There are a lot of plugins for Wordpress floating around and only in the last few months have I really started to explore and experiment with what is out there. Amongst my playing around, there was also a bit of serious work too, I have discovered my 5 plugins which I consider to be very powerful, useful, simple to implement and use and above all very Search Engine Friendly. I can honestly say that on every WP site I have built in the last couple of months (approx 4-5) I have used these 5 definitive “must have” Wordpress plugins. And here they are (in no order):

1. Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin dynamically generates an XML sitemap for your website. It pings and notifies all major search engines which can help increase the crawl rate, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask etc. You can add custom URLs to the sitemap, modify the Priority, Change Frequency and furthermore you can also submit this sitemap to your google webmaster tools (or equivalent).
2. Platinum SEO – Simply, Platinum SEO optimised your blog/website for search engines. Features include; canonical urls, automatic 301 redirects for change in permalink, automatically creates meta tags and loads more.
3. Broken Link Checker – Broken Link Checker crawls through your blog looking for broken links. If any are found you will be notified on your dashboard and be presented with a couple of actions in attempt to rectify the problem. It also picks up missing images.
4. Top Level Categories – This plugin’s task is simple yet very effective. Use it to remove the prefix before the URL to your category page. E.g. “yourdomain.com/category/latest-news/” would  simply be “yourdomain.com/latest-news/”
5. The Excerpt re-reloaded – This plugin does a little bit more than the standard Wordpress excerpt function. It allows you to choose excerpt length, html tags, the link text to full post and the html container of the excerpt. Makes for much more userful and prettier exceprts.

Working at a web company you could imagine I meet a few designers, the great thing is we each seem to have different tastes in what style of website hits the spot. Just like everyone has their own opinions on the look of the website, everyone also has their own preferred way of building their design. I believe it very important to work in the way you feel most comfortable and efficient.

I have found that overtime my processes have changed and improved, my skill level seemed to show major improvement when I challenged my initial methods of building HTML/CSS websites. I would actively try to build websites diffently each time I built another one. For a while now I have found myself to be most efficient if I do not even create a stylesheet until I have written all my HTML. This is a common method, but one I had never previously used as it never worked for me, I would prefer to work in sections. E.g build the head => style, build the menu => style etc

There are two major reasons why I now build “most” of my websites in this method:

1.    I can create all my HTML without even opening up a browser. On one screen have Photoshop, the other, my mark up. This saves a massive amount of “ALT-TAB” time.

2.    By creating all my HTML first, when I finally do review it I can see how it looks in it’s raw format. It helps to see if the flow of the current page makes logical sense. This is better for accessibility purposes and can help with SEO.

As mentioned, everyone has their own way to do things. The hard part is challenging these processes, stepping outside what you currently do just to try something different. It might not work for everyone, but it has been a substantial help in my personal development.

A very valuable lesson that everyone designer needs to know is about having everything in writing. On so many occasions I have seen clients attempt to creep the scope of the project and squeeze just that little bit more for their cash.

Who can blame them, I would do the exact same thing.

For this reason it is our responsibility to be firm and reasonable with our clients. By having physical documentation of everything agreed on, if a client asks for something outside scope, you have solid ground to turn it down and the client will hopefully understand. Below is a quick checklist of items I suggest to keep in writing:

1. Agreed Cost of the design/build
2. A breakdown of what is included for that cost
3. What you need from the client and a date you need it by
4. Feedback on designs
5. Client signing off designs

In past experience I have noticed the big lifesaver to be number 5, Client signing off designs. To often do clients approve a final design layout for a page and when you have built it exactly as agreed on, they get a new idea and expect you to take care of it free of charge. By having the design signed off in an email, you will have the ability to mention and show them that they have approved it and signed it off. You can then act accordingly.

One example of such a situation was I had a client, whom we’ll call Raul Julia. I was designing and building a straight HTML website and Raul Julia had approved multiple mock ups over the phone. just as the website entered the final review stage and was almost ready to go live, the client wanted to completely change the look and layout of the main navigation. I mentioned that he had signed it off and it was too big a task for me to tackle free of charge. Long story short, he denied signing it off and I had no proof that he had, so I had to take it as a loss.

Above: The Real Raul Julia

Ultimately, the client will generally want changes and it is at your discretion whether you charge them for it or not, personally if the changes are minor and few I am happy to cover them for the sake of the client – designer relationship. There is a line though and it is the web designers responsibility to draw it.

In reality, there are two sides to this story, both of which are dependent on your target audience.

If you have a website that is not necessarily designed for a general target audience, say a website where usually only designers may visit, support for IE6 may not be necessary at all. This is due to the fact you are expecting your visitors to be up to date and anyone who isn’t most likely would not be the type of visitor you expect to stay and explore or convert.

On the other hand, if you are developing for a corporate client who sells products online, or depends on their website for a steady stream of income, no doubt the client is going to want as much traffic and conversions as possible. You cannot rely on every user having the most up to date browser, if they are unsure how to upgrade and we want to make a conversion, then it is our responsibility to make it work given what they have.

Personally, I don’t think IE6 is that bad.

Its true IE6 is outdated but I believe designers and/or developers just love throwing around how much IE6 sucks to show they “know what they are talking about.”

I can honestly say I do not run into many issues whilst developing for IE6. I have spoken to developers, who believe an entirely new stylesheet is required while developing for IE6, and I find myself dumbfounded as to why, or how, they can run into so many problems. The main issue I tend to face is a margin/padding issue which can be easily modified with a few additional lines of CSS.

The above CSS would overwrite that particular style for the element. In this case h1. This VERY easy fix, as well as many others which help make development for IE6 almost as simple as most other browsers for all website designers.

A very useful and simple script, commonly used by myself, is an automatic PHP mailer using a FOREACH loop to get all the POST data. This method is quick and easy to implement.

Why should I use a FOREACH loop in a PHP mailer?

The answer is simple, this script enables you to get all the field names and values from a form automatically. Lets have a look what I mean..

A very simple form using only 3 text fields

If I was to email the form results using PHP, on my confirm page I would have code very similar to the following…

Now, don’t get me wrong, this works great, and you do have ultimate control over what fields are displayed and how. But imagine a form with say 30+ fields? You don’t want to have to append the field name to the message 30+ times. For 3 immediate reasons:

1. It can be a complete waste of time
2. As there is more code, the chances for a syntax error greatly increase
3. It is repetitive and boring to write

The easiest way around it is to create a FOREACH loop for all the values in POST. An example of said code is as follows:

Basically this code grabs all the fields and values in POST and appends them to the variable $message, which is then mailed. You can take it a little bit further and exclude certain fields that you do not want to see in your email, such as the submit button.

You can download a working form using this PHP mailer here.