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Suggestions For Plugin Standards
This post is not written by me but is reproduced, with permission, from a post in the Weblog Tools Collection News Forums. It was written by Weathervane. Since  Frank has downloaded 530 plus plugins, and most of his thoughts are well expressed and documented, this post might trigger some good conversation. Please chime in. As a […]

This post is not written by me but is reproduced, with permission, from a post in the Weblog Tools Collection News Forums. It was written by Weathervane. Since  Frank has downloaded 530 plus plugins, and most of his thoughts are well expressed and documented, this post might trigger some good conversation. Please chime in.

As a new WordPress blogger, I wanted to customize my installation, so I began a review of the available plugins. My first installation of WordPress was version 2.3.1. Because this version was a significant change, there was a list of v2.3.1-compatible plugins, of which I downloaded and tried most of them.

Since then, I’ve downloaded 530± plugins (this was what’s left after deleting extensions of commercial services), and tried/tested most of them. Five-hundred± is an incredible number and rivals, I think, Photoshop actions or plugins—and there are lots of those. The WordPress plugins community is impressively prolific.

Whenever I’ve had a problem with a plugin, I’ve added a text file to the plugin’s folder. (If it was a “Fatal Error,” “Warning,” SQL error, etc., I’ve pasted the error in the file.) Then I’ve gone to the author’s site and added a comment telling them about the error, including my version information for WordPress, MySQL, PHP, server, and browser. (I’ve frequently heard back from the author with their help.)

About blog comments for plugin pages: It sure is nice to have lots of comments but there are two issues that make them tedious when they’re about a technical issue: trackbacks, praise.

Maybe praise could be responded to with a thanks and deleted; it just clutters the list when you’re also using the comments for technical support. We have to scan through all that before we find answers. If we can find the answer, we won’t waste your time duplicating a question you’ve answered, and being disappointed when you don’t respond. (How ’bout using a rating plugin so visitors can leave behind evidence of their appreciation.)

Those trackbacks/pingbacks are the most unusable gibberish. “[…] blah blah, yada yada […]” makes no sense to the average person. (Developers/engineers talking amongst each other has been an obstacle for computer users since the microcomputer was popularized by the IBM PC and the Apple.) I understand that authors want traffic to their site but it’s just as easy to do by adding your URL to your comment entry—most comment forms have a “your Web site” input.

Your blog should be as creative as you want it to be when it’s blogging but it needs some standardizing when it’s about technical content, like plugins. A lot of plugin authors are already good about how they prepare their downloads. Establishing a standard, however, is mostly for the user. Below is a short list of recommendations for plugin standards—from a user’s point-of-view.

Naming Conventions

1. Do not append your WordPress plugins with “wp-“ or “wp_.” We know it’s for WordPress, it was in your description. Use an evocative name even if it’s only “joe’s-.“ It’s not just you. When ASP was popular, everything (it seemed) was called asp this and asp that (as in asp calendar, asp blog, asp faq, and on and on).
2. Tell us where we’ll find your plugin access. If your plugin options are in the Admin Area under Options, say so.
3. Don’t create an Admin. Area menu item. Your plugin access has a home in Options or Management or within the other existing Admin. Area menu items.
4. Do not add your plugin access in an unexpected Admin. Area menu item, such as a Plugins submenu item.

Operations Convention:

1. It would help us if authors would either agree to include update notice capability in their plugins or let us know if it does not have it. This way we can schedule to occasionally visit their site’s plugin page.
2. It would be a great help if plugins were always updated and tested in the latest version of WordPress. Too often a plugin is said to be compatible with version 2 or higher but activating it in version 2.3 or higher fails.
3. Clearly state any conditions required for your plugin. Some plugins must be in their own folder (even if it’s only a one-page plugin); state if the folder must be named the way you provided it in your download file. Also state whether or not a one-page plugin can be renamed.
4. Clearly state—in user language—what we need to do to get your plugin result. Please don’t say, “Place the if (function_exists(’timeofdeath’)) {timeofdeath(); } function on your page.” We’re not savvy enough to know that what you actually want us to put in the page is .
   And let us know where in our template to insert your function. An instruction such as, “Once it’s activated in WordPress, you can call it from your WordPress template using the yada_yada() function” is unhelpful to the untutored.
5. If the operation of a plugin is theme-dependant, how will we know that? There seem to be a lot of questions (usually as comments in the plugin’s page) whose answer relates to the blogger’s theme. Can the author can help us identify what needs to be in our theme/template for the plugin to work?
6. I’ve begun to learn enough PHP to appreciate the value of “if (function_exists ….” That helps to gracefully fail the function if something’s happened to the function.
7. If your plugin requires a Key or API or database file (for your IP-related plugin), as you know the URL to get one could you include the URL? We can go hunting around, say Google, until we find the Google Map API but it would be thoughtful to include that URL.

