Pat’s Point of View

If only for my own sanity should I ever want to do this again, here are some useful tips for installing WordPress MU into a subdirectory on a webserver that already has a normal version of WordPress installed in the root. If that makes no sense to you then don’t worry, you probably don’t need to know:

1. Download ZIP file and unzip files into the subdirectory (eg “/mu/”)
2. Open “/mu/wp-blog-header.php”
3. Locate line 9: if ( !file_exists( dirname(__FILE__) . '/wp-config.php')
&& !file_exists( dirname( dirname(__FILE__) ) . '/wp-config.php')) {
4. Edit this line to be: if ( !file_exists( dirname(__FILE__) . '/wp-config.php') ) {
5. Continue normal installation by going to “/mu/index.php”

The reason for this? If the MU installer detects the wp-config.php file in the root directory it thinks it’s already installed, but it isn’t. What it’s finding is the wp-config.php for the existing single-user version of WordPress.

There you go.

Have you noticed that there is a disproportionately high number of really talented people who hail from Canberra? Within the rough boundaries of the “web industry” I know many luminaries who live in or came from our nation’s capital. But I wonder if this phenomenon exists more generally?

In that sense, Canberra is very similar to New Zealand. There seems to be a huge number of really talented people in (and from) New Zealand, which like Canberra, has a comparatively small population. This is definitely the case in terms of user experience and web design, but also across the board; I always seem to meet or heard about really talented Kiwis in all kinds of fields, from music to film to consulting.

Are there any other little goldmines of talent around the world? (Perhaps diamond-mine is a better metaphor, as density is the key)

I spent some time over the festive season working on some SEO enhancements to the Chakra Jewellery Design website. The first version of the site features heavy use of Adobe Flash, effectively make it a single page website with no actual content, as everything was hidden inside a Flash movie. Whilst this makes for an excellent aesthetic and brand manifestation, there are dire consequences for findability: search engines think there is nothing on the site. (Another issue was that of maintenance, with Flash requiring more time, specialist skills and resources than plain old HTML pages.)

Several options exist for improving the situation, including AdWords and other SEM tactics, but this is potentially costly and to be honest an “easier” and more logical solution exists. So our goal was to try and improve the natural search engine ranking for the site, but exposing the good content that already exists and some other tinkering.

What we did

The improvements fall into three basic categories:

1. Extracting content out of Flash
2. Improving relevance of ‘microcontent’
3. Adding supplementary content

(It’s worth pointing out at this stage that, yes, there are design and usability issues with the site, but one step at a time!)

The obvious first step was to get the existing content out of Flash and into standard HTML mark-up. This was relatively straightforward. The Flash movie was actually made up of separate sub movies for each section of the site, loaded into a framework as needed, so it was trivial to create a physical page for each section and plonk the sub-movie on to it. The copy and images were then extracted from each Flash movie and marked-up using standards compliant XHTML and CSS. Care was taken to tailor the mark-up for maximum SEO effect, including semantically correct use of tags and careful selection of ‘microcontent’ such as title tags, heading tags, alt attributes, image filenames and even CSS class and ID names.

To maintain the look and feel of the original website, all of this mark-up is hidden ‘underneath’ the Flash movie using SWFobject. In terms of the HTML, all the content is there, but using CSS and Javascript this is hidden on page load and replaced with the appropriate Flash movie. If browsers don’t have Flash and Javscript capabilities, the underlying HTML is served instead of the Flash. But most importantly, Google and other search engines will see the HTML and lap it up. The graphic above shows the Flash version of the home page (on the left) and the equivalent HTML version (on the right).

Quite a bit of research was undertaken to ensure this technique was SEO friendly, and whilst nothing is certain on the web, I’m fairly sure this is an appropriate method to use. The main opposition to the use of the SWFobject technique seems to be when it’s used to deceive search engines (and/or users) by spamming the page with certain content in the HTML, then showing something else in Flash. In this case the content in the HTML is functionally equivalent to that found in the Flash. There are some variations, but in essence what users see is what Google sees.

