About the author: Dan Cannon is the CTO of Nicasio Design. Follow Dan on Twitter.
With WordPress gaining in popularity at an exponential rate there are more and more sites out there running on WordPress. Some are running on pre-made themes, some are running on custom designs.
Regardless of how your WordPress Site’s design will be implemented the following 10 WordPress Design Tips will help you organize your content, get more return users, and have a better WordPress experience.
First in a new series of quick tips we’re going to start publishing on good WordPress Design.
Tip #1: The sidebar is not a Christmas Tree and you should not decorate it as such.
The sidebar of your WordPress site is an extremely valuable area that allows you to show your users content that, for whatever reason, works best when separated from your site’s main content. No you probably don’t need that 3-d tag cloud (where it’s impossible to actually click on a tag – defeating the purpose). Just as with the content of your website, think about everything that is going onto your sidebar and decisions about what should be included there accordingly. Use the sidebar to help your users enjoy your site, not overwhelm them with widgets and useless information.
If you’re like most people you’re always looking for ways to cut expenses out of your budget. And right now, spending money on a custom WordPress design may seem like an extra expense that you just can’t seem to justify, especially not when there are free WordPress templates out there that you can simply tweak a little to fit your needs…right?
Perhaps. But we think that it’s not really all that simple. In the long run, you’ll spend many hours developing a do-it-yourself site that just doesn’t professionally market your brand. And after all the migraines you’ll incur, you may end up wishing you’d just hired someone in the first place. Yes, custom WordPress design and development may be an investment. But we believe that it will return to you in full many times over. Here’s how.
We’ve all seen it. That hideously ugly WordPress design that either causes us to cringe in pain as we struggle to close the screen, or inspires us to call a couple friends over to laugh and point. No one wants that reaction, least of all a company with a message to drive home. In terms of WordPress design, what makes one good and another bad? Isn’t beauty in the eye of the beholder in some ways, yes? But here at Nicasio Design and Development, we believe that there are some elementary principles that a WordPress site must follow to not find itself in the category of “bad blog.”
When considering a custom design for your WordPress site, there are important elements that are not necessarily within the syntax and mechanics of the template that should be kept in mind. For example, you may start with an idea, like “I want a blue background” but did you think about the fact that there are many variations to shades of blue? What about your text color? Headings? Accents? What about other important design elements other than colors? Custom WordPress design is just as important as the execution of coding the design.
As we prepare for the Nicasio holiday party, we took it upon ourselves to decorate our office with, yes, WordPress W’s. Why?
Well, we love WordPress and dedicate a good portion of our production efforts to pushing the platform, functionality wise, beyond the premise of blogging platform [see our site launches.] What makes WordPress special for Nicasio Design – like for many in the WordPress developer community is the flexibility it offers, however, from the perspective of a business owner what makes it special lies more in the level of satisfaction our clients voice with using WordPress as a blog / cms / custom solution.
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