August 10th, 2008 §
I now run four Wordpress blogs simultaneously for different purposes. I setup, install, modify, tweak, and maintain all the code myself. I’ve worked with the Wordpress core, templates/themes, plugins, and then some. I’ve had some bad days with it, but at any given day, I don’t think I would give Wordpress up for any other blogging platform out there. Here’s why:
Wordpress is constantly improving
Wordpress gets updated regularly, and it keeps improving at each release. It’s currently at version 2.6, and I like the new features like article versioning, the new plugin page, and the new theme preview feature. It’s driven by open source, so anyone can contribute the best and latest thing that people want or need. If you want to see a new feature in the next release, go ahead and write it and contribute to the source. It’s completely free and open.
Tons of Plugins
The default Wordpress bundle comes with a spam filter plugin and a plugin that allows you to print the words “Hello, Dolly” somewhere on the site. If you want more functionality, there are tons of plugins that do almost everything, from tracking user behavior, improving SEO, adding a photo gallery, or finding out which are your most popular posts.
Here are the list of plugins I can’t do without:
And here are some really recommended ones:
Tons of Themes
I don’t know why but there are way too many Wordpress themes out there. So there’s a high chance that you’ll be able to find one that suites your needs. If this is not the case, hire yourself a Wordpress template/theme designer. You can find them quite easily too, and at affordable rates.
Wordpress is built on PHP
PHP is a programming language used to build of websites today. PHP isn’t the best for everything, but it’s good for Wordpress because
- There are an abundance of PHP programmers, so you can get a lot of help
- PHP is relatively straightforward to learn, code and debug
- PHP is mature, and thus compatible with most web hosting services
- PHP is also improving, and Wordpress leverages on that
Wordpress is easy to use
A friend of mine who’s surveying blogging systems says he likes the way Wordpress keeps posts and pages seperate. It just makes sense. Blogging with Wordpress isn’t rocket science at all. It just works. Before using Wordpress, I was on blogspot and I was fiddling around with blogging software, because I just couldn’t get the layout to work right or I wanted to do more stuff. But with Wordpress I’ve never needed any software. I just blog from Wordpress itself.
If there’s any reason to hate Wordpress, it’s that the themes might be a bit tricky to manipulate on your own. If you’re wanting to change the look and feel of your website extensively, you’ll need to know HTML, PHP and CSS. But then, that’s true for a lot of other blogging platforms. It’s really hard to get around that. Practically all websites run off HTML and CSS.
July 2nd, 2008 §
I’m tweaking my blog design bit by bit to improve the usability of the site. And usability is one topic I’ve been harping on about for years, but I still find myself learning it about again and again.
I’ve not done much – the paragraph lines are closer to each other to allow readers to scan through my articles faster, and the margin between the title heading and the article text have increased, so that they both stand out better and have a space of their own.
Readers don’t read everything – they scan for information. Which is why I spend time emphasizing text, adding headlines and sectioning my articles. It just helps readers get more out of that 2 minutes they spend on my site, which is an average for most websites.
So good usability is about giving the user the least amount of problems and allowing them to accomplish all of their intended goals within that 2 minute space (or less).
Good usability practitioners understand that you really need to use the site constantly to get a feel of the little things that are wrong with it, and understanding what users are looking for when they spend that small amount of time on your site.
Focus on your content
To help users get the most out, you should first focus on your content:
- Write concisely
- Use fewer words
- Tell a story
- Arrange paragraphs to compose your thoughts, priorities, and focus
- Summarize at appropriate points (at the beginning, at the end, etc.)
- Remove “I feel”, “I think”,… half-baked wording
- Use captivating titles
- Use lists
Adjust your layout
Then, focus on the layout to assist reading, scanning, and remembering:
- Choose an appropriate font-size: 11 to 12px is OK
- Balance this with the appropriate line-height. Mine’s set to 1.15em. It’s a bit technical, but you can read up about it.
- Margins between title headers and content – too near means it’s hard to scan, too far means it’s breaks the flow
- Put all the other stuff on the sides and bottoms – comments, tags, similar posts, bookmarking, etc.
- Highlight things you want people to scan and remember – catchphrases, important terms, section titles, links
- Use clean colors for text and backgrounds (black on white, etc.)
At the end of all this, spend hours and hours reading your own content, scanning your own articles, using your own website – to fully appreciate everything the user has to go through when they use your site.
Make small changes.
Rinse and repeat.
If you liked what you read, consider subscribing.
Resources:
June 30th, 2008 §
Most people don’t blog – they don’t have any real reason to. But most people can discover the benefits of blogging, and some even want to try. The problem with starting isn’t about being technical. You don’t have to be a techie to start blogging – otherwise generation MySpace wouldn’t have happened.
People have all sorts of reasons for not starting a blog, but I mostly feel that people are trapped in a consumption culture, and don’t bother to try. Bloggers tend to be production-inclined. We believe that the stuff we blog about needs to be:
- archived
- shared
- discussed
It’s not as though blogs appeared on the scene and that it was absolutely the best thing since sliced bread. People who started blogs already had specific traits on which to build on, but were open enough to adapt with and sustain the emerging blog culture – whatever that may be (it keeps changing).
They could be anyone – visionaries who thought deep about specific topics, a socialite wanting to publish their whereabouts, a mother reflecting vicariously about childhood, or any regular Joe.
But to blog is to learn, give, and adapt.
If that’s what you’re after, then you’ve pretty much covered the basics of blogging. The rest are just details. And that’s what most blog how-to articles focus on, and there are tons of them. Articles on how to set up your blog, how to make it pretty, what topics to discuss, what style to write in, and on and on and on.
Blogging is an extension of yourself. It’s not the whole you, but just a part. It’s a part of you that you give to others – which is actually the permission to allow people play around with, talk about, and share your thoughts.
Therefore, you need to decide which part of you to share with the rest of the world. I feel this part is important, but I think everyone gets this. Whether or not these things are appropriate to share is subjective. Sometimes it’s worth just trying it out, while keeping certain things under wraps – like your identity, location, and so on. This is what creates the blog’s identity.
The difficult part about blogging is in managing this identity.
It sounds silly at first – why would anyone care about managing a blog’s identity? It matters when you realize that the blog is a part of you. It’s like shaving or dressing up.
One good way is to maintain seperate blogs that have separate identities. Another way is by keeping specific posts private. Yet another way is to use categories. Blog templates and themes can assist in some aspects. There are many ways to communicate a cohesive blog identity.
A lot of people get blogging wrong because they don’t realize that blogging isn’t like writing a book. It’s like a public journal, and bloggers can make mistakes, but good bloggers learn from their mistakes and publish them out and communicate their lessons with their readers. You’re not supposed to be perfect before you can start a blog. In fact, being imperfect is one real reason why you should.
But most people don’t want to look stupid, so they would rather avoid it. Bloggers, instead, find healing and connection with seemingly anonymous audiences that it drives them to write better and give more. It’s kind of a “good world”-”bad world” perspective. But it’s a perspective worth exploring.
The good thing is that you can start small, and find your way around until you reach a comfortable spot.
I started off writing personal thoughts and reflections, and my readers were mostly friends. I began to realize a lot of things I wanted to say were meant for a larger audience, and I created new blogs for that. I began to talk to other bloggers about the things they said. Some responded. Some were trolls. I killed off some older blogs, and kept some regularly updated. But the more I blogged, the more I realized that blogging is really about adapting socially. The benefits of blogging are due to its social nature.
If you’re not sure how to start a blog, start with asking yourself the question – why? It gets a lot easier after that.
If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the blog.
