Classical Cepheids (hereafter Cepheids) belong to a class of important variable stars that can be used to determine distances to nearby galaxies via the famous period-luminosity (PL) relations, i.e. the Leavitt Law. In turn, these distances can then be used to calibrate a host of secondary distance indicators located well within the Hubble flow, and ultimately determine the Hubble constant in a manner independent of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) measurements. Some recent progress in determining the Hubble constant to within ~ 3% level via the Cepheid-based distance scale ladder (the SH0ES and the Carnegie Hubble Program) were first summarized in this Proceeding, followed by a brief discussion on the prospect of using ultra-long period Cepheids (ULPC) in future distance scale work. ULPC are those Cepheids with periods longer than 80 days, which seem to follow a different PL relation than their shorter period Cepheids. It has been suggested that ULPC can be used to determine the Hubble constant in "one-step". However, based on the two ULPCs found in M31, it was found that the large dispersion in derived distance moduli leads to a less accurate distance modulus to M31 compared to the classical Cepheids. This finding might raise an alert regarding the use of ULPCs in future distance scale work.

We introduce a code called tlc s05, to fit sparsely sampled JHK band Cepheid light curve data with template light curves to derive the mean magnitude. A brief description of the code is provided here. We tested the performance of the code in deriving the mean JHK band magnitudes using simulations, and we found that it is better to observe more than four evenly spaced data points per light curve, which permits tlc s05 to derive accurate mean magnitudes for Cepheid JHK band light curves.