How simple should CMS get?

63% of the top million websites today are using WordPress for content management. It is also the fastest growing CMS. Does it suggest its ease of use? How simple should CMS get?

Very simple – reply most of the people asked. Comparing publishing process to a paper ad stapled to any street post, everyone who has something to sell, including knowledge, info, gossip and entertainment, want the web developer [middle man] disappear. Why not? Shouldn’t we all be able to publish to the internet with a push of one button?

WordPress is considered to be very user friendly. It really is, but many new end users

Irreplaceable Backups

What is your computer worth in terms of information treasure, unique and irreplaceable photos, repository of your work, research and ideas, communication with peers, clients, employers, products or production data? If you couldn’t access it in the next minute, how big would be your loss?
In a fast pace environment, although we all know backup should be well setup and fail-proof (shall I say fool-proof?), we mostly don’t follow through. Working in a corporation we have a luxury of leaving it to the IT guys. For small business or professionals, way too often the truth strikes before we are ready.

Automatic Upgrades – nursing your CMS installation

Open source CMS platforms like WordPress and Joomla regularly work on their core codes, issuing  frequently next version for the upgrade. We are so used to constant upgrades of our computer software that clicking that upgrade button is not anything most of us think twice about.

Should you always upgrade to the most current version?

This simply sounding question does not have a straight-forward answer. It is really a complex issue and coming up with a right answer goes back to the planning stage of your website. Let’s talk about the most popular Content Management platform today – WordPress.

Why some simple websites have performance problems?

When you had your website built, it was most probably handed to you in a good state. Page loading times can deteriorate over time, or quickly and abruptly, when certain events occur on the server or in the process of content maintenance. What are some reasons for a slow loading times of a fairly simple website?

Running forums

Very large content (hundreds of pages)

Large media files (images, video, audio, attachment files like PDF brochures etc.)

Excessive use of plugins

Excessive use of scripts (scripts that come with plugins, traffic analytics, marketing, forms, visual effects)

The Shortest Guide to WordPress

For small business owners and professionals

Why talk about WordPress when you need a (or have an older, traditional) website, but are not thinking of blogging?

WordPress is the most popular content management platform today, with over 80% of all blogs using it. WordPress site does not have to look like a blog at all. You won’t be able to tell ‘it’s a WordPress site’ from just looking at it. With fantastic resources amassed, it offers achieving complex functionality in the shortest time, and freedom of quick content creation and design changes by users who would normally not engage in web design.

What are the challenges of today?

New Year brings predictions, reviews, summaries, list and reflections like no other date. It makes people think, regroup, refocus and plan. When I look around, this is what I see:

We live in the world that did not exist when we were born. Generation gap is the greatest ever in history of human kind.

Industrial capitalism is at the end of its wits. Development of industries, cities and technology and science jumps over itself and instant obsoleteness is the new norm.

Almost anyone is only a click away. Almost any information is always available. The best minds on the planet can be called to work on global projects and issues in minutes. Many local workers are struggling to adapt.

Economic gap among the richest and poorest is the greatest ever.

Fascination with celebrities’ lives became ‘circus for the masses’, bringing huge entertainment revenues to global networks.

Unprecedented resources are available to us to learn from others. We innovate through re-iteration of things we know to add and improve.

Kids in schools are learning for the jobs that we don’t even know the names of yet – they will be invented in the near future.

Debts of some countries are so unimaginable that money cannot be considered asset based any more.

Social security networks are growing and crumbling at the same time, as they cannot be supported by unstable economies nor indebted governments.

Standard medical care is facing growing pressures of ineffectiveness.

Families are scattered and isolated into mostly single’s and couples‘ dwellings, due to new realities of urban/global living and new relationship models.

Is it all bad, catastrophic, depressing? It is our today. It is not good or bad. This is what it is, and human kind will emerge from it in a mutated, evolved state, as it always have.

Website design trends 2012

Twenty two year old Internet is in it’s fifth generation – immersed user. Generation rollover is accelerating, and so website design is experiencing more diversity than ever. 65% of small business owners have a website, but 31% still don’t, and out of those who do, some 20% are updating it only once a year. Combine this with the fact that viewer stays on the site only for a few seconds if he/she feels it is out-of-date.

Through the research of top, popular and emerging trends, one can come to this conclusion of what we will see in 2012 websites:

One-page websites

One-page layouts are on the rise with several variations that include: Vertical scrolling with link-embedded content, in absence of traditional navigation; Parallax scrolling; Design under the fold, where interesting content does not end above the first-visible area of the screen.

Large images

Billboard, Print and luxury Magazines designers invaded traditional web domain with their striking imagery that is worth a thousand words. Variations include oversized headers taking full height of the screen, large sliders trending against flash designs (flash has peaked some time ago, and mobile devices will mostly not accommodate that technology), large background images where it does not compete with the content.

