Caktus Blog

Insights and strategies from a team recognized at Python and Django conferences worldwide since 2009. The Caktus Blog is your space for practical how-to’s, real-world solutions, and expert advice on building better user experiences, strengthening quality assurance, solving deep and complex Python/Django problems, and managing projects that deliver impact. Whether you’re refining a UI or prepping for launch, join us to learn, level up, and lead with confidence.

2018


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Django vs WordPress: How to Decide?

Tim Scales
Vinod Kurup

In the early stages of a web development project, your first step is a big decision: what’s the right tool for the job? What kind of software makes the most sense for me?

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Caktus Embraces GDPR Compliance (and you can, too!)

Tim Scales

If you’ve landed on this page, you’re probably here for one of two reasons:##

A) You’re a European firm who’s interested in hiring Caktus, in which case: Yes, we’re GDPR compliant! Ask us about it here.

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Caktus Supports the Community through Charitable Giving

Liza Chabot

Twice a year we solicit proposals from our team to contribute to a variety of non-profit organizations. With this program, we look to support groups in which Cakti are involved or that have impacted their lives in some way. This gives Caktus a chance to support our own employees as well as the wider community. For the first half of 2018, we are pleased to donate to the following organizations:

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Outgrowing Sprints: A Shift from Scrum to Kanban

Charlotte Fouque

The problem

The Scrum and Kanban frameworks are tools for development teams, and as with any job, it’s crucial to pick the right tool for the situation at hand. Caktus teams have been using Scrum for over two years, but one of my teams started to bring up in retrospectives that sprint deadlines felt arbitrary and were irrelevant to anyone outside the team. They also had to do some mental gymnastics to plan sprints that were so brittle they were likely to fall apart due to restricted monthly project budgets. As a result, I started to ask myself some difficult questions.

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Lessons from the Great Failure of 1858 (PyCon 2018 Must-See Talk Series)

Dmitriy Chukhin

This is the third post in the 2018 edition of our annual PyCon Must-See Series, which highlights the talks our staff especially loved at PyCon. While there were many great talks, this is our team’s shortlist.

Make ALL Your Django Forms Better

Calvin Spealman

Website experiences need to be consistent as much as they need to be well thought out and aesthetically pleasing. Structure, visual design, user interactions, and accessibility concerns are among many considerations that go into building quality websites. While achieving consistency of experience and implementation is an essential goal of web development, efficiency of execution is also very important. An efficient workflow means this consistent experience doesn’t require redoing work across the site.

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Stories of Security (PyCon 2018 Must-See Talk Series)

Vinod Kurup

This is the second post in the 2018 edition of our annual PyCon Must-See Series, which highlights the talks our staff especially loved at PyCon. While there were many great talks, this is our team’s shortlist.

Why We Love TestBash (and You Will, Too!)

Robbie Duvall
Sarah Gray

Mirror, mirror, on the wall - what’s the best test conference of them all? That’s the question that many of you may be asking yourselves when trying to decide which conference to attend. Well, we believe we have discovered what may be one of the top contenders for best software testing conferences: the Ministry of Testing’s TestBash.

3 Common Form Testing Issues (Plus 1 Helpful Tool)

Robbie Duvall

Forms are something that I find myself testing frequently, whether it’s an e-commerce checkout page or a new model in the Django admin. The challenge of forms is that users will often enter things that may not have been accounted for when the form was created.

Love Your Bugs (PyCon 2018 Must-See Talk Series)

Welcome to the 2018 edition of our annual PyCon Must-See Series, highlighting the talks our staff especially loved at PyCon. While there were many great talks, this is our team’s shortlist.