Building a Tourist Community Website With WordPress: Navigation and Usability Rules

By Amir Helzer of ICanLocalize In Building a Tourist Community Website With WordPress: Content Rules, I described how our new tourist community website, Baripedia, has made the decision to hire a writing professional to rewrite and edit all the content on our site to make it professional, web-friendly, SEO-friendly, and easy to read. My decisions […]

Bloggers Share Step-by-Step Tips for Increasing Blog Usability

Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog — Condensed from Dozens of Bloggers’ Experiences is a great step-by-step guide on how to improve the usability of your blog, and improve your visitor’s experience. I’m particularly fond of the About Page point. 😉 But I also have long been a fan of “Archive by Topic Not Date” […]

One Year Anniversary Review: Accessibility and Usability

In “Usability Isn’t Expensive. It’s Practical. Usability is Useful.”, I explained the differences, and similarities between accessibility and usability: Accessibility is the development of a website or blog to be accessible to everyone. This means that the design must meet web standards and pass a range of validation tests in order to be compliant with […]

Creative Usability with WordPress.com Blogs

Taking a few notes from a recent article I wrote on Usability Isn’t Expensive. It’s Practical. Usability is Useful., Abhijit Nadgouda @ iface decided to take his WordPress.com blog, a blog with no control over the look of the WordPress Theme or any core programming files, WordPress Plugins, or templates, and put into practice what […]

Usability Isn’t Expensive. It’s Practical. Usability is Useful.

456 Berea Street tackles “Usability Testing Without a Budget” is a prime example and explanation defending usability. It doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, it’s practical. It’s the difference between a successful, and potentially money making website, and a dud. The truth is, Usability is useful. And worth it. Even larger projects can often […]

Blog Exercises: Ingredients of a Well-Designed Site

I was asked by a student in my WordPress class recently what defined a “professional blog,” one that met all the criteria for a well-designed, well-formed site that met web standards. What a marvelous question! We brainstormed all the elements that make up a web standard site, and mixed in personal preferences of the students […]

Site Review

DISCOUNT: Lorelle is offering her popular site reviews for 50% off during 2015 as part of her WordPress School year-long project teaching the basics of WordPress. The discount code is found in the introduction materials. Lorelle VanFossen offers three levels of site reviews, specifically for WordPress sites. The prices are the starting prices for the […]

Research on the WordPress, Web Development, and Web Design Job Market

In 2012 and 2013, I did extensive research for the grant program to develop and rewrite the Web Developer degree program at Clark College. This research included an analysis of current and future job opportunities for students graduating with that degree with a solid understanding of WordPress. Now that the program has completed its first […]

Blog Exercises: How Long Are Your Paragraphs?

How long are your paragraphs? Have you measured them lately? One of the telling differences between traditional writing and writing for the web is the length of the paragraph. Look at the example below. Which is easier to read? On the left, the paragraphs are huge, long blocks of text. On the right, the paragraphs […]

WordPress Introduction Course in Vancouver, Washington

I will be teaching the WordPress I Introduction course at Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education starting Saturdays, April 27 – July 13, 2013, 9am – noon, in Vancouver, Washington, just across the river from the Airport at the Columbia Tech Center. What a great way to get to learn about how WordPress works without […]

The Secret Recipe of Comment Spam Comments

Mr. Louis Vuitton just sent me a message in my blog comments I’d like to share with you. I share this touching message because it is highly educational when it comes to the art of spam comments, and serves to remind us of why we love having Akismet, the best comment spam fighter, on our […]

Evaluating What Makes a Shopping Cart Work Best

Before you check out your next WordPress shopping cart or ecommerce WordPress Plugin, you need to read this. In April 2011, Smashing Magazine published “Fundamental Guidelines Of E-Commerce Checkout Design” in their UX (User Experience) column exploring what they called the “harsh reality” of e-commerce websites. According to recent e-commerce studies, at least 59.8% of […]

Help Needed with WebVisions WordPress Theme Developers Panel

Webvisions is in Portland, Oregon, May 16-18, 2012, and I’ll be there again this year leading an awesome panel of WordPress Theme designers and developers, and I need your help. For over eleven years, Webvisions has been the go to conference for exploring the future of design, content creation, user experience, and business strategies on […]

Prove It: What Makes You Trust a Website?

What makes you trust this site? What makes you trust me? What makes you trust any website you visit? What is it about the site that earns your trust? I’ve asked this question at most of the conferences and keynotes I’ve given over the past seven years: What makes you not trust a website? The […]

18+ Things You Can Do on the WordPress Comments Panel

The WordPress development and UI team put a lot of work into WordPress comments. Did you know there are 18 features to a single WordPress comment not counting the comment content itself? Rarely do we stop to consider these powerful features in WordPress, so let’s take time now to understand all the different features and […]