Don’t You Just Hate It When People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms?

Do you use acronyms when texting? Or emailing? Or posting?

As a matter of fact, I hate text message acronyms (little clearer than the headline don’t you think?)

I may be the last person alive that thinks like this and prefers to send his text messages with proper capitalizations. And periods. Oh, and those pesky commas and apostrophes? Yeah, I like those too.

So while you might be sending me a message that looks like this…

“IMHO u need 2 MYOB. i txt w/e way i want!”

I’m probably replying with something like this…

“Your message does not compute. As I said before, this is an acronym free zone! (er, ur msg DNC. AISB, this is an AFZ!)”

Does this make me an elitist? Maybe? A snob? Most likely (ITSFWI or if the shoe fits, wear it). But I don’t care. I can’t look at a sentence improperly structured and let it sit. Call it OCD (uh, Obsessive–compulsive disorder, right?), but it haunts my soul to type lol or brb.

My grammar’s not perfect,  (IGWS  or it goes without saying) but I still want more from my typing experience than to be an IBK (idiot behind keyboard).

I know how this looks, though. You’re asking, “WDALYIC (who died and left you in charge)?” All I can say is it’s JOOTT (just one of those things). I think I’ll join the AAAAA (American Association Against Acronym Abuse).

Or go PTPOP because “patting the pissed off primate” sounds kinda’ fun.

My mind keeps drifting to two topics as I read around the ol’ internet. CSS3 and IE6.

It’s “So Awesome!” and “Shoot me now.”

One (CSS3) represents all that is good and holy about the future of web design. The other (as well as its counterparts IE7 and IE8) represents the reason we can’t actually take the future and make it present.

But both have something in common: the need to let your site analytics do the talking.

Feel free to use CSS3 all you want. By all means, don’t support IE6. You’ll get no argument from me as a user.

But as someone responsible for a website, there’s a greater obligation.

Every user matters

Every user matters no matter what browser they come in with and you have to ensure their experience gives them a chance to be apart of the overall goal of the site. If your design is less optimal for IE6 users, then conversions will probably be lower at that level. After all, your design is built with a purpose and every flaw that gets introduced to that design represents a loss in business.

Are you willing to live with that? Take a look at your analytics and find out.

I’m currently working on a project for a site that has 68% of all users in the past 3 months using a version of IE. What’s worse is over 13% are using IE6. Wow! That’s a lot of people coming to the site that I have to consider whether I like it or not.

As you can see, if I don't support IE6 for this project, I'm ignoring a significant amount of traffic. For example, if the site in this example was converting 10% of all visitors, that's 17 lost leads per month. Given the value of one lead for this business, it's a huge deal.

It’s virtually pointless to use CSS3 and ignoring the layout in IE6 is like saying, “no, I don’t want the money represented by 13% of my potential customers.”

Now, I know if I wanted to use CSS3, I could use alternative stylesheets or just let the design degrade as gracefully as possible, but I see no point in fattening the site because less than 1/3 of the users would benefit.

And with IE6, the choice is either let it go or start hacking. In this case, I’m hacking. For another site, I might say let it be. Whatever the case, the analytics will make that decision for me.

Note: Before you get all huffy and say, “your site looks like crap in IE6!” just know that’s a personal choice I made. If the analytics start to tell me to reconsider, I will. I actually just need a solution for all the .png files I used and it would be fine. In fact, I actually switched a couple to jpgs because of problems in IE7 and IE8.

Ever start to type a question in Google and all of a sudden, notice some oddball suggestions coming from that plucky little search engine? Of course you have.

I don’t know who’s asking these questions to the point they become suggestions, but I thought I’d take a stab at providing answers to the who, what where, when, why and hows of Google suggested search.

Where…

• Where does Chuck Norris live?
  • I don’t know, but I live in fear of that question everyday.
• Where does Justin Bieber live?
  • Oh my God! Oh. My. God. I so know the answer to this one!

Who…

• Who’s in jail?
  • Possibly me after that curiously ecstatic reference to Justin Bieber.
• Who won Celebrity Apprentice 2010?
  • Let me answer that with a question. Why should you – or anyone on this earth – care?

What…

• What to do when your bored?
  • Uh, do a blog post about Google’s suggested search?

When…

• When I Look at You lyrics
  • When there’s no light to break up the dark. That’s when I, I, I look at you. Uh, ahem, excuse me, I was, uh, answering the question about that awesome Miley Cyrus song.

