The way we’re going to do this is by using FireFox’s KeyWord Search Bookmarks.  This feature isn’t necessarily designed for this task, but it works a treat. This feature is designed to allow you to easily search any field that has a search feature.  Essentially, you “bookmark” the search field, give it a keyword, and then  use that keyword to search the site.  It’s very simple, very quick, and works very smoothly.

The first thing we’re going to do is head over to www.tinyurl.com and locate the field that you type the URL into.  Then, right click on the field and choose the “Add a Keyword For This Search…” option.

Upon choosing this option you will be presented with a dialogue box to add options for the Book Mark.  One of the fields is titled “Keyword”.  This is the term you will use to trigger the Book Mark, so choose wisely.  I’ve chosen “tu” for TinyURL.  Note that it’s the “Keyword” and not the “Name” that is used.  Save the Book Mark to a convenient location and you’re done.

If you want to shorten a URL, all you have to do is add a “tu ” (remember the space) to the start of the URL in your address bar, like below.

Hit return and you’ll be whisked off to a page containing your new, shortened, URL.  Conveniently the URL is automagically added to your clipboard, so all you have to do is paste it where ever it’s needed.  The beauty of this solution is that it’s incredibly easy to shorten the URL of the current page, just add your keyword to the start of the URL and hit return.  I can’t think of an easier way of shortening URLs without a plugin or bookmarklet, can you?

If you want to find out two more ways to use the FireFox address bar, see the post 2 FireFox URL Tricks.

For the uninitiated, Hahlo is an iPhone Twitter client.  And it really excels at providing a sleak, usable experience on the iPhone.  So how can you get that same experience in your FireFox sidebar?

The technique is a familiar one.  BookMark Hahlo and load your bookmarks in your sidebar (command + B on a Mac).  Once you’ve done this, locate the Hahlo bookmark and right-click it.  When you do, you’ll get a dialogue box similar to the one shown to the right (note I’m on FireFox 3).  Just select the”Load this bookmark in the sidebar” option and click OK.

Now, whenever you use that bookmark, it will load in the sidebar, much like the image below.

What do you think?  Personally, I think this is the best iPhone app out there, right up with Google Reader and FaceBook.  And to have such a convenient way to access my Twitter account feels like a real coup and will certainly encourage me to increase my currently sporadic Twitter updates.  The only thing that would make this solution perfect would be if the page automatically refreshed.  I’ve tried out the “Reload Every…” FireFox extension, but it doesn’t work in the sidebar.  I’m sure some enterprising readers will come up with something though!

What, if anything do you have in your FireFox sidebar?  And don’t forget to Follow me on Twitter.

I’ve listed five things you should include in your plan. They way you decide to approach each of these aspects of your blog will depend on what you want to achieve as well as your experience. As someone who’s set up a number of blogs, some more successfully than others, I’ve offered my thoughts on each. but please consider each carefully before setting up your blog.

1. Permalink Structure – You have to get this right first time. Changing the permalink structure mid way through a blog’s life is an absolute nightmare. I’d recommend having the post title in the permalink, similar to the approach I’ve taken with this site. By doing this you will rank higher in the search engines and allow people to clearly see what the post is about from the URL alone (remember, you can’t control how other people link to you, so have a fall back).
2. Policies – There are a number of policies you will need to establish before you start your blog. The main ones you need to decide on are Commenting/Trackbacks (moderated? Allow links? No follow links?), Privacy Policy (What are you going to do with the email addresses, names and other stats you collect?) and Monetisation (Will you carry ads? Will you sell links? Will you accept paid for content?). When you have thought about these aspects, write them down and be sure to add this information to your site. To read the policies of this site, see the about page. Comments are not moderated, but there are anti-apam measures in place.
3. Data Structure – When coming up with the plan mentioned above, you should really come up with a list of topics you want to write on. These should become the categories you use to classify your content. One advantage of doing this early is that you can give some serious thought to the phrasing used. It also helps to quickly give your new readers a quick overview of the topics covered by the blog. It should also prevent you having to come up with new categories as you go, which can be problematic.  And now, with WordPress 2.3 you have Tags to consider.  You need to ensure that your categories and tags are clearly defined to avoid getting yourself into a confusing situation with overlapping tags and categories and no clear categorisation policy.
4. Strategies (navigation, promotion, SEO) – As many of you will be aware, just starting a new blog and putting content up isn’t going to be enough for success. You have to seek out readers and draw them in. There are many techniques you can use to do this, which I won’t get into here. With that in mind, one of the most important things you can do when establishing a new blog is to come up with a marketing strategy. This should be long term.  You will also need to come up with a strategy for content.  How often will you post, on what subjects and where will you find your inspiration?  Also, take a look at some others who occupy the same niche, what do they do well, what can you do better, what got them to where they are today?  Learn from others and don’t reinvent the wheel.
5. Implementation – You will need to decide on the blogging platform you intend to use, along with whether you will be hosting it yourself or using a hosted solution.  Most people will stick with that they know, but starting a new blog is a fantastic opportunity to experiment a bit and to see if other platforms have moved on.  You will also need to think about themes and plugins, and map the two together.  For example, if you decide to use a theme that relies on a certain plugin, what will you do if that plugin stops getting updated and becomes incompatible with the latest version of your software?  Along with these considerations, PLEASE make sure you have backup and recovery plans in place.  And if you do, test them at least once a month.  And remember, it’s not just the database that needs to be backed up but all the files as well, including those that you upload to add to your posts (e.g. images).

