. Various web application frameworks and web template systems are available for general-use programming languages like Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby to make it faster and easier to create complex dynamic websites.

A site can display the current state of a dialogue between users, monitor a changing situation, or provide information in some way personalized to the requirements of the individual user. For example, when the front page of a news site is requested, the code running on the web server might combine stored HTML fragments with news stories retrieved from a database or another website via RSS to produce a page that includes the latest information. Dynamic sites can be interactive by using HTML forms, storing and reading back browser cookies, or by creating a series of pages that reflect the previous history of clicks. Another example of dynamic content is when a retail website with a database of media products allows a user to input a search request, e.g. for the keyword Beatles. In response, the content of the web page will spontaneously change the way it looked before, and will then display a list of Beatles products like CDs, DVDs and books. Dynamic HTML uses JavaScript code to instruct the web browser how to interactively modify the page contents. One way to simulate a certain type of dynamic website while avoiding the performance loss of initiating the dynamic engine on a per-user or per-connection basis, is to periodically automatically regenerate a large series of static pages.

Early websites had only text, and soon after, images. Web browser plug ins were then used to add audio, video, and interactivity (such as for a rich Internet application that mirrors the complexity of a desktop application like a word processor). Examples of such plug-ins are Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Flash, Adobe Shockwave, and applets written in Java. HTML 5 includes provisions for audio and video without plugins. JavaScript is also built into most modern web browsers, and allows for website creators to send code to the web browser that instructs it how to interactively modify page content and communicate with the web server if needed. The browser's internal representation of the content is known as the Document Object Model (DOM) and the technique is known as Dynamic HTML. A 2010-era trend in websites called "responsive design" has given the best of viewing experience as it provides with a device based layout for users. These websites change their layout according to the device or mobile platform thus giving a rich user experience.[4]

While "web site" was the original spelling (s[5]ometimes capitalized "Web site", since "Web" is a proper noun when referring to the World Wide Web), this variant has become rarely used, and "website" has become the standard spelling. All major style guides, such as The Chicago Manual of Style[6] and the AP Stylebook,[7] have reflected this change.

Websites can be divided into two broad categories—static and interactive. Interactive sites are part of the Web 2.0 community of sites, and allow for interactivity between the site owner and site visitors or users. Static sites serve or capture information but do not allow engagement with the audience or users directly. Some websites are informational or produced by enthusiasts or for personal use or entertainment. Many websites do aim to make money, using one or more business models, including:

There are many varieties of websites, each specializing in a particular type of content or use, and they may be arbitrarily classified in any number of ways. A few such classifications might include:

Some websites may be included in one or more of these categories. For example, a business website may promote the business's products, but may also host informative documents, such as white papers. There are also numerous sub-categories to the ones listed above. For example, a porn site is a specific type of e-commerce site or business site (that is, it is trying to sell memberships for access to its site) or have social networking capabilities. A fansite may be a dedication from the owner to a particular celebrity. Websites are constrained by architectural limits (e.g., the computing power dedicated to the website). Very large websites, such as Facebook, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google employ many servers and load balancing equipment such as Cisco Content Services Switches to distribute visitor loads over multiple computers at multiple locations. As of early 2011, Facebook utilized 9 data centers with approximately 63,000 servers.

In February 2009, Netcraft, an Internet monitoring company that has tracked Web growth since 1995, reported that there were 215,675,903 websites with domain names and content on them in 2009, compared to just 19,732 websites in August 1995.[9] After reaching 1 billion websites in September 2014, a milestone confirmed by NetCraft in its October 2014 Web Server Survey and that Internet Live Stats was the first to announce—as attested by this tweet from the inventor of the World Wide Web himself, Tim Berners-Lee—the number of websites in the world has subsequently declined, reverting to a level below 1 billion. This is due to the monthly fluctuations in the count of inactive websites. The number of websites again grew to over 1 billion in March 2016, and has continued growing since.[10]

[mumbaipunetaxiservices-blog]

Build a site like Housing

Website development is a relatively broad term that many of us use without fully understanding what it means. Since the birth of social media and the growth of online marketing, there are many companies around the globe claiming to specialise in this area. But what exactly does it mean, and how could it help your business?

