I think people normally use the Contact Form 7 plugin for their WP contact forms. It’s pretty good, but I think I’d recommend Dagon Secure Form Mailer.

I prefer the way it allows you to change settings by editing separate files: you can style your forms in a CSS file and even change form labels and button text by editing the language files. This keeps things simple and consistent.

It also offers more file uploading options: crucially, you can opt to upload files to your WP install rather than have them emailed.

Finally, I find it a lot more reliable, especially when it comes to setting required fields.

CMSs are clunky, complicated things, especially if you simply want to edit a bit of text on a web page. They also pose a technical problem: What if, for example, you’re making a site for a client using WordPress and they want to edit something in the footer?

This can be difficult when you’re showing someone their shiny new site and they point to the text and ask (quite reasonably) “How do I change that?”

You could add another field to the Settings → Miscellaneous menu, but that also means adding stuff to functions.php and explaining it to a client, on top of all the other stuff they need to remember. To change a simple bit of text we’d be adding an abstract layer to their mental model of the website. Oh, and they’ll probably pay more for this solution.

Far better then to use an on page editor, such as Unify. Obviously, complex sites will need some sort of database mangement system, but for smaller businesses we should be looking at keeping things as simple as possible. A CMS should only be used when absolutely necessary, as a sort of last resort.

Knot image from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Savoy_knot.png

Client a sees site x. Site x looks quite cool but the business is different from x‘s business. Designer y designs site z for client a using site x as a starting point.

Gets confusing. Guiding client a is the difficult bit.

The ever insightful Jonathan Christopher recently posted an excellent article on the usability problems with Lightbox, to which I added a response. I did in fact go ahead with some quick usability testing in my office. Here’s what I observed about thumbnail galleries and Lightbox:

• My average user (i.e. one that has very little interest in computers but uses one at work) took a long time to figure out what to do when presented with a thumbnail gallery. More technically inclined users (in this case those active on Facebook and/or Twitter) understood that they were meant to click on a thumbnail in order to see a larger image
• Only one of my five guinea pigs understood that they could move on to the next larger image in the gallery by clicking on the right hand side of the image (Lightbox doesn’t show pagination links until the user hovers over the image)
• All users understood (or guessed very quickly) that clicking outside of the image would return them to the thumbnail page
• No one attempted to use the back button to return to the thumbnail page
• Everyone was impressed with the slideshow feature (even the Facebook and Twitter users who had seen it before: to them it was conventional)

Obviously unscientific, but useful nonetheless. I’m not doubting Jonathon’s findings: I didn’t have much time to do the testing and I probably jumped in a bit early.

There are some pretty big usability problems with javascript slideshows, regardless of the HTML they spit out and the degree to which they do(n’t) degrade gracefully.

Here’s how I altered the page design:

• I added some explanatory text above the thumbnail gallery
• I added a hover state to the thumbnail links
• I used a Lightbox variation that displayed pagination links by default

Second round of testing tomorrow.

Architectural sketches (from http://news.illinois.edu/WebsandThumbs/ispace/0119_340_OnThePark_b.jpg)

I know this is completely the wrong way round, but here’s a sketch:

1. Front page/home (featured stories)
2. News (from the Union and broader journalism news)
3. Comment and analysis
4. Campaigns
5. Advice
6. Resources for journalists

Perhaps 5 and 6 could be combined.

Guy de Maupassant (Google–hosted image from Life)

She made an effort to recover herself; but every time she was on the point of speaking, her laughter bubbled up in her throat and burst out; she checked it quickly, but it always got the better of her, breaking out again and again, like the effervescence of an uncorked bottle of champagne, whose froth must overflow. — Guy de Maupassant, His Confession

Laurine d’Estelle’s reaction to her dour husband’s confession of adultery.

The Journalist doesn’t have a website as such. The editorship is up for grabs for the first time in 21 years.

I’m an NUJ member. As such, I get to vote for one (or more) of the eight candidates. Obviously, I’m interested in the candidates’ political credentials, and the degree to which they want to make The Journalist the union’s comms organ or a less political resource for journalists. But what is really making me think is the online future of the magazine.

On the face of it, designing The Journalist‘s website is a very, very good gig. It’d be a website for a collection of opinionated, engaged writers, many of whom have surely been blogging, tweeting etc. for years. It has no murky history or, in technical terms, a cludgy CMS, bodged solutions or crappy design to contend with. It’s tabula rasa.

For what it’s worth, here are some of the things I’d suggest:

1. Offer a version of the magazine not in PDF format (as one of the candidates proposes) but as an ePub file
2. Use the website and Twitter to publish stories immediately and gather feedback, opinion and analysis: the print version can publish finalised, “definitive” pieces. The online version should be more informal.
3. Develop a more visual style: make images prominent, post pictures with one or two (or zero) sentence comments. Post things to Flickr, YouTube et al as a matter of course (yes, I’m aware of the risks of social media outsourcing)
4. Develop a bank of user–contributed, editorialised resources and make them freely available to the public.
5. Structure the site along print newspaper lines (e.g. limit the top level menu to a handful of easily identifiable categories). Make the design simple and welcoming: a rarity for news publications.
6. Make one of these sections Comment and Analysis rather than setting up a separate Blog section
7. Make sure all regular editorial staff are active bloggers and Tweeters. Sack them if they’re not. (I jest).
8. Make sure all regular editorial staff become active online networkers. This will keep them on top of technological developments and latest thinking.
9. Make all content available to the general public rather than just members
10. Make it easy for members (and beyond) to submit articles
11. Never, ever, simply republish a print article: train all journalists to write for the web
12. Make sure the design is typographically and structurally designed for the web: The worst thing that could happen is the magazine becomes an online copy of the print version
13. Allow some of the online design decisions to influence the print design: Recognise the value of the website

I think this is important. Without wanting to sound hackneyed, this is both a challenge (the magazine could trundle along with an apologetic web presence) and a real chance to take a lead and increase profile and influence.

Three basic forms of posting stuff on the internet:

1. The update: short, immediate. Useful for conversational missives. Twitter, Facebook et al.
2. The name to be decided: a thought, observation or reaction that requires more than 140 characters. Tumblr, Posterous this theme et al.
3. The article. Longer form text that analyses or discusses. The traditional blog post (see my blog).

Which to use? Depends on mood, style of writing, time and a thousand other factors. Online formats are proliferating more than in print, probably due to the democratic, informal nature of the medium.

It’s a good thing, by the way. I err to #2.

Some business people. Yesterday.

How many times a day do we come across these sorts of images? To be fair, the lady in the foreground looks like she’s been up to no good in the stationery cupboard. There’s a whole subculture of actors whose subsistence depends on this work.

I nicked the image from some Twitter spammer who decided to follow me. So sue me.

Alan Green. Unsurprisingly large.

So David James has come on to save a penalty. Alan Green’s apoplexy is truly startling. He doesn’t like footballers.

Oh, and Shevchenko missed and there’s some crowd shennanigans.