Each of these new pages was put into a sub-folder on the site which was given a name that supported our SEO objectives (eg custom jewellery, chakra stones, jewellery collection). In doing so, some tweaks were needed to the flash movies so they picked up variables from the right spot, but for the most part the Flash movies stayed as they were. As such the look and feel for most users will be the same as the old site, minus some niceties such as fade-in/fade-out transitions between sections of the site.

In terms of the additions to the site, the most obvious is the ‘super footer’ at the bottom of each page. This gives an overview of the site (and the business) on every page, a list of contact details as well as links to legal disclaimer and some credits for those responsible for the site. These not only improve SEO, but also provide users with vital information. Since we now have multiple pages on the site, a search engine may bring a visitor in to something other than the home page. In that case they can easily find out what the site is about, who runs it and where they are located. This last aspect is essential for online retail, it builds credibility and gives a human aspect to the site.

Further adding a human aspect to the site is the addition of some biographical information about the owner of the business on the About us page.

Other additions include:

• New contact us page
• New combined site map and 404 error page
• XML sitemap for Google and other search engines
• 301 redirects for old pages/files

Lessons learned

I wouldn’t call myself an SEO expert, but I know enough to know the site was in a poor state, and that these enhancements will have a positive impact on driving traffic to the site. It has been interesting putting SEO theory and guidelines into practice, especially when balancing this against UX principles. A key lesson learned is that it is a compromise and a bit of black magic; it’s hard to tell exactly what effect any change will have and thus SEO needs to be a continuous effort rather than a ‘set and forget’ affair. I’ll need to keep an eye on things and keep tweaking the site to find the best results.

On another note, I felt the pain of trying to maintain specific typographic standards on the web. The font used in the Flash movies is “Praxis”, not a font that most people would have on their computer. So for the HTML content (and the main navigation which is HTML sitting ‘on top of’ the Flash) I used CSS to specify that Praxis should be used if available, but then assigned a number of ‘similar’ fonts that are widespread across Windows and Mac computers, to be used when Praxis isn’t available. This maintains the intended look of the site under most circumstances.

(For the record, I’m not a big fan of this approach to web design—trying to enforce a pixel perfect design—but rather I prefer to design for the restrictions imposed by the current technology instead of trying to avoid them. Fonts and layout are the big issues in this regard, because offline designers try to implement designs that aren’t easily implemented online. Doing so requires copious amounts of time to be spent on what ultimately should not be a high priority. And that doesn’t mean the site needs to look bad, there are plenty of great looking websites that are also usable, findable, accessible and practical to build.)

Measuring results

In terms of establishing a baseline for measuring the improvements, the Google ranking for several search phrases were recorded for the old, Flash, version of the website (see table below). I will compare the rankings for these phrases in a few months time and hopefully see a big improvement. At the time of writing this post, Google is still caching the old site and who knows how long it will be before it gets re-indexed, but in the mean time I’ve setup 301 redirects from the old SWF files to the corresponding new pages.

Additionally, the Pagerank for the site is 3/10. I’m not sure if my SEO enhancements will do much to improve that, as Pagerank really relies on having good links to your site, but an improvement here may be a welcome side affect of the work we have done.

According to Google Analytics, the keywords leading visitors to the website (recorded at the same time as the above rankings) are as follows:

Next steps

It will be interesting to see how this changes with the SEO improvements.

Ultimately the site will probably be rebuilt using Flash in a tactical manner (eg animated elements in a page that add interest and novelty factor) rather than as the main technology. Doing this will allow SEO and further extensions to the site that are currently restricted by the use of Flash.

Going hand-in-hand with this should be improvements to design and usability of the site, as well as SEO enhancements to the content itself (ie re-writing) to better target the desired keyword phrases. Investing in more incoming links from related websites would also be on my list of improvements.

