There’s lots of things I like about Wordpress 2.5, but the admin panel has taken some getting used to - I’ve felt quite disoriented often because things aren’t where I was used to them being.

I thought I’d give it a bit of time before writing about my thoughts.

I think that for new Wordpress users, things are much better organized in general than they used to be but some things leave my scratching my head. Why is “Design” put before “Comments” in the top menu? Why is “Comments” in the main menu when it’s really a part of “Manage”? Why are Settings, Plugins and Users so hard for me to get used to being in the top right?

One general thing that has caused problems for some clients who are seasoned Wordpress users: moving categories, post author and other meta information below the post box, rather than to the right and having draft posts listed up the top of pages, rather than hunting for them. Also, it allows the post box to be wider if you have a wide screen, rather than limiting it.

A massive thanks to Judy from Persistent Illusion for providing a Wordpress 2.5 admin hack to solve this problem. As usual, use at your own risk and back up your files to be sure but I have found this invaluable already.

Check this screenshot of how the admin panel will look after applying her hack versus how it would look beforehand. Make sure you show your support for this change to be a part of Wordpress 2.6 if you find it useful!

If something starts going strange or not working on your Wordpress blog, one of the most common causes is a plugin.

Written by third parties, plugins are one of the best parts about Wordpress - there’s so many of them out there which can add extra features or functionality to a basic install of Wordpress. So many of them are invaluable and almost standard when we set up a blog for clients.

Lately, we’ve run into a few problems caused by plugins and thought that sharing them might help you if you end up having the same sort of problem.

Here’s the first tip:

Does your site suddenly become very slow or impossible to log into the Wordpress admin area but the rest of your site is running fine?

A plugin could be the cause. Some plugins connect back to the plugin author’s website to see if there are new versions available. Nice and handy to be told when there is one, but not so great when the plugin’s website server is down, or having problems. Because it can’t connect, it may tie up your own admin area as well. This happened recently with aLinks - an awesome plugin - but it stopped others getting into their admin area.

Quick solution: disable the plugin until the other site is back up by moving the plugin folder outside of your Wordpress plugin directory. The usual method of disabling by unticking it on the plugins page won’t work if you can’t get into the admin area!

More and more tools are being released which help you communicate with the wider world and my question always seems to be organizing which of the organizers I should be using and the best way of using them together (if there is such a thing!). What follows is a jumble of thoughts of these issues.

Some personal examples are:

My blog(s)
Flickr
Facebook
Twitter
Tumblr
Google Reader
del.icio.us
YouTube
Feedfriend
Amazon wishlist
Last.fm

Questions I ponder which span all these examples above:

Is there such a line as the personal/work divide anymore?
Is pooling everything all together into one place the solution?
Is using all these examples separately the solution?
Who is the solution for? Me, my friends, my readers? Actually, does it matter who the solution is for anymore?
Do other people really need (or want) to know my Amazon wishlist (etc) or do I just want quick access to it?
Can x do something that y can’t do already? Or does it just make it faster and quicker but with a bit of work, I could just use x and keep two things together in one place?

Wavering between one tool to rule them all and then back to individuality reigns

I’ve set up accounts on so many sites and then come back to tools which promise the best of everything all in one place - such as Netvibes or Google Reader - but I find myself using them for a while and then moving back to the individual sites.

A good example of this is our local news sites. It’s too much information overload to subscribe via Google Reader so I just load up their homepages and take a quick glance to see what’s their big and latest headlines every so often. Is there a quick tool which shows “what’s on the homepage” of a site right now?

Another example is twitter and Facebook status. Having twhirl or some other twitter client open all the time, there’s a constant flood of messages. My eyes glaze over and when I log out and turn it on again, there’s a ridiculous number of status updates that have flown by. Information overload. Is there a quick way to see one most latest status update for each of my contacts, in one place - a little like the most recent Facebook status list that you can see? Something I can take a quick glance at? I prefer Twitter because it’s exportable, it’s RSS and I can use it how I like but does it help me or just distract me?

Every so often, I give Netvibes or Google Desktop Sidebar a go. I find myself being given a limited number of tools and the gimicks/widgets wear off quickly. I don’t really need today’s weather, today’s quote, a photo slideshow, or how many unread emails I have. I end up scrapping these and going back to having multiple tabs open, and a bookmarks toolbar for quick access to everything.

I’ve tried Remember the Milk and other to-do lists but end up back with my paper diary that I can enjoy the feeling of crossing things off from and some important reminders on my phone.

Do you have any suggestions, similar ponderings or behaviours as me?

I recently received an email asking for some Wordpress advice on making posts show up in columns just like on 9antivirus.com and thought I’d share one way of doing this.

I’ve set up a demo blog showing how it looks after the code is implemented.

There are two theme files to be edited: index.php and style.css. I have just edited the default Kubrick theme, so adjust this to suit your own theme.

The basic idea is to add a “switch” so Wordpress knows if you’re looking at a post which will appear in the first or second column.

In index.php I added code in four places:

Before the Wordpress loop starts:

<?php $col = 1; ?>

I.e. we set up the switch to start off in the first column.

Just after the Wordpress loop starts:

<?php if ($col == 1) echo "<div class=\"row\">"; ?>

Start a new row if we’re in the left hand column.