Why…

• Why can’t I own a Canadian?
  • I don’t see any reason you can’t. Who said this was forbidden? I’ll be in Buffalo next week. I’ll look into it.
• Why did I get married, too?
  • Is there a problem? Is there something I should know before my “I do” moment on July 31? You’re freaking me out!
• Why?
  • I hate this game. I’ll tell you and then you’re just going to say “why” again. Just stop it!

  Why?

  • Aaargh! See?

How…

• How to get a girl to like you
  • You’ll need to be a good kisser
• How to kiss
  • Oh crap, well I guess my last answer didn’t help.
• How to get pregnant
  • Geez, moving fast aren’t we? I’ll take a stab. First, go back and learn how to kiss. Then, go get her to like you. Only then can you get pregnant. Oh, or have unprotected sex. That usually does the trick.

WordPress plugins save a ton of time and deliver some amazing functionality. Here are the plugins I’m using at the startup of this site with credit to the authors.

Gravity Forms

What it is: Gravity Forms is a premium plugin that simplifies form building. It’s awesome and has been worth every penny.
How I used it: So far, I’m using it for the contact form and for the email subscriptions in the footer. On this site, it is pretty understated.
Author credit: http://www.gravityforms.com

Theme My Login

What it is: WordPress doesn’t offer a simple solution for styling login and user registration pages. With this plugin, you can actually fix that. It comes with a really good admin section that can be as simple or complex as you want. It also includes a bare bones style sheet that you can modify to fit your theme. I absolutely love this plugin!
How I use it: Register for the blog and find out for yourself. Everything is built around my design which really improves the professionalism of this and other site that uses it.
Author credit: http://www.jfarthing.com/extend/plugins/theme-my-login

Google Analytics for WordPress

What it is: It incorporates your Google Analytics account into the site to ensure proper tracking of user activity. I don’t know why anyone would do a site without it.
How I used it: Easy to install, easy to use and tracking site usage from day one.
Author credit: http://yoast.com/wordpress/google-analytics/#utm_source=wordpress&utm_medium=plugin&utm_campaign=google-analytics-for-wordpress

Custom Field Template

What it is: A tremendous plugin. Custom fields are a great resource in WordPress but not exactly user-friendly out of the box. With CFT, you can build your custom fields more like a traditional form including drop downs, radio buttons, check boxes, file fields, text areas and text fields. Additionally, there is a seemingly limitless number of options depending on how complex you want it to be.
How I used it: My Portfolio is mostly made up of custom fields. The site description is the actual post and everything else except for the title is a custom field. The image is a file field, I lay a link over the “Visit” button, use check boxes for the skills section and then enter testimonial information into text fields.
Author credit: http://wpgogo.com/development/custom-field-template.html (visit WordPress plugins page for English)

Google XML Sitemaps

What it is: Generates an XML sitemap of your site that is friendly to search engines
How I used it: Upon activation, I went through the settings, chose to notify major search engines and let it build the sitemap for the first time. Now, it should automatically stay fresh and when I add new content and keep the search engines informed.
Author credit: http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/

All in One SEO Pack

What it is: Among other things, it let’s you create your own title tags, descriptions and keywords per post/page while still letting you use the normal WordPress fields for more reader-friendly descriptions.
How I used it: I actually haven’t done anything beyond the initial setup. None of my pages have been optimized yet. Speaking from experience, though, it’s a great tool that improves your on-page SEO.
Author credit: http://semperfiwebdesign.com/

Custom Post Limits

What it is: Allows you to adjust the number of posts displayed on the front page of any given category by overriding the usual global default settings WordPress allows. For example, if you globally tell your site to display no more than 10 posts per page, it will do that for every category, search and archive page no matter what. While you can easily edit the loop of a category to do this, having a smooth admin section is a great way to help your client.
How I used it: I am still playing around with the portfolio and limiting it to a certain number of posts.
Author credit: http://coffee2code.com/wp-plugins/custom-post-limits/

Sidebar Tabs

What it is: This plugin uses jQuery to allow multiple widgets within one tabbed widget. In other words, it cleans up your sidebar by putting a number of items within one specific widget area.
How I used it: I put recent posts, links and Categories all into a tabbed widget which keeps the page less cluttered.
Author credit: http://www.blogviche.com.br/plugin-sidebartabs/

