WordPress

Simon Dickson at WordCampUK

Quick notes on Simon Dickson‘s presentation at WordCampUK:

  1. Make big change happen in a small way
  2. Didn’t intend to be a WP fanboy, but it just turned out to be the best way of doing things
  3. Need for a WP ecosystem – WP now mature enough to require/support a real community
  4. PHP geeks not enough – need to understand the simplicity of the platform
  5. Simon not a developer, or designer. Can get by, but could do with some help!
  6. Three threats: procurement teams, IT people and
  7. Big web projects cost far too much – hundreds of thousands, millions even. Not just the systems, but the project management etc
  8. Free platforms has benefits, including longevity and ongoing support
  9. Simon started using typepad mainly, as seemed easier. No need for IT depts to know about what people were doing. WP.com takes that to a new level.
  10. Typepad has limitations – too blog focused. Need WP’s flexibility especially that which you get from self-hosted
  11. Up to 30% of WP.com blogs now are custom domained / CSS etc
  12. Appeals of WP – zero cost (can send the wrong message), skills base (lots of local talent to draw on)
  13. Designed for use by the individual – no need for support, it’s so easy to use. Upgrade cycle the only glitch
  14. Focus on content – it’s NOT about the tech – also don’t have to wade through metadata fields before writing content. Make it like writing something in Word (sad but true)
  15. Power of RSS – category based, tag based, integrated wordpress mini sites into the big ugly corporate CMS. Use SimplePie and Google API
  16. Do you mention the word ‘blog’ in relation to WP? Initially no, but maybe mention it early then move on. Blog not as dirty a word as it was. Ingrained in culture. BBC news journalists are known by their blogs as much as anything
  17. ourNHS site – built 3 times in 12 months, but so what? Quick, easy and cheap. Lord Darzi’s blog – discussion at time about referring to it as that
  18. Incredible power in themes
  19. “can WordPress do X?” YES! It’s just HTML and PHP folks.
  20. Automate as much as possible through the WP loop
  21. With WP sites, build it then walk. Very very few support requests
  22. WordPress in Welsh with the Wales Office site
  23. New number 10 website is running on wordpress. Round of applause for Simon
  24. Number 10 – what they do is news. News is blogs. Hence, blogging the right medium.
  25. Blogging and political journalism are merging
  26. When dealing with big orgs, form a precedent quickly. No. 10 started using youtube first in uk gov, now everyone is at it!
  27. No. 10 Twitter feed – c3,500 followers – people wanting to be a part of the conversation re: uk gov. Amazing!
  28. No, 10 uses Brightcove for video hosting etc
  29. Key message: acceptance of lightweight, social tools
  30. Security testing of No. 10 – heavyweight testing going on. Will be fed back to Automattic
  31. Micro sites, sites within sites…Can be thrown together fast, run as long as you need them, then close
  32. Theme switching – WP allows one-click change of template. Have some themes developed for certain incidents, can turn on when needed
  33. WordPress as crisis site when required. Have sitting in the background til when needed.
  34. What’s needed in WordPress to get into enterprise environment: page ordering (need rag and drop built in), slicker workflow (better pending/drafts handling), new long term support version (like ubuntu, don’t call it legacy branch!) ie better upgrades, the ecosystem/community (we need people that understand WP available and on call!)
  35. Developers – need to understand content and designers need to understand the WP machinery
  36. WP generalists?

SEO for WordPress

Here’s some notes from the session at WordCampUK on SEO for WordPress, presented by Nick Garner of Betfair. Will tidy up later with more links and stuff.

