Lee Munroe » tips

Barcamp Belfast: The 7 Deadly Sins of WordPress

Lee — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:45:41 +0000

I had the pleasure of attending and talking at Barcamp Belfast on Saturday (25th April) before dashing off and getting a plane to London for the marathon.

I had a great morning and going by feedback from others the whole day was a great success with some fantastic speakers and over 350 attendees. Well done to Andy Good for putting it together, along with all those who helped out. There’s a good video montage of the day here.

The 7 Deadly Sins of WordPress

I got the ball rolling at 9.30am with my WordPress talk, looking at 7 ways to make your (WordPress) blog more effective.

I thought that rather than put up my slides (which don’t really make sense out of context) I’d give an overview of the 7 points and the solutions.

1. Backup

Assume things will go wrong and the time will come when you’ll regret you didn’t backup (server problems, site gets hacked, client/other user deletes stuff, you muck it up yourself)

Solution

Backup daily automatically with WP-DB-Plugin. Your backup will be emailed to you daily and you don’t have to lift a finger.

2. Easy Comments

Make it as easy as possible for users to leave comments. Don’t put a barrier in their way in the form of captchas or having to signup to leave a comment. These are used to stop spam, but there are better user friendly ways.

Solution

To stop spam, install and activate Akismet (which will put spam in a spam folder) and verify comments before they’re published.

3. URLS

The default URL for posts e.g. http://www.leemunroe.com/?p=1194 doesn’t mean anything to users or search engines.

http://www.leemunroe.com/tips-more-twitter-followers/ means more to users (they now know what content is on that page) and search engines can allocate keywords to that page based on the url

Solution

Under Settings > Permalinks click ‘Custom structure’ and enter /%postname%/. This will change your URL so it includes the article title.

4. Feed

Make sure your RSS feed link is easy to find. It should be clearly linked to in your sidebar and should be in the browsers address bar also (this is a common convention and there are also applications that will find your feed going by the link in your head).

By default WordPress will include this link, as will most themes, but if you’re designing your own theme it can often be overlooked.

Solution

Put this code between your tags:

5. Actions

Once someone reads through your post it’s up to you to point them in the right direction of what their next actions should be. They could add a comment, read other articles on your site, help promote the post, follow you on Twitter etc.

Solution

Use the following plugins to suggest actions at the end of your post. These will help keep users on your site reading other articles or help to promote your post via social networking sites.

6. SEO

For your posts to be found on Google they have to be well optimized. There are a few simple modifications you can make to help SEO.

Solution

Use the All In One SEO Pack and you can set titles, descriptions and keywords for your homepage, posts and pages.

7. Text

On the web, people don’t read they scan. You have roughly 3 seconds to grab the readers attention so your text should be easily read and scannable.

Solution

Break blocks of text into smaller paragraphs
Use meaningful sub headings
Use lists where appropriate (bullet and numbered)
Highlight (bold) keywords
Make sure links stand out against other text
Remove unnecessary waffle text

Photo thanks to Colin Parte

These are my 7 deadly sins of WordPress. It should take you no longer than an hour to implement these solutions and they will make a big difference to the effectiveness of your blog.

There are lots of other ways you can improve the effectiveness of your blog so feel free to share any tips below.

Also if anyone has any links to #barcampbelfast roundups or photos, please share.

Guest Post: 8 Tips To Design a Charity Website

Lee — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:53:12 +0000

Check out my latest guest blog post over at Webdesigner Depot; 8 tips to design a charity website.

The post takes a look at what makes up a good charity website (who usually don’t have a large website budget) and showcases 20 good examples.

Read the full post here.

The research for this post was carried out while working on my own charity campaign Sponsor Lee.

Feedback appreciated.

7 Things Web Designers Can Learn From Gordon Ramsay

Lee — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:00:56 +0000

I was watching Ramsay’s Kichen Knightmares USA on Friday night and it got me thinking that as web designers we can learn so much from the kitchen maestro extraordinaire.

Photo: Channel 4

1. Simplicity

Gordon constantly tells the failing restaurants to simplify their menus. It’s easier for the kitchen to manage and less choice makes it easier for customers to make a decision.

Simplify your website and your information architecture. Make it more concise for the user.

2. Communication

Constant communication between your team and your customers is vital as is constant communication with your website users.

Always give feedback to let your website users know what has just happened or what they need to do.

3. Keep it fresh

For a restaurant to reek of quality it needs to bring in and produce fresh food everyday. A website doesn’t need to be fresh every day but you can’t let it go stale either otherwise users won’t return and content becomes outdated.

Introducing a blog or newsreel allows you to easily update a website daily, weekly or monthly with fresh content.

4. Test, test, test

The first thing Gordon does when he visits a new restaurant is test the food (which he’s never happy with of course). Testing is a vital stage of a web project. Basing your design decisions simply on what you think is not good enough. You’ve been involved in the project from the start so there are things you’ll overlook.

Test your websites on external users i.e. people who aren’t involved in the project at all. Get real users to test sites for you, not just your family and friends.

5. Feedback

Closely related to testing is asking for feedback. You’ll often see Gordon out in the local village asking people what they think of the restaurant and why they don’t go there for meals.

Ask your users and target market for feedback and how your websites can be changed for the better. Take the feedback as constructive criticism.

6. Influence your customers

Gordon often makes restaurants specialise in certain dishes for certain nights e.g. Tuesday nights are pie nights. This is a type of ‘call to action’ guiding your users in the direction you want them to go.