Website (or web) development basically covers the work involved in creating an online site. The components involved in this process can range from developing a single, static page to advertise a company's contact details or place, and could extend to the most complex, web-based internet applications and network services.

Since the commercialisation of the internet, this has been a growing industry that has allowed people to work remotely from all corners of the world. It has catered to a growing demand, with many businesses needing to outsource technical experts to help them get their website up and running.

As well as a number of web development and design services, an agency may be able to help increase your brand's visibility in other ways - by managing your social media platforms or helping you develop an effective online marketing strategy.

Not only are they technical experts, people who work in this kind of role with have in-depth knowledge of the modern consumer market, so will have a mind for online business. They should also have a creative eye, so will be able to help make your company advertising stand out against other competitors on the market.

You will find a number of digital marketing companies online who you can contact directly to help you enhance your online profile. Be sure to check out customer reviews to find out which ones are the best. You should also be able to view earlier examples of their completed work on their company website.

Web development is an extensive description of various actions pertaining to the creation of website for the internet of intranet. This may comprise e-commerce business development, web content development, web design, web server configuration, client-side or server-side coding. Still, according to web experts, web development pertains merely on non-design features of creating websites such as writing markup as well as coding. Web development may begin from creating of uncomplicated static sole page consisting of plain text up to the highly complex web-oriented internet applications, social network services or electronic businesses.

To huge corporations and businesses, web development groups may include hundreds of web developers. Minimal organizations may just necessitate for a sole and permanent or contractual web developer, or alternative task associated with the work positions like graphic designer or information systems support.

The latest web development tools are employing strong advancement of Linux, PHP, MySQL and Apache as well as Microsoft.NET technologies in order to administer the website as a medium to make use of applications on the internet. Web professional today assist to distribute applications to be web services that are conventionally accessible application though an offline computer.

Rather employing executable code through a local pc, users are connecting through applications on the internet to develop a new content. This has made way for latest methods to communicate and permit various chances to disperse information as well as media delivery. End users now have the capability to access applications coming from various areas, rather than being stocked on a particular location.

n into legal consequences. Mark Cuban Not to be confused with WebCite. A NASA.gov homepage

A website[1], or simply site, is a collection of related web pages, including multimedia content, typically identified with a common domain name, and published on at least one web server. A website may be accessible via a public Internet Protocol (IP) network, such as the Internet, or a private local area network (LAN), by referencing a uniform resource locator (URL) that identifies the site.

Websites have many functions and can be used in various fashions; a website can be a personal website, a commercial website for a company, a government website or a non-profit organization website. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, ranging from entertainment and social networking to providing news and education. All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web, while private websites, such as a company's website for its employees, are typically a part of an intranet.

Web pages, which are the building blocks of websites, are documents, typically composed in plain text interspersed with formatting instructions of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML, XHTML). They may incorporate elements from other websites with suitable markup anchors. Web pages are accessed and transported with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which may optionally employ encryption (HTTP Secure, HTTPS) to provide security and privacy for the user. The user's application, often a web browser, renders the page content according to its HTML markup instructions onto a display terminal.

Hyperlinking between web pages conveys to the reader the site structure and guides the navigation of the site, which often starts with a home page containing a directory of the site web content. Some websites require user registration or subscription to access content. Examples of subscription websites include many business sites, news websites, academic journal websites, gaming websites, file-sharing websites, message boards, web-based email, social networking websites, websites providing real-time stock market data, as well as sites providing various other services. As of 2016 end users can access websites on a range of devices, including desktop and laptop computers, tablet computers, smartphones and smart TVs.

Main article: History of the World Wide Web NASA.gov homepage as it appeared in April 2015

The World Wide Web (WWW) was created in 1990 by the British CERN physicist Tim Berners-Lee.[2] On 30 April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to use for anyone.[3] Before the introduction of HTML and HTTP, other protocols such as File Transfer Protocol and the gopher protocol were used to retrieve individual files from a server. These protocols offer a simple directory structure which the user navigates and chooses files to download. Documents were most often presented as plain text files without formatting, or were encoded in word processor formats.

