My WordPress Developer’s Wishlist

Let’s just get this out of the way: I’m a total WordPress fanboy. Most projects that come through my door can be – and are – built on the platform and I’m always finding great new ways to extend and improve the basic functionality. Most of my clients love the backend and I’ve yet to find a WYSIWYG system that works as well as WordPress’s. I feel silly even making a list like this but these ideas have popped into my head over the last year and I wanted to get them down in one place.

One caveat here: I’m trying to leave out anything that’s easily relieved with a plugin or some easy template code. The decision to incorporate something into WordPress core or leave it to the plugin authors is likely a constant struggle and far be it for me to try and play back-seat driver for the development phases.

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Taking Your First Steps on Twitter: The 30 – 40 – 30 Plan

This post is for anyone who just signed up for Twitter and thought, “OK, now what?” It’s for the businesses and individuals curious about how to get started on Twitter and have fun with it. This isn’t about ROI, it isn’t about analytics, and it isn’t about strategy. It’s about what I like to create and engage with and, simply, where to start if you’re taking the first step and you’re already lost.

As always, I’ll begin with a disclaimer: this isn’t a rulebook. This is just a way to simplify your thinking about what can be done with this active and fascinating social network. I’m of the mind that more people using these networks to communicate, rather than just promote what they’re doing, makes the experience stronger and much more enjoyable.

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How to be a better self-promoter in the creative industry

I was having coffee at a local coffee shop recently and came across one of the worse examples of in-person self-promotion I’ve seen in a while. This was a chance encounter and I certainly don’t know all the details of the situation but I left with a name, a URL, and a bad taste in my mouth. Because I’m sure this person wasn’t completely aware of their impact, I wanted to share the experience so you know where this kind of thing can go wrong.

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Working with a web designer: help us help you

I’m a very retrospective person, particularly when it comes to how I do business. I’m always looking back at projects, looking for what I could have done better and making changes to my planning process along the way. During this retrospection, I find myself coming back to the design process far, far more often than any of the other steps. There’s a million reasons why this portion can become so sticky, but that’s only indirectly why I’m writing this. This post is about helping me help you to come up with the best design we possibly can.

Design is just one of those things, isn’t it? First of all, it’s hugely relative … to a point. There are rules – alignment, sizing, consistency, contrast, etc – but even adhering to those leaves you with a near-infinite number of combinations of colors, fonts, shapes, photos, and sizes, all of which have fans and foes. What looks clean and elegant to one person can look boring and uninspired to another.

On top of that, design has to actually do something, it has a goal. Some of the best-looking web sites out there are hard to use, incompatible with various devices, and disturbingly hard to maintain. On the web in particular, looking good is just one component of a long list of requirements.

Oh, and let’s not forget to mention the pink elephant in the room here: budget. Maybe, just maybe, given an infinite budget and a due date of “at some point during your life,” perfection is possible (doubtful). But that’s just conjecture and, besides, it’s not the reality. There are limitations to how much money someone can spend, how long they can wait, and how long a designer can look at the same mock-up without ending up in an institution.

Despite these obstacles, there is a path of least resistance and it’s our job to find that path. So where do we start?

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Analysis, Keywords and Monitoring: 3 Steps to Improve SEO

I’ll just say it right up front: the target audience for this post is for business owners and entrepreneurs who are online and understand the importance of optimizing their site for search but aren’t sure where to start. If you’re unconcerned with search traffic, that conversation is for another day. If you’re looking for in-depth topics, start with one of my other SEO posts like Choosing Keyword Phrases for Site Content. You know you’ve got a problem but you don’t know how to correct it. Don’t worry, Josh Can Help.

Think of yourself at the bottom facing up...

Once the SEO bug bites, it’s tough to shake the feeling that you’re not doing something - or anything – right. There are stated, universal things one can do to improve ranking but the black-box nature of search engine algorithms makes for a tense situation, especially if you’re already ranking well for a few key terms. Combine this mysterious environment with the stories everyone has about the almighty Google fist striking a site completely off the ranking pages and you have a recipe for abject paranoia.

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