I hope those five points give you something to think about.  I absolutely believe that having a plan is one of the most important things when starting a new blog.  Something else that I find useful is the strategy point above.  After six months it’s incredibly useful to revisit this strategy to see if it still aligns with what you are currently doing.  if not, why not?  And is your current approach wrong, or is the strategy wrong?

What do you consider when starting a new blog?

Below I’ve listed some key points that bloggers should consider when designing, or redesigning their blog. I should point out that I take a holistic view of usability, which is something many so-called usability consultants don’t agree with. I guess this puts me firmly in the “user experience” camp but I fail to see the difference between the aim of the two approaches.

So what areas should blog design concentrate on when thinking about usability?

Is the Purpose Obvious?

Most blogs have a purpose. Whether it’s to get across a point of view, promote a product or service or cover the latest news, every single one has a purpose. It’s key to convey this purpose to your readership, especially if that purpose relates to an action you want the reader to take. In these cases, the blog becomes an extended sales page, and so should contain many of the same elements. It’s probably best if I give an example.

I stumbled across a blog called Scribe Fire earlier. It’s a fairly nice looking blog, very clean and easy to read. Upon looking at the front page it’s obvious that the blog is for a product called Scribe Fire. That’s all well and good, lots of software products have blogs these days. What makes this blog different is that the purpose of the product isn’t stated anywhere. I defy anyone to explain to me what Scribe Fire is from reading the first page of the blog. You can see some recent changes and features, and I know what the latest version is, but I don’t know what it actually does. This is a bit of an oversight by the designer and is compounded by two things. Firstly, this is the landing page of the www.scribefire.com domain. This isn’t a blog linked to from the “main” site, as many product suppliers do, if someone hears Scribe Fire they will end up here. Secondly, there aren’t any clearly worded links that would point to the purpose of this piece of software. There’s a “Getting Started” link, which implies that this is where you go after installing the software. Following this link confirms this.

By the way, Scribe Fire is a FireFox plugin that allows you to quickly post content to your blog. Why they don’t have that simple text anywhere on the front page is beyond me. You can get a description of what Scribe Fire does by clicking on the “Download” link (which actually takes to to a completely separate site), but why would you want to download a piece of software without knowing what it does?

Categories, Tags and Archives. Oh My!

To access the vast majority of content on a blog, a reader is going to have to leave the front page. When exploring a blog, there are a few ways the content may be organised. Firstly, there are the “Archives”, which are typically organised by date. Then you have the Tags and the Categories. Personally, I don’t see the point in the date based archive. If I’m navigating a blog, I’d have no way of knowing when a post I’m interested in was actually posted. I wouldn’t know whether to go to September 2006 or April 2002 to look for a specific post. So I’m definitely a fan of Tags and Categories.

There are some problems with providing links to Categories and Tags, namely that there tend to be a lot of them. There are a few options available, like listing them in the sidebar, Tag Clouds or putting them in a drop down list. I favour simply listing links for two reasons. Firstly, it follows the web usability convention of linking to new pages. Secondly, I’m not a fan of using drop downs to link to other pages. Why not? Well, drop downs are essentially form elements. They are typically used for providing information to a page, things like selecting a colour when buying an item of clothing. Using the same page element to navigate away from the page will confuse less experienced users. Another factor that will confuse less experienced users is the multiple ways of dealing with navigation drop downs. Some will change page as soon as the option has been selected where some require a button to be pressed. In my personal experience, I’ve found it difficult to label and name drop downs such as these effectively. For example, take a look at the category drop down at Techie Buzz (screenshot to the right). By clicking on the “categories” button will I get taken to a list of categories, as the name implies, or the category I’ve chosen in the drop down, which is what happens. There is also a default category, which further confuses the issue.

