In this article, I will show how to easily train GPT-class neural networks from home. Let me start by saying that we won’t train NN from scratch, as that would require 8 (eight!) A100-class GPUs at least and a massive dataset. Instead, we’ll focus on fine-tuning a pre-trained GPT-2 model using a smaller dataset, which anyone can easily make or find online. OpenAI has kindly released GPT-2 under Modified MIT License.
nanoGPT
We’ll use the nanoGPT repository created by Andrej Karpathy for fast and easy GPT training. He has a comprehensive videolecture explaining how GPT-2 works and how to train such a neural network. However, we’re interested in fine-tuning the model using our own dataset and seeing the difference from the original (GPT-2 trained by OpenAI).
YouTube has become such a popular online resource for so many people that there are now over 1 billion videos posted every month. This means that you have a very good chance of getting any information or video about your …
Are you looking for great tips, tutorials, and hacks from experienced web developers to take your skills to the next level and help you solve client problems faster? Well, so are we! That’s why we are launching The BLOG XCHANGE!
Chun-chun-chun-chun…Blog XChange! (Members Only)
tl;dr – The Blog XChange is a new initiative for WPMU DEV members aimed at providing better engagement with our member community by focusing on the content that matters most to you. Help us to help you and we’ll reward you with Hero points and links to your site.
Blog XChange…What The Heck Is That??
Here at WPMU DEV’s secret content lab, we are always searching for new blog content ideas.
You would think that hiring the most brilliant writers in the WordPress universe would result in endless blog content, but alas, this isn’t so.
Which is ironic, I know, given that one of us is the author of a best ok-selling book called “Infinite Content Creation(How to Never Run out of Content Ideas for Your Blog).”
The WPMU DEV blog, however, is a different beast. We don’t publish fluffy filler content about WordPress. We know that our audience (yes, YOU!!) would never stand for it.
We know that you expect us to write articles and tutorials with substance. Beefy content (or tofurkey if you prefer non-meaty adjectives) that you can apply in your business to improve not only your skills but also solve real challenges for your clients and deliver them better and faster websites that will help them get results.
Help us make our blog your blog!
Writing blog content targeted to your needs requires us to spend a lot of time researching previous post comments, scouring our members’ forum, analyzing analytics, doing keyword research, peeking into our competitors’ sites, reading through tons of industry newsletters, etc.
Sometimes, we come near, but near just isn’t close enough.
We want to post content on our blog that reflects who you are, what you do, and how you solve everyday challenges in your business working at the coalface and deep in the trenches.
Since we can’t be you (somebody’s gotta write the blog, right?) we came up with an ingenious idea:
“Why not tap into your knowledge and experiences as a WordPress web developer and reward you for all contributions you make to our blog?”
By sharing your knowledge and experiences on the Blog XChange, you will be helping other members and helping us too! In return, we will reward you for your contributions with loads of hero points and, if we use your content on our blog, with links to help promote your business.
Don’t let all that great knowledge go to waste…xchange it for hero points and links at the Blog XChange!
In this post, I’ll briefly tell you how it works and how to get started if you’d like to contribute. For full details, including guidelines for posting content and exactly how we will reward you for your contributions, see the pinned post inside the Blog XChange. (Check it out…it’s now live in your Member’s Area!)
Blog XCh-ch-ch-Changes – How It Works In A Nutshell
First off, we’re not looking for Pulitzer-prize-winning authors. You don’t have to submit polished prose or perfectly-presented publish-ready posts…we’ll take care of that.
What we’re looking for is a good ‘chunky’ piece of content that comes from your experience as a WordPress web developer, website builder, digital agency, tech support services provider, etc.
In your own words, tell us about a problem you have solved or a solution, fix, or hack you discovered that improved some Aspect of your or your client’s website or business.
Test and compare different plugins you are currently using against ours and share your results.
If you like, also feel free to share code snippets, screenshots, links to your favorite time-saving tools and resources, etc.
Preferably, it would be ideal if the content you share on the Blog XChange includes using our plugins or services (you’ll get extra points for that!) but it’s not a requirement.
Every contribution you make on the Blog XChange will earn you points. After all, just by posting it, you are helping other members.
The Blog XChange can be your little side hustle.
What the blog team will do, is regularly scan the contributions posted on the Blog XChange. We will then reward you for anything we use on the blog. This includes quotable sentences, paragraphs, or sections of text, code snippets, mini-tutorials, video reviews,…even links to great tutorials published on your own sites, or a great headline idea for a new post will earn you a point.
