Toptal Blog
The Toptal Blog is the top hub for developers, designers, finance experts, executives, and entrepreneurs, featuring key technology updates, tutorials, freelancer resources, and management insights.
Featured in
World-class articles, delivered weekly.
How to Build a Multilingual App: A Demo With PHP and Gettext
Making your website or web app available to a wider audience often requires it to be available in multiple languages. For non-English projects, you can increase your audience by releasing it in English as well as your native language. Internationalizing and localizing your project, however, becomes a much easier process if you start during its infancy.
In this article, Toptal Software Engineer Igor Gomes dos Santos shows us how to leverage simple tools, like Gettext and Poedit, to internationalize and localize a PHP project.
Igor Santos
With a big eye on UI/UX, Igor is a developer with strong PHP background (10+ years), moving into JS-land for more interactive experiences.
Realm Is the Best Android Database Solution
Since the inception of the platform, Android developers have had pretty much only one option for a database: SQLite. Although feature-rich and powerful, it wasn’t quite what Android app developers needed. Realm, a modern, efficient database solution for mobile platforms, turned out to be an amazing replacement for SQLite on Android.
In this article, Toptal Software Engineer Mateus Gondim Romão Batista explains why you should use Realm for your next Android application.
Mateus Gondim Romão Batista
With nearly a decade of Java experience, Mateus (BCompSc) has done web projects using Python, Django, and JS, lately focusing on Android.
PostCSS: Sass’s New Play Date
PostCSS is the hot new tool that’s making the rounds on the front-end side of web development. It has been quickly and widely adopted, and possibly will have a significant impact on how we base our present-day CSS.
In this article, Toptal Software Engineer Nicolás J. Engler introduces us and guides us on how to start using this tool, expand it with plugins, or integrate with other CSS processors, task runners, or bundlers.
Nicolás J. Engler
Nicolás is a product designer with a proven background creating and developing both physical and digital experiences.
Make Your Web Front-end Reliable with Elm
If you’ve spent your fair share of time developing web front-ends, you know that no amount of libraries and plugins are sufficient enough to make the development experience pleasant. Unpredictable event chains, complex data binding, and lack of structured data modeling only makes things worse.
Elm, a programming language built for front-end development, cuts to the root of all these problems and solves them there.
In this post, Toptal Software Engineer Stanislav Davydov provides a detailed guide to Elm and shows us how The Elm Architecture solves some of the most fundamental challenges of front-end development.
Stas Davydov
Stanislav’s 18+ years in organizations of all sizes have focused on eCommerce, complex web services, friendly UI, and data mining/scraping.
The Art of Building Self-Service Admin Areas
Software is regular and predictable, so it seems paradoxical that practically every web app needs a sizable administrative area. The explanation for this paradox lies in software’s interaction with humans. While you probably can’t build a fully automated system, there’s a lot you can do to save time and money.
In this post, Entrepreneur Jack Kinsella explains what you can do to streamline administration, thus saving valuable time and making your projects more profitable. Adminimisation is the word of the day!
Jack Kinsella
Jack has a background in law and is currently interested in probability, algorithmic education and blockchain.
Don't Hate WordPress: 5 Common Biases Debunked
Today, WordPress covers more than 50 percent of website shares and serves nearly 60 million websites worldwide. Its popularity has resulted in many misconceptions that have grown and spread like a forest fire, and have made people stay away from WordPress.
In this post, Toptal Software Engineer Donald Mudenge explains the five most common WordPress taboos and myths, clarifies them, and offers solutions on how to overcome them.
Donald Mudenge
As a wordpress developer, Donald’s main focus is understanding project requirements and providing the best solution to the problems.
A Node.js Guide to Actually Doing Integration Tests
Your software isn’t fully tested until you write integration tests for it. While unit tests help ensure that functions are properly written, integration tests help ensure that the system is working properly as a whole.
In this article, Toptal Software Engineer Luka Blažecki uses Node.js to explain why integration testing is important for every development platform and how to write clean, composable integration tests.
Luka Blažecki
Luka (MCS) is a team leader focused on back-end solutions that scale. He’s fluent in Node.js, SQL, and NoSQL databases as well as AWS.
The Ultimate Guide to Building a WordPress Plugin
WordPress plugins can be both a blessing and a curse. With more than 45,000 plugins available in its official repository, WordPress users can customize their website to their heart’s content. However, not all plugins follow the standards necessary to keep the platform performant and secure while also delivering a solid user experience.
In this tutorial, Toptal Software Engineer Ratko Solaja shows us how to build a robust WordPress plugin, following all the necessary best practices.
Ratko Solaja
Ratko enjoys creating compelling websites that excite users. He is a regular WordCamp and WordPress Metup speaker.
How to Make an Android and iOS App in C# on Mac
In the past few years, Microsoft has pulled a few aces from up its sleeve. Yes, they messed up Skype, failed with smartphones, and almost succeeded with tablets. But they did some really amazing things as well.