Mobile design

It has gone a long way from text-only site alternative through plug-ins, responsive design, to separate mobile edition of the main website that has its own set of rules and technologies. Swipe-touch, no hover effects, fluid width and feel, and lots of different device viewport sizes constitutes quite a knowledge base – dig in. Mobile design is officially in the main stream of design this year, with mobile apps for everything you can imagine useful.

Minimalism

This one evolved, too. It is not your old black and white layout with lots of white space and one font. New minimalist is rich and sophisticated in a subtle way. Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. Simple is Good. Minimalist design pronounces clear message, right to the point, without clutter. One-page websites are part of this philosophy.

Perspective / 3D

- we will see more often designers do away with a traditional desktop perspective, in favour of more 3D, or side-shot perspective that makes the page more attractive, and adheres to a more realistic view, as long as it still shows well on mobile devices. It may include rich surfaces, where applicable.

Fat footers

There seems to be agreement not to throw anything that didn’t fit into main navigation to the footer any more. Fat footer is now designed for richer content, personalized experience, desirable extras, not an afterthought of main content.

Interactivity

Is not going away, but it becomes more embedded in context. Interconnected with social networks, includes modal boxes with facebook sign-ups to site, sharing what you surf or watch (scary, isn’t it?), interacting with corporate sites in a game playing way.

Built-in activism

Fairness, environment and community involvement interlaces with business models of many new startups. We are going to see more of it, in times of suppressed economical growth.

Typography

This subject is present in every new year trends for quite a time. Makes you think that designers are yearning to distinguish themselves with funky fonts, no matter what the technology cost. Keep in mind that non-standard fonts are mostly not compatible with a diversity of internet devices.
Slab Typefaces – all capital letters, bold and imposing, as in western’s ‘Wanted’ posters have their purpose and strong place as elements of design in the new year, but not as a main theme.

In new design elements trends, one very visible is QR code usage and associated digital art. Taking advantage of huge amount of information that can be crammed into such a small space, QR codes are popping up in lots of places, including small merchandise objects, real estate, business cards, T-shirts, wearables, tatoos, and street advertising. Another visible trend is metamorphism or otherwise called mutant advertising, which is using mutant human appearances to exaggerate advertised message, which is then longer remembered.

Color schemes are very utilitarian, with modern neutrals, grays accentuated with red or orange, and some blueprint inspirations. Greens are still reflecting organic influences in anything environment-related. Large imagery fills sites with lots of vibrant, stunning colors.

So there you have your 2012 work cut out – and don’t forget that facts and opinions get blurred all the time, as the only reality is our own.

Mobile website first?

Your website does not look correctly on 4S?, on other smart phones neither? In fact, it does not even load? Oh, no… What are you going to do?

We first create a website, and then ‘adapt’ it to mobile website, viewable on mobile devices. And how are we doing it? There is lots of ways: mobile plugins, responsive design, conditional css, using grid etc. You can look it up… Shouldn’t though mobile version be created first and given the right to it’s own set of rules and best practices, before treated as hand-me-down version of something bigger and better? You’re right it should!

It may seem like a nuisance to design (and more importantly, maintain up-to-date) a separate mobile website just for mobile devices, but it does make perfect sense, if you know how websites and servers work.

You may think that when the code detects small device, just execute ‘display:none’ for complicated elements and resize your high resolution images and everything will be all right. What about beautifully designed block menus, sparkling with colors on ‘hover‘, centered across fixed width template? What about sophisticated backgrounds and elaborate horizontal galleries? Plugins to popular content management software are well developed to take care of most challenges with mobile web design, but here is something to think about:

Responsive design wakeup call: not displaying large element on a mobile device does not prevent it from being download anyway! What does it mean? Simply, all large files still have to end up on a mobile device before the pages are displayed, even when these large files are already coded to not being shown. It has been proven by looking at the server log files.

Why it matters? Because mobile devices work not on a broadband cable or fiber internet connection like standard computers, but on telecom data packages that have much smaller capacity and are more expensive per megabyte transmitted that way.

It does make a lot of sense to design separate mobile site. Mobile devices are gaining market share as a primary internet channel and cannot be ‘adapted‘ from your main website any longer. Mobile users have specific needs that need to be addressed to sell your products, services, ideas and information.

Focus on one transaction is base of a mobile experience. Content overload has no place on a small screen.

Because of touch screen capabilities, various operating systems and technology, color or greyscale screens – Say NO to:

• Flash
• Fixed-width layout
• Complex navigation paths with submenus
• Playing with hover features
• Low contrast designs

Remember:

• Less is more
• Engage better with focused interaction
• Use simpler interface, text rather than logos with details
• Forget about partner promos, loosely related links, multiple sponsor logos, big ‘About’ pages and fat footers – too much content
• Click on button evolves to touch-and-swipe – be open to NEW

And face it: Your website cannot be all things to all people.
Its functionality and convenience are more important for the best consumer experience than haute couture look and reference library stack of resources combined.