In some cases, we may contact you to discuss publishing a full-blown article, tutorial, or case study. This is exactly what happened when one of our members posted a comment on one of our discussions. We then created a case study and promoted her business throughout the post…so, win-win!
Obviously, there are some things we will not publish, like content designed to promote affiliate links or hyped-up self-promotional stuff…basically we’ll apply the same editorial guidelines and criteria to whatever you submit that we ourselves use to ensure that we maintain our blog to the highest standards.
The Times, They Are A-Blog XChangin’ – How To Get Started
Contributing content to the Blog XChange is super easy. Any WPMU DEV member can do it.
As soon as you get an idea for a post, head on over to the Members section and click on the Blog XChange link (or click here to go there now.)
Click this button as soon as inspiration hits!
Click ‘Start Discussion’.
Almost there…
Enter the title of your post in the ‘Subject’ field (it doesn’t have to be a snazzy title or an SEO-optimized headline…just tell us what it’s about!)
Under ‘Topic’ select ‘Blog XChange’.
Type or paste in your content in the ‘Discussion’ field. Feel free to use the formatting, quotation, and hyperlink tools too!)
If you’d like to keep track of any discussions on your thread, check the ‘Notify me by Email’ box.
Click the Post button to submit your contribution.
Type, select, paste in content, check, and click the button and you’re all done…too easy!
Your contribution is now added to the Blog XChange. If you need to make any adjustments to your post, just click on the Edit link.
You’re a blog writer now…congrats!
That’s it! you’re all done.
Thank you! Hero points coming right up…check your sidebar!
We’ll get in touch with you if we use your content on our blog (e.g. to confirm the URL we’ll be linking to) and to discuss things further if we have any questions.
Hero points and links…thank you WPMU DEV!
To XChange is to Grow
As web developers and WordPress service providers, you know the challenges that you and your clients face every day. Better still, you know how good it feels to solve these challenges and come up with better, faster, more efficient ways to get things done.
By sharing your knowledge and experiences with us, you’ll be helping us write the exact content you’d like to see on our blog, helping other members, and helping yourself too!
As Winston Churchill famously never stated…
“To improve is to XChange; to be perfect is to XChange often.”
We look forward to seeing your contributions and to working more closely with you to benefit our valued members and help improve your businesses.
You’ve got two options for customzing your profile on CodePen, and endless possibility:
Open to everyone: Apply Custom CSS (which can be a link to a Pen on CodePen)
PRO only: Apply a Pen-as-Header-Background
In this video, Chris & Stephen look at a bunch of awesome profiles on CodePen, and find that many users (especially the coolest profiles) do both. Here’s the shuffle machine we used in the video to randomize cool profiles:
Back in August 2020, when the content-visiblity property in CSS trickled its way into Chrome browsers, Una Kravets and Vladimir Levin wrote about it and we covered it. The weirdest part is that to get the performance value out of it, you pair it with contain-intrinsic-size on these big chunks of the page where you insert some arbitrary guess at a height. I wrote:
That part seems super weird to me. Just guess at a height? What if I’m wrong? Can I hurt performance? Can (or should) I change that value at different viewports if the height difference between small and large screens is drastic?
Jake Archibald and Das Surma just did a video on all this and it helped clarify that a bit. You can see at about 7:30 in just how confusing it is. Jake used this massive HTML spec page as a demo, and made <section> wrappers around big chunks of HTML, and applied:
section {
content-visibility: auto; /* this is the thing that delays painting */
contain-intrinsic-size: 1px 5000px; /* this is the guess at the height of the content, and also saying width doesn't matter */
}
Apparently that 5000px isn’t the height of the element, it’s the size of the content of that element. I guess that matters because it will push that parent element taller by that number, unless the parent element overrides that with a height of its own. The magic comes from the fact that the browser will only paint¹ the first section (where it’s very likely the viewport isn’t over 5000px tall) and defer the painting on the rest. Sorta like lazy loading, but everything rather than media alone. It assumes the next section is 5000px tall, but once the top of it becomes visible, it will actually get painted and the correct height will be known. So assuming your page is just big ass blocks on top of each other, using an extremely large number should work fine there. Godspeed if your site is more complicated than that, I guess.
It’s a good video and you should watch it:
This is yet another thing where you have to inform the browser about your site so that it can Do Performance Good™. It is information that it can figure out by itself, but not until it has done things that have a performance cost. So you have to tell it up front, allowing it to avoid doing certain types of work. With responsive images, if we give images a srcset attribute with images and tell the browser in advance how big they are, including a sizes attribute with information about how our CSS behaves, it can do calculations ahead of time that only download the best possible image. Likewise, with the will-change property in CSS, we can tell the browser when we’re going to be doing movement ahead of time so it can pre-optimize for that in a way it couldn’t otherwise. It’s understandable, but a little tiresome. It’s like we need a stuff-you-need-to-know.manifest file to give browsers before it does anything else — only that would be an additional request!