Structural Conventions:

1. Have a unified file set for your plugin. You may have instructions at your plugin page but including a readme file and a link file in your download helps.
2. The structure of the download file really helps us identify the nature of your plugin files and how to install them:
   * If your plugin is only one file then put it in a subfolder called “plugins.” Everything else should be in the root folder. When your plugin download is uncompressed we’d have a folder with your readme, a URL shortcut, and any screen capture files. Within this folder is a second folder called /plugins containing your plugin file. * If your plugin has multiple files, then instead of /plugins, your folder would have an expressive name. It would help if the name of the subfolder was the same as the name we’re going to see listed in the Admin Area Plugins list.

   * Now for the biggie: Some plugins have files that go into multiple folders (/plugins, with others going elsewhere, like /wp-admin). The plugin could uncompress to a folder called /installation with two folders in it: /wp-admin and /wp-includes/plugins, containing their respective files—or something like that. With this structure I only have to drop the folders in /installation into my WordPress folder and it’s done.

3. It would help us users if readme files contained a standard set of topics:

• Plugin name (as we’ll see it in the Plugins listing)
• Plugin version
• Plugin URL
• Demo URL(s)
• Author
• Author’s URL
• Author’s email or contact page URL
• WP Version compatibility
• System requirement(s)
• Description
• Features
• Release notes (what you’ve changed since the last version)
• Screen capture description(s) (if you included captures)
• Installation instructions (including structural requirements, if any)
• Configuration options (including where to find the option/management form(s)
• Usage (function parameters, with output examples if practical)
• Donation URL (if you’ve got one)

If these topics are clearly written, there’s no need for a FAQ.

Nice Gestures

1. User testing. In business, there’s User Requirements Testing (URT). The people who commissioned the work test the application to ensure it meets the application flow they described in their requirements. There is another testing format that seems to have disappeared from the corporation, let’s call it Real Time Testing (RTT). I wrote about my experience with a plugin I really liked, Thinking It Through: The DG Review Site Plugin. I wish the author had given the plugin to a non-coder, blogger friend to try-out. The plugin’s a real nice idea but ….
2. If you include images that you made using software that stores it’s originals in a specific format—like Photoshop, Illustrator—include them so we can customize them for our site design.
3. We should maintain a list of existing plugin names, so that authors won’t duplicate plugin names. Microsoft did this a long time ago for various Windows objects/components. It cuts-out confusion.
4. Someday, it would be nice if the WordPress would focus on plugins. Say, something that assists in installing them. A Manage or Options submenu, with a browse button to select the file or the folder to be added to /plugins. It would require some thinking but the WordPress people are pretty good thinkers.
5. You should be using your plugin on your site, if for no other reason than to show us it works—it gives us courage. If your plugin page says, There’s an example of my plugin running in my sidebar, then have it running there. Occasionally check your plugin page to see that everything is up-to-date and correct.

Admittedly, this must seem ungrateful of me. Authors took the time to code, freely offered their work, and I’m suggesting a little more work. I think some standards would cut-down blogger frustration, requests for help, and give us all more time for blogging (or coding).

Voice and Tone: Writing to reflect your personality as well as your message (Part 1)
Last week someone posted a question to the WordNerds group regarding the importance of voice and tone in writing. In particular she wanted to know how to convey the importance of voice and tone to colleagues who aren’t professional writers. Not having covered this topic previously I thought I’d give it a go.

Scale of tone? Or is there more to it?

Last week someone posted a question to the WordNerds group regarding the importance of voice and tone in writing. In particular she wanted to know how to convey the importance of voice and tone to colleagues who aren’t professional writers. Not having covered this topic previously I thought I’d give it a go.

Voice and Tone, is there a difference?

After prowling the Web looking for various references on the subject I’ve found that opinions differ on this. Some treat the terms interchangeably, while others see key distinctions. For the purpose of this blog, I will define voice to represent the personality and/or style of the writer and tone to reflect the mood or attitude of the writing in relation to its audience and goal. Today I’ll focus on tone.