Websites have many functions and can be used in various fashions; a website can be a personal website, a commercial website, a government website or a non-profit organization website. Websites can be the work of an individual, a business or other organization, and are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose. Any website can contain a hyperlink to any other website, so the distinction between individual sites, as perceived by the user, can be blurred. Websites are written in, or converted to, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and are accessed using a software interface classified as a user agent. Web pages can be viewed or otherwise accessed from a range of computer-based and Internet-enabled devices of various sizes, including desktop computers, laptops, PDAs and cell phones. A website is hosted on a computer system known as a web server, also called an HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) server. These terms can also refer to the software that runs on these systems which retrieves and delivers the web pages in response to requests from the website's users. Apache is the most commonly used web server software (according to Netcraft statistics) and Microsoft's IIS is also commonly used. Some alternatives, such as Nginx, Lighttpd, Hiawatha or Cherokee, are fully functional and lightweight.

Main article: Static web page

A static website is one that has web pages stored on the server in the format that is sent to a client web browser. It is primarily coded in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML); Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are used to control appearance beyond basic HTML. Images are commonly used to effect the desired appearance and as part of the main content. Audio or video might also be considered "static" content if it plays automatically or is generally non-interactive. This type of website usually displays the same information to all visitors. Similar to handing out a printed brochure to customers or clients, a static website will generally provide consistent, standard information for an extended period of time. Although the website owner may make updates periodically, it is a manual process to edit the text, photos and other content and may require basic website design skills and software. Simple forms or marketing examples of websites, such as classic website, a five-page website or a brochure website are often static websites, because they present pre-defined, static information to the user. This may include information about a company and its products and services through text, photos, animations, audio/video, and navigation menus.

Static websites can be edited using four broad categories of software:

Static websites may still use server side includes (SSI) as an editing convenience, such as sharing a common menu bar across many pages. As the site's behaviour to the reader is still static, this is not considered a dynamic site.

Server-side programming languages repartition on 28 April 2016. Main articles: Dynamic web page and Web application

A dynamic website is one that changes or customizes itself frequently and automatically. Server-side dynamic pages are generated "on the fly" by computer code that produces the HTML (CSS are responsible for appearance and thus, are static files). There are a wide range of software systems, such as CGI, Java Servlets and Java Server Pages (JSP), Active Server Pages and ColdFusion (CFML) that are available to generate dynamic web systems and dynamic sites. Various web application frameworks and web template systems are available for general-use programming languages like Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby to make it faster and easier to create complex dynamic websites.

A site can display the current state of a dialogue between users, monitor a changing situation, or provide information in some way personalized to the requirements of the individual user. For example, when the front page of a news site is requested, the code running on the web server might combine stored HTML fragments with news stories retrieved from a database or another website via RSS to produce a page that includes the latest information. Dynamic sites can be interactive by using HTML forms, storing and reading back browser cookies, or by creating a series of pages that reflect the previous history of clicks. Another example of dynamic content is when a retail website with a database of media products allows a user to input a search request, e.g. for the keyword Beatles. In response, the content of the web page will spontaneously change the way it looked before, and will then display a list of Beatles products like CDs, DVDs and books. Dynamic HTML uses JavaScript code to instruct the web browser how to interactively modify the page contents. One way to simulate a certain type of dynamic website while avoiding the performance loss of initiating the dynamic engine on a per-user or per-connection basis, is to periodically automatically regenerate a large series of static pages.

Early websites had only text, and soon after, images. Web browser plug ins were then used to add audio, video, and interactivity (such as for a rich Internet application that mirrors the complexity of a desktop application like a word processor). Examples of such plug-ins are Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Flash, Adobe Shockwave, and applets written in Java. HTML 5 includes provisions for audio and video without plugins. JavaScript is also built into most modern web browsers, and allows for website creators to send code to the web browser that instructs it how to interactively modify page content and communicate with the web server if needed. The browser's internal representation of the content is known as the Document Object Model (DOM) and the technique is known as Dynamic HTML. A 2010-era trend in websites called "responsive design" has given the best of viewing experience as it provides with a device based layout for users. These websites change their layout according to the device or mobile platform thus giving a rich user experience.[4]

While "web site" was the original spelling (s[5]ometimes capitalized "Web site", since "Web" is a proper noun when referring to the World Wide Web), this variant has become rarely used, and "website" has become the standard spelling. All major style guides, such as The Chicago Manual of Style[6] and the AP Stylebook,[7] have reflected this change.

