I have about a dozen plugins that I use a whole lot.  But once in awhile you find one that really rises to the top.

Every so often, I am asked by a client to set something up for display of tabular data.  I tend to cringe when this happens; as I’ve written elsewhere on this blog, having a non-technical person edit their site content, while terrific in theory, can be tricky in practice, especially when rows and columns are needed.  Clients are often disappointed and upset when it’s a lot harder than using their word processor, and ends up looking like being a mess that requires a geek to fix.

As a CSS geek, I’m not overly fond of HTML tables.  With some of the more militant CSS mavens, table avoidance is almost a religious dictum.  But when displaying spreadsheet-like data, even I will admit that it’s often the most expedient tool, as long as it doesn’t involve stupid things like multiple nested tables.  So with text editors so problematic, I’m always looking for alternatives.  I’ve found a few, and they’ve been disappointing.

But then I just found WP-Table Reloaded.  It just worked.  And worked.  The interface makes it so easy to set up columns and rows.  Cool.  The interface walks you right through it with almost no thinking needed, and no code to write!  It sets up your grid in seconds, and then you just enter your data.  I had a test table set up in about 2 minutes, and stuck it in a WordPress post.  Great… but then I looked at the page I’d made, and it was even better!  The table was already set up to sort on any column, search the table, automatic paging, automatic headings, and even pretty decent non-table-ish default styling!?!  Whoa!!!!!  Try doing all that with a WYSIWYG editor!

But wait, there’s Even More… I went back into the admin part, and found that there were loads of other things I could do to my table, such as adding more rows or columns, titles, footer, re-sort the data, merge cells….  oh, and let’s not forget (what, you say there’s more??) that you can import CSV data (and export!), so I fired up a spreadsheet, did a “Save As” into CSV format, went back into WordPress, imported it, and voila, the whole thing was in WordPress, looking way sexier than it did in lame old [insert your favorite spreadsheet name here].  And if you’re able to write a pinch of CSS, you can get even fancier with the look of your data, but you may not need to – it looks that nice already.  Here’s an example of a chart I made with it, for which I used the very simplest settings.

And one final piece of excellence:  the plugin can be set so that you don’t have to be an full admin to use it!  Why does this matter?  If you’re the admin of a site, you may have other people contributing content, such as authors.  Most plugin authors consider their job done when their plugin is working.  That’s fine, but if the plugin can only be used by the full admin (this is, I believe, the plugin default), then other contributors to the site cannot use it.  Yes, you could change that author into a full admin, but that’s very risky – they could easily mess up your whole site when they have access to everything, even inadvertently.  With the settings of WP-Table Reloaded, you can set it up so that the author user can enter tables (if you want that), but cannot play with the full admin features of the site!  Plugin user permissions are an afterthought to most plugin authors, for whatever reason – maybe it’s just boring to code that part or something.

Tobias Bäthge is the author of the plugin.  He’s a very friendly guy, and I figure his IQ must be off the charts!  He’s simply awesome, and even though his plugin is free, I decided to donate a few bucks to him – stuff of this quality more than deserves some support.  There is so much good free software for WordPress.  I’ve taken advantage of a lot of it, so I’ve been donating when I’ve been able, and also spend quite a bit of time answering questions on the WordPress support forum.

Bravo Tobias, and thanks!

WordPress has been the premier open source tool for blogging for quite some time now, and people are also discovering that it can be used for other types of sites.  The developers (and plugin authors) have done a superb job adding features and making the system easy to use.  While this has allowed people with moderate computer skills to use it, an inevitable byproduct of such popularity is emerging: a lot of people cannot figure out various parts of the system, and they are having trouble getting technical support, even though there is a nice free support forum where people can join for free and ask questions.

You don’t have to be Einstein to figure out that I like WordPress.  The number of sites I’ve made with it is well into the dozens.  Because I like WP (WordPress) so much, when I have time, I go to the forum and answer people’s questions to give a little bit back.  But it seems that the number of people needing help may be outstripping the number of volunteers who can answer them.  Because I’m not being paid to do it, frankly, I am selective in what type of question I will answer.  If someone doesn’t make an effort to clearly describe their problem, pass.  If they have a rude or annoying tone, same thing.  If the problem doesn’t sound fun to work on, or at least interesting, no go.  And of course, there are many questions that I can’t answer, even with quite a bit of experience.  It’s a big, complex system, and there are many, many plugins that are not part of the core software.  In spite of all that, the hardcore gurus on the WP forum do a superb job.