Website accessibility

Websites of the companies that offer goods or services to the public in Ontario must be accessible to people with disabilities. If you have at least one employee and offer goods or services, you are legally required to comply with the Accessibility Standards for Customer Service. Private and non-profit sector organizations will be required to comply by January 1, 2012.

So is your website’s content accessible?

Here are some considerations that need to be addressed in order to achieve accessibility standards. First: don’t despair – there are resources and organizations that can evaluate your website and guide you through fixing most of the problems found.

To make your website accessible, you need to keep in mind that not everyone is using mouse and not everyone has good vision, in addition to computer hardware and internet connection limitations. There are variety of devices that want to “see” your website, like screen readers, audible enhancers, tablets, mobile phones etc.

We will not discuss old browsers and operating systems. The pointers below will only focus on design layout and development guidance that includes people with disabilities and compliance with provincial standards.

Basic issues that need to be addressed are quite simple:
Text size, contrast, keyboard-only navigation, descriptive images and links and content access.

Text size:
Make it easy for the viewer to increase the text size at will, without breaking your tediously developed layout. Check it easily on your finished site by clicking CTRL+ good few times and verifying that it actually changes the font size.

Contrast:
Strong contrast is required between text and background, and that includes visited links, hover attribute and all of this. Test it by taking screenshot of the site’s front end and viewing it in grayscale only. Better yet, ask a senior if he/she can see your website’s content easily. Maybe your designer’s choice of colours was not that cool after all.

Keyboard only navigation:
Not everyone can use mouse to navigate your site and make selections on the screen that seem normal to able bodies. Test how someone using only keyboard can get to the choices you provided for viewers, including all links and form controls.
In many sites created with Content Management Systems for instance you can’t select any of the submenus with a keyboard only. Find alternative ways of navigation. These may include skipping submenus, displaying submenus as main menu in the content of all top level pages, using access keys or tab index etc. Also: stop using the tables already!

Descriptive images and links:
Think about it in terms of the TV’s descriptive video feature. Visually impaired viewers want the images described to them, not missed. To describe your images and links you may use alt and title attributes, tooltips or note boxes. Provide text alternatives for images and audio. And yes, you – Flash developers, are on your own. Good luck with that!

Content access:
This last part deals with screen resolutions and horizontal scrolling. Test that your content is visible on variety of screen sizes and does not require any horizontal scrolling. If you have pdf documents for download, they should be text, and not image based. Scanned and pdf-ed manual or designer-style brochure where you can’t select text, won’t cut it.

Finally, do you know that besides GUI browsers like FireFox, Chrome, Safari or Internet Explorer, there are also non-gui browsers, like voice browser or text browser? Does your website make any sense in one of those?

Isn’t it time you talked to your boss about the accessibility standards implementation deadlines?

For more details on subject, google accesibility standards, WCAG, AODA.

When will internet marketing bubble burst?

There are the good ones – websites that have tangible business behind them, convey readable message and sell real products.

There are the bad ones – websites that represent some business but present it in a way that is messy, hard to follow and poorly maintained and…

…there are plain ugly – websites based on parked domains with good names trying to score clicks of internet users who were looking for these common phrases, the gold mines of generic search, captured by pirates, with no useful content but spam. They spin viewers around through countless links leading to nowhere.

Do they make any money? They score money on misleadingly generated traffic, and useless ‘internet marketing’ products. Usually at the second click you’ll find this long, long ‘sales letter’ with testimonials, pictures of checks, videos of ‘marketers who made money’ resting on exotic beach, basking in wealth.

Promises of automatic traffic generation, link building and overnight effortless profits make novices drooling. Clickbanks, affiliates, eBay associates, automated blogs and what else have you…

Yeah, some of them made money on desperate people seeking 2nd, 3rd, or even first income, like worthless asset-backed-papers made money on Wall Street before financial crash put in misery people with can‘t-afford-it-mortgages. MLMs also come to mind.
The number of these useless, partially abandoned by original owners, partially created for profit on unsuspecting internet searchers domains is humongous. They are pushing real businesses out of the picture, because competition for attention grows exponentially in a sea of trash.

Basic SEO principles of automatic search engine algorithms, like checking keywords matching page content, page description tags and so on are becoming completely useless. Most of spam pages have them, with keyword numbers to content ratio even higher than in real websites. Some of search engine companies (like Bing for instance) went so far to employ manual verifiers of pages to eliminate trash from displaying in generic search results. This process is though nearly not as far in production as needed.

Companies like Marchex (not the only one) bought popular domain names worth millions of dollars few years back, recouping this money only partially in traffic generated to them unintentionally by seekers of something else. These domains were intended for resale, but prices are so high that interested business owners don’t touch them, so most of them remain as spam, creating questionable business model for other owners of parked domains.
If you read newest internet marketing schemes, you will find them convoluted and dishonest enough to start a bad headache. Where are we going? When this bubble is going to burst and who will suffer?

Minibizweb