Wordpress is an interesting animal! It started out as a basic blogging platform and has grown since then. I actually ran across it by accident poking around in cPanel a long time ago. Ever since that day, I’ve been in love!
Like I said, Wordpress began as a simple content management system for bloggers. It was pretty light, fairly simple to install and use and worked great for what it was meant for: blogging. I’m here to tell you it is still light and easy but it has grown to be much more than just a blogging platform. Extensions and non-blog Wordpress themes have done a great job making it into the CMS it is today and through the upgrade process, many of those useful extensions have been built in and now it works great running all sorts of sites.
This article will introduce you to 5 non-blog Wordpress themes that will show you how well Wordpress does on sites that aren’t necessarily blogs. A few of the site types you’ll see are: magazines, church sites, portfolios, and photography sites. I have looked around and found some of the best themes for the jobs and I hope you enjoy.
Newspress – A Great Magazine Wordpress Theme
Magazines have hit the internet and they’ve done well creatively. I think a good magazine site will be colorful, easy to navigate, highlight main or new articles and will draw your attention to the content. When it comes to magazine themes, layout makes a big difference.
Newspress does a good job of immediately getting your attention. Across the top, you will see articles being highlighted with pictures from the individual articles. I believe the theme does this automatically for you. There are some customization options and a widgetized footer for further flexibility.
Churches Can Use Wordpress Too
I think Wordpress lends itself very well to running a site like a church site. That’s because of the amount of changes a church site could see on a weekly or monthly basis and Wordpress is a fairly simply CMS to learn. Churches don’t always have the budgets for professional webmasters or design professionals so a simple CMS and free non-blog Wordpress themes make life a lot easier.
The Delta Theme is a very amiable choice for a church website. It’s layout is very easy to figure out and shouldn’t be all that unfamiliar to someone who frequents church sites. With easy page navigation up at the left of the banner, and a thin sidebar directly beneath, and a wider right sidebar, there is plenty of room for things like services times, contact information, and calendar widgets.
Easily Setup A Portfolio Site Using Wordpress
If you are a design professional of any type these days, you’ll be wanting a presence on the internet. You’d want something to grab and hold attention, using graphics and photos that are large enough to show off your skills. You’ll also want it to be easy to navigate as to not frustrate any potential clients. Wordpress makes setting it up easy… with the right theme of course.
The WP-Creativix theme may just be the portfolio theme you’ve been looking for. In my opinion, one of the best portfolio themes, WP-Creativix has many of the features a design professional may be looking for. It has easy page navigation along the top, large pictorial previews of each project just below the page navigation, and an easy scroll through of the rest of your projects.
Show Off Your Photography Skills With Wordpress
A good photography site or blog will actually get out of the way and allow the photography to take center stage. That not only means that the design should not be distracting, but also that the navigation should be unobtrusive. You can also have a page set up for each photo explaining about it. Wordpress, with the right theme, can help you accomplish all of this quite easily.
Viewport is one of those photo blogging themes that gets out of the way. Notice how the page navigation is small and subtle. There’s a search box but it’s not distracting. There are arrows on either side of the photo allowing you to easily flip through the photographs. There’s also a caption and quick description which also allows you to click through to a post that tells more about the photograph. All you can ask for in a photography theme, right?
Use Wordpress as an Internal Communication Tool with P2
As mentioned in an earlier article, How To Use Wordpress As A Twitter-Like Communication Tool, if you make use of Automattic’s P2 Theme, you can also turn Wordpress into a tool that may help pull your business or organization out of the uncommunicative rut.
The theme takes much of its usability from Twitter and it allows you to easily, and in real time, post and reply right from the front page. Want to know more? Just check out the post.
Wordpress, even though it began as a simple blogging platform, can be used in many different ways. These are some of the best non-blog Wordpress themes highlighting many of those non-blogging uses. What other uses (and themes highlighting those uses) can you think of that Wordpress may be good for? Let us know in the comments.
(Via MakeUseOf.com.)
Like most things, making a decision on which web hosting company to choose can be tough. With all the companies out there each promising to have 99% uptime, unlimited resources, and knowledgeable support, there has to be a way to cut through the jargon and make an informed decision. Right?
This guide will help you make that decision by showing you how to compare apples to apples. By understanding what hosting companies mean by what they say, you’ll be able to decide which hosting company and package best suits your needs.
1. Price
This is the aspect most of us will look at first when choosing a hosting provider; however, it shouldn’t be the deciding factor. When you see price differences it’s helpful to remember the old maxim that we get what we pay for. Jumping on the cheapest offer you see isn’t necessarily the best idea, especially if you rely on your site to make money. Things like non-outsourced support and quality hardware cost money, and a hosting company that charges $1.99 per month likely won’t offer these features. Take a closer look at the features that each host provides, and THEN compare prices.
Further reference(s):
- HostMonk – A site with comprehensive list of hosting companies and their packages. Use this site to compare prices of almost any web hosting companies’ hosting packages.
- WebHostNinja – Another good site for web hoting price comparison.
2. Area of Focus / Specialties
It’s a fact that not all web hosts are right for all different kinds of customers. Some offer great shared plans but don’t have solutions that are good for growing businesses, while others have great enterprise solutions but aren’t the right fit for someone with a small recipe blog. Look into a company’s specialty or area of expertise before you buy, and go with one that understands your particular needs as a customer. You can find reviews and recommendations on the Web, and many of these will talk about a particular company’s strengths and weaknesses.
3. Tech Specs / Limitations
Take a good, honest look at your site and figure out what you want it to do. If you’re hoping to host a blog, an e-commerce site, rich content, and videos, then you shouldn’t go with the cheapest hosting package you can find. A cheap hosting plan probably won’t have the RAM, processing power, and disk space to serve all these needs, and you’ll spend more time dealing with downtime or load issues than you would like. Look to see what you are getting with the cheap host and what features are included in the cost. Do they charge for additional domains, support, backups, etc.. Call them. Ask questions. Tell them what you envision your site’s needs to be. Just don’t take it for granted that they take your site as seriously as you do.
4. Tech Support
In most people’s opinions, this is the big one. When my site, for some unknown reason, goes down, can I call up and get a real, live person on the phone? And, more than that, can they find out what’s wrong and fix it, or at least tell me what I need to do to get my site back online? Before going with a host look into their reputation for customer support. See what kinds of different ways you can contact them when you need support – email, toll-free phone, chat, and so on. Are they staffed 24/7? Do they outsource support?
You’ll find that, like in price and technical specifications, all hosts are not equal. Some hang their hat on their support crew, and some view customer support as an afterthought. Steer clear of the latter.
5. Features / Add-Ons
This area of consideration comes down to the following question – What makes this hosting company special? What extra incentive do they provide to make hosting your site with them just a touch more attractive? Whether it’s multiple data centers, energy-saving practices, or additional features such as regular data backups or free domain privacy, hosting companies often offer more than just servers. If you see one that offers something you need or find important, that can be a good indicator that you should look into using that company.
6. Hardware
You might have to do a bit of reading (or question-asking) to get to the bottom of this one. What kind of machines does your hosting company use? Are they top-of-the-line, out-of-the-box new machines, or are they cobbled together from what might be spare parts and chicken wire? If the hosting company doesn’t say what kind of servers they use, you’ll want to ask, since hardware can affect the performance of both their servers and your site.
Further reference(s):
7. Customer Reviews / Satisfaction / Reputation
This is one of those factors that you’ll have to get a little creative to get the real story on. Do a Google Blog search for a particular hosting company, or look them up on Twitter – whatever you have to do to see what their current (or former) customers are saying about them. Are they easy to contact for support? What’s the average time it takes to respond to a ticket? When they find a problem with a site, what’s their course of action? This is one of the great things about social media – ask a question about a company, and you’re more likely than not to get a few answers.
Further reference(s):
8. Email Features
This is one of those areas where you might not have considered asking your host for help. If you have a spam problem, then it may be because your hosting company doesn’t provide an adequate solution to stop it. Look into or ask about your provider’s spam solutions and general email practices. No matter what they say, email isn’t dead quite yet.
9. Control Panel / User Interface
Even if you’re the least tech-savvy person in the world, there are some things – installing WordPress, setting up email, setting up FTP accounts – you should be able to do without calling your hosting company’s support line. Does your provider use cPanel or Plesk to make updates and modifications easier, or do they use some clunky interface that no one can figure out? You’ll most likely be the one working with it, so if you can’t figure it out, then that’s going to be a problem.
Further reference(s):
10. Scalability / Room to Grow
Finally, an important thing to consider about your hosting provider (and the plan you choose) is whether or not they fit into your plans for the future. In other words, what you consider adequate hosting now might not meet your needs two years from now, once you start selling your wares online and getting some good traffic to your site.
Any web-based enterprise should have its eye on growth, so if a hosting company might have difficulty accommodating that growth it could pose an issue. Does the host have VPS or Dedicated Server solutions? Will they be able to easily upgrade your account? Transferring from one host to another takes valuable time and effort which could be avoided if the company can scale their solutions for growth. As with all these factors, do some research, get some opinions, and make an informed decision.
11. Bonus
Last but not least, we’d also like to share with you some useful resources that might be handy when it comes to web hosting.
(Via hongkiat.com.)
Typography is an integral part of design. Think of all the different uses of typography on the web, from large headlines and bold blocks of text to smaller-sized text in body copy, and you’ll soon realize that not only is it a crucial part of a web design, but that it’s a pure combination of art and science.
We’ve come a long way since the start of the internet, but the use of typography is as important today as it was back in the day.
Typography Basics
Typography is the use of type in a design. Typography seeks to create a greater meaning by thoughtful and deliberate selection font, size, color, layout, alignment, and other factors that affect the design of type on a page.
There are two major classifications of fonts to choose from: serif and sans serif fonts.
Serif fonts have serifs or extra embellishments at the end of stokes; some call them feet or tails.
Sans serif fonts are without serifs; no extra details are found on the end of each letter.