I’ve just returned from a week in Cairns, a trip which was meant to be partly for the OZCHI 2008 conference and partly for holiday. Not the best trip.

Last Sunday we flew up to Cairns. When we arrived the Qantas check-in staff didn’t provide an infant boarding pass for my daughter, and I didn’t such a thing even existed, so when we went to board there was a bit of dilemma. Thankfully the staff at the gate were very helpful and gave us an upgrade to business class! (Although I think this result had more to do with another family of four who were giving them a hard time about wanting to sit together so our two ‘spare’ economy seats were a welcome relief). It was a great start to the holiday, and not a bad flight to get upgraded for: it’s 3 hours to Cairns.

Then we arrived in Cairns. Hot. Humid. Ouch. I’m not built for hot weather, but I soldiered on and tried to find the cab we had booked online the night before, with a special request for baby seat. A lot of cabs in Cairns are now based on the eco-friendly Toyota Prius, so I was thinking hey they are pretty high tech up here. Sadly no. After asking some people and having no luck I called the cab company. They told me two things: a) they don’t accept bookings from the airport and b) “in Queensland public transport vehicles are exempt from having to carry baby capsules” (a phrase we were to hear over and over again) so they can’t do that either. FAIL! Why does your website allow you to request both those things if you can’t deliver?

So now I know why you see so many baby seats/capsules on the luggage conveyors at the airport, it’s because you can’t rely on anyone you just have to bring your own. Seriously, I don’t give a crap if the Queensland government have deemed “it’s perfectly legal to just hold the baby on your lap”, it’s not safe! How can they feel it’s unnecessary for essential safety equipment for babies to be available? I would happily have waited and/or paid more to secure a safe mode of transport for Grace. We had few choices, the best of which seemed to be catching a cab with Grace on Jenn’s lap in the back seat. We discussed the lack of baby seats in Queensland cabs with the driver, as well as how using a hybrid vehicle for a taxi is really just a PR stunt and not yet economically viable (nor environmentally friendly at the end of the day).

Monday. A day of relaxing and acclimatisation in preparation for my OZCHI tutorial on Tuesday. Possibly even more hot and humid. Yuck. It’s not glamorous, but we spent most of the day in Smithfield shopping centre because we had to get some groceries for Grace and it was air conditioned! (not something there is a lot of in Palm Cove). In the spirit of the tropical theme I bought a lovely knock-off ‘Aloha shirt’. Cool in that absurd kind of way.

Tuesday. Went off to James Cook University for my tutorial. Still hot. Got into the room the tutorial would be in…urrgh not much cooler. Lovely. The tutorial went well, although almost everyone there was not exactly at the right level for an introductory course, but I got good feedback and I think we all got something out of the half day.

Wednesday. Can’t remember what we did in the morning, but I remember the heat hadn’t relented. We went for a late lunch at Pepper’s Beach Club on the esplanade at Palm Cove, we’d been there many times when we last stayed there and it was always nice. I had a ham focaccia and a light beer. Big mistake. I remember thinking our order arrived quite quickly, Jenn only got a salad so I was wondering if my sandwich was fresh. It turns out it probably wasn’t and given the hot and humid conditions something was off. To cut a long and painful story short I spent the next 8 hours witnessing my body performing a complete evacuation of its digestive system by any and all means possible. I’ve not been struck by any major illness in my life, and I’m sure this is nothing in comparison, but this bout of food poisoning was the worst such thing I’ve ever experienced.

By midnight I was completely wrecked, severely dehydrated and in need of medical assistance. I was worried, about me but also about my family, what if this was viral? At this point I was also pondering, in my barely lucid state, how vulnerable we are when on holiday. Without your normal support network, local knowledge and even transport, you kinda feel on your own. But we managed to get an ambulance to the resort which was harder than expected. The paramedics agreed it was food poisoning, possibly with a bit of heat stroke to boot. I opted not to take them up on the offer of hospitalisation because I had a wife and baby to consider. Besides, the mass evacuation seemed to have slowed by the time the paramedics arrived, so I thought I would ride it out and see how I was in the morning. It was a rough night.