Websites can be divided into two broad categories—static and interactive. Interactive sites are part of the Web 2.0 community of sites, and allow for interactivity between the site owner and site visitors or users. Static sites serve or capture information but do not allow engagement with the audience or users directly. Some websites are informational or produced by enthusiasts or for personal use or entertainment. Many websites do aim to make money, using one or more business models, including:

There are many varieties of websites, each specializing in a particular type of content or use, and they may be arbitrarily classified in any number of ways. A few such classifications might include:

Some websites may be included in one or more of these categories. For example, a business website may promote the business's products, but may also host informative documents, such as white papers. There are also numerous sub-categories to the ones listed above. For example, a porn site is a specific type of e-commerce site or business site (that is, it is trying to sell memberships for access to its site) or have social networking capabilities. A fansite may be a dedication from the owner to a particular celebrity. Websites are constrained by architectural limits (e.g., the computing power dedicated to the website). Very large websites, such as Facebook, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google employ many servers and load balancing equipment such as Cisco Content Services Switches to distribute visitor loads over multiple computers at multiple locations. As of early 2011, Facebook utilized 9 data centers with approximately 63,000 servers.

In February 2009, Netcraft, an Internet monitoring company that has tracked Web growth since 1995, reported that there were 215,675,903 websites with domain names and content on them in 2009, compared to just 19,732 websites in August 1995.[9] After reaching 1 billion websites in September 2014, a milestone confirmed by NetCraft in its October 2014 Web Server Survey and that Internet Live Stats was the first to announce—as attested by this tweet from the inventor of the World Wide Web himself, Tim Berners-Lee—the number of websites in the world has subsequently declined, reverting to a level below 1 billion. This is due to the monthly fluctuations in the count of inactive websites. The number of websites again grew to over 1 billion in March 2016, and has continued growing since.[10]

[clearperception-blog1]

Build a site like Housing

Website development is a relatively broad term that many of us use without fully understanding what it means. Since the birth of social media and the growth of online marketing, there are many companies around the globe claiming to specialise in this area. But what exactly does it mean, and how could it help your business?

Website (or web) development basically covers the work involved in creating an online site. The components involved in this process can range from developing a single, static page to advertise a company's contact details or place, and could extend to the most complex, web-based internet applications and network services.

Since the commercialisation of the internet, this has been a growing industry that has allowed people to work remotely from all corners of the world. It has catered to a growing demand, with many businesses needing to outsource technical experts to help them get their website up and running.

As well as a number of web development and design services, an agency may be able to help increase your brand's visibility in other ways - by managing your social media platforms or helping you develop an effective online marketing strategy.

Not only are they technical experts, people who work in this kind of role with have in-depth knowledge of the modern consumer market, so will have a mind for online business. They should also have a creative eye, so will be able to help make your company advertising stand out against other competitors on the market.

You will find a number of digital marketing companies online who you can contact directly to help you enhance your online profile. Be sure to check out customer reviews to find out which ones are the best. You should also be able to view earlier examples of their completed work on their company website.

Web development is an extensive description of various actions pertaining to the creation of website for the internet of intranet. This may comprise e-commerce business development, web content development, web design, web server configuration, client-side or server-side coding. Still, according to web experts, web development pertains merely on non-design features of creating websites such as writing markup as well as coding. Web development may begin from creating of uncomplicated static sole page consisting of plain text up to the highly complex web-oriented internet applications, social network services or electronic businesses.

To huge corporations and businesses, web development groups may include hundreds of web developers. Minimal organizations may just necessitate for a sole and permanent or contractual web developer, or alternative task associated with the work positions like graphic designer or information systems support.

The latest web development tools are employing strong advancement of Linux, PHP, MySQL and Apache as well as Microsoft.NET technologies in order to administer the website as a medium to make use of applications on the internet. Web professional today assist to distribute applications to be web services that are conventionally accessible application though an offline computer.