The accessibility implications are important too. Steve Faulkner did a test applying content-visibility: auto to images and paragraphs:
The content is visually hidden, but in both JAWS and NVDA the hidden<img> is announced but the content of the <p> element is not. This has to do with how the img and the p element content are represented in the browser accessibility tree: The img is exposed in the accessibility tree with the alt text as the accessible name. The content of the p element is not present in the accessibility tree.
He notes that content hidden this way should not be available to screen readers, per the spec. I could see it going either way, like hide it all as if it was display: none, meaning none of it is in the accessibility tree. Or, leave it all in the accessibility tree. Right now it’s a tweener where you might see a bunch of stray images in the accessibility tree without any other context than their alt text. This is an interesting example of new tech going out with more rough edges than you might like to see.
Speaking of alt text, we all know those shouldn’t be empty when they represent important content that needs to be described to someone who can’t see them. They should be like paragraphs, says Dave:
I finally made the simplest of all connections: alt text is like a paragraph. Word pictures. Basic I know, but it helps me contextualize how to write goodalt text as well as source order of my code.
I don’t want to be overly negative here! The performance gains for setting up a long-scrolling page with content-visibility is huge and that’s awesome. Being able to inform the browser about what is OK not to paint in two lines of code is pretty nice.
I keep saying “paint” but I’m not sure if that’s really the right term or if it means something more specific. The spec says stuff like “allowing user agents to potentially omit large swathes of layout and rendering work until it becomes needed” (emphasis mine).
Video is increasingly becoming a pivotal part of digital marketing. That is mainly because over 90% of users say videos greatly help them make a purchase decision, a fact that’s not hidden from any smart marketer. Yet adding videos to WordPress sites continues to be a nasty experience for most site owners. Why? Here are […]
I’d say 85% of my grid usage is in one of these two categories…
I just need some pretty basic (probably equal width) columns that ends up being something like like grid-template-columns: repeat(3, minmax(0, 1fr));to be safe.
Actually doing some real layout where five minutes in I realize I’d really like subgrid.
Subgrid? It’s a nice intuitive way to have a child element on the grid inherit relevant grid lines from the parent grid.
Here’s a great recent video from Rachel Andrew covering it. Last year, we linked up her talk on the same! It’s such a clutch feature and I wish we could rely on it cross-browser. Right now, Firefox is the only one that has it. (Chrome issue, Safari issue)
In my recent video, right about at 20 minutes, I realize subgrid would make even a fairly simple layout much nicer, like removing the need for variables or resorting to magic numbers.
SlideCasts let you combine YouTube videos and Google Sides / PowerPoint presentations in a single-player. The speaker video and the slides appear side-by-side and, as the video progresses, the slides auto-change in sync with the video.
You can try a live demo of SlideCasts here. Just hit the play button on the YouTube video and you’ll notice that the slides will change at the 10s, 25s and 30s mark (configurable).
SlideCasts can be really useful for educators involved in remote teaching. The teacher’s “talking head” video can be uploaded to YouTube and the lecture slides can be hosted on Google Slides.
If your course slides are available as a PowerPoint presentation that will work as well since you can directly upload your PPT and PPTX files to Google Slides.
Go to the Addons menu inside Slides, choose Creator Studio and then select Create Slidecasts. Here specify the URL of the YouTube video and your Google Slides deck (both should be public).
Next, specify the timestamps in mm:ss format (minute seconds) when the slides should change in sync with the video.
For instance, if you want the second slide to show at the 15s point in the video, the 3rd slide at the 45s mark and the 4th slide at 1 minute, 20 second mark, your markers would be written as:
0, 15, 45, 1:20
That’s pretty much it. Click the Generate button and copy-paste the HTML code into your website.
The SlideCast player is responsive so the video and slides will auto-resize based on the size of the visitor’s screen.
Marie and Chris talk about video tutorials and demos for CodePen, and how CodePen is planning to improve videos across documentation and our YouTube channel.
Jetpack adds an absolute ton of powerful functionality to your self-hosted WordPress site. If you have had the feeling that you’re paying for more than you need, you’re in luck, Jetpack is starting to have features you can buy individually. Jetpack Backup and Jetpack Search are new features you can buy individually if you like, and Jetpack Scan is the very latest, scanning your site constantly for any security issues and offering one-click fixes, just $7/month.
