New Media, Web Frontier, Part Two

Second in a Series

Editor’s Note:

In the world of business, people matter.

Technical barriers for a business stepping out into the Web world require acquiring the know-how (or hiring and working with someone who has the knowledge) to handle some coding language and technical issues. Then there are the details to get a site going such as site hosting, as well as writing, editing, configuration and publishing expertise.

Packt Publishing is a leader in guidebooks that can fill in the gaps between for solo entrepreneurs. Based in the United Kingdom, the company’s books and online publications share the experiences of IT professionals in adapting and customizing today’s systems, applications, and frameworks. The company has build a library of real life experiences, distilled in a digestible manner, easy to use and then apply.

Online forums can help provide guidance, but as with any frontier (and the world of Web publishing is a true frontier), sometimes it can be difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys who can appear to be helpful (and their advice can prove fatal to a web site, but more of that in another segment.) The first installment in the series can be found at http://www.corpct.net/2009/05/05/frontier-web-site-development-and-cms/.

Here, the question and answer session continues.

Three Packt authors offer up pithy advice for those seeking to venture onto solo entrepreneur status for publishing and handing a Web site. They are:

Tessa Blakeley Silver, whose background is in print design and traditional illustration.
Tessa is a published author for Packt Publishing and has authored several books including WordPress Theme Design and Joomla! Template Design. She’s currently working on a new book, Joomla! 1.5 Template Design.

Vladimir Prelovac, founder of Cleveritics.com, author of WordPress Plugin Development: Beginner’s Guide book and popular articles about WordPress SEO, website optimization, customization, security and maintenance.

Paul Thewlis, who has worked as a web communications professional in the public and private sectors, and is currently e-communications manager for a multi-national transport company based in the United Kingdom. He has authored Packt title WordPress for Business Bloggers.

QU: Do you see content management system (CMS) such as WordPress and Joomla platforms as the next chapter in Web development? In other words, some businesses can have much more flexibility to publish on demand, rather than depend on a web firm?


Tessa Blakeley Silver: Sure. For me and what I do, it’s the current chapter in Web development. I consistently push clients toward a CMS (I use WordPress as the default I recommend unless the client knows what they want to use and their justification for using it is more solid than say, “my brother said Joomla was cool”). I think most developers and firms do push toward a CMS. If they don’t, they may be resistant because they think it takes work away from them, but I’ve found that pushing clients toward a CMS can increase the work and quality of work for me.

The client is happy and in control of their content and instead of being bogged down in text edits and content updates, I’m free to think more creatively for the client and suggest site theme and Plugin enhancements that can help them boost sales/subscriptions or help them strategize and connect their brand out into social networks as well as a host of other income increasing endeavors. It creates a nice cycle: the client is happy and instantly gratified updating their own content. They publish something that I’m able to make additional suggestions for, for example: “I see you posted “x” if you create an account with (insert network) and link to it, or an Amazon affl link for that book review you’ll start to see “y: happen”.

Usually, making simple suggestions starts a chain of other site enhancement ideas.

Creativity like this was much more restricted when sites were ’static’ and I was overloaded with a schedule of site maintenance and content updates. Pushing the site to work for the client and to the next level was often left up to the client to ask me for enhancements, but as they often don’t know what all the possibilities are (they’re busy running a business after all), they didn’t ask for much and overall progress with their site was much slower.

On the whole you should never think that you’re just going to “put up a site.”

I attempt to get my clients in a state where they understand they’re going to “give birth” to a site that will forever grow and evolve.

Vladimir Prelovac: I definitely see WordPress stepping into this role, and already some of the major sites including corporate sites (as seen on http://wordpress.org/showcase) have adapted to it. That’s certainly a positive signal for future users. Days of depending on a Web firm to handle publishing are coming to an end because in the time you need to give them details; you can already write an article on your own using your site.

Paul Thewlis: Most definitely, Web publishing is now a push-button activity that anyone can master. After a few hours’ practice, using WordPress is no more complicated than most office software. It offers plenty of flexibility. However, that’s not to say the skills of web developers and designers are no longer needed. For example, most people can use MS PowerPoint to create a fairly professional presentation, but if you need something really special, you’d call in a designer to give your slides an edge. The same is true of developing websites with open source tools such as WordPress.

From time to time you may need some professional help to make something really special, particularly from an artistic design point of view. But that’s not to say you can’t get going on your own. You can certainly get more bang for your buck by starting out with WordPress than you could a few years ago hiring a web firm to design a bespoke site from scratch.

QU: Can you site successful business sites that use WP and incorporate advertising?

Blakeley Silver: Well that’s the interesting thing about WordPress, unless they’re not using SEO friendly URL’s, or using the month/date SEO format, it’s hard to tell if a site is using WordPress (unlike Drupal or other CMSs which have “giveaways” in the urls). There are plenty of WordPress-ish site’s out there that are successfully integrating content with advertisement but I’m not totally sure they’re running on WordPress. I’m really inspired by the Envato network of sites. I think some of their sites like Freelanceswitch.com and their tutorial sites like PSDtuts.com and VectorTuts.com are WordPress, but I’m not sure. If they’re not WordPress, you can most certainly do everything they’re doing with WordPress.

Prelovac: Sure, these are examples of some of the business sites using WordPress:

Thewlis: There are literally thousands of successful websites out there using WordPress. Gigaom.com is one of the most successful tech blogs on the web and runs on WordPress – it’s a media business whose very existence is due to advertising revenue.

EatingBritain.com is another good example of an ad-supported site. For many more examples, take a look at http://wordpress.org/showcase/.


QU: Any collaborative efforts (business, designers, developers) worth a mention due to their design or content or a combination of factors?

Blakeley Silver: Again, the Envato network is great. They’re subscription and download business sites and also information sites set up by designers and developer’s for designers and developers.

Prelovac: None that stand out because the WordPress ‘scene’ is so intervened and there are literally thousands of designers and developers, easily findable through Google.

QU: Define developing a theme, and how the structure of a theme and the online support and improvements after purchase of a theme can make the difference for business.

Blakeley Silver: Theme development is creating the design, CSS and custom post and page layouts that you’d like your site’s content to be displayed in. The advantage of purchasing a commercial theme is, a good commercial theme developer will offer you additional technical support; Helping you install your theme and they can usually even help with minor customizations to fit your content’s needs.

The drawback to purchasing a theme is if you want your content to be highly customized in its display, then it can be hard to find a theme that suits your needs. It’s then better to hire a developer to craft you a custom theme.

You can do a lot with WordPress just by getting creative with the theme.

For instance, in the case study that I develop in my book, WordPress Theme Design, I walk designers through creating a “magazine feel” of featured articles as well as monthly columns and tweak the theme to use the posts and categories a little differently to achieve this as opposed to a basic blog.

I’ve creatively used posts and categories to handle all sorts of non-blog things, such as product descriptions and customer feedback. I’ve also set up portfolio theme’s for designers and service providers that use WordPress posts to hold portfolio and case study descriptions and then categorize them into “services”. Using categories this way is great as you can have one portfolio piece show up under multiple categories like “design” and “web development” so if someone’s in a hurry and only interested in your “web development” skills they’ll see the piece while other people who only clicked on “logo design” or “layout design” see it too.

Prelovac: As a Plugin developer, I do not share much in common with theme design. However, I can tell you that it is the same as in every business, and Plugin development for that matter too – you want to purchase the product from a trusted and checked source.

To be continued . . .