Tone and formality

Writers often think of tone as a measure of formality, striking a more serious mood and style for an academic paper, a not-as-serious mood (the equivalent of business casual clothing) for an informative blog entry and a light mood and casual style for an e-mail to a friend. They do this in regard to their audience and publication as though there were a corresponding scale that shows that serious, matter-of-fact writing is taken more seriously by peer-reviewed journals and professors, while a laid-back tone is more welcomed by friends.

While this makes sense to a degree, I’m not sure that such a scale is accurate. When deciding whether a writer is well-informed and making a good case, I’m more likely to consider how the information is organized, the logic of the arguments made, and any related sources, than I am the seriousness of tone. Where I will consider the tone is when it comes to readability. Is the piece so dry that I’m asleep before I finish? Does it match the subject matter? Is it appropriate to the message or does it make the writer seem disingenuous? Some writers will strike a serious tone to seem more authoritative, when in fact that tone seems false, making us question—rather than trust—the authority.

When matching seriousness of tone to audience it’s equally important to match the tone to our goals. Are we writing to inform? To persuade? To warn? To amuse? To console?

If I were writing guidelines for the safe-handling of sodium, my first instinct might be to take a very serious tone. Sodium is dangerous, it shouldn’t be touched by human hands, mixed with water, bla bla bla. Yet, if I’m giving these guidelines to students, I want them to pay attention, both to keep them safe and to keep them interested. While I want to make sure they don’t hurt themselves, I also don’t want to scare them away from the study of chemistry. Rather than just giving them somber warnings about explosions, perhaps it would be appropriate to follow the example of Theodore Gray—who documented his sodium party experiments in text and video. Gray’s tone is moderately serious with a hint of humor, clearly demonstrates the dangers of sodium, yet still makes one want to learn more about it. Had he kept his tone too serious or dry no one would have paid much attention, but by striking the right balance, his story was passed along and mentioned in Slashdot and other media.

Tone and attitude

To be serious, or not, is but one measure of tone. Plenty of people stop there, but I think there is much more to it. Humorous writing may be sarcastic, flippant, silly or ironic (among others). Complaints can be angry, bitter, sad, cautious, polite, intense, etc. Tone comes in a wide range of attitudes, some of which may overlap. This is where things get tricky. It’s (relatively) easy to write something that sounds serious and professional. That’s the tone I’ve used so far today. But have I struck the right mood? In taking a straightforward approach to the topic, am I sounding condescending or collegial? Pedantic or informative? Have I so bored you that you’re now asleep—dreaming that your lobster ice-cream franchise failed because you just couldn’t compete with your rival’s spicy crab cones?

These are the questions I must ask myself. When I re-read something, I’ll question the mood. Is it too dry? Too goofy? Too dark? Does it suit the topic? Will it engage the reader? Today the fight has been to avoid being too dry or condescending. My goal is to offer some friendly advice, not to come off as some authoritarian know-it-all. To capture the right mood, I’ll need to keep tweaking things. I’ll replace sentences like:

“Writers are often confounded by such nuances.” (Man, that sounds pompous.) with “This is where things get tricky.”

Then I’ll make sure that I’ve used contractions and added a few quirky ideas—such as the bit about the lobster ice-cream. Perhaps I’ll also switch perspective. Notice how the bits I’ve written in first person seem more friendly than those in third person? Vocabulary, perspective and punctuation can all color the tone of the text. With that in mind I’ll keep reading and tweaking until it sounds good enough to post. Good enough depends on your objective—given my time restraints I’ll spend less time polishing a blog entry than I might an article for print publication. (That’s my disclaimer in case I still didn’t get the mood spot on!)

Recommendations

Choosing a tone, writing, then editing to reflect that tone seems to be what works best for me. It also helps to let someone else read your work. They may notice an attitude that you didn’t. When they suggest a change to a word or phrase, take it under consideration. As writers we’re often protective of our work, but if we’re writing to be read, then we need to listen to our readers. They won’t always be right, but they won’t always be wrong either. Viewing your work through their eyes, will give you a new perspective, and often some very good ideas.

Also remember, you don’t always have to sound serious to be taken seriously.

