Archive for December, 2009

A lot of the work WebCommons has taken on in 2009 has had to do with working on company/organization websites developed with WordPress.  One of these sites was even a complete conversion from an existing static site (a basic site with several pages of information) to a dynamic site using WordPress where it became a site with lots of built-in programmed features, such as a blog, contact form, events calendar, etc.

When talking to customers of websites, they frequently express how they desire the power to do most of their own content updating, without having to pay for a web developer like me to do it.  That’s indeed a very fair request.  Why pay a developer to type up your paragraphs of marketing material and other content that appears on your site?  Being frugal in this tough economy is definitely the way to go!

WordPress makes it possible for you to really own your website, with the ability to make most updates as you please.

WebCommons is especially skilled with working with WordPress sites, and possesses the skills to convert your old static website into something dynamic, using WordPress, usually for a very affordable price.

Even if you already own a WordPress-based site, WebCommons is very good at extending the power of your site, by locating and adding plugins — what WordPress calls its program extensions.  Of course, many power users can already do this, but can they also deal with programming conflicts or bugs in these plugins, and can they converse with plugin developers in the fixing of these issues?  WebCommons can!  WebCommons can even fix many of these bugs in cases where the plugin developer refuses to do so or has gone AWOL.  WebCommons can even develop a custom plugin for you when there isn’t one available that serves your purposes!

WebCommons is also adept at visually enhancing themes and fixing the many theme issues that can crop up, such as elements displaying strangely in particular browsers.  I recently had a customer who had a WordPress-based site that looked pretty good in Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari, but looked really whacked in Internet Explorer.  IE comprises a huge share of visitors to websites, so this was potentially reducing traffic (and thus, business) for this company.  WebCommons to the rescue!

To see a couple examples where WebCommons has made a good number of visual adjustments to WordPress themes, check out these websites:  Stephen A. Harmon Photography and KaZoing! Party & Play.

If you would like your static site converted to WordPress, or if you would like advice and/or an estimate on how to make your existing WordPress site look and work better, give us a ring or an e-mail.

On edit: WebCommons is no longer in the business of doing web programming projects for clients.

While revamping the WebCommons About page recently, I realized that I hadn’t ever really expressed what my company’s web design philosophy was.

So, I just took myself through a thought exercise, trying to drum up my guiding experiences and methodology for approaching my web work.  After 15 years of tinkering with websites, certainly I could think of a way of relaying this in a way where most anyone, especially potential clients, could understand what I’m driving at.  A true challenge, I thought at first, but I made myself do it.

The strange thing was that the words that formed this philosophy practically wrote themselves.  In many ways, I just repeated what I say to myself all the time when working on various web projects.

I broke down the philosophy into three parts:

1. A beginning, overarching thought about proper web design, which can be spread like a meme;
2. A bunch of statements that undergird the overarching thought, lending significant but not overwhelming detail;
3. And finally, a “formula for website health”.  This is where I distill everything I said before into a symbolic equation, that if followed closely by professional practitioners, should produce very well-designed, more potentially successful websites.

Here’s my overarching thought about web design:

At the outset, web design, like any visual functional design, is about controlling the “flow of the eyes.”  In the long run, web design is about capturing the ongoing interest, if not soul, of a significant many who visit the website.  Period.

And here’s the distilled WebCommons formula for website health:

Website Health =
Eye Control + Obvious Navigation + Convenience Functions + Simplicity
+ Modesty + Performance + Coherent Style – Nonsense

Check out the new page entitled The WebCommons Web Design Philosophy to read the undergirding statements in between.

What do you think of WebCommons’ web design philosophy, and the formula for website health?  If you are a web developer, what is your design philosophy?  Disagreement is welcome.  Philosophical differences in web development are the norm, and we can all learn a lot from these differences.

Note: In case you’re wondering, I didn’t include “Fresh, Compelling Content” in the formula because I see this as the purview of the website owner, not the designer.  A designer doesn’t create the content, unless it’s their own website they’re designing.  It’s not a “formula for website success”, which is part good content, part sufficient marketing, and part good luck.