My colleague Ben Minson wrote a post about why tripane help is a relic of the book-paradigm documentation age, and how it can limit us from taking advantage of other web technologies. See Why I Don’t Like Tri-pane Help. As a quick definition, tripane help is the standard webhelp HTML output that has several frames — the table of contents pane on the left, the … more »

In The Big Shift from Search to Social, Anne Gentle notes the growing problem with Google’s search and trends towards alternative search sources, such as social networks like Facebook. She links to an stirring NY Times article called The Dirty Little Secrets of Search, which I recommend reading. The NYTimes article exposes how search engines are gamed, and how search engines can also game consumers. … more »

My wife wants to finish our basement so badly that she registered for a local eight-week course on how to finish your basement. As the first class approached, she realized how difficult it would be for me to nurse the baby while she learned about framing, plumbing, electricity, and so forth. So I agreed to go instead. I had been putting off finishing my basement … more »

Integrating a WordPress blog into your website is one of the most common requests I receive as a WordPress consultant. Whenever someone asks me to do this, I usually recommend moving the entire website into WordPress. That way you can manage all the content in one place. The user experience is more seamless too. If you’re interested in having me convert your website into a … more »

A reader asks, Technical writing is a field that I’ve been pursuing and about to complete a certification. My question, how important or valuable would also pursuing a web design certificate for a technical writer? The certificate in web design? Not necessary. But a working knowledge of HTML and CSS? Yes, critical, because everything is moving (or already moved about 10 years ago) to the … more »

My wife Jane attended a Segullah writer’s retreat conference this weekend. During the conference, one of the presenters explained a common mistake many novice writers make: they look for stories to fit a pre-selected theme. You hear the result of this strategy most commonly in church talks. Someone is assigned a topic, or has a topic he or she wants to explore. To make the … more »

In this video, I talk with Whitney Quesenbery and Caroline Jarrett about the feasibility of removing links embedded directly within paragraphs — which Kathryn Summers and Ginny Redish describe as “exit points” that confuse and disorient low-literacy readers.

Last week Will Sansbury mentioned to me that one of his ideas with the Atlanta chapter site was to provide an example or template of how WordPress could be used for chapter sites. I got to thinking, why isn’t there a standard WordPress template for chapters and SIGs to use? Further, in WordPress 3.0, WordPress MU and regular WordPress will be merged. This is huge, … more »

Recently Will Sansbury and I gave a webinar to STC community leaders on chapter and SIG websites. Rather than giving a static, one-way presentation about theoretical concepts with web design, or boring people with technical details they probably didn’t care about, we held the webinar more like a design review workshop, not too different from a writing group workshop. Although I spent three years in … more »

Date: Jan 28, 2010 Time: 1 pm EST Platform: Genysys (on the web) Cost: Free for STC members Registration required Will Sansbury and I are giving a webinar on web design and WordPress this Thursday as part of the STC Community Leaders series. In the webinar, we plan to look at about five chapter/SIG sites in depth, examining what they’re doing well and how they … more »

Google Custom Search can dramatically improve the search results for your WordPress blog or any other site. WordPress is a great blogging platform, no doubt about it. But the built-in search feature is terrible. As I’ve searched for keywords from past posts to respond to reader questions, I would continually come up empty-handed. As a solution, I incorporated Google Custom Search, which is a free … more »

I’m giving a webinar for STC community leaders on January 28 titled “Site Critiques and WordPress Q&A.” Here’s the description: Because most communities have far more virtual participants than physical participants, establishing a strong web presence where members can find information, interact with each other, and access resources is critical. In this community webinar, we’ll review a handful of chapter or SIG sites and discuss … more »

Recently I’ve been working on a simple calendar project that uses a wiki for documentation. Although I’ve heard a lot about using wikis for documentation, and have even used them in the past, I ran into a few surprises this time.

The fourth sin in my ongoing Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging series (being fake, irrelevant, boring, unreadable, irresponsible, unfindable, and inattentive) is being unreadable. Readability is probably the easiest sin to correct, especially if you’re familiar with your stylesheet. Reading Instincts A while ago I moved The Content Wrangler to WordPress and used a Massive News theme as a starting point. I liked the way the Massive News … more »

Smashing Magazine recently posted 10 Useful Usability Guidelines and Findings. The 10 guidelines are as follows: 1. Form Labels Work Best Above The Field 2. Users Focus On Faces 3. Quality Of Design Is An Indicator Of Credibility 4. Most Users Do Not Scroll 5. Blue Is The Best Color For Links 6. The Ideal Search Box Is 27-Characters Wide 7. White Space Improves Comprehension … more »