Voice and Tone Resources

• A Word About Style, Voice, and Tone
• At the Sound of Your Tone…Part 1
• Individual and Appropriate Voice
• The difference between tone and voice
• Thinking Rhetorically: Consider Your Voice, Tone, and Persona
• Tone: A Matter of Attitude
• Tone in Business Writing

To learn more, read Part 2: Voice

iPhone and iPod Touch Updates: The Good and The Bad
While I’m not yet a Mac convert, I’ve always been an iPod convert. I bought my first iPod in September of 2003 and can’t say I complained. Reminiscing, it was a 40GB 3rd generation that I paid $475 for on eBay. It wasn’t cheap, and I was fresh out of college, so it put a huge dent in my savings for a good period of time. But I can’t say I was disappointed in that investment. However, I always looked forward to something bigger. When the iPod Touches were announced in November, I ordered one immediately. It came and I have to say it’s pretty awesome. I didn’t go with the iPhone because…

Out of Office
I’ll be out of the office until December. If you have questions related to content development for your Case Web site, event postings, news stories or announcements in Case Daily feel free to contact the Office of Marketing and Communications. If you have questions regarding the username and password for your account on the main campus Web server (Aurora) contact webmaster@case.edu. If you need to transfer your account to a new maintainer, fill out an account application form and indicate that it is a transfer. If you have questions about uploading files to your account, review the entry on Uploading…

I’ll be out of the office until December.

If you have questions related to content development for your Case Web site, event postings, news stories or announcements in Case Daily feel free to contact the Office of Marketing and Communications.

If you have questions regarding the username and password for your account on the main campus Web server (Aurora) contact webmaster@case.edu. If you need to transfer your account to a new maintainer, fill out an account application form and indicate that it is a transfer.

If you have questions about uploading files to your account, review the entry on Uploading your files with Dreamweaver.

If you need to download Dreamweaver from the software center it is now part of the Adobe Creative Suite.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Your home page is NOT your index; it’s your store front
Space. Designers want to preserve it and clients want to fill it up. Whether you’re a designer, a writer or a client you’ve all participated in this debate. What goes on the home page and what does not?

Space. Designers want to preserve it and clients want to fill it up. It’s not that the copywriters, marketers and others don’t like space. It’s just that they have some important points they want to make, and there is only so much room in that quarter page magazine ad, 2 page-spread, catalog, or Web page. But wait, Web pages aren’t restricted the way print is. We can make it wider—everyone has larger monitors these days. Or we can make it longer—people can scroll. No wait, we read somewhere that people don’t like to scroll. Put it all above the fold. Or put it above the place where I’d have to scroll on a 17″ monitor using a browser that has 5 toolbars. (In other words, the space we’d have in that quarter page print ad.)

Whether you’re a designer, a writer or a client you’ve all participated in this debate. What goes on the home page and what does not? At one point you may have even thought the matter settled. But then Joe in operations suggested that it would be imperative for people to get to the transportation section in one-click. If that’s on the home page, then Sally feels it is equally important to include the section on ergonomics, Brad wants to include the President’s Day sales specials, and Sonia in Plumbing Supplies has just offered up the latest kitchen sink—in scratch resistant stainless steel.

Everyone’s ideas are important. Any of these could be compelling to your reader, and supportive of your goal of selling widgets, clarifying the calculus, promoting an event or what have you. So how do you decide what goes on the home page?

Establish your home page priorities

Your Web site has one or more goals, educational, commercial or otherwise. The Web site project team has additional specific goals. They may want to sell out the stainless steel sinks to make room in the warehouse for next year’s ceramic models. They may want to promote their research to help pave the way for the grant application due in March. These are all worthwhile, but when it comes to the home page I find there are three things we should make clear to our users.

Tell them where they are.

Your home page should make clear the name of the organization and the nature of your business.

Encourage them to come in and look around.

Give them a taste (but just a taste) of what you offer, so they want to learn more.

Provide clear directions to the entrance.

Show them how to enter and navigate your space.

That’s it. If you can achieve these three steps, the rest will follow and Sonia will be able to unload those stainless steel sinks. O. K., I admit that is easier said than done. But let’s compare our site to something more tangible, with which we’re all familiar.

Your home page is like a storefront

In America, particularly in areas of urban sprawl, the well-designed storefront is rare. But if you’ve spent any time in Europe, large American cities, or small towns whose retail districts have not yet been replaced by box stores and strip malls, I think you’ll know what I mean. A store front usually has a large sign over the door (like our Web banner) proclaiming the name (and often the nature of) the business. If you are walking down the street in the hopes of buying hiking boots, the sign over Larry’s Leather Shoe Emporium will make you stop. You’ll look in the window.

If you see patent leather heels surrounded by shiny fabric, you’ll continue walking. That wasn’t the right place. If you see products by Merrell and Columbia sitting next to backpacks and logs on a field of crushed leaves, you’ll recognize that they may very well have what you need.