Always ask yourself what you want users to do next on each page and guide them in that direction with one clear call to action button.

7. Cleanliness

Get the gloves out and get the workspace cleaned. A clean kitchen is important for good restaurants as is your workspace and desktop for good web design. It must be clean and organised to for you to work effectively.

Stay clean with a tidy workspace and stay organised with your calendar and to-do list manager.

Final thought

Lastly be passionate about what you do. Gordon will always fit this in somewhere. If you’re not passionate about what you do then it’s not worth it.

There you go, Gordon’s guide to web design. I found another good article on Gordon on 37 Signals blog that’s worth checking out.

Do you watch Gordon Ramsay’s shows and have you learnt anything from him?

Quicktip: Update your WordPress copyright date automatically

Lee — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:04:50 +0000

New year, time to go through all your websites and blogs and update the copyright date that you placed in the footer, right?

Not if you were smart and developed your site so it updates automatically.

Solution

PHP and WordPress can update your copyright year automatically.

Just place this code where you want the year to appear and voila, your year will change to 2009 (and will update automatically for years to come).

Admittedly I hadn’t done this myself until today ;)

Don’t use the_time

I seen a couple of solutions using the_time tag in WordPress, but this only displays the year of the last blog post in the_loop.

10 Web App Tips From 8 Inspirational Speakers

Lee — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:33:38 +0000

This is a long overdue roundup of FOWA London 2008. I was looking through my notes and decided that rather than giving a general roundup (as you’ve probably already read or seen all the talks online) I would share with you my 10 favorite points from the 2 days.

1. Push your content to other sites

Kevin Rose – Digg – The Future of News
Stuff that happens on your web app should be easily pushed and shared with other apps e.g. Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed

2. Monetize later when the community is built

Edwin Aoki – AOL – Web Apps Are Dead – Long Live Web Apps
Building the community and bringing people together is what matters. Build the web app based on your passion and then monetize.

3. Do stuff later when the user is gone

Joe Stump, Blaine Cooke – Digg & (ex)Twitter – Languages Don’t Scale
Queuing is a technique you can use to do stuff later when the user is gone therefore speeding up the immediate response. “Every large website has some sort of queuing mechanism”.

4. If you force users to supply info that doesn’t matter, you will get inaccurate data

Kevin Marks – Google – The Future of Enterprise Web Apps
Only ask the user for the info that matters to them (e.g. username, email, password). If you as for a zip code, for example, chances are you’ll get 90210 or 12345 – this information is worthless.

5. Plan to localize your app/social network

Kevin Marks – Google – The Future of Enterprise Web Apps
Containers provide a social context for your users and localization is a container already established geographically. If you localize your app it enables an easy way for people to form connections.

6. If they haven’t contributed yet, show them how

Alvin Woon – Plurk – The future of social app interface design
Every web app has novice and advanced users. You need to spend time with the novice users and educate them. When they register, show them how to do things. Expert users don’t need guidance, they’ll go off and do their own thing.

7. People love to look at data about themselves

Ben Huh – I Can Haz Cheeseburger – How to take your community to the next level
Info porn! Share info on a daily basis about your users and they’ll come back on a daily basis to check this data.

8. Make users contributors

Beh Huh – I Can Haz Cheeseburger – How to take your community to the next level
Let your users contribute – they’ll work for you for free (look at Wikipedia). Once you start paying people to contribute, they become employees and things get complicated and expensive.

9. There’s social value in knowing what your friends know

Bret Taylor – Friendfeed -The Future of your Online Presence
The data you provide should be relevant to your user. Even if you’re not interested in a particular subject, if 20 of your friends or family have read an article then you’ll want to read it too so you’re not left out.

10. Don’t prematurely Optimize

Elaine Wherry – Meebo – Scaling the Synchronous web
You can’t predict what’s going to happen your app so wait until it does happen and deal with it then, don’t waste your time trying to fix something that hasn’t happened yet.

Other areas of interest from FOWA

Bun Huh’s lolcats were very popular (which, to be honest, I just don’t get)
Kevin Marks made a good point: In Star Trek, why doesn’t the computer know what date it is? (Captain’s log stardate…)

Lee Munroe » tips

Barcamp Belfast: The 7 Deadly Sins of WordPress

The 7 Deadly Sins of WordPress

1. Backup

Solution

2. Easy Comments

Solution

3. URLS

Solution

4. Feed

Solution

5. Actions

Solution

6. SEO

Solution

7. Text

Solution

Guest Post: 8 Tips To Design a Charity Website

7 Things Web Designers Can Learn From Gordon Ramsay

1. Simplicity

2. Communication

3. Keep it fresh

4. Test, test, test

5. Feedback

6. Influence your customers

7. Cleanliness

Final thought

Quicktip: Update your WordPress copyright date automatically

Solution

Don’t use the_time

10 Web App Tips From 8 Inspirational Speakers

1. Push your content to other sites

2. Monetize later when the community is built

3. Do stuff later when the user is gone

4. If you force users to supply info that doesn’t matter, you will get inaccurate data

5. Plan to localize your app/social network

6. If they haven’t contributed yet, show them how

7. People love to look at data about themselves

8. Make users contributors

9. There’s social value in knowing what your friends know

10. Don’t prematurely Optimize

Other areas of interest from FOWA

Photos thanks to: