Follow Up to My Transition to WordPress

First of all, thank to all of you who took the time to read my previous article. I felt I should address these questions.

Home Page

Yes, I deliberately eliminated the traditional “home” page. My site is based on the concept of unique, landing pages. The few who noticed had on a subsequent visit arrived at a different opening page. They wanted to know how I did that. It was only when they landed on a different page did they notice the lack of a home page. For example compare the twitter visitors’ page to the general public page.

goldendog.com visitors

twitter visitors

I will write about the value of landing pages in more detail in an upcoming article about email marketing.

Not Supporting IE6

Yes, deciding to no longer support a browser with 23% market share at the time was not done lightly. I was spending too many hours fixing IE6 bugs. I complicated the issue by not having the statistical data to tell me the percentage of my visitors using IE6. Prior to this makeover I had not bothered with Google Analytics or SEO. I made a guess since I lacked the data to back me up that my core audience was not on the out of date browser. I would never have taken such a risk for a client’s site without the numbers.

After installing Google Analytics on January 14, 2010 the data shows that only 4% of my visitors use IE6. The low percentage justified my decision to not devote a disproportionate amount of time to supporting the obsolete browser.

Free Themes

Since installing WordPress in October 2009 I have upgraded it three times. I have upgraded the Hybrid theme once. I have upgraded all but one of my 13 plugins at least once too. Based on this relatively brief experience, I counsel you to be careful that the theme you ultimately choose will be supported by the developer in the future.

Print Designers Transitioning to Web

This is an excellent time to begin to try your talented hands on web projects. W3 standards handed to web developers the much-appreciated hanky we needed to dry our tears over years of browsers’ inconsistency. To put it in terms a print designer can relate to; it was the equivalent of preparing a print file to meet simultaneously opposing specifications for four different printers. As soon as IE6 drops out of the browser market then all browsers will be standards compliant. These standards rest on shifting sands for example  CSS3 is not universally supported as yet.

WordPress and other CMS based applications allow you to focus on creating by minimizing your involvement with the code. Still having a solid knowledge of HTML and CSS, I feel, is essential for a designer to realize his concept. SitePoint offers some of the best references books and articles on the subject. Check out my Toolbox for reading suggestions, essential cheat sheets and web sites I find helpful.

Please, share your thoughts, experiences and any questions you may have.