Next you will look for the door. Ideally it will be obvious. If there are two doors, you want one to be clearly marked as the entrance. You don’t want to walk up to a door and find a 3 x 5 inch sign with an arrow saying, “enter next door.” If you can’t find the entrance you may keep walking. But if the door is clearly marked, you will come inside and look for the hiking boot section. Ideally the store will have clear signage and displays, so you can pick out your boots and make your purchase. (Inside navigation will be the subject of a later article.)

Don’t clutter up the window

I use the store metaphor because it’s easy to visualize. An appealing display of items we want or need will entice us to enter. A cluttered display (with some exceptions) will not.

Imagine Larry’s store window with the boots and the leaves. Now lets add a stuffed deer, BB gun, hunting knife, camouflage vest, pup tent, Coleman Lantern, fake trees, a plastic owl, binoculars and a canoe. Is this a wilderness supply store or a shoe store? No matter, they have boots, so you’ll enter anyway. Now add sleeping bags, parkas, stuffed bunnies, a grizzly bear, a basket of easter eggs, and a mannequin of Little Red Riding Hood carrying an open basket overflowing with jam, cheese, sausages, wine and two crystal goblets. It’s an intriguing scene. You may stop and stare at the window for a moment. You may wonder what the display is about and you may wonder what they really sell here but you might not notice that pair of hiking boots sitting behind the bunny rabbits. Thus, you may keep walking.

Larry’s window, crowded as it may be, may still create an attractive display. But it’s also confusing. When presented with too many choices, it is easy to get confused. At that point the easier choice is to continue walking. The same applies to our Web site. If we don’t present simple and obvious choices, it is easier for the user to hit the back button and look elsewhere than to enter our site—even if we have the information or products they want. (View psychologist Barry Schwartz’s video below to learn more about the problems humans face when confronting choices.)

So what should we put on the front page?

As you are planning the page, think of the storefront and keep it simple. Include your name and a brief description that let’s people know they’re in the right place. Highlight 1-6 products, news items, special offers or announcements (not 1-6 of each). Include a simple menu with less than a dozen (6 would be good) choices that will take them to obviously distinct sections of your site. You may also include a search box, footer, related sites and other simple navigational aids, so long as they offer intuitive guidance rather than clutter. (If your site is a blog it is fine to include your primary content, i.e. your entries, on the first page, as this is standard blogging practice. I’ll address blogs another time.)

These numbers aren’t written in stone. Perhaps you really need 7 menu items rather than 6. It depends on the content. But when you justify 7 it’s easy to think that one more won’t hurt, and what about this bit, then suddenly you are up to 31 and your visitor doesn’t know where to look. Just keep thinking of that store front. While you are doing that, pretend you are the visitor, a person far less familiar with your content than you. Look at your site plan or design draft through their eyes. Does it allow you to make simple choices? Or do you have to think about where to go?

Test your content

It’s sometimes hard to tell how much is too much. Or your team may have marketing research that shows your target market wants to see 50 things on the front page. What they think they want may not be what they can really use, so test it. Create 2 front pages, one with the clutter and one with 6 menu choices. Get some volunteers (unfamiliar with your product or subject area) and ask them to answer 12 questions, the answers to which they will find in your site. Have them time how long it takes to find the the answers. For each question ask how easy or difficult it was to find the answer (on a scale of 1-6). There are many ways to test usability (I’ll write more about that later), but this one is fairly easy to implement, even on a shoestring budget, and it can give you some quick insight between what you think will work and what really does.

Homepage Design and Decision Making Resources

My friend Shirley, from Pownce, gave me the link to the Home Page Design article which offers a number of interesting insights into the role of your homepage. Other than that I thought I’d focus more on the psychology of decision making that really drives our need to make sites simple. To that end I’ve included Mano Singham’s articles on snap judgments and the Barry Schwartz video. These aren’t directly related to Web page design, but they underscore why our design choices are so important.

• UX Matters: Home Page Design
• Snap judgments (1): Mano Singham examines decision making in relation to Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink
• Snap judgments and prejudices (2)
• Improving the quality of our snap judgments (3)

Ted Talks: Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

In this video, presented by TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Barry Schwartz explains how freedom of choice can be stressful and make us less happy, a notion counter-intuitive to those of us raised to think that freedom choice is better. I think it’s an idea we can apply to the content choices we present to our site visitors.