I ran into one funny type of grievance last week.  The person had an interesting question, and said that they had been able to do fancy tag styling with another system, and how could they do that with WP?  I answered with a suggestion that did not produce the identical result, but gave them some of what the other system did, and with a bit of extra CSS work, could end up with the same visual appearance as the other system.   Her response was along the lines of “well, thanks, but I just can’t believe that WP can’t automatically do the same thing as System X…”, and went on to describe how angry she was about it, and how bad WP must be.  I just shrugged and wanted to say, “then why not go back to System X”, but instead, I voted with my feet.  I’m offering free support – why spend any more time with someone who is ungrateful, angry, and won’t ever be satisfied anyway?

It’s kind of sad now – as newcomers flock to WP, I see some forum questions that are so basic that they sound forlorn: “My site just crashed.  What do I do now?”

While making the rounds trying out a variety of content management systems, I keep running into a particular personality type:  someone for whom a particular system has essentially become their mother, so System X has become the paradigm that everything is judged against, and as such, any other system will automatically be found lacking.  Kind of like the iPhone fanboys.  Just typical group dynamics.  There are so many systems available, paid or free, and there’s probably something out there for almost anybody who wants to build a site.  WordPress does tick a lot of boxes for me, yet it isn’t the only system I use.  Different jobs may require different tools.

For a newbie, WordPress will work very well for someone of this description:

• They like WP’s bloggish format, structure, and flow.
• They have good basic computer skills.  They want to write articles, and can do basic word-processor-style editing, know how to save files, how to use menus, how to install things, etc.  They don’t mind sticking to the basics when editing something:  headings, paragraphs, some formatting (such as bolding), and maybe adding some photos.
• They can find a WP theme design that looks good to them.

A newbie to WP will probably not enjoy it if:

• They like to do a lot of customizing, and want to make significant changes to WP’s typical structure, but lack the skills or desire to write at least some code and possibly deal with things like functions and the API.  I actually have a friend who is extremely adept at web development, yet even he finds that the prospect of editing PHP code keeps him away from using WP.  Many newbies find this out way too late.
• They want to produce complex multimedia content. A simple WYSIWYG editor is no good for this. Some plugins may make this easier, but the forums are littered with questions from beginner users baffled by trying to handle video, fancy photo galleries, audio, etc., often not even able to handle simple installation of plugins or things like file uploading.  Also, the web is not Microsoft Word, nor is it Adobe Acrobat.  People get upset when they find that their content online doesn’t look exactly like their document, and also are puzzled why people wouldn’t want to download their 4 megabyte PDF that contains all their sales literature.  I would argue that no Content Management application will ameliorate a lack of basic knowledge in web technologies.
• They’re not self-sufficient.  Thought there is sometimes good help out there, using open-source software generally requires a user to be resourceful.
• The commonality in the items above is that they all require advanced skills, and though newbies often want to accomplish these things themselves, they will really need to hire a professional to pull it off.  I suppose the main factor here is cheapness – it costs money to get professional help.

Bottom line:  WordPress is great out-of-the-box for the user with regular needs, yet it will reward the very advanced user with endless customization possibilities.

But many newbies were unwitting victims of a subtle trick:  the web developer they hired registered the domain name himself before building the site.  The site is running, it looks fine, everything’s fine, right?  Just one little problem – the original client does not own the domain of their site, the web developer does.  Why does this matter?  I know of a case where a fellow wanted to update his website using a new designer.  He went back to his old web developer and told him of his new site plans.  Guess what?  The developer said, sure, you can have access to your domain: I’ll sell it to you for $600.  Otherwise, get lost.

This is a form of cybersquatting.  Essentially this amounts to someone taking advantage of your lack of technical expertise in order to make money from what should be your property.  Someone new to the web would likely not even be aware of this practice.  Legislation has been put into law to combat cybersquatting, so you may have legal recourse.  Web companies are doing less of this scamming now because of the laws, but many of these swindles took place when the web was nearly new.  Developers are well aware that trying this with a large company will result in very harsh consequences, but if the client is small, the developer may count on the client being unaware of the law, or being unable to afford legal counsel.

In the best case scenario with these developer-owned domains, the developer will simply sign it over to you when you ask for it.  In worse scenarios, they will try to charge you an usurious rate for the domain, or they may simply try to strong-arm you hiring and paying them to make further changes to the site – their bid for permanent job security.   And they count on clients being unaware of their rights.

If you have a long-standing business under a name that closely matches your domain name, you should have a very strong case for a suit.  If not, it may be less clear-cut.  In the case above, the client finally gave up and registered a new domain name and got others to develop the new site there.  But he shouldn’t have had to do that.

When you set up your new website, the way to avoid this is to register the domain yourself, or at the very least have your contract with the developer indicate that you own the domain name.

