Stick to your theme’s template. Dallas Wordpress Website Design Experts at KISS PR Explain - 5 Essential Tips to Optimize Your Website 12/05/2020, Plano, Texas // KISSPR // Website design is essential for both users and search engines. Now, as far as image is concerned, you want to make sure that you pick images that are related to your content. Unfortunately, creating quality videos is usually a long process that involves moving mobile footage to a desktop app for editing. Make sure you’re getting this right and not sabotaging your designs for a considerable part of your audience. Responsive Images — WordPress automatically delivers a more appropriate image to users depending on a variety of conditions like screen size, viewport size, and screen resolution. So take WordPress’s advice: don’t use the theme editor! Every website breaks or goes down eventually, even if only for short periods of time. It’s easier than ever to find great images to complement your words. Pamela thanks a lot for your advice. Author. Verdana is cool. Allied to great content, all of the points we’ve discussed lay the foundation for solid design. Image by Olga Milagros / shutterstock.com. In a mobile-first world, it’s an absolute requirement for modern sites on the front end but can often feel like a duct-taped nightmare of media queries and assorted hacks under the covers. WordPress is the CMS (content management system) behind millions of websites. I’ve started to use photopin recently and I really like what I’ve found so far. So true Pamela. Its how you use the power of design to get attention of readers at specific locations or part of design like subscribe box or ads. We could write a book about the principles of web design, and it would probably all need to change by next year. Hi Tom, great article and useful links. They can certainly help but I like the freedom from distrations having no images brings. In the bad old days, you could only choose from a limited set of fonts while doing web design, but those days are thankfully gone. The most important design tip is to make your content has breathing space. Responsive design in action on an iPad view of Smashing Magazine. 4 Powerful WordPress Design Tips 1. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. Users find it easier to navigate a well-structured website, while search engines can also find specific content to match user queries. However, it’s well worth your while taking the extra effort to deliberately investigate major trends in order to stay current. Picking colors that tell a story about your brand is essential. I agree! Unless you’re running a gallery-based portfolio, the chances are that the vast majority of the content of your projects will be in text form. Unlimited Users. Arial is also good but it looks cluttered in long paragraphs. Of course, your blog would be nothing if it's not social today - here's a few more WordPress tips tricks and tweaks for socialing your blog. Commit to Responsive Design. These trends are so popular because they create visual engagement by following a simple set of good design rules. Oh! Android’s homepage keeps up with material design trends. This is a very useful tips on creating an effective web design.. Good job Pamela!:-). But, there are probably those who are the complete opposite of me, and like having the content without the distraction of images. It’s a legend of a Font, along with Arial, and Wingdings lol. On the issues of responsiveness and small details, my favouriter theme, Divi, has a major failing: in the builder, when one inserts an image module, or an image in a slide, Divi does not stick to the WordPress standard in managing the image size, but just uses the original image in all of it’s bloated glory. Because you know all that amazing content you’re generating? Some of the components of a creative design include: Fonts, especially in your headings and on parts of your website that you want to stand out. While an Organic Theme will provide a huge head start towards creating a beautifully designed website, there are still potential poor design choices that can be made on the path to completion. Good looks is everything and web design is not left out…. Do you have any favorite tips for learning design skills as a developer? And spend some time formatting your pages to make them inviting. In this article, we’ll take an in-depth look at eight design best practices you can use as a developer to up your design game and expand your overall marketable skillset. Adopt a simple clean design. Thank you for these tips. I wrote a post on this topic that starts, “Content is king, but if your king looks like a toad, no one will know he’s royalty.”, The rest is here: https://copyblogger.com/blog-design-mistakes/. Using H3 headers provides a nice opportunity for the quick scanner to read an engaging topic… and “read more”. There is always so much open space that looks so clean on Copy Blogger. Once you place a foundation for your brand’s website. Choose Your Hosting. Give someone a WordPress site, they’ll use it and break it. I love every point here except I’m now avoiding images. Really easy to use and has lots of options! Great color sets a tone, and creates expectations. If you want yours to stand out above the pack, then you need to take some design steps to make sure that it is catchy, engaging and easy to follow. That’s not all. See https://wordpress.org/news/2015/10/wordpress-4-4-beta-1/. When you set up a new WordPress website, the platform gives you three image sizes to play with: thumbnail, medium, and large (plus the file’s original resolution). 1. Looking for some wordpress resources or helpful websites to further your wordpress website? I understood that you can use whatever don’t you want on your site. What have you got for him? 2. Keep it simple, uncluttered and easy to read. Also, yes and yes to both content needing to supersede design a little more frequently in site design and that these tips are old and common sense to good designers. What’s the five second rule? Then visit the biggest players you can find; they’re studying user response in minute detail, not experimenting with avant garde design that looks attractive but merely gets in the way of the user getting the job done. However, this does not impact our reviews and comparisons. I am perplexed with respect to your comments on fonts. @Dan Shafer nice one. Posted on May 7, 2019 by John Hughes in Tips & Tricks. If you take away nothing else from our article, remember this: design is all about detail. Restrict Bots Access. When given the choice between using a vector icon or a static image, it’s a good idea to go with the vector. For example, it is very user-friendly and easy to understand. Too much content and I feel overwhelmed. 1. I’m going to try the customized fonts. That is it’s only weakness, as far as I am concerned. I am newbie designer and have started playing around with typography.I always just sticked to default but now see what a big difference it makes.I guess its all about exploring.As for new trends i really like paralax effect.Thanks for good list to look at. One tool I like to use to customize my images is PicMonkey.com. If you don’t write, get someone who does and then design around it. Here are five tips for designing a website layout for those of you that are Splice Video Editor: An Overview and Review, How to Change Thumbnail Size in WordPress and Why You Want To, How to Use Font Awesome On Your WordPress Website, https://wordpress.org/news/2015/10/wordpress-4-4-beta-1/, Download a FREE Global Presets Style Guide for Divi’s Language School Layout Pack, How to Fix the “PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR” Secure Connection Error, Get the Ultimate “Divi Utility Kit” from the Marketplace, How to Add a Stylish Preloader to your Divi Website, How to Create WooCommerce Gift Cards (Just in Time for the Holidays). Lately it’s the light gray on off white effect, which seems to impress other designers while driving readers away. To make your WordPress enticing, use the right colours and fonts. I also like when blogs make me think a bit longer to figure out how the image relates to the post. And, undoubtedly, a major part of these customization options is interlinked with the design. Install an SEO Plugin. I use them daily. The font used on the blog should match with niche your blog is targeting. For the average visitor the design has five seconds to do three things: assure the visitor that they are in the right place, give them a good reason to stay, and communicate clearly what they should do next. Common.. don’t go knocking Comic Sans. This highly rated free WordPress theme has a responsive design so you can use it to build a business website, portfolio website, online shop or a simple blog. More often than not, however, they are optimizing for efficiency rather than aesthetics. Topping the “Most Used” list these days is parallax scrolling: a simple but effective motion design technique where foreground images move faster than those in the background. It’s an easy change to stand out. Posts about design tips written by Lorelle VanFossen. Like it or loathe it, design is a crucial aspect of every web development project. My eyes are not what they used to be and 12 point type with grey text on off white background is impossible for me to read. Nice written on wordpress design. As a developer, you know that a seamless experience across platforms requires a lot of testing and fixing, but that’s no excuse to slack off. I think that point depends on your target audience. Thanks ! Unlimited Websites. WordPress.com has its benefits, too. Well said, Stephen! Effective use of white space is one of the most elegant and time-tested ways of doing this. Customizing your site title and tagline improves professional branding. utorials about WordPress, blogging, social media, and having your say on the web. The perfect theme for bloggers and online-publications. You want users to be naturally visually drawn to the most important information in any section of your website. Copy the following code to .htaccess file. I speak with so many people who call me after getting involved reading my WP blog. It's highly customisable, very easy to use and best of all, it's free. I recently switched to a simpler theme on wordpress and it allowed the images and headlines to pop out without anything fighting for the viewer’s attention. By the nature of their work, developers are an organized bunch most of the time. Nike Betterworld popularized the effect but now it’s really become a cliche for people who don’t know any better, like people who use Comic Sans to design their bake sale flyers. We highly suggest using Sendgrid for quicker and more efficient responses. We’ll touch on many of these rules as we go through the rest of our list. I also agree completely with having at least an image per blog post to break up the text nicely. Responsive design simply involves the ability to appropriately adjust to every user’s screen size, device orientation and platform. This will help your site load quickly. Infinite scrolling is another popular, though mildly controversial, technique. Trends don’t really matter all that much; it’s how you use them. The 5 steps and other information is quite good for the beginners and for professionals also. We put our experience, experts, and excellent WordPress know-how to good use, and created this list of 15 tips for WordPress beginners. Albar. Taking a little bit of extra time and effort to actually make your forms intuitively usable, friendly and stylishly presented instantly raises the overall design profile of your pages. To use it well, remember these two rules: Setting up custom fonts on your site takes a little extra effort, but they’re worth it. Tahoma is a font which I recently tried at my blog and it is also a good option. +1 one thousand times! Keeton in Tips & Tricks. So many people use too many colours on their website, but perhaps I never use enough too . A large proportion of WordPress themes have customization options, meaning you can make changes to the design and layout via the Customizer. Design or Content? To underline how important this is, overlooking this crucial design element means you could be kissing goodbye to a third of website traffic. Article thumbnail image by Sentavio / shutterstock.com. Tutorials • WordPress Andrian Valeanu • June 07, 2011 • 4 minutes READ . Moving along, we come to card-based design (of which Pinterest is a classic example), a technique with an emphasis on the elegant visual display of condensed information. When using WordPress, there are a lot of great plugins that can help you set up a custom 404 page with little effort. You can use services like the Google Font API and Typekit to “serve up” the custom fonts you choose to your visitors sites. Break up your text so you’re not presenting your visitor with big blocks of nonstop copy. Love that idea: the big plus behind generating your own images is that they’re uniquely yours, so you don’t have to worry about coming across the same image used elsewhere (which happens with stock images all the time). Posted on October 13, 2015 by Tom Ewer in Tips & Tricks | 19 comments. Let us know in the comments. Let’s run through the list one more time: Adding basic design literacy to your skillset as a developer using the techniques we’ve discussed will not just delight your end users, it will also considerably increase your marketability as a developer. 3. You can take it into a free online image editor like iPiccy.com and crop, combine and customize to your heart’s content (as long as your license permits it — some Creative Commons licenses don’t). WordPress has two flavors: WordPress.com and WordPress.org.The major difference between these two platforms is hosting, i.e. You’re probably already unconsciously familiar with what’s hot purely by virtue of general web browsing. Thanks! If you provide valuable information that they can use, they will return to your site for sure. Get the inspiration you need to do your best work, every Sunday! It's flexible and doesn't require any design experience to use. I wish there was a simple way to NOT handle these with the overhead of WP, delivery a simple message and send them packing. Install Google Analytics. Your ideal customer has eleven tabs open, and is flipping through them, trying to find some information. As a developer, you’re used to focusing on details in a very different context, but they’re equally important in this arena. Basic WordPress tricks every designer should know. But if that font isnt installed on the visitors computer it will just render the default font that they do have. Make the first paragraphs of your pages inviting by keeping them short. 150 Most Wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks. I completely agree with the custom fonts. Keep the navigation friendly and label everything clearly to avoid confusion. One of the best ways to learn WordPress design is by examining the internals of existing themes. But if it makes the difference between an engaged visitor and one who clicks away, it’s worth it, isn’t it? No matter how attractive the website, bad content will drive viewers away in droves. Sure, it’s a little extra effort. We really need Divi to get back to the WordPress standard in dealing with images. Telling a story with your site design: that’s a great way to put it! Try to design in a way that will not require a lot of customisation in page options or the conversion process can end up being very tedious. However, if you’re working on your own and your platform of choice is WordPress, most clients will see you as a one-man army. Plano, Texas , Dec. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Website design is essential for both users and search engines. Scrolling techniques in action at I Hate Tomatoes. It’ll just confuse them. That’s a topic for discussion. Today’s post is all about how you can use design your WordPress website to invite, entice, and engage your site visitor long enough for him to begin to interact with your words. Great design allows you to deliver your message more efficiently as the reader will be more enticed to keep scrolling. I recently began taking and uploading my own photos onto my blog. These days this is a paramount to keep open communications with prospective leads! 