Yes, you read that correctly.

Barack Obama ran for office using arguably the most technologically-committed campaign ever. The new look of the White House website is no surprise when you keep that in mind – although I must say that I actually was a bit surprised to hear about it. Considering everything else that is being talked about this inauguration day, honestly, who was even thinking about the White House website?

Thoughts on the new design

The new look of the White House website picks up where his campaign and transition websites left off. In fact, if you go to Change.gov now, there is a note saying that the “transition has ended and the new administration has begun. Please join President Barack Obama at Whitehouse.gov” – so you do get the sense of continuity from one phase of his election and presidency to the next.

Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House and a contributor to the White House blog, writes that the new website is “just the beginning of the new administration’s efforts to expand and deepen the online engagement” that many Americans used to help play a role in the election.

I think what I’m most impressed with the most is how Obama’s calls for transparency and communication in government were carried over to the website. What those two things translate most readily into in web design terms is what I talk about all the time – a commitment to site usability.

What’s done well

What are some features on the new website that make it very usable and that I really like?

• Intuitive navigation – The top navigational bar has only a few simple choices, and the drop-downs that appear when you hover over a link provide links to all sorts of information about his agenda, the administration, the history of the White House, the government, and how to stay informed. They’re simple to use and look great – what more could you ask form.
• E-mail updates – This is a standard feature on many websites, but this is downright genius the way it’s incorporates here – not to mention groundbreaking. But it comes as now surprise to see the administration use this, considering Obama’s use of other technologies during his campaign, such as text messaging.
• Functional footer – This is also a commonly found design element nowadays, but again, it’s use here really fits well with the openness and accessibility that the website and administration are both trying to convey. It makes it even easier for people to find the information that they’re looking if they don’t want to use the drop-down menus at the top – again, a hallmark of usability.

Of course, the snazzy Web 2.0 design really does wonders in tying eveything together, and the web designer in me can’t help but wonder if it’s running on WordPress!

What could be fixed

I know I’m probably being a bit too nit-picky here, but there are a few small touches that I would have done differently:

• Styling the text links – The text links are the same color as the text, and aren’t underlined either, so it’s hard to tell what is a link and what isn’t. I would have done this a bit differently, since styling them properly helps with both usability and accessibility – something I detailed in another post I wrote on the subject.
• Page title tags – The page titles on pages throughout the website are very basic: “Contact Us” is all it says for the “Contact Us” page, for example. I’m sure that the White House website doesn’t have search engine optimization forefront on their mind, but it wouldn’t hurt to include some more information in them. People who use tabbed browsers would be appreciative of that!
• Breadcrumbs – Once you get into the sub-pages on the website, there is a well-styled breadcrumb bar that appears at the top of the footer area. I just wish that they would have done the same at the top of the page where it would be more visible.
• Form fields – Eye-tracking studies have shown that it’s best to put the labels on top of input fields on website forms, but the Contact Form on the website has them reversed. I would switch this up and it will look a lot better.

It’s a great start

Overall though, this is a great website that I’m very impressed with. I’m curious to see how the website grows and changes over time as more content is posted to it – pending legislation and executive orders, for example – and new features come online – such as the RSS feeds, which aren’t quite ready yet.

From a marketing angle, I think it very accurately reflects the message that the new administration wishes to convey about itself. And as I’ve written elsewhere, if the design of a website is able to help convey the right message about an organization, then that truly a great website.

Please keep in mind that I’m not trying to brag here about anything I’ve accomplished. I’m writing this to give me a chance to reflect, but also to give people the sense that anything is possible when you work hard and put your mind to it.

That was then…

When I started Addicott Web, I had only designed very basic websites before, and it had been a few years since I had created those, so my knowledge of how to create a website using modern techniques was lacking. For the most part my experience until then had been maintaining and working with websites that other people had created.

At the time, I didn’t know whether this new business would make it or not. But I had a sense deep down that I could do this – although admittedly, my confidence at the time was still a little shaky.

Want a brief snapshot of where Addicott Web was when I first started it? I didn’t:

• Have many clients, let alone a portfolio – Back then I was still primarily known for the site maintenance work that I was doing for the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. I had only begun to talk to CityPAC about their website, who would ultimately become my first client.
• Have much of a website – Addicott Web’s first website was very basic and used mostly stock images and text that no one really read anyways. I remember spending so much time pouring through the content on it too, trying to fine-tune everything. It had almost no focus on usability or SEO, but it was better than nothing, and at least it gave me something to refer people to.
• Know what anything about blogs – Starting a blog was the furthest thing on my mind a year ago, so I definitely had no idea about how to write for blogs, how to promote your blog, or that I had a particular voice for how I wrote.
• Know how to communicate and interact with clients – I had no formal documents or processes set up for how to work with clients, and was doing everything on the fly. As an example, I was still using invoices that I typed out in Microsoft Word each month, and e-mailed from my personal Yahoo! account.

What a difference a year makes…

Initial learning curves are always steep, and mine was definitely no exception to that rule. Although I feel that I’ve learned and grown a lot as a web designer and a businessman, with only one year of business under my belt, I know that I’m only in the middle of that curve and still have a lot to learn.

It’s taken a lot of work to have come this far. I try to learn as much as I can about anything and everything related to web design and being in business for yourself from wherever I could. And it’s beginning to pay off. I’m feeling more and more accustomed to these concepts from seeing them so often – to the point where I can now talk and write about them with confidence, and in the case of how to interact with clients, actually implement them with my own clients.