After the ‘purge’ had finished the ‘reboot’ began, as my digestive system was rebuilt, a process that ultimately went on for about 60 hours. I was trying to rehydrate myself but Mr Stomach wasn’t playing nicely. I couldn’t digest anything for a while, so eating and drinking were very difficult.

Thursday. Why does it always seem to be overcast in Palm Cove? It makes is more humid and it’s depressing rather than a tropical paradise. But on this day I think the sun was out all day. It might have been hotter but at least not as humid, but I wouldn’t know since I spent the entire day in bed. Made a break for it at dinner time and chanced a trip to the restaurant. Saw OZCHI folks going off to the conference dinner, but I was in a daze. Didn’t last long, had to return to the room.

Friday. Started to get better, I even ventured out for breakfast and lunch. Arranged to meet James Breeze and some others for dinner, but as the sun started to set the humidity rose and as we couldn’t find any restaurants with air-conditioning I quickly wilted and had to make a very early exit. The heat, sweat and thought of food just made me ill. Why no restaurants in Palm Cove have A/C is beyond me.

Saturday. Feeling much better. Packing, breakfast then transfer to airport (and guess what? no baby seats available, because “in Queensland…” grrrr!). At the airport things were looking up, we managed to all get on the same flight (long story) and even got moved to a bulkhead row with a bassinet so we could put the baby down for a sleep during the flight. Back home in Sydney. Dry heat. Hmmmm.

Man, I need a holiday.

Bit of a delay while trying to get my Twitter Tools plugin to work. So here are two weeks of my tweets:

@awmitchell damn skippy! #osnbc 10:55 AM Nov 24th

RT @trib: #osnbc http://www.acevents.com.au/socialmedia08/ (for @lisakate) 10:45 AM Nov 24th

thanks @trib and @warlach 10:40 AM Nov 24th

can’t be arsed working it out…what’s #osnbc? 10:36 AM Nov 24th

having 100% daddy time with bubs tonight. w00t! 5:28 PM Nov 21st

what’s @S2D_Catherine been up to? 4:59 PM Nov 21st

d’oh! 4:58 PM Nov 21st

what’ 4:58 PM Nov 21st

@arbitraryDoll I think @trib blogged it didn’t he? 12:29 PM Nov 21st

@s2d_jamesr errr um this is guerillia social media research 12:25 PM Nov 21st

@Alex_Manchester you just need to wear one of those yellow vests 12:16 PM Nov 21st

@s2d_jamesr a hybrid bicycle…does that mean you peddle with your hands as well? :) 11:35 AM Nov 21st

oh shit, left my lunch on the bus! the missus won’t be happy 10:30 AM Nov 21st

Had breakkie with @docbaty and the USiT team at News Digital Media (previously known as News Interactive) 10:24 AM Nov 21st

@pixel8ted yep Maxtor = bad http://snipr.com/60592 but there are others out there that do what you want 4:10 PM Nov 20th

@pixel8ted don’t buy Maxtor! 4:07 PM Nov 20th

@scenariogirl yet you bought a Ford :) 2:22 PM Nov 20th

@russmaxdesign should filter tweets too…sick of your whinging :) 2:19 PM Nov 20th

@scenariogirl you know what a ’68 Monaro is? Mr Hardy is a lucky man 1:44 PM Nov 20th

UK govt using mentoring to assist people with using technology http://snipr.com/5yt0p 9:33 AM Nov 20th

hating smokers… 9:31 AM Nov 20th

@jamesbreeze couldn’t you use senduit.com? 5:54 PM Nov 19th

@ericdot what sort of designer isn’t also a Mac boy :) 5:11 PM Nov 19th

needs to cleans his Facebook status. This should do. 12:53 PM Nov 19th

RT @oliverw: Next Michael Robinson (CEO of Media at NDM) to talk about personalising the news website experience #aimiaux08 10:46 AM Nov 19th