2. My wife like fonts with various curls and sh*t. I hate it, I like a good clean plain font. I agree with Sam, comic sans is a legend font. Or will he click and make it disappear? This is becoming more urgent, as WP 4.4 approaches. Poor layout choices, lack of search options and plain old irrelevant or low-quality content are all things that will send visitors packing. Keep a default font size that is reasonably easy to read. Jon, thanks for that resource. You can either dip into your funds and pay for them with a service like Typekit, or use the free Google Font API. One lesser-known source for inexpensive images is DepositPhotos.com. If you want to learn WordPress development, you're in the right place! A well-designed error page reassures visitors and gives the impression that everything is under control and things will be back to normal soon. The best advice you gave was the first step. Advanced WordPress tutorials. Responsive design in action on an iPad view of Smashing Magazine. If you know the name of the free theme you want to install, then you can look for it by entering its name in the search field. You need to keep a balance between design and content. Another current trend that rewards close study is material design: Google’s attempt to create a cohesive visual language across their products and services. Follow the links in the post for all the details. Nick Schäferhoff. Are your website’s colors memorable? Hi Pamela, Also, if you choose the right hosting provider, it can be significantly more affordable. Is design king, or is content king? The World's #1 WordPress Theme & Visual Page Builder. 3. In that split second when your site visitor is deciding whether to stay or go, he’s only thinking about himself. Sometimes the image supports the post in a more subtle way – I think it’s wonderful when bloggers are able to find such images , And once you perfect your site you can not sit back on it, you have to keep tinkering as other blogs and sites will be doing the same thing. Often times, I’ve seen blogs where if you look at the image they used, you can’t even tell what the post is about. For just a split-second, it’ll hit him before your headlines, your content or your images. Watch Theme Demos. Reddit’s error page design, simple and informative. If it doesn’t pass muster, he may never read your words. This matters too. What’s stopping him from ditching your site altogether? It would appear that readability gets lost in the quest to be cool. They have a huge selection. Bounce rates vary wildly across websites, but one of the uncomfortable truths of online design is that a large number of people will be hitting your carefully constructed content and heading straight for the virtual door. The key here is to pick good themes – you’re not going to learn from the bad designers, right? By preventing abusive bots from accessing your website, you can tighten the security of your WordPress blog. When you carefully choose fonts that reflect your brand’s personality, your site will look more believable. Five web design tips for a better user experience. as @Steve said, this stuff is pretty much old hat. You know what a killer website is? Flywheel. *. 02 Oct 10 Tips for Designing for WordPress #1 Review Your Themes Shortcode. Although, it’s a little effort, honestly, it’s worth it. A professional designer is going to look at the content and purpose of the site and design around it, not follow a bunch of rules that may or may not be applicable to their or their clients’ sites. 1. Today, I want to talk about some WordPress design tips, more importantly how to get the most out of a free theme (if you are using one). The ultimate email opt-in plugin for WordPress. WordPress.org (also known as self hosted WordPress) is the world’s most popular website building platform. When he hits your home page, the first thing he’ll notice is your website’s overall design. You’ll want to make that your own! Harness the power of Divi with any WordPress theme. Nick Schäferhoff is an entrepreneur, online marketer, and professional blogger from Germany. I used to use iStock, but DP costs $.80 to $1 for small images. If all they get in that time is a very glitzy parallax hero image against a busy background, and you’re trying to get them to read any of several news updates, you’ve made a bad design decision. Our professional WordPress development and design teams have extensive experience in developing WordPress websites for diverse businesses. Thanks for sharing http://ipiccy.com/. I especially agree with the point about colours. There’s no getting away from it though: users rightly expect websites and apps to display and function flawlessly across myriad devices. He’ll hover over that big X on the browser, click it, and make your site go away. I’m able to do several things for which I would like to use photoshop (I switched to a Mac and my photoshop license is for a PC). Pamela Wilson is the founder of BIG Brand System, where she helps people build online businesses they love. WordPress will show you the theme in search results. Don't overwhelm your visitors with 30 choices on your menu. These are some basic tips for designing a user-friendly and attractive WordPress website. Images draw your visitor in, capture their attention and communicate on a different level than words. Thanks! WordPress.com themes often have a default tagline, such as “Premium Theme” or “Just another WordPress.com site” which shows up in the header and sidebar. 1. Custom fonts are served up to your WordPress site by a third-party site. These must be used with attribution, so read the license carefully and give credit where it’s due. He found WordPress when he needed a website for his first business and instantly fell in love. By default WordPress uses its own mail server but this does not mean you can achieve the best speeds. Website design is essential for both users and search engines. Rather than rules and fashions that go in and out of date, I prefer to stick to broader principles that are always correct. Thanx. 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