Relinquishing their closed empire approach, they open-sourced .NET, joined the Linux Foundation, released SQL Server for Linux, and created this great new tool called Visual Studio for Mac.
In this post, Head of Open Source Demir Selmanovic details how to make an Android and iOS app in C# on your Mac.
Demir Selmanovic
Demir is a developer and project manager with more than 15 years of professional experience in a wide range of software development roles.
Most-read Articles
An Angular 5 Tutorial: Step by Step Guide to Your First Angular 5 App
Adobe XD vs. Sketch – Which UX Tool Is Right for You?
The History of Remote Work, 1560-Present (with Infographic) (Updated)
World-class articles, delivered weekly.
Toptal Developers
- Algorithm Developers
- Angular Developers
- AWS Developers
- Azure Developers
- Big Data Architects
- Blockchain Developers
- Business Intelligence Developers
- C Developers
- Computer Vision Developers
- Django Developers
- Docker Developers
- Elixir Developers
- Go Engineers
- GraphQL Developers
- Jenkins Developers
- Kotlin Developers
- Kubernetes Experts
- Machine Learning Engineers
- Magento Developers
- .NET Developers
- R Developers
- React Native Developers
- Ruby on Rails Developers
- Salesforce Developers
- SQL Developers
- Sys Admins
- Tableau Developers
- Unreal Engine Developers
- Xamarin Developers
- View More Freelance Developers
Toptal Designers
- Adobe Creative Suite Experts
- Agile Designers
- AI Designers
- Art Direction Experts
- Augmented Reality Designers
- Axure Experts
- Brand Designers
- Creative Directors
- Dashboard Designers
- Digital Product Designers
- E-commerce Website Designers
- Full-Stack Designers
- Information Architecture Experts
- Interactive Designers
- Mobile App Designers
- Mockup Designers
- Presentation Designers
- Prototype Designers
- SaaS Designers
- Sketch Experts
- Squarespace Designers
- User Flow Designers
- User Research Designers
- Virtual Reality Designers
- Visual Designers
- Wireframing Experts
- View More Freelance Designers
Toptal Finance Experts
- Blockchain Consultants
- Business Management Consultants
- Business Plan Consultants
- Business Process Optimization Consultants
- Certified Public Accountants (CPA)
- Economic Development Consultants
- Equity Research Analysts
- Excel Experts
- Financial Benchmarking Consultants
- Financial Forecasting Experts
- Financial Modeling Consultants
- Financial Writers
- Fintech Consultants
- FP&A Consultants
- Fractional CFOs
- Fundraising Consultants
- FX Consultants
- Growth Strategy Consultants
- Integrated Business Planning Consultants
- Interim CFOs
- Investment Managers
- Investment Thesis Consultants
- Investor Relations Consultants
- M&A Consultants
- Market Sizing Experts
- Pitch Deck Consultants
- Private Equity Consultants
- Procurement Consultants
- Profitability Analysis Experts
- Real Estate Experts
- Restructuring Consultants
- Risk Management Consultants
- Small Business Consultants
- Supply Chain Management Consultants
- Valuation Specialists
- Venture Capital Consultants
- Virtual CFOs
- Xero Experts
- View More Freelance Finance Experts
Toptal Project Managers
- Asana Experts
- Blockchain Project Managers
- Business Delivery Managers
- Business Transformation Program Managers
- Client Delivery Managers
- Digital Project Managers
- Digital Delivery Managers
- Digital Transformation Program Managers
- eCommerce Project Managers
- Enterprise Coaches
- Jira Administrators
- Kanban Project Managers
- Lean Project Managers
- Learning Management System Administrators
- Mobile Project Managers
- PMI Project Managers
- PMO Specialists
- PMP Project Managers
- Prince2 Experts
- Program Managers
- Scrum Project Managers
- Scrum Coaches
- Scrum Masters
- Software Project Managers
- Software Development Project Managers
- Technical Business Analysts
- Transformation Project Managers
- Waterfall Project Managers
- Web Project Managers
- View More Freelance Project Managers
Toptal Product Managers
- Artificial Intelligence Product Managers
- Blockchain Product Managers
- Business Systems Analysts
- Cloud Product Managers
- Data Science Product Managers
- Digital Marketing Product Managers
- Digital Product Managers
- Directors of Product
- eCommerce Product Managers
- Enterprise Product Managers
- Enterprise Resource Planning Product Managers
- Freelance Product Managers
- Interim CPOs
- Jira Product Managers
- Kanban Product Managers
- Lean Product Managers
- Mobile Product Managers
- Product Consultants
- Product Development Managers
- Product Owners
- Product Portfolio Managers
- Product Strategy Consultants
- Product Tour Consultants
- Robotic Process Automation Product Managers
- Robotics Product Managers
- SaaS Product Managers
- Salesforce Product Managers
- Scrum Product Owner Contractors
- Web Product Managers
- View More Freelance Product Managers
Join the Toptal® community.