Book review and summary of "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald A. Norman.
Book review and summary of "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald A. Norman.
Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems by Steve Krug My rating: 3 of 5 stars An easy-to-read guide to doing your own inexpensive usability testing. I liked Krug’s humorous writing and entertaining use of quotations, and the book's cartoons make it even easier to understand. I didn't find it as […]
Sliders (AKA carousels or rotators) have become incredibly popular on WordPress websites, and websites in general. Sliders commonly display images, but can also display text and video. They are frequently used on home pages, but can appear on any page. More often than not, clients ask us to put them on their sites. The problem […]
These are the best WordPress podcasts I've found. They have content for WordPress site owners, designers, and developers. My favorites are those that are focused on education rather than news. I listed them in order of preference. If you like these, you should read my other posts about podcasts. I’m always looking for more, so please […]
"What website mistakes do small businesses make?" This was one of the many questions asked at the Small Business Tech Panel at the Warehaüs, a coworking space in Holland, Michigan in March 2014. Here's an expanded version of the answer I gave. The items (in no particular order) are as follows: Not optimized for sales Business websites exist to […]
We talked about WordPress Performance Optimization at the April 2014 meetup of WordPress Grand Rapids, a group I help organize. Since the meetup, I've spoken with a few clients and prospects whose WordPress sites were loading slowly, so I thought it'd be helpful to post here too. The speed of websites has become more important than ever. I talked about it […]
WordPress All-In-One for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson My rating: 3 of 5 stars A broadly informative WordPress book, covering installation, administration, publishing, SEO and social media, design, development, and Network/Multisite. Because it covers so many topics, it doesn't get very deep into any of them. You'll want to read more focused WordPress books (or websites) for […]
You've probably pasted code into WordPress' Text editor, then switched to the Visual Editor, and found that parts of your code were stripped out. The Post Snippets plugin prevents that from happening. It lets you create snippets of text and HTML that can be entered as shortcodes into WordPress pages and posts. For example, you can create shortcodes for Google […]
SiteGround is an excellent WordPress-optimized shared host. They're fast, secure, and reliable, yet inexpensive. They're the host I most frequently recommend to small business and nonprofit clients. From firsthand experience, I've found their plans to be superior to similar hosting plans from GoDaddy, Bluehost, DreamHost, Hostmonster, HostGator, iPage, and small local hosting companies. For clients with larger and/or […]
"What does a small business website need?" This was one of the many questions asked at the Small Business Tech Panel at the Warehaüs, a coworking space in Holland, Michigan in March 2014. Here's an expanded version of the answer I gave. The items (in no particular order) are as follows: Effective content (text, images, video) Too […]
Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Web Application by 37 Signals My rating: 4 of 5 stars The book is written for those who create web applications, but as a web designer who creates WordPress websites, I found plenty of relevant advice about planning, project management, client relations, hiring, and productivity. […]
The Advanced Automatic Updates plugin is one of my favorite WordPress plugins, but it lacks a way to easily specify exclusions. I'll show you how to to exclude plugins from being automatically updated by this plugin. May 26, 2020 update: Advanced Automatic Updates hasn’t been updated for over 2 years, so although it may still work, […]