Link Me Up

I’ll keep this one short and simple. Just because it’s a blog, there’s no need to treat links differently to any other web site. So, they should be carefully and descriptively worded, underlined and relevant. I can’t click something if I don’t know it’s a link.

Good Form, Chap!

Many forget that most blogs do still have forms within them. The most common example is the comment form which, despite it’s simplicity, can still cause problems. Similar to the Links point above, there’s no reason to not follow standard usability guidelines just because your on a blog. So, something you may want to concentrate on.

• Readability – I’ve lost count of the number of blogs that, for some unknown reason, have tiny text boxes. There are two ways this can play out, either the box itself is too small or the text within the box is too small. At the end of the day, I link back to my blog when leaving a comment, so if I leave a poorly conceived comment, or one riddled with spelling or grammatical mistakes, it’s going to negatively impact on the image of me as a blogger. So I’d rather not run the risk. To solve this, you may want to look at Forms that Leap Out.
• Required Fields – Most forms have compulsory elements, make sure your readers are aware of what they are.
• Feed Back – Even if you design the perfect form, people will still make mistakes. When this happens you need to provide them with usefull feedback. This should include stating exactly what’s gone wrong, why, in which fields and how they correct it. Tone is very important when providing this feedback, and should be helpfull and supportive, not condescending. You should also leave the data the user entered in place to avoid the situation where a user spends ten minutes writing a comment and then gets it cleared when they put a typo in their email address.
• Spam Prevention – Unfortunately, spam prevention needs to be considered by all bloggers. Most use a tool like Akismet to catch spam after it’s been submitted but increasingly CAPTCHAs are being used. If you use CAPTHA you need to consider a few things. Firstly, you need to offer an audible challenge for those who cannot actually see the CAPTHA test. Secondly, there are CAPTCHAs which use mathematical questions, or similar. Be carefull when setting the difficulty and be sure not to discriminate against those who’s first language is not your own. Even better, I would recommend using the previously mentioned ProtectWebForm CAPTCHA which tends not to even challenge genuine users.

I hope you enjoyed this post. I deal with usability every day and I really can’t overstate quite how important it is. With that in mind I’m announcing two things. Firstly, I’ll be redesigning this blog with an emphasis on usability. Secondly, I’m offering free usability assessments to bloggers. When I was doing this as a job, I would charge over £50 ($100) for this, so take the opportunity while you can. If you are interested, leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll consider you. Each assessment can take a long time, so I’m only looking to do one a month, depending on the level on interest.

The problem many people are having in recent times, especially those who telecommute, is that the computer is no longer used just for work.  Everyone and their dog uses the internet for recreation, shopping and time saving these days, which means that by shutting the door on your computer room, you are also shutting the door on a source of entertainment.  So how do you maintain the home work balance while still utilising the same tool, your computer, in both lives.  The answer is built into almost every operating system currently out there, user accounts.  I have set up two user accounts on my computer, one for work and one for play.

But setting up two user accounts isn’t enough for me.  I’m terribly undisciplined so I had to make sure I stayed focus when I’m working.  My answer to this is to remove the fun things from the account.  So no games and only work tools available.  I’ve even gone so far as to setting mail.app up so it only checks my work address when I’m logged on to that account.  This may sound overly strict but it really works and helps you stay focused.  And of course the flip side is that when I’m logged on to my “fun” account mail.app doesn’t check my work account.  if you find this not strict enough, you can even go so far as to block certain websites on your work account.  Yes, facebook, I’m talking about you!

It’s probably worth pointing out that using a Operating System like OSX switching between user accounts is a sub five second job.  So if the worse comes to the worse, you can always quickly jump into your other account.  But just by putting this, albeit easily bypassed, obstacle in the way, it really reduces the temptation and keeps you focused.

In this post I’ve highlighted two accessibility features I use regularly and the ways in which I use them. Crucially, they fit my workflow and processes well. I think both the features below are well worth your consideration, as do many other OSX features. So read on and see if you can make use of them.

