My Favorite WordPress Plugins

I was talking WordPress with my husband a couple of days ago, and we realized that he and I frequently use–and/or consider most important–different plugins. He said he’d like to know which are my favorites and why he should adopt them. The reason he (or anyone else) might want to adopt them is because they make WordPress even easier to use and they don’t require a degree to install, configure, or run. My lowest bar for a plugin is that it not annoy me. The highest praise I can give one is that the results delight me. So, here we are, the plugins I find delightful.

1. My new favorite plugin is Lighter Menus by corpodibacco. With 2.5.1 the administrative side of things changed. I found it confusing and annoying to get where I wanted to go. The Lighter Menus plugin puts all the admin navigation in a tidy little drop down bar at the top.
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Website Style

A creative individual, the head of a religious organization or charity, owner of a boutique, or a business that wants to project big business professionalism–they’re all going to want a different website style. But there are a lot of design options out there. How do you decide what not to include in your website?

Conventional wisdom consistently lists the following:

Dated gimmicks. Flashing, pixelated GIFs; poor navigation structure (even or especially if it looks “cute”); smiley faces; pictures of puppies and kittens–They’ll make you look like you’re well behind the curve in all of your business dealings, including the one you’re trying to sell (and even if it’s a personal website, you’re selling something–yourself).

Large graphics. This is less of an issue than it used to be as people move more toward high-speed Internet access, but I recommend visiting the local library to try to put yourself in a visitor’s shoes. You’ll have, on average, a half hour. How much of your half hour of library Internet time is eaten up waiting for your website to fully load? Even 5 seconds can be too long for some people.

Poor SEO planning. Flash websites–last I heard–aren’t SEO friendly, though there are ways to improve that, even with Flash sites. Blogs are getting better, but also have trouble managing good SEO. Search Engine Optimization means you’re found when people are looking for what you’re selling. It’s important to be sure that the site is constructed in such a way that the search engines can find it and list it appropriately.

Other things to avoid? I hate the ones above, but the ones following the cut are my top five: (more…)

Inspiration

I wear a lot of hats, so the sites that interest me fall into a variety of categories.

Website Design

Endicott Studios… Beautiful images, beautiful stories…

CSS, Design Inspiration. One of my very favorite websites to visit now and again, especially when I need inspiration, has been the CSS Zen Garden site. Since 2004, designers have been sending in beautiful designs that demonstrate the flexibility of CSS. The content of the site never changes, only the way it looks, from a movie theater to a garden, a sci-fi thriller theme to a daguerreotype. The brain behind CSS Zen Garden, Dave Shea, wrote a book about the beauty of CSS that’s pretty important reading for anyone who wants to design beautiful websites that people can actually use. As of this writing, CSS Zen Garden is down, but I hope it comes back. Dave Shea thinks it’s still relevant and so do I. (more…)

Graphic Punch

I had someone tell me that he didn’t want pictures of pretty, smiling girls on his website. He only wanted relevant pictures, like of businessmen doing the work he was selling. “What am I going to do?” he asked. “Tell the potential client to click on the link under the pretty girl? Then I sound like a jerk.”

I don’t think there’s anything sexist about presenting an attractive example of the buying demographic on your website.

Well, no. I don’t want anyone to sound like a jerk, but the images you choose for your website should not only be indicative of the content, they should also be attractive. Pretty, smiling girls are right up there with babies, kittens and puppies for appeal factor for both sexes. (more…)

Optimization

One of the things that bothers me about current Search Engine Optimization technique is not just the understanding that the successful website requires more high quality incoming links than outgoing, but also the focus that’s been put on that idea. It’s very likely true–everything else being equal for a well-established website with interesting, frequently refreshed content–but I have a problem with it. (more…)