Fresh

Don’t drop the ball now that the ball has dropped! That’s right, it’s a new year, and time to make new resolutions and goals as well as re-commit ourselves to standards and quality in web design and development.  One of the most critical periods in the creation of a new (or redesigned) website is what we at eROI call the “Deploy” phase. This is when all the hard work the team has put into a project culminates to one defining moment when you flip the switch and the site “GOES LIVE” for the whole world to see.  But more important than the actual flip-switching is the pre-launch phase where we make sure the site is ready for prime time, so to speak.

One of the most important steps in the pre-launch phase is an in-depth QA process, including usability and cross-browser testing.  But let’s assume that step has already been completed and your site is bug free and looks snazzy in all the major browsers.  Heck, let’s even say you’ve got a kick-ass mobile version and that everything degrades gracefully with javascript disabled, or on a horrible, outdated browser (I don’t think I need to name names here).

Aside from making sure everything works and looks good, here is a list of items to check on and implement (if you haven’t already).  Many of these may seem rather trivial compared to larger issues like site functionality, but the little details are important and you want to put your best face forward when presenting a new website to the world.  The lack of a favicon may not drive people away from your site, but those small details will be noticed and appreciated by users as well as peers in the industry.  Other items on the list can be much more crucial to the usability and success of the site.

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I just came across an SEO plugin for WordPress that trumps the tried-and-true All In One SEO Pack that nearly every WP developer at eROI uses for meta taggy and optimized title-y goodness.  Platinum SEO was developed using All In One as its foundation — so it keeps the awesomeness of the original ultimate SEO plugin while adding on even more sweet features.  One of the coolest thing about Platinum SEO is that it will automatically transfer settings from All In One if you already have that plugin installed.

But the absolute BEST thing about Platinum SEO?  It plays well with More Fields for WordPress 2.7.

A couple months ago I gushed about what More Fields does for WP 2.7, and I’m a big More Fields evangelist around the office.  But unfortunately I discovered an incompatability between More Fields and All in One SEO.  If you chose to edit the default page types using More Fields, your All in One SEO box would disappear from the edit screen.  With More Fields you should be able to choose which boxes appear on your edit screen, but for whatever reason, More Fields does not detect that All In One exists.  Other plugin’s edit screen boxes appear in this list, which leads me to believe there is something wrong with the All In One plugin. Bummer! (more…)

Everybody loves WordPress here at eROI, and over the past year we’ve fully embraced using it not just as a blogging platform, but as a full blown content management system.  But although it has so many great features built-in (and more to come with WordPress 2.7), there are certain plugins we always add on to bump it up to the next level of CMS greatness.  They mostly work in the background, doing all the hard work and not getting much credit.  Our clients may not necessarily notice they are there, but they would probably notice if they weren’t.

There are a few categories of plugins that are essential (or at least extremely beneficial) to any WordPress-as-CMS installation:  SEO, Spam Prevention, Tracking/Analytics, and Feeds.

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