When presented with the task of creating things for the Internet, knowing where to start can be half the battle. If you lack design skills or if you’re pressed for time, using some premade resources can be extremely helpful. The first order of business is locating a resource that has what you need. The second? Searching within this resource for templates, tools, and items that can aid you in making content.
Thankfully, we can handle the first part easily. Envato Elements is truly a one-stop resource for so many templates, themes, graphics, illustrations, photos, and more that you can use immediately in your work. Once you sign up, you gain access to thousands of items.
But if you’re not convinced, let’s talk about some of the ways you can use Envato Elements to make stellar online content starting immediately.
Your Designer Toolbox Unlimited Downloads: 500,000+ Web Templates, Icon Sets, Themes & Design Assets
Build a Website Using a Template
If you’re creating online, you need a website. And Envato Elements makes it super easy to do this. It features a wide array of templates that make it easy to build and launch a site quickly. There’s no shortage of options as well, so you can choose anything from an HTML template to a full CMS template. Here’s the full breakdown of the types of templates offered here:
And within these options you can narrow your search by features (responsiveness, eCommerce, PSD files included) by focus (admin, landing page, or site) and topic (beauty, corporate, fitness, etc).
Create Presentations to Accompany Online Courses
If you want to offer or sell online courses, you may wish to create and share this content via presentations. This means you’ll need some solid templates on hand if you want to make a real impact. Lucky for you, Envato Elements offers these as well. You can select from templates for Keynote, PowerPoint, and Google Slides, all of which are super professional-looking and easy to use. Just download the template, add your custom content, and export it. That’s all there is to it.
The crux of the situation here is that you shouldn’t have to labor over these elements of your work if you don’t have to.
Create Graphics for Social Media
If you run a business online, you should have a social media presence. But yet again, that’s another thing you have to create consistent content for. If coming up with an endless supply of compelling graphics doesn’t sound fun to you, Envato Elements can help. Its graphic templates section is loaded with a wide variety of options including templates for infographics and logos.
They also have scene generators or mockups, which make it easy to display your product or app on a background that’s been carefully (and stylishly) presented.
You can pair these templates with some other resources as well like the selection of graphics available. You can select from graphics that encompass the following categories:
They also have a dedicated Social category that you can browse for social media platform specific templates.
As if all of that weren’t enough, there’s also a Photo category that includes thousands of photographs you can use for anything under the sun.
Make Explainer and Promotional Videos
The last thing we’ll discuss here today is how you can make videos using resources on Envato Elements. If you haven’t already dipped your toes into the video-making market, now’s the time. Video is extremely popular and it’s been proven to increase visitor engagement. Because of this, many opted to create promotional videos or explainer videos that describe something practical. And while you may need to film some footage yourself, having stock footage on hand is beneficial. Wouldn’t you know it that Elements has this as well?
Hundreds of thousands of stock videos and motion graphics are available to choose from to add to your creations.
Or, if you need a templated solution, there are thousands of video templates to pick from as well. They cover categories like:
When you’re in edit mode, you can add in sound effects or music as well. The sky’s the limit here.
Don’t Wait to Start Creating
So you see, you really have no excuses not to start creating unique content for your online presence, whatever that may look like for you. From websites to videos, Envato Elements has you covered from top to bottom.
It’s probably one part coronavirus, one part new-fancy-video setup, and one part “hey this is good for CodePen too,” but I’ve been doing more videos lately. It’s nice to be back in the swing of that for a minute. There’s something fun about coming back to an old familiar workflow.
Where do the videos get published? I’m a publish-on-your-own site kinda guy, as I’m sure you know, so there is a whole Videos section of this site where every video we’ve ever published lives. There is also a YouTube channel, of course, which is probably the most practical way for most people to subscribe. We’re about halfway to Wes Bos-level, so let’s go people!
I had literally forgotten about it, but ages ago when I set this up, I created a special RSS feed for the videos so I could submit it as a video podcast on iTunes. That’s all still there and working! An interesting side note is that this enables offline viewing, as most podcatchers can cache subscriptions. Why build an app when you get the core ability for free, right?
I keep the original videos, of course. On individual video pages, I show a YouTube player that could be somewhat easily swapped out for another player if something crazy happened, like YouTube closes down or drastically changed their business model in some way that makes it problematic to show videos with their player. The originals are stored in an S3 bucket. If you’re an MVP Supporter, I give you the original high-quality download link right on the video pages.