Inside the Wordpress loop:

Add in the switch:

<div class="post col<?php echo $col;?>" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">

I.e. I added in col<?php echo $col;?> to the post’s class. We’ll use CSS to decide how to display posts in each column.

Just before the end of the Wordpress loop:

Change the switch and the row:

<?php if ($col == 1) echo "</div>"; (($col==1) ? $col=2 : $col=1); endwhile; ?>

The Wordpress loop ends with endwhile.

Just before this, I do two things: finish the row and I make $col switch between the first or second column. If you haven’t seen code like this before, this is what it’s doing:

Are we in the first column?
Yes: Move to the second column.
No: Move to the first column.

In style.css I added three lines of code at the very bottom:

.row { clear: both; }
.col1 { width: 200px; float: left; padding: 0 10px; }
.col2 { width: 200px; float: right; padding: 0 10px; }


If you’re using a different theme, you may need to adjust the column widths and the amount of padding.

Using a row div forces the two posts to always line up with each other, even if the excerpts are different lengths.

Read part 1 first »

We recently moved a forum options sidebar from the left to the right of the screen in an online community I help run.

The change generated a lot of discussion and in this post I’ll document how people reacted to the change and some of the ways I’ve managed the feedback.

Reactions to changing a layout

Initial reactions seemed to fall along three lines (in order of magnitude):

• Users who felt uncomfortable with the movement. Things weren’t where they expected them to be, and it took them back.
• Users who didn’t care about the change, they were more interested in doing what they always did on the site.
• Users who liked the change immediately, for no particular reason.

After some time, reactions changed to (in order of magnitude):

• Users who got used to the change, and carried on as usual.
• Users who preferred things how they once were and had a reason for their opinion.

A change in layout does require a change in behaviour. It’s going to be strange at first - hence the reason I like to give things a month to see how they pan out.

Managing feedback from changing a layout

When we introduced the layout switch, we gave limited reasons as to why we made the change. One of these was:

We read from left to right, and the content is the focus of the forum, not the options first.

I feel very strongly about this reason and had researched how people were actually using the forum’s sidebar options over the previous six months to back up this decision.

On so many sites, the real content is crowded between sidebars and focus is taken off of the main purpose of the site. I’m not talking primarily about sidebars used for navigation here, but sidebars with related options and information to the center stage.

In a forum, I want readers to first focus on reading the forum topics and forum threads. That’s what the forum is there for. Not options and information such as “mark all read”, “bookmarked discussions”, “edit profile” or even “who’s online”.

However, one site member strongly disagreed with the change. Comments included:

“It goes against all the site usability rules.

We have millions of websites worldwide as irrefutable proof that the left hand side is the correct location for this panel. Surely they can’t all be wrong?

I would NEVER recommend to a client that they have their side bar on the right. People expect to see this stuff on the left because that is where it has always been. Nothing puts people off using a website faster, than not finding things where they expect them to be. For that reason alone, I am amazed that the change was made.”

The other day I came across this quote:

“Any architect who tells you that the bathroom always needs to be in a certain place in every house is obviously insane or a control freak. Why do we think any different from “usability gurus”? (Dan Saffer - UX Week 2007)”

I responded by saying:

“If the sidebar was primarily used for navigation, then I would have left it on the left hand side. It is not primarily a navigational aid. It has a login, forum statistics, options, filters and preferences along with two banners.

As a person who makes a living from designing websites, research-based decisions are important to me. I am not advocating that right hand sidebars are right for every site, but with our sidebar content, I believe it is the right decision.

Based on thorough research of the last six months of 2007 of how users of this site are behaving, very few people are using the sidebar to navigate the forum.

Putting the options and preferences to the right hand side means that the focus goes back on the content - the forum topics and the forum comments, which are the most important things in a forum. We also subliminally reinforce the message that people should read topics first, before clicking the “add discussion” button.

To navigate through the forum, one does not need the information in the sidebar - and in fact, the only link people are using in any real quantity is the link to the off topic forum, one which is not an essential aspect of the site.

When people come to the forum page and click on another link within the site, here is what they are doing:

44% Reloading the forum page (i.e. checking to see if something has changed since last load)
42% Clicking through to one of the latest forum topics
6% Clicking through to an item in the top menu
3% Logging in / changing things in their account page
3% Clicking through to the Off Topic forum category
1% Adding a new forum topic
1% Searching the forum
1% Other (< 0.5% each)

Within forum topics, the click rate on the sidebar ranges from a mere 0.1% - 2%. The bulk of people click on the forum link at the top, a pagination link, the bottom/top of page links or something else in the main menu."

(Note: slightly edited for brevity.)

While I strongly believed my decision was the right one, I was still open to changing things back after a month - when initial reactions had died down, and people were used to the new furniture positions.

Aside from the one member who felt strongly about the issue, it hasn’t been mentioned as an issue by others since that time.

So, we’re about to reach the end of the month and I look forward to the responses from people. Again we’ll survey logged in members over a two week period.

The sky hasn’t fallen, and traffic is up. My prediction is that the vast majority will say they are happy with how things are, or don’t care what happens.

Dealing with people who disagree with change isn’t easy and you’re not going to please everyone.