Amongst everything I’ve accomplished and learned, I now have:

• A good-sized portfolio – I’ve worked on 8 different websites in 2008, which includes all the projects in my portfolio, as well as Addicott Web’s website and one other that is launching imminently. This gives me quite a selection of work to show prospective clients, and reassures them that they are hiring someone who other people have worked with successfully.
• Standardized ways to communicate with clients – I’ve created a whole range of materials to help me work with clients easier, more efficiently, and more professionally. I use Freshbooks for my invoicing, and I have web design questionnaires, letterhead, CD labels, envelopes, form letters, contracts, and much more all ready to go when I need to use it. And of course, all of them are nicely branded with the Addicott logo and contact information.
• A website that I’m proud of – I went through two intermediate designs before I finally settled on the current one. That was back in July, and since then, I’m really comfortable with it overall. I don’t foresee making major changes any time soon, other than slight usability or SEO-friendly modifications here and there.
• Started a successful blog – It took me a while to find my voice and focus in on specific topics that I could write about and provide useful information on. I’m also still learning such things as how to write a blog post, how often to write, etc., but those will always be a work in progress. I did have a few bright notes to the year – three of my blog posts got a ton of attention, which is definitely helping me to get the Addicott Web name out there even more.

Most importantly of all, over the past year I’ve finally found my sense of purpose and direction. I now know that this is my profession, and that based on how this year has gone, I can be successful at this. I’m hoping I’ll be successful enough so that I can turn Addicott Web into my full-time job, which is my long-term goal for the business.

Knowing both of those things is what continually fuels my confidence that I am offering a unique service to people. This is essential in everything that I do, from marketing to client interactions to actual design implementation.

Looking to the Future

Where do I want to be a year from now?

I want to have learned new things. I want to have written even more about the topics I do. I want to have helped even more clients make great websites for their business or organization. And most importantly, I want to look back and say that I have gone even further down this path towards making Addicott Web successful and towards being in business for myself.

I hope that you’re able to do the same things – either personally or professionally, or both – and that your 2009 is just as successful as well.

Happy new year!

One of the benefits of using WordPress is that you can find a plugin out there for almost anything that you can imagine. The purposes vary, but they generally fall into a few broad categories:

• Improving website/blog usability
• Better search engine optimization (SEO)
• Speeding up the back-end administrative use
• Importing photos, analytical data, etc.

Since I use it so often, I thought I would prepare a list of the top plug-ins that I use and install on the websites I build in WordPress.

What Visitors Will See

1. Secure and Accessible Contact Form

This plug-in is what I use on the contact forms on my WordPress-run websites. Once installed, you can create an accessible and usable form that has plenty of anti-spam and security features built in. You can also style it to look however you want it to, which is one of the nicer touches built into it.

Here is an example of the contact form as I used it on Etgar 36′s website:

2. Lightbox

This plug-in is used to overlay images on the current page, which is a nicer way of displaying full-size images that are linked from thumbnails. You can also group images together into an album, making it easier for your visitors to browse through multiple images on the same page. Here is an example of Lightbox in use in my portfolio on this website:

3. WP-PageNavi

This plug-in is one of the most popular WordPress plug-ins out there, and for good reason. If you have a lot of blog postings, it adds a nice, paginated navigation to the bottom of each page, allowing your visitors to browse through your postings easier. Here is an example of it in use on this website:

3. Similar Posts

This plug-in displays a highly-configurable list of posts that are similar in content to the current post that your visits are reading. The similarity can be based on any combination of word usage in the content, title, or tags, and you can have it display anywhere you want, although common practice seems to be to have them display at the end of your post’s content. You can see it in action on my website in this image:

What Visitors Won’t See

1. Manageable

This plug-in can make things much easier for website/blog administrators to update their page/post data (things such as the date, title, categories, and more) without actually loading each page/post individually. This is a definite time-saver, so I make sure that I install it on every WordPress website I build. You can see how it functions in this image:

2. Admin Drop-Down Menu

This plug-in transforms the regular WordPress menus into drop-down menus instead, saving the website/blog administrator time from clicking and waiting. See the before the after images below:

Without the plug-in

With the plug-in

What Do You Use?

If you’re a designer or web developer, do you work with WordPress yourself? If so, are there are any plug-ins that you include in your standard installation that others should include as well?

The short answers I’ve given to those who have asked are that it:

• Gives the impression that I actually know what I’m talking about
• Helps me gain exposure to others within the design community, which will hopefully help me attract new business

The folks over at Vandelay Design wrote something on this topic earlier this year, which sums up perfectly how blogging can enhance business for web designers. They include the two points that I mentioned above, but their list also includes some of the other benefits as well.

To summarize what they wrote, there are ten reasons why designers should blog:

• Increased exposure
• Improved name recognition
• The learning experience
• Networking
• Helps customers find you
• Improved site content for search engines
• Improved communication skills
• Demonstrate your knowledge
• Potential promotion when needed
• Variety of work

You can read the full post here if you’re interested in reading more of an explanation on each point.

So now that I’ve helped answer your question, let me pose two questions to give you an opportunity to add to the conversation. Are there other benefits to blogging that aren’t mentioned above that should be? Do you think blogging would benefit people in other industries in the same way as it does for web designers?