Webdesign aus Witten » LONG RUN INTERNATIONAL LTD.

Da mir heute Morgen ein Termin ausgefallen ist und ich auf einmal vor einem (nahezu) leeren Kalender stand, habe ich die Zeit genutzt um eine schon länger brach liegende Internetseite zu aktualisieren. Im Januar 2007 habe ich für etwa 2 Wochen einen Praktikanten beschäftigt. Der hat keinen Kaffee gekocht oder den Rasen gemäht, sondern sich produktiv und mit vorzeigbaren Ergebnissen mit dem Thema Webdesign auseinander gesetzt.

Das Resultat war damals die Internetseite www.webdesign-im-ruhrgebiet.de. Bisher war dort ein Drupal-System im Einsatz, das natürlich sowohl vollkommen überdimensioniert als auch hoffnungslos outdated war. Heute Morgen schlugen dem System die letzten Sekunden. Jetzt habe ich die etwa 30 Text-Absätze in eine einzelne HTML-Datei überführt und diese neu hochgeladen. Konsquent ist die Seite nun sehr übersichtlich und stellt die Arbeit des Praktikanten ganz gut dar.

Ich werde diese sicherlich noch ein wenig ausarbeiten, aber für den Anfang reicht das erstmal. Schließlich soll die Seite ja nicht nur Zeit kosten, sondern auch einen im Vergleich zum Aufwand angemessenen Nutzen bringen.

Screenshot der neuen Internetseite

Several month ago i announced to extend the usage of Worpdress as the main CMS for my customers. Since the beginning, i’m experiencing with different kind of plugins. There’s no doubt that it’s absolutely necessary to extend your WordPress installation with plugins. Most of those Top list of plugins contain at least the following items.

This are, from my point of view, absolutely must-have plugins. They provide all-day useful functionality to increase productivity, integrate your WordPress with other (important) services and secure it right from the start. Except two of this plugins they all come at no cost. I personally don’t mind spending a few Euros on professional made and (to me) very useful software. Therefore i won’t exclude this software from the list as others have done before:

Akismet

That’s i think the most-used plugins for WordPress since ever. Akismet is a spam blocker that checks your comments and trackbacks automatically for spam entries and blocks or removes them. It’s based on a collaborative approach and free for personal use. Any professional bloggers are asked to pay 5$ a month to get an professional API key.

http://akismet.com/

Contact Form 7

Most people that deal with WordPress on a professional basis are wondering why WordPress isn’t providing a contact form. The usual answer (‘to keep it simple and stupid’) caused Takayuki Miyoshi to create the awesome Contact Form 7 plugins. It’s a full-featured, out-of-the-box usable contact form that is available in 43 languages. Based on modules for form elements, it’s also very easy to adjust to your personal needs and – for future – also to HTML 5 improvements. It also integrates with Akismet for spam filtering and connects to the reCaptcha plugin that prohibits spoofing.

http://contactform7.com/

Google Analyticator

Google Analytics is frequently named as the core of the data kraken. I see it as one of Google’s most usable tools. When registering at Google Analytics, you’ll get some JavaScript code to track your visitors. This plugin allows to add the tracking code right at the header or footer of your website without changing the template files. This is a significant improvement as you just can add any templates you want, use Google Analytics with them, update them and don’t need to re-add the JavaScript code.

Additionally it adds a new element to your dashboard that shows your 30-day visitor development and some key statistics on your site performance.

http://plugins.spiralwebconsulting.com/analyticator.html

Google XML Sitemaps

This is definitely a must-have plugin. A sitemap generator is a tool that creates a full overview of your whole site structure, called a sitemap. This sitemap is made available to search engines and allows them to get to know your site without loading each single page. The Google XML Sitemaps plugins additionally informs the search engines about updates to your sites and generates this sitemap automatically once you update your site. It also allows to customize lots of options regarding your sitemap.

http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/

wpAntivirus

There have been numerous kind of hacks for WordPress in the past. To prohibit anyone from being incognito in your code, wpAntivirus checks for common methods to conterminate CMS installations. It allows you to configure a daily check and alert for any security breaches.

http://wpantivirus.com/

wpSEO

wpSEO is maybe the most professional plugin for WordPress. It improves WordPress’ functionality everywhere it lacks of options for search engine optimization. Functionality contains generating of titles, meta description and keywords and the ability to prohibit duplicate content. There are plenty of ways to set your own site title, meta description and meta keywords without editing the template files as well as any robot-related options. It also contains a dashboard plugin with a short overview of your Google, Yahoo and Alexa ranks. For personal use one will have to pay 20€ as a one-time fee. To use it in any of your customer installations, you’ll have to pay at least 50€ and up to 100€. From my point of view, this plugin is worth it’s money as it solves you many problems and saves a lot of time.

http://www.wpseo.de/

That’s my personal list of most-valuable and most-necessary WordPress plugins. I can imagine so many more interesting and notable plugins, but this ones are for everyone and every purpose. In the next days i will start adding lists of plugins by topic.