1. Listen, don’t read – Firstly, under the services menu you’ll find the “Speech” option. This allows you to select any portion of text in any cocoa app, for example safari, and have your computer read it to you. So how can you use this feature? Well, I use it in a couple of ways. Firstly, multi-tasking. Sometimes you get an email that you want to read but don’t really have the time to give it your full attention. This normally happens when a newsletter arrives that I’m interested in but can’t spare the time to read (for example the Money Saving Expert Email newsletter). So what I tend to do is open the email in Mail.app, set the speech service on it and then get on with my other tasks. I find this a very effective way of cramming as much as possible in the day. The second way I use this feature is to proof read something I have written. Occasionally, especially if you’ve been working on the same thing for a while, you tend to lose the fresh perspective on your writing. There are loads of tips out there on how to overcome this, many of which involve getting someone else involved to either read it to themselves or out loud to you. Unfortunately, there may not always be someone else available, so why not have your computer read it back to you. One particular advantage of this is the pronounced way OSX’s speech service deals with punctuation. It really makes you appreciate the way others read your content.
2. Get up close and personal – Most operating systems have the ability to zoom into certain areas of the screen but none manage it quite so elegantly as OSX. All you have to do is hold down the “ctrl” key and wheel your mouse (on a laptop, just place two fingers on the trackpad and move them up or down) up or down. This will result in the screen zooming in to the area around your mouse. And you can zoom really far in, and in small increments. You are completely in control. Again, I use this in a few different ways. The obvious is to zoom in to see something small on the screen, probably the way most people use it. I also use it to “enlarge” embedded videos that don’t have native zooming capability. I also use it when doing detailed work in programs such as Photoshop, when the applications zoom just doesn’t cut it. For example, imagine trying to select a shape in Photoshop roughly, if you zoom in using Photoshop’s zoom function you can’t comfortably fit the entire shape on screen and still have enough detail visible. My solution is to zoom in as far as possible using Photoshop and then use OSX’s zoom to go the extra little bit. The great thing about this functionality is that the zoomed area moves around with your mouse! It’s quite the time saver.

These are just two of the features that make OSX special. How do you make use of some of the lesser known features of OSX?

The key to both these tips is the URL bar. The vast majority of people just use it to go directly to addresses they know, www.google.com for example, but there’s so much more you can do. These tips work best if you use it in conjunction with the Five FireFox Keyboard Shortcuts I’ve posted previously, especially control-l to go to the address bar.

The first trick is a bit of a time saver. It allows you to assign aliases to web addresses. So, instead of typing in www.google.com you could assign it an alias of “g”. Then, if you type “g” into the address bar and hit return, you will be taken to www.google.com. This isn’t the best use of this trick though, I have “gr” and “gm” going to Google Reader and G Mail respectively. These are logical aliases, and keeping them logical seems to work best for me. To set this up you will need to create a bookmark for the page you want to assign an alias to. Once you’ve created a bookmark, you will need to go to it’s properties. There are two ways to do this. If the bookmark is on your toolbar, you can just right click and go to the properties option. If not you will need to open the bookmark organiser, find the bookmark and click the properties button with the bookmark selected. This should bring up a dialogue box similar to the one to the left. The field you are interested in is labelled “keyword”. Whatever you type in here will become the alias for the bookmarked URL. Type this keyword into your address bar, hit enter, and you’re there!

The next tip is an even greater time saver. Searching is a huge part of using the internet, and we search in many different places. For example, I regularly search Google for the general web, flickr for photos and Amazon for books to buy. To perform a search on these sites you need to visit the site, locate the search box (not always easy), enter your terms and hit return. Previously there were only two ways to speed this up. Firstly you could bookmark the page with the search field on it, to save typing the address, which isn’t much of a time saver at all. Alternatively, you could add the site to FireFox’s search field as an option. However, the option doesn’t exist for most sites and you will still need to manually select the site from the drop down before proceeding. So let me show you a better way using FireFox’s address bar. The first place to start is with the search field for the site you want to search. When you’ve found it, right click it. You will now see an option that says “Add a Keyword for this Search…”. There’s that word “keyword” again. Clicking this button will bring up a properties dialogue box, once again you want to assign a memorable, and preferably logical, keyword for this search. In the example to the left I’ve chosen “oibs” as a keyword to search this site, Oak Innovations Blog Search. You use this new keyword in much the same way as the bookmark shortcut above except this time you can add search criteria right into the address bar. So if I typed “oibs Quicksilver” into my address bar, I would be presented with the posts from this site that match the search term “Quicksilver”.

I couldn’t tell you how much I use these bookmarks every day, it’s almost constant.

Fortunately, OSX allows you to switch between open applications with one button, displaying the full application window each time you land on it.  It’s incredibly easy and incredibly fast, and can help you quickly distinguish between similar open application windows.  Unsurprisingly, you use Expose to do this.  First step is to invoke Expose, you can do this through either the keyboard (F9 on my MacBook) or through a “hot corner”, if you have one set up.  I would recommend the keyboard, this techniques works much better that way.  Now, you should see all your open windows laid out before you.  To cycle through each one, just keep hitting the tab key (or shift + tab to cycle backwards).  Each window will be displayed to you in all it’s glory.  So select one, hit either return or the space bar.  To exit, press Esc.  It’s that simple.

