Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Making it simple and useful
The move from Blogger to WordPress was motivated by a need for more flexibility (tags) and identity (own domain name), and since I was working with Javascript libraries like script.aculo.us I also wanted to have Ajax functionality so I was testing BloxPress integration with various plugins when my one month vacation began.
When I got back to work on the design of this blog I found various interesting plugins that I want to use but I don’t want it to load slow for every visitor. So, thinking from a micromedia perspective, I choose to organize the plugins following an edition approach:
- Feed Edition. If you are a heavy information consumer just grab the full feed and add it to your favorite aggregator. You can also subscribe to a category feed or to the comments of a post.
- Mobile Edition. Mobile devices have limited display capabilities so this blog uses Alex King’s Mobile plugin to adjust the content for mobile users.
- Simple Edition. The essential plugins, the detail is below.
- Extended Edition. Some nice to have plugins to integrate other services like image/photo hosting, automatic translation, map visualization and others are incorporated in this edition.
- Experimental Edition. Is the web the ultimate API? Hive 7, An Ajaxian Virtual World raises the bar of what can be done in a browser, Ajax design plugins/themes go to this edition.
With this approach a reader can select the edition to read and I can plan the integration of plugins using an iteration model. This first iteration focuses on simplicity - or what Scoble calls anti-marketing design - and usefulness - the added value for a visitor using a browser when reading this blog. Here are the plugins/features that got selected for the Simple Edition.
Publishing Essentials
WordPress 2.0 provides a light core publishing platform, the following are the must-have features I need to start this micromedia adventure:
- Bilingual. I want to write in English and Spanish so I choose Gengo Multi-language plugin’s.
- Spam Protection. I like Akismet web service but I decided to protect this blog with the stable Spam Karma 2 plugin.
- Syndication. This blog expresses points of view but doesn’t cover breaking news, to fill the void I get headlines from web sites like memeorandum using the inlineRSS plugin.
- Edition Selection. To change between editions, I am using the Theme Switcher plugin.
Search Extensions
This blog is about web search so the search box is available in the header and it has a couple more features than what the WordPress basic install provides:
- Extended Search. To allow search in comments and other pages with an Ajax interface I use the Ajaxified Search Everything plugin.
- Highlighting. When you are searching for something, you skim - instead than read - the content. The Search Terms Highlighter plugin allows to detect terms from internal/external queries to help you skim faster.
- Metrics. To store what readers are searching on the blog the Search Meter plugin is used.
Ads Extensions
This blog also talks about online advertising so it should have some ads, I believe that ads should be useful for the reader so if they aren’t you have the option to hide them, the advertising features are based on Problogger Clean theme.
Data Organization Extensions
This blog embraces knowledge sharing and additional information about the post has to be included to identify relations, here are the extensions added:
- Tagging. A post usually covers various topics and tags allow to describe these semantic associations, I choose the powerful Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin for this functionality.
- Location. A post can mention different places but you need geographic coordinate information to have a better identification, Geo plugin is used for this matter.
- Comment Reading. When a post has various comments it’s not so easy to follow the conversation, Brian’s Threaded Comments plugin enhances the reading experience.
- Metrics. Statistical attention metadata is useful to identify trends, basic information is how many times a post had been viewed and WP-PostViews plugin is used for this.
Javascript generated metrics, microformats integration, post rating, sitemap generation, link tracking and OPML integration are planned for the Simple Edition and will come in next iterations, but first let’s finish the introductory posts.
Labels: internet
