Chiperoni ku Basel

Category: wordpress

  • Links and ideas from last week’s WordCamp in Zürich #wcch

    I attended the WordCamp in Zurich last Saturday.

    It’s been a while since I attended a similar geek event and I enjoyed listening to others.

    It was encouraging to hear about WordPress. I’ve used WordPress since September 2004. And it’s truly a great sign of continuity that WordPress is still here. Not only that, but there’s a thriving community and a company that want to keep it that way as well.

    Secondly, it was encouraging to hear from other bloggers and web developers.

    Here’s a quick run through my Twitter notes and faves (like a Storify summary of Tatort on Spiegel.de ;-)).

    First talk I listened to was on trends in enterprise blogs. I found this talk useful for my day job.

    Large, enterprise blogs have switched off commenting and are experimenting with new forms of integrating user interaction, e.g. by using annotations, or by asking specific questions, or moving comments entirely to Facebook.

    Regarding content length, short texts and long analysis articles (aka Longreads) work best. It’s the mid-length texts between 500 and 800 words that are read least frequently.

    And many of the enterprise sites use extensive email marketing to bring readers to their site.

    The slides are here.

    Next talk that inspired me was by Vitaly Friedman. He had a fun starting point by looking at typewriter art in the late 19th century, which led to ASCI art and teletext.

    If the Internet hadn’t appeared, we would all be teletext designers and developers.

    I think I’ll print this tweet on dead wood and post it on my office door:

    Vitaly had some excellent UX examples. His message: details matter for usability.

    Another very enjoyable talk was by Paolo on virtual offices and distributed teams. First thing to note it’s not only about tools. The tools should not be the first thing you try to solve when setting up a distributed team. Three common mistakes are

    1. Trying to mimic a local office setup
    2. Measuring work based on the wrong metrics
    3. Suffering instead of embracing change

    Recruiting is a very important part of distributed teams. And because your team is in different places and different timezones, managers need to empower their team members. Managers must trust team members to perform and deliver their work packages in time, in high quality.

    Next talk:

    I liked Christian Leu’s humorous talk about how to become a successful blogger. His point was there are tonnes of articles on successful blogging. There’s no point in repeating this.

    Many long-term bloggers have moved to Twitter and are blogging less. Main reason given by many is lack of time. As a result, @leumund presented 10 simple tips to find more time for blogging.

    It’s important to stay true to yourself.

    In summary, it was an enjoyable day.

    Videos of the talks will be published WordPress.tv at some point.

    Observation:
    There were several talks on maintaining multilingual sites with WordPress. For me this is a sign, that WordPress is used increasingly in a Swiss business environment. Many Swiss websites (even for SMEs) need to display in German, French, Italian and English. My humble tip: Consider using Drupal instead of WordPress for multilingual sites. Maintaining multi-language sites is part of the Drupal core.

    While listening to others present, I thought of two WordPress presentations which I could present to share some of my more recent learnings and experience:

    1. Idea no. 1: POSSE and IndieWeb plugins for WordPress – Using Webmention plugin, an URL shortener and Jetpack’s Publicize (see corresponding entry)
    2. Idea no.2: Security for non-techies – Make your WordPress site less vulnerable, even if you’re a non-developer; about WordPress resources, plugins, advice, where to get help

    Further links:

    Storify

    Blogging in an imperfectly multilingual world

    Live blogging notes by Evren Kiefer

    On communication within a distributed team

    The end of time

  • Responsive web design and low and expensive bandwidth

    Some time ago, the Malawi daily newspaper, The Nation, released a new web design. More recently Nyasa Times updated their web design. In both cases, it’s an improvement. And from my current home base here in Switzerland, both sites load promptly.

    From family in Malawi I hear that the loading times for both sites have increased. It would be interesting to hear from others if they noticed the same.

    Many people in Malawi access the internet via mobile devices. Only few have access to flat rates and most Malawi internet users probably use prepaid data bundles, i.e. every MB of data costs $$$.

    In addition, some parts of Malawi and even parts of Blantyre don’t have a good connectivity.

    I think it’s important to find out how your target audience will access your site. And then optimize your site for low bandwidth. I’ve written about this topic before. (Click here and here).

    I’m not a web developer. But I do think we need to step in and ask questions about page speed. Page speed is an important part of the overall user experience.

    Responsive web designs are great. One content base serves web pages on different end devices from smartphone to large monitor screens.

    But what about optimising responsive sites for lower bandwidth?

    What kind of things should you adapt and change? Best practises for responsive sites?