This

1. Create an Account for Google Website Optimizer
   That’s the easy stuff: Go to www.google.com/websiteoptimizer and login with your Google Account or create a new one. Once you’re done with that, proceed to step 2.
2. Click “Create another experiment” in Google Website Optimizer
3. Choose “Multivariate Experiment” to start
   Multivariate experiments allow you to change the behavior of your website in multiple ways and is, in comparison to the “A/B experiment” an advanced tool. Choose this option to get the most of A/B testing. On the next page, Google Website Optimizer shows you a list of four things that should have been done up to now. Overall, this is the creation of your website variations that should be tested. If you haven’t done this steps up to know, contact your web designer. You can do this on your own, but it will be a hard way without any technical skills.
   Once your testing page and all the alternative contents are ready for testing, click on “Create”.
4. Set the configuration for your experiment
   Give your experiment a name and set the URL to your Testing page. This is, for example, a contact page or your product page. Also don’t forget to set the conversion page URL. This will be the page that means a success to your business once it is called. “continue”
5. Choose that you want to install the JavaScript yourself in your website. “continue” will show you an overview of your configuration and the necessary JavaScript code that you’ll have to insert into your Testing Page.
6. Install “Google WEbsite Optimizer for WordPress” Plugin in WordPress. This is actually the plugin that allows you to insert custom code for A/B testing in WordPress pages and posts.
7. Choose your testable post / page in your WordPress installation.
   (Maybe you have to disable the visual editor in Users > Your Profile to proceed the editing. Otherwise you can just use the switch “HTML” in WordPress RTE.)
8. Copy the controll script in the “Google Website Optimizer” section in your WordPress post / page.  Also add the tracking script in the same page.
9. Add the Page sections to your WordPress post / page and add the testable content (version A) inside the tags. Once you’ve done that and updated your post, it will show the version A content right where you added the Page sections. Don’t forget to change the “Insert your section name here” in the Page sections to your personal section name.
10. Next step is to add the Conversion Script. Again, open your WordPress installation and choose to edit the Conversion page you’ve entered in Step 4. Copy the Conversion Script into the Google Website Optimizer section.
11. Click “Validate pages” on the Google Website Optimizer homepage. This will check if you’ve done well. Once all necessary scripts are added, proceed to the next step with “Continue”.
12. Next Step will allow you to add the content in Version B (C, D,..). At first it show the Original Content. Add new variations with a click on the same-named link at the left. Choose a name for your Page section and enter the content for each version.That’s just copy&paste as you’ve created this variations with your designer and developer before.
13. Once all variations are added, proceed with “Preview” to the next step. This will give you a preview of all the variations right in your website you’ve added. Don’t forget that A/B testing requires you and your visitors to have JavaScript enabled. It’s important to use this preview. Otherwise you won’t have seen the implementation of all this variations right in your website. There is always a chance for typos, mistakes or technical problems. Just click through your variations and – once you’re done – close the window to get back to the experiment setup.
14. Click “Save and continue”. This shows you a last overview of all your configuration. One last notable thing is the amount of traffic that will be sent through this experiment. Usually, i would suggest you to keep this at 100%. If you’ve very risky changes regarding the content of your site, you can set this done to prohibit annoying your customers.
15. Click “Start Experiment”. Google will now estimate how long it will need to collect enough data for first reports. Now it’s your turn to stay cool and wait for any results. Once those are available, go through the reached conversion rates, interprete the results – and don’t forget to change the tested page’s content to the most successful one.

That’s it. After all there will be huge changes in the way A/B testing is done with WordPress in the next weeks. Google yesterday released an API for it’s Website Optimizer that allows to connect your (personal) software via plugins with it’s service. I’ll stay in touch with the development in that point and will update my article.

• Google Website Optimizier API announcement: http://websiteoptimizer.blogspot.com/2009/10/introducing-website-optimizer.html
• Carsonified’s podcast on A/B testing in WordPress: http://carsonified.com/blog/business/how-to-do-ab-testing-in-wordpress