Things to Consider for Typography on the Web
There are many differences in handling type in print versus on the web. Things to think about with text on the web are contrast, color, readability, and size.
Colors on a monitor screen are created by light, and it becomes more important to think about contrast because it’s straining to look at and read text with poor contrast. Black text on a white background is the easiest to read because it provides the most contrast. Color theory and color choice play an important role in web typography.
Sans serif fonts have been proven to be more easily read online in body copy because serifs make it tougher for the eye to follow, while the opposite is true for printed text.
Although at an increased size and with more leading—the amount of additional vertical space between lines of type—sans serif fonts can still work fine in body text on the web. Serifs work great in headlines and headings because they give a special accent to a headline and because serif fonts are easy to read when dealing with smaller quantities of text.
Size is an important factor to consider when choosing your font styles. Text that is too small is hard to read, but text that is too big takes up too much space. Find a size that works well with your design and is easy to read.
Taking Control of Fonts
There are many settings that control the way your font appears on a web page. Font size, as mentioned previously, is certainly important. The three most popular units of measurements are: em, percentage (%), and pixels (px).
Declaring font sizes in CSS is simple, here’s an example of paragraph elements being assigned a unit of 1em.
p {
font-size: 1em;
}
Em is a widely used form of typographic measurement for web designs because it scales well and can give you finer increments of size (i.e. 1.35em).
Pixels are measured relative to the screen resolution and give you a bit less control as you can only use whole numbers (i.e. 2px).
Many people like using percentages for font sizes because they give the user control of font sizes. The size is determined by their browser’s font size settings.
Kerning and leading can also be controlled with your CSS. Kerning is the space between characters and can be controlled with the letter-spacing property. Leading can be controlled using the CSS property, line-height. Both are great ways to control the look of your text.
Other possible and less popular units of measurements are:
- points (pt)
- pica (pc)
- inches (in)
- centimeters (cm)
- millimeters (mm)
- x space (ex)
Using pt is great for print stylesheets because they are a print unit of measurement. Points shouldn’t be used in your web pages because there are big differences between browsers when using points; Mac OS computers tend to show text 25% smaller than PC computers.
Web Safe Fonts
What is a web safe or web standard font? These fonts make up a group of a select few fonts that are available on most computers. This is what currently limits font choices on the web under CSS2 specifications.
Choosing from the web safe fonts available will ensure better control over what your text looks like on all browsers and operating systems. The consensus for the most popular fonts are:
- Arial (Mac OS equivalent is Helvetica)
- Times New Roman (Mac OS equivalent is Times)
- Verdana
- Georgia
- Courier
Other popular fonts:
- Impact
- Lucida Console (Mac OS equivalent is Monaco)
- Lucida Sans (Mac OS equivalent is Lucida Grande)
- Palatino
- Tahoma (Mac OS equivalent is Geneva)
- Comic Sans
- Trebuchet MS
When using any of these fonts—especially the ones from the second list—it’s a great idea to include a few options to fall back on in your CSS, as explained in the following section.
Setting Your Fonts
There are a few methods to choose from to display fonts on your websites. If you’re using a web safe font, you can declare it via CSS, such as in the following example:
font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
It’s important to include several fonts just in case someone doesn’t have your first option. This gives your user’s browser something to fall back on. This list of fonts is called a font stack.
Redefining ‘web safe fonts’ with CSS3
Current CSS3 specs allow you to choose from any licensed OpenType or TrueType font at your disposal. You can do this by using @font-face, as shown in the following example:
@font-face {
font-family: 'Journal; src: url(journal.ttf) format('truetype');
}
h1 {
font-family: 'Journal', sans-serif;
}
Font replacement tools
There are several font replacement methods at your disposal if you are still unsure about using @font-face in your designs.
Cufon is a favorite font replacement tool to use because it’s relatively painless to integrate into a website. Plenty of documentation is available on their website, as well as the text generator that spits out code you’ll need. Although it’s a good, solid solution, it’s not without it’s downsides—currently text rendered by Cufon is not selectable by users.
sIFR is a Flash-based text replacement method and is just as nice as Cufon. You’ll need Flash to create a font file for your site. It’s best used on headlines or very small blocks of text because the load time can drag on a bit if you use it extensively on a web page. The downside is that it doesn’t work without Flash enabled in your browser, but the upside of sIFR versus Cufon is that text is selectable.
Web Typography Mistakes
Lack of typography consistency is one the biggest mistakes new web designers make. Font properties are best controlled globally, and it’s good practice to set the font family, size, color, line height and weight for the body element of all your pages through CSS, such as in the following example:
body { font: 1em/1.3em Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: #000; }
You should set heading styles globally as well for h1, h2, and h3. Link styles should also be set globally.
Choosing fonts that are too similar is not a good choice, and should be avoided by carefully looking at the style of fonts and the design of the site to choose something that is appropriate. Most serif headings pair well with sans serif fonts for body text. Pairing two sans serif fonts is a bit trickier but is certainly a viable option.
(Via Six Revisions.)
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