Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
Following on my theme for this week, here are the steps to make WordPress mobile friendly. This assumes you are using a separate URL for your mobile friendly wordpress (such as sitename.mobi):
1 – Buy your domain and park it on your current WordPress site, so sitename.com and sitename.mobi are generating the same content
2 – Add (or modify) the file /wp-content/themes/yourtheme/functions.php and add the following lines:
<?php
remove_action(‘template_redirect’, ‘redirect_canonical’);
function elixir_urlrewrite( $url ) {
Posted in Accessibility, Web Design and Development | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
This post is not about ‘how to get more traffic to your site’ its about how to get the right traffic to your site.
Posted in Search Engine Optimization | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008
CSS is vitally important in making your site mobile ready. I ended up making 3 CSS media sections in one CSS file:
- @media screen – contains all the CSS positioning informaiton, font sizes needed for the screen, etc.
- @media handheld – the CSS for handhelds. This removed a lot of unneeded parts of the screen (footer text), and doesn’t include positioning information.
- @media print – CSS for when the page is printed. This changes the font size for printing, labels links for printing, turns off unnecessary navigation (left hand menus, footer, etc) and anything else to make your site look good when printed.
All CSS for these sections should be contained within curly brackets {}
@media print{
Posted in Accessibility | 1 Comment »
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
When was the last time you bought a can of cola online? A television? Signed up for legal representation? While internet marketing is a great way to drive traffic to your website to generate sales or leads, there are still many people who either won’t or can’t purchase online. However, many of these people will do research online before going a bricks and mortar store to make their purchase or before picking up the phone to make an appointment. That is one reason why more and more businesses are actively using the internet to get their brand in front of a growing number of targeted eyeballs.
Branding helps because:
- It is your identity
- It communicates your message to others
- It builds reputation and trust
- It separates you from your competitors
Your online brand should be aimed at your target audience and be consistent with your offline brand profile.
Keep in mind that your brand is more than just your website. Consider all the other online avenues that your company and others use to publish information about your brand. Information within your control such as press releases, company blogs, articles, etc., can all find their way into search engine results. Information out of your control such as product reviews and customer opinions can also find their way into the results. Because there are external factors involved, many organizations are now monitoring what people are saying online about their brands.
A growing group of brand advocates – individuals who are inspired spokespersons on behalf of a brand, are rapidly gaining the attention and consideration of many businesses. Businesses are learning to nurture these advocates by feeding them the latest news, providing advance knowledge of updates, and most of all, listening to their opinions and ideas regarding products, services, advertising, and other aspects of the company-client relationship. These brand advocates can make or break the success of online brands.
The development of advocacy creates increased opportunities for the branding message to be passed on virally or by word-of-mouth. Web 2.0 or social networking sites play a pivotal role in the rapid spread of consumer related information about brands. These types of sites were developed so that individuals could communicate with others who shared similar tastes or outlooks.
Branding can no longer be thought of as something that can immediately be transferred from offline to online. Online branding in the Web 2.0 age requires a change of focus away from the company’s branding message towards the message formulated by the consumers of the brand. The strongest online brands are built on a foundation of brand advocacy coupled with a solid, consistent branding message from the parent company.
Posted in Branding | No Comments »
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
Setting up CSS for mobile phones is easy enough but what about modifying your site to handle these users. Considering the total people using a mobile phone to surf in a business environment is minimal so you want to minimize the additional webmaster time spent supporting this implementation.
I found this script at http://www.brainhandles.com/2007/10/15/detecting-mobile-browsers/
Posted in Accessibility | No Comments »
