Web Design

Newspaper Website Interface Review

I’ve been working on a WordPress theme for a while that’s geared towards high-content sites – sites that produce a lot of content on a regular basis.  Whilst I had a general idea of what I wanted to aim for, I thought some research was in order.  I wanted to see how high-content, high-traffic sites […]

A New Look for a New year

To reflect a change in focus and a change in my interests I’ve redesigned this blog. In this post I discuss the main reasons for doing this, the process I followed and some of my goals. I also briefly discuss some of the tools and techniques I used in the redesign and where the blog is heading.

Help Shape the Future of WordPress

WordPress, the number one blogging platform on the Internet, is undergoing another fairly major change for version 2.7.   Amongst the changes is a restructuring of the Administration menus, which have only recently been redesigned.   If you happen to be a WordPress user, either self hosting or on WordPress.com, you can take part in […]

How to Implement a Robust, Usable Image Thumbnail Solution in WordPress

In this article I’ll show you how to create a robust and usable thumbnail solution for WordPress themes. One that will automatically resize images and optionally add borders and copyright watermarks.

How Poor Usability Can Irrevocably Damage A Brand

Natuba launched a new iPhone focused social photo sharing site. They were fortunate to get coverage on TechCrunch, a leading blog, but the initial post pointed out functionality the site didn’t appear to have. Although it actually did. So how much did this usability failing hurt Natuba?

Failing to Serve Basic Visitor Needs

There are some breeds of website that should be tailoured to users with little internet experience. These are essential sites, sites that all sorts of people need to use. So why, in this case, where three of these “every man” sites so awful from a usability point of view?

BBC Redesign – A Mixed Bag

The BBC recently launched a fairly major revamp of its web site and it ended up as a bit of a mixed bag. There are some real triumphs, but the effort seems disproportionally distributed resulting in some major failures.

3 WordPress Theme Tips

In developing the new WordPress theme for this site I had to expand my WordPress knowledge in order to meet some of my goals. These are the techniques I used.

Stuck in a Time Warp?

I was searching for the current time in the US earlier today and came across the Official U.S. Time Clock (screenshot below).   I couldn’t help but chuckle at the fact that the design for the official US Clock Website is so clearly stuck in the 1990s.   What use is a clock that’s behind […]

Blog Usability – Get the facts

Usability should be a key requirement of any website, regardless of it’s purpose. As someone who deals in web app usability every day, it’s easy to look down at blogging. After all, many of the complex user interactions associated with fully fledged web apps, such as GMail, aren’t really found on blogs. There are, however, […]

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