Simply Exclude

What it is: This plugin makes it easy to exclude categories from search results, the front page of the blog, archives and your feed.  One could do this within the loop itself, but that’s not ideal for a client that needs to admin the site.
How I used it: I excluded the Portfolio from showing up anywhere but the portfolio page.
Author credit: http://www.codehooligans.com/projects/wordpress/simply-exclude/

Category Pagination Fix and No Category Parents

What it is: Category Pagination fixes broken pagination as a result of your permalink structure. No Category Parents removes “category”  from the URL string thus ridding you of duplicate content pages.
How I used it: Pagination simply would not work with my permalink structure of /%category%/%postname%. It would only work if the word “category” was inserted into the string like so: http://www.nimaha.com/category/portfolio. Well, that’s ugly and I didn’t want that. But that wasn’t the only problem. It was also duplicating content where the URL I showed just above was the same as http://www.nimaha.com/portfolio. Not good as you SEO types can confirm. These two plugins fixed both issues so that pagination works with my permalinks and only one URL is returned.
Author Credit: Category Pagination Fix: http://www.htmlremix.com/projects/category-pagination-wordpress-plugin, No Category Parents: http://milardovich.com.ar/

TweetMeMe Retweet Button

What it is: It adds the retweet button you see on so many blog posts. It comes with some useful configurations at the admin level.
How I used it: The same way everyone else does. You can see the retweet button in the upper right corner of blog posts.
Author credit: http://tweetmeme.com/about/plugins

My new site is officially open for business.  Okay, technically, I uploaded a week ago before I was really done. Shame on me. Your comments are welcome and I’d love to hear your feedback (the good, the bad and the ugly) on the new site.

Getting Down to Business

Building your own site is hard. Without any client direction, you can easily sidetrack yourself with competing ideas.  I went through about 4 different possible designs and settled on something I never would have expected. Normally, I like light designs. This is dark with reverse type and very unusual for my tastes. Below are two examples of headers that didn’t make the cut.

The original header was fun to make, but just didn't seem to make sense for what I was trying to do.

This header concept stuck but the menu had to go with too much resemblance to the circus.

Platform

I exclusively use WordPress these days and this site is no exception. I love the WP community and its eagerness to help. I learn something new and useful on every project and this was no different.

I started with the default theme (WP 2.9.2) and built from there. I’ve detailed the plugins I used in the next post.

What I Like

• Portfolio page. I wanted simple and accessible for the portfolio so I decided to feature one item per page. I was able to accomplish this by using a cool jQuery plugin that allows the posts to work on a slider where only one is visible at a time. Viewing additional work is as easy as clicking (and sliding) to another project. The page itself is a customized category template that makes use of custom fields as well as the post and title. Each time I add a new project, I simply fill out the fields on a new post and just like that, it slides in to the portfolio rotation.
• The menu. As I showed above, the first menu was kind of circusy (not really a word). I decided it needed to be more understated but with a pop. Enter more jQuery that allows the hover effect to ease in rather than happen immediately. As you hover over, the light grows at a slow place and then sticks once you go to that page (yes, there is a flicker and I haven’t figured that out yet).  Check out  this tutorial to see how it’s done.

What I’m Looking to Build On

I doubt I’m alone when I say there are 100 things I don’t like for every one I do. It’s hard to look at your own site and not fret over every bit of minutia. With that said, here are a few things on the list for improvement.

• Code efficiency. I’m new to jquery and trying to pick it up. As such, I relied heavily on plugins and tutorials and left some bloated code.
• Simpler home page. Not sure I love the home page anymore. It might be busier than I wanted and I may work to improve its visual presentation.
• Blog design needs some TLC. I kind of went bare bones on the blog implementation for now in the name of getting it up and running. I’ll spend time off and on improving it. For example, the comments template, other than a bit of CSS, is pretty much out of the box from the default theme.
• The little things. A misalignment here, malfunctioning feature there, sprinkle in a few browser issues and top it off with a few unsolved bugs and you have yourself a long to-do list.

Browser support

IE6 will surely die and the clock is counting down.

All major browsers are supported. Yes ,even you Internet Explorer 7 and 8. Actually, 8 isn’t too big of a challenge. It still has hiccups but was pretty consistent throughout development. IE7 on the other hand was a pain, as it always is. And as for IE6, well, it’s far from a “major” browser and I chose not to support it. As far as the rest of the browsers go, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari are all in working order. There is a bug with Safari right now, however, that is at times preventing the Recent Work sidebar from loading.