@joelflom you mean you weren’t already reading www.usit.com.au ? :) 10:41 AM Nov 19th

@docbaty now you’re just sucking up :) 10:30 AM Nov 19th

@ericscheid have you finalised the numbers for #ozia08 ? 10:05 AM Nov 19th

is up to his neck planning research for next week! 5:10 PM Nov 18th

Blogged my doco preso at #arkux08 http://snipr.com/5qnd4 5:09 PM Nov 18th

please SBS, don’t bring back Top Gear Australia for a second season…don’t embarrass us any further 11:28 AM Nov 18th

is quite liking ‘Wires and Lights’ http://blogs.news.com.au/theaustralian/wiresandlights/ 11:24 AM Nov 18th

might see @s2d_jamesr on 20:30 flight tomorrow night? 7:57 PM Nov 13th

thinks business frequent flyers who get all smug and uppity are really just overcompensating 7:36 PM Nov 13th

at airport for the first time in ages, on “my own ticket” 6:42 PM Nov 13th

any of my tweeps in Sydney Qantas Club? 6:41 PM Nov 13th

off to #arkux08 5:53 PM Nov 13th

has discovered the wonders of dual screen presentation mode in Powerpoint for Mac! 3:37 PM Nov 13th

aren’t the new “car” yellow pages cute? 12:59 PM Nov 12th (update: they’re called “Yellow™ In the Car”)

@diversionary re “mongoose” it’s not as wierd as it sounds :) 12:54 PM Nov 12th

can’t believe one would be stuffed silly after ‘high tea’ 2:10 PM Nov 11th

Fresh from my Twitter feed:

Case study: redesign of The Australian business section http://tinyurl.com/5z32lz 4:44 PM Nov 8th

@scenariogirl it’s hard to go back to Powerpoint after seeing that feature in Keynote, isn’t it? 3:40 PM Nov 8th

Just put in two more #iasummit submissions (thanks @rebeccarodgers for spurring me on) 3:20 PM Nov 8th

is doubtful Codral will clear his fuzzy head 2:58 PM Nov 8th

trying out ScribeFire for blogging http://www.scribefire.com/ 5:39 PM Nov 4th

Free to good home: one ticket to “Enhancing Online User Experience” next week in Melbourne http://tinyurl.com/5o9d88 11:08 PM Nov 3rd

RT @s2d_jamesr: RT @tobyward: 270 respondents now to the Intranet 2.0 study: but we need 300+ so plz promote: http://tinyurl.com/6qbu3l 11:02 PM Nov 3rd

@lachlanhardy ahhh yes, Melbourne Cup. I wondered why you were in a suit 4:53 PM Nov 3rd

was just compared to “Twiki” from Buck Rodgers 3:36 PM Nov 3rd

hates conference calls… 7:16 PM Nov 2nd

just realised I shaved off my mo just when Movember is kicking off! 5:01 PM Nov 2nd

I’m really liking microblogging at the moment, there’s a freedom from having to write up one’s thoughts into a proper post, you can just blurt stuff out. For those of you that don’t follow me on Twitter, he are my tweets from the last week:

my baby just crawled for the first time! 3:55 PM Oct 31st

love the baby mop http://tinyurl.com/6mxnmk 12:01 PM Oct 31st

RT @trib: Agency people. Make your socmed strategists *and* your clients watch this! Today. http://is.gd/5hbM 11:00 AM Oct 31st