If your curious about my workflow, I’m still using ScreenFlow. I don’t make nearly enough use of it, but it feels good in that it’s fairly easy to use, very reliable and fast, and I can always learn and do more with it. Shooting my screen is easy and a built-in feature of ScreenFlow of course. I also have a Rode Podcaster on a boom arm at my desk so the audio is passable. And I just went through a whole process to use a DSLR camera at my desk too, and I think the quality from that is great. It’s all a little funny because I have this whole sound recording booth as well, with a $1,000 audio setup in there, but I only use that for podcasting. The lighting sucks in there, making it no good for video.
It’s this new desk setup that has inspired me to do more video, and I suspect it will continue! One thing I could really use is a new high quality intro video. Just like a five-second thing with refreshed aesthetics. Anyone do that kind of work?
Earlier this week European Commissioner Thierry Breton shared an image on Twitter of him having a video conference with Apple CEO Tim Cook. It has been widely reported that during this meeting Cook told the Commissioner that the COVID-19 contact tracing API being co-developed by Apple and Google will be ready for launch on April 28th.
Dark website designs are where it’s at. Don’t believe me? They’ve become increasingly popular over the past year. Dark designs are thought to be easier on eye strain and make for a more pleasant viewing experience. They can also add atmosphere to your site.
As more and more websites have shifted to dark mode in 2020, we thought it imperative to highlight some designs that really capture the concept of dark designs well. What follows is a list of over 20 delightfully dark website designs you’ll definitely want to check out.
The Serge Thoraval: Atelier website doesn’t just offer a dark design — it also features some really interesting effects. From a mouse hover effect when the site is loading to transition effects when you scroll down the page, this site sets itself apart.
This site offers a dark design that makes each portfolio piece really stand out. Plus, when you hover over each item, they color shift and descriptive text scrolls across it from right to left.
DevArt is another site with a dark design that helps to make the artwork it features stand out. It’s also easier on the eyes than sites with brighter backgrounds.
The Creative Park website offers up a delightfully dark design that allows the subject of photos to really stand out. It also has some really interesting transition effects for changing slides, clicking links, and opening menus.
The 3D Hubs website leverages its dark design to make the components it features stand out. This also works well for displaying video and individual items the company offers.
Welford Media is a web design firm that uses a dark design on its website to engage visitors. This design choice allows the company’s tagline stand out at a glance and builds immediate interest.
The website for the Meaning 2020 Conference has a dark design as well. The gray background allows the colorful logo to stand out and offers a subdued backdrop onto which videos and photos are placed.
This is a website dedicated to the work of Rich Brown, an art director and UX/UI designer. The site itself features a dark design onto which video backgrounds play seamlessly.
The design on this website is super interesting. Artem Pivovarov has a dark design with a prominent photo background. It also has interactive elements in this background that react on hover.
Formigari Srl is another site you should check out for dark design inspiration. It highlights videos and photos on a deep gray background that makes the entirety of the content feel immersive.
Still another site you should check out is Canvas United. This site is for a New York-based digital agency that provides some cool transition effects and an immersive experience.
The Resoluut website offers a dark purple background with images that appear as though they’re hovering on top of it. There is a lot of play with depth of field here.
Still another option is the Fantassin website, which features a dark background and tons of cool scroll effects that draw the eye further down the page.
The Cody Petts Studio website highlights the work of Cody Petts, including print and packaging designs as well as photography. It’s dark, gritty, and extremely compelling.
The design for the Kazuma Kurata website offers a dark background that’s intimately inviting. It makes the colorful Aspects of featured photos stand out even more. The design and function of the site make it clear why it’s deserving of its AWWWARDs Nominee status.
The Bachoy website highlights a creative and tech studio. The dark design featured here uses a cool spotlight hover effect and interesting interactions with photos as you scroll down the page.
Last on our list is the website for Arara, which offers battery-free bicycle lights. This site is dark but not brooding, and instead uses the darker background to make the bright colors featured in images and videos “pop.”
Dark Website Designs Can Serve You Well
As you can see from the examples listed above, dark website designs can really take the overall look of your website to the next level — whatever that means for you. Whether you want to make colors look more vibrant, ease eye strain, or provide a mood, dark designs offer flexibility in both form and function. Have fun playing with them!
Figma is an awesome design tool. In this video, we’ll look both at some design tips and tricks for when you’re putting a web design together, as well as look at some of the cooler features of Figma.
Video is increasingly becoming a pivotal part of digital marketing. That is mainly because over 90% of users say videos greatly help them make a purchase decision, a fact that’s not hidden from any smart marketer. Yet adding videos to WordPress sites continues to be a nasty experience for most site owners. Why? Here are […]