  1. you can’t hold your website users’ hands the whole time. SEO can make it easier for them to find what they want
  2. What have you got that others don’t? What do you want on your site? Structure your content for search engines, use analytics and get social with links
  3. Using WordPress with the right plugins helps
  4. Content – useful and entertaining? Can the people writing your content actually write well? Need for enthusiasm. Would you read your content?
  5. Jon Bounds tweets – “ I’d love a discussion about whether or not it’s all a bit vulgar, rather than how to do it.”
  6. Who do you want to visit your site? Motivation: PR, money making or ego? Picture your reader and write for them
  7. Think like a librarian when structuring content: correct titles, categorisation, avoid duplication
  8. When building sites, get metadata in first, then the content. Don’t bury under piles of javascript & navigation stuff
  9. The cost of some sites using ‘traditional’ CMS can make you sob
  10. Security issues with WordPress? Can’t do ‘hard baked’ pages?
  11. Get Google Analytics and webmaster console
  12. If you are getting 90% traffic from search engines, that’s bad. About 60% is probably best.
  13. Gaming search engines gets harder as processor grunt increases. Don’t bother putting your black hat on.
  14. It takes time to get right, but can save a lot of marketing pennies
  15. Journalists are cheap – get them to write your content
  16. Can’t beat good writing
  17. Links: general directories are useless.
  18. Pimp yourself around: comment on related sites with link back to yours, put signposts up on relevant sites, be remarkable/stand out so people want to link to you
  19. Getting pageviews is fine, but to what end? You can generate traffic, but what do these people do when on your site except consume bandwidth
  20. Plenty of content, lots of key phrases
  21. 10% of traffic will have commercial intent
  22. Adsense is horrible (agreed!) If you are going to run ads use affiliate schemes
  23. The fundamental thing is that Google wants to find the sites that people want to see, so it really is just about the content
  24. SEOdigger.com – find out what keywords a site ranks for

WordPress 2.6 out now

The WordPress development blog has announced the release of a new version of the world’s best blogging software.

Some of the big improvements include: the ability to compare versions of posts, wiki-style, tracking who changed what – great for multi-user blogs; a new dynamic bookmarklet to help quick posting; the inclusion of Google Gears to speed up the admin interface; and new theme previews which include your content.

There is a video demonstrating the new version:

[HTML1]

Other, smaller changes include:

  • Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
  • Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
  • Bulk management of plugins.
  • A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
  • Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
  • Plugin update notification bubble.
  • Customizable default avatars.
  • You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
  • Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
  • Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
  • You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
  • Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.
  • Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
  • You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
  • A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
  • Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
  • Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.

That’s my morning sorted, then.

Local stuff

I always like reading Andrew Brown‘s roundups of stuff that’s happening in his area – Lewisham – that he regularly posts to his blog. I haven’t the discipline to do anything regularly, but here are a couple of things I’ve been looking at recently.

First up is that I took another look at the website for my village – Broughton, near Kettering in Northamptonshire. Before you click the link be warned: it’s not a very modern design. Indeed, as I suspected, a quick ‘View Source’ shows that the thing is done in Frontpage (argh!). But ignore that…

…because the content in fabulous. It’s a really, really good community resource. There’s stuff for the Parish Council, loads and loads of photos and bits of history about the village. Elaine Bradshaw, who is behind the site, really has done a terrific job.

The only shame is that I can’t find any contact details for her on the site, firstly to congratulate her on what she has achieved, but also to wonder how much easier it would be if we WordPress’d the whole thing. Maybe stuck all the photos up on Flickr, made it easier for anyone in the village to contribute… If somehow you end up reading this, Elaine, do get in touch.

Secondly, on the way to work today I saw a large fluorescent sign, imploring those that saw it to ‘Save Naseby Battlefield!’. I wasn’t under the impression that the battlefield was under any threat, but apparently it is:

Power company E.ON is investigating the possibility of installing turbines close to the historic battlefield.

The proposals have been met with anger from historians, who are working on plans to boost the national reputation of Naseby by building a visitor centre at the battle site.

A further bit of digging revealed that the campaign has its own site, and it runs on WordPress! Stop Kelmarsh Windfarm is the name of the site, which I can’t help but feel is a rather negative slant on things (‘Save Naseby Battlefield’ sounds much nicer, I think).

It also confuses the hell out of me. I mean, wind farms are good things, right? But heritage stuff is important too… argh!

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