Here are the specific details of what belongs where on a WordPress page. Placement is very important because making it easy for your new visitors to quickly find what they’re seeking can turn them into repeat visitors who can quickly find posts to share with others.
These tips specify the optimum place for each of the items used on an optimum Web page. They are not the only place they could be; there are secondary locations that may be used. Once you understand why usability experts recommend specific layouts you can make the decision to alter them. Until then it is best to use what has been tested and known to work.
HEADER
• Logo in left corner…business name next to logo… tagline under or next to your business or site name.
• Tabs under the logo for Home, About, Reference, Glossary, Contact (optimized to not affect SEO)
• Links or tabs at very bottom of template for About, Contact Us, Privacy Policy, Copywrite. You may also want Sitemap, Hosted by ________, and Advertise links.
• Two columns, posts on left, sidebar on right
Order of Information in Right Sidebar Column:
• Site Search (Enhanced site search is very important. More research is required before recommending the best solution. In the meantime, see SearchTools. Search must be clearly labeled with the word SEARCH – either using the word search to start the process OR having SEARCH before the box and a button with some other word after it.)
• Subscribe multiple RSS feed options (by category, w/ or w/o comments, links only?)
• Reference – static pages that have the latest information and links to all posts on a specific subject
• Categories – rename header to customize. I prefer “Blog Topics”
• Recent Visitors (MyBlogLog, Blog Catalog, etc.)
• Social Networking Links
IMPLEMENTATION:
• Use tabs to more effectively display more info in less space in the right column. Use for Recent Posts, Most Popular aka Popular Posts. Most Commented is another option to consider.
• Use tabs for Recent comments, Top Commentators
• Blogroll (I may change that to “We Recommend” links)
• Have category descriptions show on mouseover (as they do now in this blog)
• Have descriptions for Reference pages show on mouseover the way category descriptions do.
• Tabbed display of MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, other?
• Dates added to each post but not in the urls.
NOT NEEDED or DESIRED:
• Archives by date (Who remembers when something was posted or finds it again that way?)
• Tagcloud (More useful for diary-like blogs. Not necessary for sites with clearly defined topics.)
TO USE OR NOT TO USE; THAT IS THE QUESTION:
- WordPress XML Sitemap
CHANGES I WOULD MAKE TO THE DEFAULT WP CSS (or make sure the designer did NOT change):
• Bulleted items – solid bullets instead of arrows
• Hyperlinks standard color; visited links change to standard color
• Ability to use outline format (Roman numerals, capital letters, numbers, lower case letters)
If possible I would have the CSS correct the spacing issue that occurs when a bulleted item appears on more than one line. If you know a fix for this, please share it in the comments. Thanks.
ONE UPGRADE MORE IMPORTANT THAN MOST OTHERS:
A Glossary plug-in to automatically link any word used in a post to the definition present in the glossary. Definitions should be editable / controlled by the blog writer. Every blog or Web site uses words that are specific to their niche. A glossary that auto-links your preferred definition to those words whenever you use them would greatly benefit every site:
- Save time explaining them repeatedly
- Shorten posts for easier scanning and readability
- Please your advanced readers who already know what they mean without losing those who may not have come across that word or phrase before.
RELATED POSTS:
- Defining The Perfect WordPress Theme
- Perfect WordPress Theme Design Part 1: Backgrounds, Style, Number of Columns
Gail Gardner
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Thats a great article. Thank you for this sharing.
Awesome tutorial that you’ve posted 🙂
thanks for great sharing to us 🙂
It’s a great guide. I am looking for some good articles about wordpress themes, plugins etc. Your information is valuable, thanks for sharing.
WordPress ideas is very Good I really appreciate your way of presenting this post with a excellent suggestion.
Great tutorial. Although at times I want to have my site look totally different, I try to remember that it is important to provide users an interface that is familiar and easy to use because of that familiarity.
Lots of great ideas – unfortunately I don’t know CSS very well so it’s difficult for me to make changes to WordPress themes
Great presentation of the topic!
To your question regarding the site-map, I would definitely say: YES. There is a plug-in for WordPress that creates an xml sitemap, according to the standard set by Google. That gives a good SEO boost, as Google likes to see all your posts and pages in one place, to easily find out when was the last time that the content was modified, and get an indication of how important each page is.
Apart from that, I would suggest a sitemap for humans, with the website’s logical categories as headers and each category section as a bullet under the header. This clearly enhances the navigation of the website. The only problem is that up until now I haven’t come across any tool that automates this sitemap version. That makes it a lot more time consuming.
WordPress theme design are very famous because of its flexible and creative approach and all the Website Templates whether they are Joomla Templates or CSS Templates, there is no comparison with wordpress themes.As you can read the approach which have been told here, can not be found anywhere else.
Related post plugins are also very handy for keeping users on your site for longer. One popular free one is YARRP – I see you are using a related posts plugin on this blog but haven’t recommend one as a tip.
The true effectiveness of the plugin really shows when you have a lot of posts, otherwise the suggestions tend to be a bit inaccurate or empty entirely.
Nice insightful post. Thanks for sharing the information.
Leslie would love you to read ..Save My Marriage Blog
Thanks for the WordPress ideas! How do I add a glossary? Is there a plugin? The glossary is fantastic idea, adds links and a page for pagerank.
Thanks so much!
hi, this is interesting stuff and worth keeping in mind.
I am a non-technical type and have struggled for months to learn all the tech jargon which some designers use. I found this post easy to understand.
Thank you for that!
This is an amazing resource. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you.
Anne Goddard
Is sitemap necessary when using WordPress?
I’ve been looking for something like this for a while, great article!
Now I am using this logo maker:
A straightfoward logo maker. Simple, but it really works for me.
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i agree. it is difficult sometimes to find a site that is actually helpful!
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Thanks for this great information. It’s reassuring to see that there is a pecking order of sorts and that what feels comfortable for us is usually good for our users as well. I know I hate going to a site that is poorly set out. I never stay long even if the content is good. This checklist will become a bible for many and even if it seems boring then think about those who are going to use your site and put them first. Otherwise you might lose people for good.
Good article here and I’m very glad to see you’ve put KeywordLuv to use!
I’ve been following your articles for some time now. They are really great, and interesting reads. By the way, absolutely love KeywordLuv!
Information accessible here is great.
however, for all blogs, detailed editing needs a good amount of HTML , PHP etc knowledge but yet with basics you can do nice editing.
best sources can be searching a lot of related topics on search engines.
Awesome tutorial, than you for give us tips on how create in a friendly use for our followers and visitors, hope you will post more info not just for WordPress also features keywordLuv.
How are you finding keywordluv nowdays? The blogs I have running it are getting a lot of spam comments?
This is a great tutorial! I really appreciate that you took the time to provide such detailed information. So many tutorials assume new users know so much, but I think you do a great job providing tons of info without being condescending.
caitlin’s last blog post..This Week’s Favourites – 5th June 2009