Dodge Web Solutions

Back That Thing Up!

By Leave a Comment

I made a fun video with my friend Lydia at Expresso Designs today about backing up your site and safely updating, and I realized I was overdue for a website backup post.  Basically, you should not work without a net.  Two nets, actually – a staging site and regularly scheduled backups of your site.  The staging site you can try your updates out on first (and with Gutenberg coming, it’s a great idea for everyone) and if something does go wrong, you can revert back to an earlier copy of your site.  Thanks to Bonbon Lang-es for the beautiful safety net photo for the featured image*** – which is what your staging site and more importantly, your back ups, are for your business: your safety net.

I usually do backups via .xml export, or the host or All in One WP Migration, which really is terrific…but you can’t automate your backups with them.  I spent the morning trying out Updraftplus (I am apparently the last person with a computer and a website who hasn’t, but there ya have it) and I like it!  I backed up a really large site and a small nimble one, and it worked great for both.  Fair warning – it took about 35 minutes to do the back up for the larger site.  It’s free and you can schedule your backups (and store them in the cloud) and move on to other tasks.  The scheduling part is huge, because you want to find that you have been making backups regularly, not just when someone remembered to.

You need to keep in mind the storage limit of your chosen place for sending your backups, and you can choose any schedule you want and how many to keep.  You may choose to do at least a weekly backup, as is recommended at wpbackitup.   Another client makes very few changes to their site, so they will be happy with biweekly backup, and only keeping one or two of the backups.  If you do that, I recommend setting a backup that cannot be deleted except manually, just as a backup to the backup.  It also doesn’t hurt to occasionally download one of the backups to a different place than you usually store them – again, just as a backup to the backup.

 

***And the inspiration for the title goes, of course, to Juvenile

 

Adding Your Logo to the Login Screen

By Leave a Comment

I thought it would be a fun thing to see a photo of my kids every time I signed into the back end of my site.  And, of course, you may need to do that if you’re making a site that will have a a lot of the employees of your customer seeing the admin sign in screen.  It looks more professional and reassuring (if they’re a little nervous signing in, they know for sure they’re at their own site).

Here is a code snippet from WP Optimus to easily see the logo or image of your choice when someone goes to https://yoursite.com/wp-admin.  Just add it to the bottom of your functions file in your child theme.  You’re using a child theme, right?

function my_login_logo_one() { 
?> 
<style type="text/css"> 
body.login div#login h1 a {
background-image: url(http://localhost/wordpress/one.jpeg);  //Add your own logo image in this url 
padding-bottom: 30px; 
} 
</style>
<?php 
} add_action( 'login_enqueue_scripts', 'my_login_logo_one' );

 

And you can do it even more easily, via a plugin, of which there are many!

SKT Themes has a list they like

And so does WP Optimus in the article above

And the WordPress Codex discusses it, and provides a slightly different code snippet.  Let me know how your make out with this!

Preloaders – the Personalized License Plate of the WordPress World

By Leave a Comment

I started a complicated analogy of custom license plates, the DMV, honeymooners, and, inevitably, prison riots.  It just went off the rails, so I deleted it and am sticking to dignified directness in my writing tonight.

Often, we have to wait for a site to load.  But what if you start to customize a users experience, even before she or he sees your site proper? I’m talking about a customer preloader, and it’s so easy!

For WordPress, there are plenty of preloader plugins.  I chose the one that had been downloaded 10,000+, Preloader.  It’s a free plugin, search for it and download (or upload, whatever’s your pleasure) and activate.  You’ll need to upload a .gif for the custom preloader – I bought a really, truly cool radar one that turned out to be a little too complicated for me (it was a Photo shop file and I’m just too tired tonight).  So I got a free one at Preloaders.net and it’s still pretty neat.  Just upload your .gif to your WordPress Media library, add the file path to the settings in the plugin (it’s easier than it sounds, and they give instructions with pictures.  All class, man) .  The only *slightly* tricky part is adding the css to your header template, but you can do it!  In my case I have simple hooks so it was even easier.

After that, it’s like a friendly welcome mat to your site.  Like a favicon, a custom preloader is just one more way to set your website apart and show your are interested in creating the best user experience you can.  Let me know if you have another way you prefer to handle your custom preloader!

Don’t Eat Candy You Find on the Ground!

By 1 Comment

While I usually write about WordPress and tips and tricks thereof, this was an excellent article that I wanted to pass on to anyone reading this blog (hi, Mom!).  Sometimes people are intimidated by trying to protect themselves from viruses, spyware, malware, etc (fun fact – it’s all malware) and some just stick their head in the sand and think Norton will save them.

This article in Slate talks about a more holistic approach to keeping yourself safe online and securing your computer, accounts and self.  Just as you wouldn’t eat candy you found on the ground, you should’t install it if you weren’t looking for it in the first place (ie, those emails telling you to click here).  Update stuff!  Change your passwords and make them different from each other!  Even doing something is waaaaay better than doing nothing and probably more effective than you think!

And if all else fails, consider Linux.  Ubuntu is easy, free, and basically has no viruses.   Probably professional courtesy.