    I switched off a WordPress mobile plugin called Mobilepress ‘cos it was creating a lot of broken links which showed up in Google Webmaster Tools.

    Should I reinstall a mobile plugin like Mobilepress on my WordPress site?

    This got me thinking about responsive web design and bandwidth. I’ve started doing some preliminary reading and googling on this. Here are some links I’ve found:

    Design your site for mobile devices first. The buzzword is mobile-first.

    (…) more than 12 percent of the world’s Web traffic comes from mobile devices. This fraction is significantly higher in nations with higher smartphone penetration and is expected to increase notably in the next few years as adoption picks up in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

    One important task is to optimise images. I found this Smashing Magazine article provided some helpful guidance on responsive image solutions. But minimizing the bandwidth impact of images isn’t easy.

    Test your site to see what is affecting page speed. There’s Google’s Site Speed within Google Analytics, Web Page Test and Yslow to help you identify issues.

    In my opinion, this list of web design guidelines for low bandwidth still holds true.

    Good background article:
    How and Why Responsive Design Can Go Wrong

    Conclusion: Building websites isn’t getting easier. Ask your developers to search for ways to improve your site’s performance.

    Tips? Ideas and suggestions? I appreciate your comments and suggestions to improve.

  • Elmastudio has released a new theme #Namba

    A new theme to try out:

    Namba WordPress Theme.

    I really like their themes. My current theme is also by Elmastudio.

  • Successful blogging?

    I love reading list articles. Here’s one that appeared on my radar today:

    6 Pillars of a Successful Blog

    And just for fun, I’ll run thru the list and assess my own private blogging chez moi.

    So let’s get started…

    Purpose/Message/Mission
    This is a private blog. The main purpose is to learn and reflect.

    It’s an ever-evolving mix of learning, reflection, discovery and knowledge management. I’ve always said it’s like a scrap book. Chiperoni.ch will no longer do well from an SEO point-of-view, because the topics are too diverse, too sporadic. I write about the Internet and online marketing. I link to my huge Flickr collection of snapshots. I write about architecture and travel. I post Youtube videos. I try out WordPress plugins and themes.

    If you’re setting up a blog for business purposes, think about your purpose. Brainstorm ideas. Put together an editorial calendar. This will help you stand out from the crowd.

    Email Newsletter
    I don’t send out an email newsletter for this blog. While this Google service still exists, you can get an email notification via Feedburner:

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    There are some pretty cool email newsletter plugins for WordPress. I briefly tried Wysija. There’s also Sendpress and Email Newsletter to try. And yes, I wholeheartedly agree… if you want your blog to grow, send out a regular email newsletter.

    I do have a cool WordPress plugin called Thank me later, which sends auto-sends thank you messages to people that leave a comment.

    A Free E-Book/Manifesto
    There is no free e-book to download. There is no manifesto to link to at Chiperoni.ch. Yet. I have plans to write a book or two. Maybe. Some day.

    David Meerman-Scott uses e-books very effectively for his topics.

    I am a regular reader of the e-books at Hubspot.

    IMHO, you should spend some $$ on your e-book layout to get a better return.

    A Product/Business Model
    There is no business model at Chiperoni.ch. I am here for fun. This is a private, non-profit blog. There is no advertising. So far I have not published any paid blog entries here. If this changes, I will publish a disclosure statement.

    Again if you’re planning to offer a product or service, put some thought into your business model. A good starter is this business model generation canvas. It leads you through various business questions.

    Site Design
    I like minimal blog designs. Currently I am using themes by Elma.

    If you’re building a business, test your site design using a poor man’s usability test. Ideally before coding; using a paper test. Find 5 people that fit your site’s target audience. Think of some site tasks you would like to test, e.g. how to contact you; how to ask for a quote. Ask your test person to think out loud while performing the tasks. And then sit next to them and quietly observe how your test person navigates through your site.

    Check your site design from an SEO point of view. Are there enough text areas for your key phrases on your main landing pages? I would avoid overusing fancy carousel and slider plugins. Do you have one sentence explaining your main mission, written in HTML?

    Effective Self Promotion
    It’s 2013. You need to find creative ways to promote your business blog. The Internet is a vast ocean of data. Nobody is waiting for your cool product or service. If your self promotion is too low-key, nobody will notice you. If your self promotion is too heavy and your service offering doesn’t match, you will put people off.

    I am stating the obvious. My only advice is to try various ideas and find a marketing mix that works for you. Trial and error.

    Or build a private, non-profit blog like Chiperoni.ch. And as such I don’t need to join the success theater.

    looking closely