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.

Share
Share
Toptal core team members share their experience, expertise, and perspectives on the Toptal Edge Blog

Featured in

World-class articles, delivered weekly.

Subscription implies consent to our privacy policy

My Five Worst WordPress Development Mistakes

Join an expert in a look back in horror at his most embarrassing mistakes in his early days as a WordPress developer. He discusses general PHP bugs, WordPress-specific bugs, and also mistakes made at a managerial level while supervising other developers.

11 minute readContinue Reading
Scott Fennell

Scott Fennell

Having developed a theme and plugin framework for the largest law firms in the world, Scott is no stranger to WordPress at scale.

Zero Downtime Jenkins Continuous Deployment with Terraform on AWS

When your app’s next iteration is ready to deploy, you have two choices: either stop the entire application and deploy the new version manually every time or build an automated zero downtime CI/CD deployment pipeline once.

In this article, Toptal Freelance DevOps Engineer Gaurav Kohli demonstrates the latter using the Jenkins-powered continuous deployment pipeline of a three-tier web application built in Node.js, deployed on AWS Cloud, and using Terraform as an infrastructure orchestrator.

11 minute readContinue Reading
Gaurav Kohli

Gaurav Kohli

Gaurav has 12+ years cumulative experience working as a developer, scrum master, senior consultant, and product owner.

Who, What, and Why: A Guide to User Testing Methods

The fundamental purpose of user testing is to better understand and empathize with people who are the core users of a digital product.

8 minute readContinue Reading
Jeff Bryant

Jeff Bryant

Jeff’s UX career has produced award-winning mobile applications, enterprise applications, and user-centric products owned by millions.

VR Project Development–How Project Managers Should Prepare

This article examines the VR technology, market trends, and most popular use cases. Key project roles are described alongside some most important challenges that PMs might face when managing a VR project.

13 minute readContinue Reading
Audrius Zujus

Audrius Zujus

Audrius is an experienced product and project manager who has worked with: Uber, Deloitte, Rolls-Royce, Deutsche Bank, Warner Bros.

Three Principles of Data Warehouse Development

Data warehouses aren’t exactly a new concept, but industry demand for data science services, coupled with the rise of AI and machine learning, is making them more relevant than ever.

In this post, Toptal Data Warehouse Developer Chamitha Wanaguru outlines three basic principles you need to keep in mind when developing a new data warehouse.

9 minute readContinue Reading
Chamitha Wanaguru

Chamitha Wanaguru

Chamitha is an IT veteran specializing in data warehouse system architecture, data engineering, business analysis, and project management.

How to Value a Fintech Startup

Compared to traditional financial services businesses, fintech startups require different valuation approaches. This article explores these differences and the best practices to apply when appraising a fintech investment.

13 minute readContinue Reading
Nirvikar Jain

Nirvikar Jain

Nirvikar has helped raise $20+ billion of capital and built lines of business as an experienced CEO, banker, and strategist.

UI Design Best Practices for Better Scannability

Scannability is often an overlooked usability factor, but it is one of the most impactful. These UI design tips make it easy for designers to convert a brief visitor to a long-lasting user.

10 minute readContinue Reading
Nemanja Banjanin

Nemanja Banjanin

Nemanja is a designer who creates distinctive and visually appealing UI/UX. He leads large-scale user-centric and result-driven projects.

Changelog: The OWASP Top 10 Project

The de facto standard for web application security is the Open Web Application Security Project’s Top 10 Project. It lists the ten most prevalent security threats based on an extensive amount of data and community feedback and was updated in late 2017.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Full-stack and System Security Developer Hrvoje Gazibara discusses the changes to the OWASP Top 10’s most recent revision by illustrating new vulnerabilities, and even some that were removed.

18 minute readContinue Reading
Hrvoje Gazibara

Hrvoje Gazibara

Hrvoje is a software engineer with 5+ years of experience using languages like PHP, Python, JavaScript, SQL, and HTML.

What Is a Down Round and How to Avoid One

Anyone vaguely familiar with the venture capital industry knows that down rounds are bad news. But what exactly are they, and why do they occur? What alternatives do founders have to avoid a down round?

9 minute readContinue Reading
Natasha Ketabchi

Natasha Ketabchi

Natasha transitioned to venture capital after a career in banking, built in prestigious firms such as JPMorgan and A&M.

Most-read Articles

World-class articles, delivered weekly.

Subscription implies consent to our privacy policy

Join the Toptal® community.