The Blog

Find out the latest news, tips and tricks from the Junger Media team.

5 Unique Ways to Use WordPress (Not as a Blog)

WordPress is easily the most intuitive, user-friendly blogging software available today, but did you know you can use it for other types of sites?

Here are five unique ways to use WordPress besides as a blog.

A Content Management System

Like most Web sites that use a content management system, WordPress allows you to create static pages outside of the reverse-chronology setup of blogs.

Whether you're creating a page of resources, links, or non-date specific information, pages are the best option for timeless content on your site.

But what about your site's home page? WordPress allows you to set any page as your site's main page. In WordPress 2.5 and above:

Log in to your dashboard
Click on "Settings" and "Reading"
Under "Front page displays," select "A static page" and choose the page you'd like to use

Using WordPress as a CMS is increasingly popular, especially because it doesn't require tech-savvy users.

A Job Board

If you're looking to start a job board using WordPress, it can be done.

Sorel Mihai, one of my favorite theme designers, has created JobPress, a WordPress Job Board.

JobPress allows for both free and paid listings, depending on your preference. Charging for listings is easy (view the settings page) and integrated with PayPal.

Other features include:

Job categories
RSS feeds for listings
Categorization by part-time, full-time and freelance.

Check out more about JobPress here.

A Storefront

Yes, you can sell products using WordPress.

Check out the Market Theme. It's a great-looking, minimalist theme that focuses on highlighting the products you have to sell and helps you sell them.

Features include:

Support for PayPal and Google Checkout
Affiliate support, if you have no products to sell
Compatibility with WordPress MU

Check out more about the Market Theme here.

A Portfolio

If you need a place to show off your work, WordPress makes a great portfolio.

Two great Portfolio themes are Sharpfolio, a free download from WEBRevolutionary, and Sorel Mihai's Portfolio theme.

These two themes work a bit differently — Sharpfolio works more like a "typical" WordPress site, while Portfolio has a custom settings page.

A Classifieds Site

DailyWP's Sorel Mihai comes through again with Classipress, a complete package for managing a classified ads site.

While there are some third-party plugins that attempt to do what Classipress offers, none of them do it right. Classipress requires no additional plugins, so everything works perfectly together.

Check out more about Classipress here. (UPDATE: DailyWP's Classipress seems to have fallen off the face of the earth, but interestingly, there's another classifieds theme of the same name now available!)

Posted in Featured, Wordpress | 9 Comments »

3 Web Publishing Tools I Can't Live Without

There are thousands of tools you can use to successfully run your Web site, but believe it or not, you only need three.

They don't cost a lot of money, and you don't need a deep technical understanding to use them.

Here are three Web publishing tools I can't live without.

A Simple Text Editor

If you're a blogger, writer or any kind of content creator, a basic text editor like Notepad should be your best friend.

It's the simplest, cleanest and most intuitive word-processing program available — and it's free.

When you're using programs like Microsoft Word to write, you often get loads of junk content that comes along: fonts, sizes, and sometimes even HTML.

You don't need that. You're focusing simply on the words. Don't get overloaded with extra features and settings. You don't need them.

A Good Content Management System

It used to be that Web publishing involved creating pages in Dreamweaver or FrontPage; perhaps you used server-side includes or some kind of template for a consistent design.

Today, it's all about using the right content management system (CMS). A good CMS organizes your content and keeps it completely separate from your design and code.

For Junger Media and my other sites, I use WordPress — easily the best blogging software available (and totally free).

I've also worked with Movable Type, Expression Engine and Blogger in the past. They're not really my cup of tea, but they may work great for you.

Image Editing Software

When you want to add some photos to your site, you'll need to do some image editing. If you're not a designer, your needs will mostly be cropping, re-sizing, and small image creation.

Adobe Photoshop is the standard for image editing and manipulation, but it's also pretty expensive. Photoshop does a lot more than the simple tasks you'll need, but it's the best way to do them.

If you don't want to drop the coin for a copy of Photoshop, check out GIMP — a free alternative that does everything you need.

What Web publishing tools can YOU not live without?

Posted in Featured, Production | No Comments »

Do You Know Your Site's Goal?

What's the purpose of your Web site? No, really.