Rather employing executable code through a local pc, users are connecting through applications on the internet to develop a new content. This has made way for latest methods to communicate and permit various chances to disperse information as well as media delivery. End users now have the capability to access applications coming from various areas, rather than being stocked on a particular location.

n into legal consequences. Mark Cuban Not to be confused with WebCite. A NASA.gov homepage

A website[1], or simply site, is a collection of related web pages, including multimedia content, typically identified with a common domain name, and published on at least one web server. A website may be accessible via a public Internet Protocol (IP) network, such as the Internet, or a private local area network (LAN), by referencing a uniform resource locator (URL) that identifies the site.

Websites have many functions and can be used in various fashions; a website can be a personal website, a commercial website for a company, a government website or a non-profit organization website. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, ranging from entertainment and social networking to providing news and education. All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web, while private websites, such as a company's website for its employees, are typically a part of an intranet.

Web pages, which are the building blocks of websites, are documents, typically composed in plain text interspersed with formatting instructions of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML, XHTML). They may incorporate elements from other websites with suitable markup anchors. Web pages are accessed and transported with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which may optionally employ encryption (HTTP Secure, HTTPS) to provide security and privacy for the user. The user's application, often a web browser, renders the page content according to its HTML markup instructions onto a display terminal.

Hyperlinking between web pages conveys to the reader the site structure and guides the navigation of the site, which often starts with a home page containing a directory of the site web content. Some websites require user registration or subscription to access content. Examples of subscription websites include many business sites, news websites, academic journal websites, gaming websites, file-sharing websites, message boards, web-based email, social networking websites, websites providing real-time stock market data, as well as sites providing various other services. As of 2016 end users can access websites on a range of devices, including desktop and laptop computers, tablet computers, smartphones and smart TVs.

Main article: History of the World Wide Web NASA.gov homepage as it appeared in April 2015

The World Wide Web (WWW) was created in 1990 by the British CERN physicist Tim Berners-Lee.[2] On 30 April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to use for anyone.[3] Before the introduction of HTML and HTTP, other protocols such as File Transfer Protocol and the gopher protocol were used to retrieve individual files from a server. These protocols offer a simple directory structure which the user navigates and chooses files to download. Documents were most often presented as plain text files without formatting, or were encoded in word processor formats.

Websites have many functions and can be used in various fashions; a website can be a personal website, a commercial website, a government website or a non-profit organization website. Websites can be the work of an individual, a business or other organization, and are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose. Any website can contain a hyperlink to any other website, so the distinction between individual sites, as perceived by the user, can be blurred. Websites are written in, or converted to, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and are accessed using a software interface classified as a user agent. Web pages can be viewed or otherwise accessed from a range of computer-based and Internet-enabled devices of various sizes, including desktop computers, laptops, PDAs and cell phones. A website is hosted on a computer system known as a web server, also called an HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) server. These terms can also refer to the software that runs on these systems which retrieves and delivers the web pages in response to requests from the website's users. Apache is the most commonly used web server software (according to Netcraft statistics) and Microsoft's IIS is also commonly used. Some alternatives, such as Nginx, Lighttpd, Hiawatha or Cherokee, are fully functional and lightweight.

Main article: Static web page

A static website is one that has web pages stored on the server in the format that is sent to a client web browser. It is primarily coded in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML); Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are used to control appearance beyond basic HTML. Images are commonly used to effect the desired appearance and as part of the main content. Audio or video might also be considered "static" content if it plays automatically or is generally non-interactive. This type of website usually displays the same information to all visitors. Similar to handing out a printed brochure to customers or clients, a static website will generally provide consistent, standard information for an extended period of time. Although the website owner may make updates periodically, it is a manual process to edit the text, photos and other content and may require basic website design skills and software. Simple forms or marketing examples of websites, such as classic website, a five-page website or a brochure website are often static websites, because they present pre-defined, static information to the user. This may include information about a company and its products and services through text, photos, animations, audio/video, and navigation menus.

Static websites can be edited using four broad categories of software:

Static websites may still use server side includes (SSI) as an editing convenience, such as sharing a common menu bar across many pages. As the site's behaviour to the reader is still static, this is not considered a dynamic site.