Gratuitous Hyphenation

This one comes from good intentions.  Let’s say you’re thinking of using the phrase “West Philly Cheese Steaks”, which is your company name.  People are sitting in a meeting and somebody writes “westphillycheesesteaks.com” on a board.  Someone says that “westphillycheesesteaks” is really long and doesn’t look like a word.  Spaces in a URL don’t work, so they try “west-philly-cheese-steaks.com” instead.  More readable!  Just one little problem – if someone is trying to type that name, they will tend to have trouble.

Even if you can type, most of you will do better with letters than punctuation marks, simply based on frequency of use.  As a geek, I use the number row a lot, but I still make typos with characters.  With three hyphens, typos will abound, which could be pretty annoying to a web surfer.  Because people are quite used to the web by now, they are more accustomed to typing a phrase with no spaces.  So this will make your URL easy to type.  If you’re still worried about people being able to read it, you can put “WestPhillyCheeseSteaks.com” on your business card or brochure – most web servers will handle the caps gracefully.

Using Hard-to-spell Words

I had a whopper that one client had already registered before I could intervene.  I won’t quote it here, but it was along the lines of Guinevere’s Resplendent Serendipitous Tchotchkes.  And she had every little bit of that in her URL.  A spelling nightmare (not to mention nearly impossible to remember).  Even without hyphens, imagine trying to type that.  And if you somehow manage to do so with no errors, it takes awhile to do it, which is still annoying.  What to do?  Abbreviate.  Guinevere.com is not super easy to spell, but better than the behemoth.  Shorter and simpler are good if possible.

Naming things can be emotional, so this could get tricky.  Say your company is named “Cooper and Vishnuswamiramachunandra”.  If you use all of that, you have a monster typing assignment.  But your colleague Vishnuswamiramachunandra might feel slighted if you call the business the simpler “cooper.com”.  You could abbreviate to, say, “vishnucooper.com” or the like.  Or, a compromise:  you do use “cooperandvishnuswamiramachunandra.com” for your site, but you also register “coopervishnu.com” and/or “cooper.com”, and you set up the shorter URL(s) to automatically take you to “cooperandvishnuswamiramachunandra.com”.  Then possibly everybody’s happy!  URL forwarding can be very helpful.

It’s also possible that you have no hyphens AND no difficult words, but there are just too many words, so the URL is still too long.  “smithandmillerandshortattorneysatlawservingcentralkansas.com”  You get the idea.

The last and most fun category might be URLs with misspelled words, or ones that are unintentionally hilarious, like this one.  If it’s your business, you might want to try to spell it correctly, and consider whether it sounds ridiculous or not.  If you’re not sure, ask someone.     People in my hometown do not, and that’s why we have lots of fun misspelled signs.  By the way, misspelled URLs can be your friend!  Along with your good domain name, you can register common misspellings of it, and then forward them to your real site.

I hope this is helpful to you!  Another time I may concentrate more on good practices, or make a rogue’s gallery of really bad ones – that could be fun!

There seem to be two groups that still use this slow, buggy, graphically-challenged, security-risk-riddled browser:  poor innocent folks who have no idea they even have it,  (Hi, Mom!)  and corporate intranets who, sadly, built huge important company applications that won’t work on any other browser.   For the first group, it’s fairly easy to get rid of IE6, you simply upgrade – users are generally prompted to do that .  Even I will admit that IE8 is a pretty decent browser – though it’s not in the class of Firefox or  Chrome, I’d say it’s about as good as Safari by now.

For the second group, they’re sunk:  to re-write their applications from top-to-bottom would be every coder’s unending nightmare.  So they have to quietly limp along and pray that no one clicks on those malware sites that set cyberattacks ablaze.  Let’s have a moment of silence in honor of those poor schmucks supporting such systems.

So gradually, my dream of being able to totally ignore IE6 is coming true!  Another positive development is the significant waning of sites that use the dreaded Irritating Flash Intro Page.  After much keening and wailing, site owners finally became aware that no matter how gosh-darn-impressive these look to the sales staff, site visitors hate them, and they’re terrible for SEO.  Flash is still in wide usage, but its applications have at least become more mature and subtle.

Yet there are still those who have the really goofy Flash splash page that runs nice and long, just enough to assure that the user is motivated to click away to some other site.  And there’s the very annoying phenomenon of sudden music foisted upon the unwitting visitor.  Fortunately, this has mostly disappeared except amongst certain special populations.  Fancy restaurants and top chefs, I’m talking to you on both counts!       With the fanciest restaurants, the probability of having unnecessary bad Flash approaches 100%.  I can only surmise that Flash-splash-loving graphic designers and chef-restaurateurs must be cut from the same cloth.

Here’s to a world with no IE6 and no Flash intros!  Huzzah!