In 10 words or less, can you explain

why you have a Web site?
where you'd like to be in one year?
what's your plan for getting there?

If you can't, you're in trouble. You're not destined for failure — yet — but you're certainly on the wrong track.

Too often, Web sites get started and run for the wrong reasons.

"I want to have a blog."
"We needed to put something up."
"They're doing it, so we have to."

We're all guilty of this, to some degree. I've started a ton of Web sites on a whim with no real long-term goal — and they've all landed in the graveyard.

So take ten minutes, right now, and determine your site's goal. Some options include:

to sell a product or service
to deliver an information product, like news
to build a brand

Be honest with yourself. It's OK to admit that your blog (while well-intentioned to empower your readers) is really about selling a product. There's nothing wrong with that.

Ask yourself this:

If you had to shut down your Web site today, what would you want in return?

That's your goal. Go out and reach it.

Posted in Featured, Management | No Comments »

You Are Not Your Users

If there's one big thing I took away from Usability Week, it's that you are not your users.

It's a mantra every Web publisher should repeat constantly — in fact, you might want to even write it on a Post-It note and leave it in plain sight.

I run into this problem a lot with people who come from the print media world. The old school of thought is that you put out your product, take a survey or two of your audience, and make a change when necessary. But for the most part, your product is your product — you get to define it as you want.

When it comes to Web publishing (especially in the B2B world), your definitions are not always the same as your users. From Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox:

A simple example: Many sites use segmentation, in which users must click through to the appropriate site segment. Unfortunately, these segments often don't match the way customers think of themselves, and thus require them to peek through multiple site areas to find the right one. Even a simple segmentation such as company size isn't obvious. What counts as small? Better sites will annotate their choices with a definition (stating, for example, that their small business segment targets companies with less than 100 employees).

Your users come to you for a specific piece of information — the sooner you give it to them (and the easier it is for them to find it), the more likely they will come back to you.

Real estate sites are horrible at this, often not showing pictures of the property — a huge asset for prospective buyers.

The realtors want you to give them a call to find out more. But as a user, you want to gather as much information as possible before making that call. It's frustrating when you can't.

The next time you think about re-organizing your site or restricting the amount of information you present, remember: you are not your users.

Posted in Featured, Usability | No Comments »

5 Ways to Automate Your Facebook Experience

Automating your life is easier than you think.

My finances are on autopilot — and it's been the best thing ever. Not only does it save you boatloads of time, but it's actually pretty comforting.

So how do you automate the biggest time waster in your life — Facebook? It's easier than you think.

Here are 5 ways to automate your Facebook experience.

Import Blog Posts as Notes

Every one of your blog posts can automatically be imported into your profile — easily. In Facebook:

Click on "Notes" on your left-hand Applications navigation.
On the right-hand nav, click on "Import a blog" under Notes Settings
Enter your blog URL, check off box, and click "Start Importing"
Verify your RSS feed is appearing correctly, and "Confirm Import"

Ta-da! Your blog posts are now automatically being imported into Facebook.

Subscribe to Friend Updates via RSS

Facebook used to allow you to subscribe to your News Feed via RSS natively, but shut down the service over privacy concerns.

However, an app emerged to take its place: RSS News Feed Reader.

Subscribe to the feed in your favorite RSS reader (I recommend Firefox's Live Bookmarks, since there isn't anything more to read than the one-line status).

Sync Your Twitter and Status

Why update your Facebook status if you're using Twitter to do essentially the same thing?

The official Twitter app automatically posts your latest Tweets as your status.

Add Flickr, Digg, del.icio.us to Your News Feed

Don't waste your time uploading your pictures, bookmarks and more to a specific service and to Facebook — automatically import them into your feed.

On your profile page, under the "What's on your mind" box, click "Settings." This will allow you to import items from

del.icio.us
Digg
Flickr
Picasa
Yelp

Share Stories with Shareaholic

Instead of heading to Facebook to post links or stories on your profile, use Shareaholic.

The Firefox plugin lets you share any Web page on Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Mixx and more without leaving the actual page.

What did I miss? How are you automating your Facebook experience?

Posted in Featured, Social Media | No Comments »

« Previous Entries

Next Entries »