Using Plugins Wisely

By Leave a Comment

Ah, plugins.  Remember when smart phones first came on the scene, and everyone was archly assuring you that “there’s an app for that”?  Sometimes I feel like those of us in the WordPress world rush to use plugins in much the same way.

Plugins are wonderful tools that make life so much simpler (anyone who has tried to manually post to their social media accounts can attest to this) and solve so many problems you couldn’t anticipate having when you first envisioned a site.  And yet, they can really slow down the load time of your site.

I am ever cautious to throw around the word “ironic,” since I am pretty sure I usually use it wrong, but in this case I am going to go out on a limb and admire the irony of the P3 plugin.  Immensely popular (100,000+ installs) and highly rated (though not updated for quite a while), the Plugin Performance Profiler will inform on the other plugins on your site, letting you know who is slowing down the works.

Another thing to consider is whether the need for the plugin is perhaps indicative of a lack in your WordPress theme.  I am quoting from Reaktivstudios.com’s article below (since they said it better than I could):

“A well-coded theme should handle most of the standard needs a site has. That being said, needs change and evolve over time. Your content may have evolved. Or perhaps you’ve got a different focus for the site now. Regardless, there may come a time where you need to do something different, but don’t need a redesign. But when looking at a plugin, what is the goal? If you’re trying to “fix” something the theme should be doing, then the answer isn’t adding a plugin: it’s fixing the theme….”

I have made sites and had to later add what I believe now were too many plugins to just handle normal things that the theme should have been capable of.  However, sometimes for whatever reason (lack of time, money or motivation) people are not able to overhaul their site.  In this case, a plugin can bridge the gap between what you need and what your theme and site are currently capable of.  In that case, they are a life-saver.

Another interesting article discussing plugins (and giving some great technical explanations of how they work) can be found here on the wpmudev site’s blog, How Many Plugins is Too Many Plugins?  Let me know if you have any good plugin stories!

 

Make it Easy!

By Leave a Comment

Make it easy to buy things, if you are selling them!  That is the excellent advice in this ecommerce article, boiled down to its essence.  Don’t confuse your visitor, make it easy to navigate and easy to return to shopping.  Let them see what is in their cart.  Make it crystal clear how to contact you, what your return policy is, and give them a hint about shipping costs.  Of course, page load times are always crucial to conversions: “Four in 10 Americans give up accessing a mobile shopping site that won’t load in just three seconds (which is roughly the time taken to read to the period at the end of this sentence).”

Bonobos has an excellent shopping cart, and actually just an excellent site in general.  Walmart isn’t too shabby (you doubtless know this but I am still amazed at the different sites for different countries.  I guess a different aesthetic appeals to Americans vs. Canadians…)

What do you look for in a shopping experience?  Do requirements to sign up for a membership or an account drive you away?  Do you appreciate or resent (one vote for resent, over here) the “You May Also Be Interested In” suggestions after you put something in your cart?

 

 

Slowly But Surely, Government IT Enters the 21st Century

By Leave a Comment

Apologies to Arstechnica, since I borrowed the title from their article, a cheerful discussion of some of the great apps and sites for citizens to get help, speak their minds, or just find their bus.  I would like to write today instead about the US Web Design Standards, released in September, for all federal websites and organizations.  Per infotoday.com: “…now the federal government as a whole has a single set of rules to establish not only a common visual style, but also guidelines that provide for easier navigation and standardized terminology.”

The Atlantic quotes U.S. Digital Service Designer Mollie Ruskin talking about their goals in setting these standards: “…our aim was to create an aesthetic both on par with 21st-century consumer products, while also capturing a distinctly American style that places a premium on simplicity and usability.” Unfortunately, the Atlantic could not resist pointing out that Canada and England have been doing it better all along, style-wise.

Well, I happen to love my country and found little nuggets of patriotism such as “CSS selectors are prefixed with usa (For example: .usa-button)” heartwarming and uplifting.  USA!USA!USA!

All kidding aside, this is a good step in the right direction for our federal government, making it easier for our many different agencies to have the same look and feel, and increase ease of use for users citizens visiting their sites.

Breadcrumbs

By Leave a Comment

Just a quick note – I was mentally laying out a new site yesterday.  The theme I was using asked if I wanted to enable breadcrumbs, and if so, for what post type.  (In WordPress, technically speaking posts are posts and pages are posts – crazy, right?)  At first, I scoffed – “Breadcrumbs?  Is this 2008?”  But then I got over myself and started doing a little reading.

This article on marketingland.com presents a great case for considering breadcrumbs in the context of what is best for the user.  (hint, if done right, they often are)   But they kind of buried the lead, or maybe I did.  The most important thing to do, when designing a new site, is to consider what is best for the user.  And don’t worry so much about what is in style and what is old – if it works and makes your user’s experience better, then it is good!  If there is a better or simpler way to do it, it will generally evolve.  Or maybe you will discover it!  But a website should beautiful, functional, and as simple as possible.

Architect Louis Sullivan said:

“Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change, form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever-brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies, in a twinkling.
It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression,that form ever follows function. This is the law.“[3]

And a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein sums up the best UX (user experience) perspective: “in effect, that everything should be as simple as it can be but not simpler!”