Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is an easy to use AJAX contact form. It has a variety of options, but begineers will have no problem setting up a contact form on whatever page they choose. There are advanced options that include redirecting to a thank you page, and more. This plugin is ideal for inserting a contact form into a page or post. It used to be possible to integrate the Contact Form into the sidebar, using actual PHP code, but ever since they moved to AJAX, I haven’t attempted this.

Similar Posts

If you are using WordPress as a CMS for your website, and you don’t have much, or any, dynamic content, you can skip this plugin. If you have dynamic content in the way of posts, articles, etc, then this plugin makes it pretty easy to integrate ‘similiar posts’ anywhere on your post page. I recommend adding it to the bottom of the post page, that’s where people expect it.

Warning: This plugin requires you to edit your template. It’s not a major edit, but if you switch templates you will need to reintegrate the plugin. You’ll need a bit more understanding of WordPress / HTML to properlly integrate this plugin.

Google Sitemap Generator

Ah, this plugin is great. Updating a sitemap everytime you create a new page or post is a huge hassle and no one wants to do it daily. This plugin stops you having to. Once installed you start by generating your first sitemap. (Warning: You have to already have a sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz file on your server. If you dont, connect via FTP and upload two text files with those names).

The sitemap will contain all your posts and pages (unless you tell it to ignore some). A huge time saver and it will automatically regenerate your Sitemap when you add new posts and pages.

W3 Total Cache

Everyone debates what the better plugin for caching is. WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache. They have similiar functionality, but W3 is newer and more advanced. W3 does a lot of things well, such as Minfying Javascript, CSS and HTML. It gives you a good deal of control over browser-side caching, and it’s easy to setup and use if you aren’t an expert.

Depending on your Hosting enviroment, you may need to use FTP to change the permissions on some files, or manually edit them, but the plugin gives easy to follow instructions on how to do that and there are tons of tutorials out there if you get stuck.

All in One SEO

The best all around SEO plugin. Install this on every WordPress site you have, it only takes a few seconds and adds a good deal of functionality and immediate SEO benefit to your website.

You can customize page titles, post titles and more. It’s a must have for every website. Seriously.

Apache GZIP Compression

Using Apache and HTACCESS is the best way to compress your website pages. You can use mod_deflate or mod_gzip to compress your web pages. Deflate is a newer technology and may not be available on all servers.

It’s not only important to Gzip your web page, but also your JavaScript and CSS. That’s why using Apache is the prefered method as opposed to PHP.

Example of HTACCESS GZIP Compression

Add the following code to your .htaccess file in your main website directory. If you do not have an .htaccess file then you can create one. Not all web hosting providers allow their clients to utilize .htaccess, especially on shared hosting servers, but you may be able to contact your hosting provider and ask them to enable this functionality for you. A common location of .htaccess file is /home/accountname/public_html/.htaccess

###################################
# GZIP Setting #
###################################
#This will use the mod_deflate #
#Apache Module to compress your #
#Website pages including HTML, XML#
#CSS, and Javascript #
###################################

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/text text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/x-javascript application/javascript

PHP GZIP Compression

PHP can be used to compress your PHP website pages. PHP is not as fast as using Apache and you don’t have the ability to GZIP javascript or CSS files, unless you run them through a PHP script first.

Example of PHP GZip

ob_start("ob_gzhandler");
?>

Example of PHP GZip for Javascript and CSS

//File gzipcss.php
ob_start("ob_gzhandler");
$file = '/css/style.css';

$content = file_get_contents( $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . $file );
echo $content;
?>

And then instead of linking to your CSS file in your HTML files, link to the gzipcss.php file.

Expected Page Speed Increase

Not only will compressing your webpages, CSS and Javascript make your website load significantly faster, it is considered a High Priority Page Speed Rule by Google. I’ve seen it increase Google Page Speed rankings as much as 35 points.

Testing

If you aren’t sure if your website currently has a GZIP compression installed you can test it very simply with an HTTP Compression Test. You can test to see if your javascript and CSS are being GZIP’ed using RedBot

Many web development and design companies rely on image-heavy and/or tabular designs, which can confuse search engines and make your site utterly illegible for potential customers who rely on special accessibility software such as screen readers.  One must remember from the very beginning that a website needs to be designed not just to look good, but also be well-organized and accessible by screen readers and web crawlers (like Googlebot, Bingbot, or Yahoo! Slurp).

Tabular designs are a throwback from when web browsers were not designed in a way that allowed websites to be both accessible and aesthetically-pleasing.  These employ table elements to arrange images and various blocks of text in a way that makes sense to the average viewer, but in a way in which search engines are unable to assign levels of importance to various keywords or terms.  This is because tables and images have very specific functions that in this case are not being used properly.

So what then is the purpose of table and image elements?  Tables are meant to store data, so when a web crawler sees them, that’s what it assumes is being displayed.  Images are meant to be minimally-important aesthetics or to depict a product or service visually, not as navigation elements or as a descriptive header (this can be achieved using CSS in a much more accessible way).  Though alt tags help with improving the accessibility of images, they are not meant as a replacement for keyword-rich headers or textual content.  It is perfectly fine to use both of these elements on your site, however, as long as it is as intended and not as a replacement for actual content.