I only just stumbled across this handy shortcut, but I can see it being of great use.  If you liked this post, you may also be interested in 5 hidden OSX gems and 5 cool things you can do with Automator and AppleScript in OSX.

For this weeks task we’ll be putting our archives to work for us. Most bloggers have large back catalogues of content that just sits there, not pulling its weight. So we’re going to give it a kick start, and allow it to mobilise visitors to other parts of your site.

If you were to draw a map of the links within your blog, it is likely it would resemble a pyramid. There would be a few posts on the top, the most recent posts, with links streaming downwards into older posts. Therefore it is highly likely your older posts will have far more internal links pointing to them than your newer posts. This imbalance mostly reflects the fact that links are created when you first write a post. And obviously, you can only link to content that exists at the time. Ideally, when viewing the map of your site there would be links freely flowing in all directions, evenly sharing out traffic.

An example of a typical blog my be one which reviews gadgets. It will no doubt have covered the recently released new, improved, iPods. In that post you may very well have referenced a previous post you had written on the old iPods. This is logical and provides your readers with valuable background information. It also helps establish yourself as an authoritative writer – people like to know you’ve dealt with a subject previously and are comfortable with it. However, it is unlikely you will go back to your original iPod post and update it with links to the new review. The main reason for this is that it takes a concerted effort by the blogger to go back and find content that relates to a new post.

If however, you do go and make this concerted effort you will notice a number of benefits. Firstly, it’s a great way to see if your older content holds up today and remember, there’s nothing wrong with updating something that doesn’t sit right, blog posts are living entities. Secondly, it serves as a very usefull way to assess how easy content is to find on your site. And thirdly, should you actually go back and add the appropriate links, you will notice increased page views per visit, better search engine rankings and reduced bounce rates.

So with that in mind, this weeks task is as follows:

1. Pick the five best performing posts in your archive. Revisit them and look for ways to link to your newer content. Don’t force it, you will likely find that there have been some common themes running through your blog that lend themselves well to cross-linking.
2. Schedule a time, this may be weekly or monthly depending on your posting schedule, to assess your previous posts and add links to your newer content. If you can, make this part of your blogging checklist, the list of tasks you perform before sending each post live.

I’ve always found in content links far more effective than links that appear outside of the main flow of content, for example related links provided by the WordPress plugin. For further details on using in content link, see my post – Reducing Bounce Rates with the personal touch.

When I first started this process, I found it difficult. There were some feeds I obviously wasn’t reading, and others that obviously weren’t updating regularly. Some, on the other hand, I wasn’t so sure about. I needed help. Fortunately, Google Reader, my feed reader of choice, provides some tools to help with assessing the worthiness of your feeds. If you take a look on the left hand side there is a trends button, clicking this will result in a whole host of stats being made available to you.

There are a few tidbits of information available to you through these stats. Firstly, you can see how many feeds you subscribe to, and how many items you read. Scary, isn’t it. You can also see what times of the day you are most active, which may help you in deciding your “golden hour”, the time at which you are most mentally active.

All of this is usefull, but when it comes to cleansing your feeds, the two lists at the bottom of the screen are most usefull. The first thing you’ll want to look at is the list of stats that don’t update regularly. This can be seen by selecting the “inactive” tab at the top of the “Subscription Trends” list. Depending on how brutal you want to be, you may like to expand this list so you can see the 40 most inactive feeds. This list is hugely usefull in seeing which feed sources aren’t being updated anymore. When I went through this list I found 12 feeds that belong to blogs who had closed their doors many months ago. Obviously use discretion here, some sites just don’t update as much as others, so don’t blanket remove feeds on this list.

The other stat you may be interested in is the list of feeds you do read. Unfortunately you can’t sort this by feeds you don’t read, but nevertheless, by expanding the “Reading Trends” list to 40 items you can begin to see some of the less popular feeds you are subscribed to. Of course the usefullness of this second list will vary depending on how many feeds you are subscribed to, seeing the 40th most popular feed when you are subscribed to 500 may not be of great relevance, but seeing the 40th most popular feed when you are only subscribed to 45 will be very usefull.

Of course, it goes without saying that if this feed appears to be one of your least popular, ignore it! Hopefully this technique will help you take a more scientific approach to cleaning the feeds you subscribe to. Lead with your head on this one.