Server-side programming languages repartition on 28 April 2016. Main articles: Dynamic web page and Web application

A dynamic website is one that changes or customizes itself frequently and automatically. Server-side dynamic pages are generated "on the fly" by computer code that produces the HTML (CSS are responsible for appearance and thus, are static files). There are a wide range of software systems, such as CGI, Java Servlets and Java Server Pages (JSP), Active Server Pages and ColdFusion (CFML) that are available to generate dynamic web systems and dynamic sites. Various web application frameworks and web template systems are available for general-use programming languages like Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby to make it faster and easier to create complex dynamic websites.

A site can display the current state of a dialogue between users, monitor a changing situation, or provide information in some way personalized to the requirements of the individual user. For example, when the front page of a news site is requested, the code running on the web server might combine stored HTML fragments with news stories retrieved from a database or another website via RSS to produce a page that includes the latest information. Dynamic sites can be interactive by using HTML forms, storing and reading back browser cookies, or by creating a series of pages that reflect the previous history of clicks. Another example of dynamic content is when a retail website with a database of media products allows a user to input a search request, e.g. for the keyword Beatles. In response, the content of the web page will spontaneously change the way it looked before, and will then display a list of Beatles products like CDs, DVDs and books. Dynamic HTML uses JavaScript code to instruct the web browser how to interactively modify the page contents. One way to simulate a certain type of dynamic website while avoiding the performance loss of initiating the dynamic engine on a per-user or per-connection basis, is to periodically automatically regenerate a large series of static pages.

Early websites had only text, and soon after, images. Web browser plug ins were then used to add audio, video, and interactivity (such as for a rich Internet application that mirrors the complexity of a desktop application like a word processor). Examples of such plug-ins are Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Flash, Adobe Shockwave, and applets written in Java. HTML 5 includes provisions for audio and video without plugins. JavaScript is also built into most modern web browsers, and allows for website creators to send code to the web browser that instructs it how to interactively modify page content and communicate with the web server if needed. The browser's internal representation of the content is known as the Document Object Model (DOM) and the technique is known as Dynamic HTML. A 2010-era trend in websites called "responsive design" has given the best of viewing experience as it provides with a device based layout for users. These websites change their layout according to the device or mobile platform thus giving a rich user experience.[4]

While "web site" was the original spelling (s[5]ometimes capitalized "Web site", since "Web" is a proper noun when referring to the World Wide Web), this variant has become rarely used, and "website" has become the standard spelling. All major style guides, such as The Chicago Manual of Style[6] and the AP Stylebook,[7] have reflected this change.

Websites can be divided into two broad categories—static and interactive. Interactive sites are part of the Web 2.0 community of sites, and allow for interactivity between the site owner and site visitors or users. Static sites serve or capture information but do not allow engagement with the audience or users directly. Some websites are informational or produced by enthusiasts or for personal use or entertainment. Many websites do aim to make money, using one or more business models, including:

There are many varieties of websites, each specializing in a particular type of content or use, and they may be arbitrarily classified in any number of ways. A few such classifications might include:

Some websites may be included in one or more of these categories. For example, a business website may promote the business's products, but may also host informative documents, such as white papers. There are also numerous sub-categories to the ones listed above. For example, a porn site is a specific type of e-commerce site or business site (that is, it is trying to sell memberships for access to its site) or have social networking capabilities. A fansite may be a dedication from the owner to a particular celebrity. Websites are constrained by architectural limits (e.g., the computing power dedicated to the website). Very large websites, such as Facebook, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google employ many servers and load balancing equipment such as Cisco Content Services Switches to distribute visitor loads over multiple computers at multiple locations. As of early 2011, Facebook utilized 9 data centers with approximately 63,000 servers.

In February 2009, Netcraft, an Internet monitoring company that has tracked Web growth since 1995, reported that there were 215,675,903 websites with domain names and content on them in 2009, compared to just 19,732 websites in August 1995.[9] After reaching 1 billion websites in September 2014, a milestone confirmed by NetCraft in its October 2014 Web Server Survey and that Internet Live Stats was the first to announce—as attested by this tweet from the inventor of the World Wide Web himself, Tim Berners-Lee—the number of websites in the world has subsequently declined, reverting to a level below 1 billion. This is due to the monthly fluctuations in the count of inactive websites. The number of websites again grew to over 1 billion in March 2016, and has continued growing since.[10]