Search engines can tell the difference between header text (h1 or h2 tags, for example) and normal paragraphs or lists (p or ol/ul tags respectively).  They can even tell that an h1 tag is more important than a h2 tag, and so on.  They can not, however, tell what the text on an image might say, which is potentially the biggest problem with this kind of a design.  It is best to use divider (div) elements, and arrange your content in a logical HTML structure, using proper header, paragraph, and list tags where required.  HTML is not a design language; it is meant specifically for organization and structure.  The actual design should be done using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), which is a language specifically made for that purpose which all modern browsers recognize.

What’s an easy way to tell if your site’s HTML structure makes sense?  View your site with CSS (and even images) disabled, and see how easy it is to follow the content.  Think of this as how web crawling bots and users with screen readers will view your site.

Setting up your site in this way will allow for further SEO to be achieved much more easily, as you can figure out the best key words and terms and use them in the appropriate places, with the appropriate HTML tags, within your site’s content.  Upon initial development of a new site, Storm Code employs these fundamental tactics so that the more advanced SEO options we offer are more easily implemented, and even if not desired, the client still has a well-organized site that search engines and screen readers will understand.

A website can help you grow you business in ways that you may not even be aware of. A website is a giant business card that search engines hand out for you. That is why search engine optimization is so very important for a small business.

It’s great to be able to point existing or potential clients to your website. It’s even better to put your website on your business card. However, it’s not enough to just have a web designed, informative website. You need people to be able to find it on their own.

That’s why Search Engine Optimization is such a buzz word these days. You want your website to appear on every search engine, and that in and of itself is easy. It’s getting your website to appear on the first page that is going to really start to generate leads.

Search Engine Optimization is a complex and time consuming process, and it can end up being very expensive if you do not choose the right company. At Storm Code, we pride ourselves on being able to boost your search engine rankings, regardless of what your budget is.

With selective choices for keywords, and targeted location based SEO, you can rank higher on search engines in the specific areas of the country that you do business.

If you are interested in Search Engine Optimization, packages start at $199. Contact us for more details.

No one can say that having a strong web presence will protect you entirely from recession, the dot-com bubble burst is evidence enough of that. However, a strong web presence can increase your local customer base as well as increase your global customer base. It allows you to market your product all across the globe without the need for old fashioned paper and print marketing.

That doesn’t mean you should run out and spend all your money buying ad space on Google and Yahoo. Having a strong web presence isn’t all about getting people to your site. You have to consider what happens after you get people to your site.

Are you offering up to date information about your products and services? Is all the contact information current? Is your website easy to navigate? Does it have the functionality that will help drive your business in the 21st Century? Is it capable of handling a large stream of visitors or will it fold under the pressure of more hits?

If you answered no to any of those questions or you were unsure of any of your answers, then it’s time to contact a professional. Gone are the days when you could pick up a book on HTML and setup and maintain your company website.

You should be treating your website like a digital version of your Office. It is representative of your business as a whole. If it is well designed and developed then you instill confidence into your clients or potential clients. Just like you would if you had a well put together and clean Office that you met clients in. If a client were to walk into your office and it were to be a disaster, with half a wall missing and a ‘Dummies Guide to Office Renovations’ sitting on your desk, what impression would you be giving?

You need to have that same mindset when thinking about your website.

HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) was designed to display information in a structured manner. It wasn’t designed with fancy images and layouts in mind. It also wasn’t designed to be used as an advertisement tool. What most web developers do when designing a purely HTML website would be considered ‘hacking’ the language. They use workarounds and techniques that are not standardized to create dynamic and great looking sites using a language that was not meant for that purpose. It’s akin to using lipstick to leave a message on a mirror for lack of the proper pen and paper. Web Developers took what they were given and used it to the best of their ability. However, the Web Community understood that the lipstick and mirror of HTML could only be used for so long.

CSS was designed to take the strain of styling a page off of HTML in order to let HTML do the job it was intended and developed for, which is organizing the content on the page. A simple example would be the HTML font tag. The font tag was used in order to change the size, color, or font face of text included inside the tag. So it may have looked something like this: <font size=”10px”>This is font size of 10px!</font>. To this day, browsers still support the font tag and many sites that have not made the change to CSS still use it to help style the page. If you wished to use CSS to change the font size of a specific piece of text you would include it in span tags like this: <span id=”myFontSize”>This is font size of 10px!</span> then in your style sheet you would define the myFontSize id as: .myFontSize { font-size: 10px; }.

Now, you might be thinking that the CSS example took more code, and hence more time. In this specific case you would be correct. However, once a style is defined in a style sheet, it can be reused. You could create another span tag <span id=”myFontSize”>This is another font Size example!</span> and that would also be given the font size of 10px that was defined in the style sheet. To better explain what this benefit can actually mean, let’s imagine a 25 page website was created for a company. The comapny President is very fond of the courier font and tells the developer to use it everywhere on the site. If the site was developed in HTML without CSS, a font tag would be used to surround every different piece of text that needed to be in the courier font, and the font name would be hard coded into every page, most likely multiple times. Now lets say the President retires and a new President takes over that prefers Times New Roman. In order to change something as simple as the font used on the site the developer would have to go through each page and change multiple font tags from courier to Times New Roman. That’s a headache and a time waster. If the site had been done in CSS, all relevant text would have been included in span or div tags that referred to a single entry in the style sheet. That means changing the font for the entire site would be as easy as changing Courier to Times New Roman in one place.

CSS not only allows you to easily style a website in a way that separates content and style, but it also allows you to easily re-style the website quickly, without having to dig through any of the actual pages. It also allows you much more control over the style of the website then simple HTML does. CSS is the future of web design. Most companies with a major web presence have already made the transition. Have you?