That’s no way to get a discount @docbaty ! :) 11:19 AM Oct 30th

running a small business? where do you learn how? 3:37 PM Oct 30th

@diversionary positivity is over-rated :) 2:28 PM Oct 30th

@AlHaigh born to roam….that’s some funny shit :) 1:32 PM Oct 30th

@trib sure but it was only ever a work-around and is no longer necessary…and it shits me :) 9:38 AM Oct 30th

has a pet hate of people who double space between sentences! 9:08 AM Oct 30th

@docbaty tweetdeck is a bit buggy but see how you go 8:39 AM Oct 30th

IA Summit submission done…. 11:52 AM Oct 29th

I’m not quite there yet @russmaxdesign , hearing my little one almost say “daddy” was pretty bloody great :) 10:08 AM Oct 29th

wish i could make $15k this easy http://tinyurl.com/5elev9 3:22 PM Oct 28th

great idea! “Ending the Conference Bag Arms Race” http://tinyurl.com/6dwv8j 5:24 PM Oct 27th

why do most people think “changing background colours” when they hear personalisation? 4:58 PM Oct 27th

News.com.au redesign launched http://tinyurl.com/5cndyn 2:20 PM Oct 27th

wonders how he can stop Confluence from sending the whole text of a page in its notification emails 1:55 PM Oct 27th

@jamesbreeze heaven help anyone on the receiving end of my posts before I’ve had my morning coffee :) 10:19 AM Oct 27th

are marketers trying to ‘game’ web 2.0? http://tinyurl.com/5cgkg8 10:03 AM Oct 27th

made evil eyes at the moron who sat at bus stop with lit cigarette, she wasn’t even smoking it but killing the rest of us with toxic fumes 9:38 AM Oct 27th

@gerrygaffney I think I’m with you re twitter :) 9:36 AM Oct 27th

In an effort to increase our profile, as well as share and discuss interesting tidbits, the News Digital Media USiT team have launched a blog: www.usit.com.au

USiT stands for User Standards and Innovative Technology and is the name we give to the user experience team here at NDM, so this new blog will soon be running over with good stuff on IA, UX, IxD and various other topics.

It’s early days but it would be great if would could collate and harness the vast amount of knowledge the team has, as well as the extensive knowledge network we bring to the table. Ultimately, I hope we can start to write our own content and push it out through this channel, instead of just aggregating links and other people’s posts.

But first order of the day will be a nice WordPress theme :)

A while back, I was talking to a friend about the website for his small business, which includes an e-commerce element. The site isn’t working as well as it could for him, and we were talking about how we could increase inbound traffic and generally improve the effectiveness of his site.

I started telling him about how we could drive website sales, you know, the usual ‘e-tail’ things: promoting products, specials, discounts etc, as well as driving more and more traffic to the site through various social bookmarking/networking channels. But it became obvious he didn’t want to achieve huge sales. He didn’t want the whole enchilada.

And this made me think, how do you not go all the way? So much of what we do as designers, experience architects, marketers etc is to get the maximum return; make the website the best it can be, get the most traffic, get the most sales. But what if that’s not the objective?

Our methods and techniques are all based on the idea that the client wants to lead their field, in the case of e-tail, be the “next Amazon”. Do we even know how to aim lower than that?

Some would say that everything comes down to a cost-benefit balance, but you’re still aiming for the most benefit from the least cost. What if the aim is to sell more but not overdo it? With careful application of online marketing strategy, good UX and web design principles, we could easily generate more business than the business wants. The business could grow and hire staff to cope with the demand, and potentially become a thriving enterprise, but that’s not the aim in my friend’s case.

Sorry, no answers here, just ponderous thoughts.

I’ve been using Wordle.net quite a bit lately for communicating research results, and I thought I’d give it a go for all my blog posts:

I was a little surprised, but pleasantly, to see the biggest words were “people” and “can”. Fairly high up there were “web”, “design”, “usability” and “information”, which is kinda good since I’d like to think that’s what I’ve been blogging about.

How did I do this? Well, I didn’t want to use a tag cloud plugin, so I used the WordPress export feature to create an XML dump of all posts and pages, extracted the CDATA fields, stripped all the HTML tags using regex in HTML-kit, then pasted it into Wordle :)