With all that in mind, when it comes to customizing wordpress, there are three basic steps one needs to understand.

1. What do you want?

   Pretty trivial… I know. Like any other project, this is the step that you need to understand more than any other ahead of time. It is important to figure this part out so you know which plug-ins and themes to choose or design.

2. Do you know what you are doing?

   WordPress is a CMS. That is, it is subject to updates and upgrades once in a while as it becomes necessary. While it is possible to change its behaviour by editing core files, it is not a good idea because it comprises of more than 3000 files. This not only makes it pretty hard to figure out which file to edit to bring about the desired result, it is not recommended given that a silly mistake (error) in one can cascade throughout the CMS, ripping havoc. So, know what you want to do, and if you don’t or are not very sure, hire someone to help.  Like Janvier , or check out the net.

3. Do you know the limits?

   It may be the world’s best publishing platform, but if you expect to build an application that will be used to remotely control robots on the battle field using wordpress, I think you may be missing the point. I give this example because a few months back, I had a client approach me who wanted to build a wordpress  based social network “exactly like facebook“. My reaction was “with wordpress MU you can come close enough, but with regular wordpress, it’s fairly almost impossible, or you could pay at least $7000 to achieve that – or try to“. So, before you start customizing or hire someone to do the job for you, it is a good idea to know – or at least have an idea – of the limitations the software has. This will help you to avoid tons of headaches, but most importantly it will save your pocket from leaking unnecessary cash to freelancers!

In my next post on how to unleash the beast within wordpress, I will discuss the steps involved in carrying out the customization you need.

While all this is great and interesting, social networking is the way of the web for the next few years to come. The average school website may not be as complicated and complex as giant facebook.com  or  hi5.com  but it will certainly  involve more than telling the visitor who the Principal is and their address. The average city website will involve connecting inhabitants in  more interactive ways like local classified ads, events feedback, events pictures and videos with comments. In a nutshell, it will be like youtube, flickr, facebook, and average Joe’s website all combined but at a probably much smaller  scale. So, realizing the stakes at hand, I took a giant leap and changed one of the earliest websites I have worked on into a social network. PraiseVoice services has been home the the praisevoice radio for the last four years.  It is a shame I have used the site as my Guinea pig for many of my design projects, but I am coming back to make it a pearl to reckon with once again.

I started the site in 2005, having done hardly any design work before. The beginning was slow and very hard, but the efforts started paying off  after a few months. It gained popularity, but  since it was more of a volunteer work, at times I let my arms down (my apologies to those who appreciate the service). Just two months ago, it was trailing in the 24 millionth position on alexa.com stats. But wait for this. . .it’s now in the 2.4 millionth position and the trend seems unstoppable. That is, just the fact of networking the site, it surged an amazing 1700% increase in less than a month. Obviously such steroid growth is bound to cap at a certain “more stable” level but it has helped me to prove a point. Networking your site is like putting it on steroids. It drives from the trivial mathematical exponential growth function. One lets two know, who let four know on their turn and so on. (Not strictly speaking mathematically, but close enough).  Of course it takes more than  just networking the site, because you would also need to have the site marketable and attractive enough to let users want to share it with friends and relatives.  Praisevoice as it looks may be a little confusing to the less keen observer, thinking it’s a facebook clone. Though you be able to log in praisevoice with your facebook account, praisevoice.com is still based on wordpress 100%.  Not on regular wordpress, but wordpress  multi users (wpmu). These two are structurally different, but very similar in all aspects. Actually most plugins used on regular wordpress still work really well with  wordpress mu. The magic one that makes the whole networking possible though, is the buddpress plugin. Its original design is not particularly impressive, but with a few tweaks you can make your wordpress site look like facebook with a lot of features. Another option is to by the the socialengine php code pack.  I have tried their demo and found it really interesting. Actually I thinking of hooking this site on SocialEngine, but that won’t be tonight.

Of course social networking comes with a lot more responsibility like security and privacy of your visitors, but in the end it’s worth it. A lot worth it given its promise  for the future and the face that it makes your site look less like a deserted island.

If you would like services designing a social network for your site, please contact JANVIERDESIGNS, for a free quote. Prices start at US$350 for a wordpress based social network, and US $750 for social engine based website.  Delivery depends on what you need and how simplified you make it!!

The future is networked

1. Keep it simple.
   Ever wondered why Google doesn’t make their site so complicated and yet stays as the top online portal for the past few years? Because they keep it simple. Visitors are not looking for “CSS wizards”. As a matter of fact, just a small portion of them actually know what  CSS is, let alone knowing what it does. Visitors want information really easily. So, the easier to navigate the site you design, the better the user experience will be.
2. Graphics moderation is key.
   Clogging your pages with so many graphics means one thing: search engines won’t like you. Why?
   • First, because Search engines don’t understand the data contained in the graphics than the graphic’s title and hopefully its URL.
   • Graphics don’t make your site any faster. Actually, they slow it down and this can meaning nothing but bad news, because your site load time is one the key parameters search engines consider while indexing pages  from your site.
   • Graphics are relatively larger files than average text or html files. So, for an account with limited  bandwidth thi can be a source of trouble.
3. Be at their place. Will you?
   When you design a page or a bunch of them, very likely it’s for someone else. Some audience out there. If you were part of that audience, how would you like them? Ask yourself that question, to avoid being part of the 85%  webmasters who will see their websites go down in less than a year because they failed  to consider this trivial but rather  crucial info.  I see web designers who spend so much time on “flashy” techniques and forget what really matters;  User Experience!!
4. Color combination.
   It may not be your choice, but from different surveys and polls data, most web surfers preffer clear backgrounds to dark ones. In other words, a white background and a black font is better than a black baground with a yellow font. Google chooses that combination. So does  Yahoo! and many others including wikipedia, facebook,… Do you think it’s a coincidence? Think again.
5. Be unique
   Yes…Uniqueness is quality. Even if you use a highly popular theme or template like the wordpress omni theme, make sure you can get a professional designer to customize it for you to give it a unique look. This is because you simply don’t want to have a site looking like your competitor’s  who might buy the same template!

With these few  design tips, I hope you can a new insight in making your pages more appealing and more attractive. The main point to focus on is the visitor, because in the end their behaviour  will read the final verdict for the content and organization for your site.