Line In Web Design

Creating a 3D Pipe with Illustrator and Photoshop

Simon — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:00:42 +0000

We’ll be building the shape in Illustrator using the 3D Revolve tool before going into Photoshop to texture it all up using clipping masks and blend modes and layer styles and all that modern doohickory.

1) Before I start trying to create anything based on the material world, I always spend at least five minutes gathering some reference materials – especially for things that I don’t come in contact with every day. I’m not a pipe smoker, so I don’t have a real one lying around the house that I can use so I grabbed this photo from Stock Exchange instead. My memory is so rubbish that I don’t trust it to recall the important details of anything (anniversaries, birthdays, modern smoking pipe construction), so I always use a reference.

Instantly, I start to see little details that will help our design read better. The features that jump out at me from this image are the two different materials and the little lip at the smoking end.

2) In order to accurately recreate the pipe, we’re going to have to divide it into two parts. This is because we’re going to need to revolve the pipe around two different axis. Hopefully this screenshot will make the things a little clearer.

3) Got it? No? Me either. Not to worry, when in doubt, just start – trial and error are your friends.

Let’s grab our pen tool (p) and start roughing out the shape of the stem. You need to imagine that you’re cutting a slice out of the tube, then cutting that slice down the middle. To help you understand that nonsense sentence, an example: If I was going to make a sphere, I’d draw out a half moon and revolve it around the straight edge. Play with the revolve tool until you figure it out – don’t worry, it took me a while too.

Here is the shape of my stem – I used no stroke and a fill of #919191. I used this neutral grey because it will react better with the texture when we apply the blending mode in Photoshop. It doesn’t have to be perfect, as the 3D Revolve is an applied effect that can be edited or deleted later from the ‘appearances’ panel.

4) Using the pen tool again, we start on the bowl, again using no stroke and a fill of #919191. I made something like this. Hopefully you can see the half-bowl shape. I’m going to be revolving it around the small edge, if that helps you understand it any better.

5) Once you’ve created your shapes, select the stem and go to Effect -> 3D -> Revolve. Here are the settings I used for the stem:

6) And here are the settings for the bowl:

7) You’ll probably have to move the stem around so that it looks like it’s coming out of the bowl and not totally detached. This really is just trial and error (unless you smart folks know of a better way – leave a comment if you do). You have to click and drag with your mouse, then let go of the button so that Illustrator can re-render the object. Repeat until it looks something like this:

8) That’s looking pretty pipe-shaped! All right, go get a coffee before we move on to the Photoshop stage – you’ve earned it.

Got one? Great, now let’s make it look more real. Shift + click both paths to select them within Illustrator and then hit Ctrl/Cmd + C. Start up Photoshop and open a new document. The size of the clipboard image will already be set, but because it’s going in as a vector, you can have it as large as you want. My document size was 700px x 400px (increase the size/DPI if you’re planning to use it for print). Go to Edit -> Paste (or hit Ctrl/Cmd + V) and Photoshop will ask you how you want to import it. Select Smart Object and then OK and it’ll come in with a bounding box around it.

I made mine a little smaller (remember to hold shift to constrain ratios) because I like to have a little breathing room around my images, and then I confirm the transformation.

9) Name this layer ‘Pipe Original’, then duplicate it, lock it and hide it (I like to use non-destructive editing techniques – including keeping originals intact – wherever possible. This is just in case we decide to go back and edit the original pipe in future. Rename the duplicate ‘Pipe’, then right/ctrl + click this layer and select ‘rasterize layer’.

10) Grab your favourite wood texture (I used the 4th one of these free wooden textures) and place it on a layer above the rasterized pipe. Call this ‘wood’ and resize it so that the texture’s scale matches that of the pipe. I also rotated mine slightly so that the grain is parallel to the stem. Alt + click the line between the two layers to apply a clipping mask. Finally, change the ‘Wood’ layer’s blending mode to Multiply. Boom! 3D wood.

11) Select the Wood layer and click on the layer mask icon. Make sure your foreground colour is set to black, then get a big, hard brush – make it big enough that the edge of it follows the curve of the wood nicely. Ctrl/Cmd + click the small image on the Pipe layer within the layers panel to select it, then line it up between roughly half way between the bowl and the tip of the stem and click once. Finally, paint away all the wood between the tip of the stem and edge you just made, like so:

12) Ctrl/cmd+click the Pipe layer icon, then Ctrl/Cmd+click the LAYER MASK image on the on the Wood layer, then press Ctrl/Cmd+shift+i to invert the selection. Create a new layer, then select the fill tool and click once within the selection – it doesn’t matter what color you use. Rename this layer ‘Plastic’.

13) Drop the ‘plastic’ layer’s fill to 0, then double-click the layer to fire up the layer styles. Select gradient overlay and make something similar to this:

Make sure that you set the Blending Mode within the gradient style layer style, NOT on the layer itself, or else it won’t work right.

And there you have it! A realistic, 3D pipe to use anywhere in your illustrations

How To Use Dreamweaver CS5′s New Site-Specific Code Hinting

Simon — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:00:12 +0000

The new version of Adobe’s successful CS series of creative products has just recently launched and Dreamweaver has received an extensive upgrade full of exciting new features for WordPress developers. For a long while, I was content using Notepad++ to do all of my development but, after switching to a Mac, I thought I’d give DreamWeaver another go and this new version has been well worth it.

About Site Specific Code Hinting

This has to be my current favourite new feature. Often times, I’ll find myself developing away from the internet on a local server. The WordPress Codex is a fantastic resource but, unfortunately, it’s all online. Site specific code hints have been a lifesaver. Not only do they save typing time, but they also remind you what arguments a function takes and tell you where in your site tree that function is located.

WordPress’ code is well commented, so sometimes looking up the function in its original file can provide all of the information I need to continue developing (and it sometimes has a lot more information than the Codex). Of course, you could use the site-wide search that has been available in DreamWeaver for many years, but that doesn’t tell me whether or not a function actually exists or whether I’ve just made it up (it happens more than you’d think).

These code hints aren’t limited to WordPress, either. There are defaults available for Joomla and Drupal as well but, better than that, you can actually have it search recursively through your programs and create code hinting from your own functions!

Using Code Hints

Using Site Specific Code Hinting is easy. If you’re looking to use one of the default sets (currently Wordprss, Joomla and Drupal), you first need to set up a site and add a PHP server.

I do all of my development offline on a local testing server using MAMP on the Mac. MAMP stands for Mac Apache MySQL PHP, and is basically an Apache web server in a box. It’s very easy to install, set up and use. Equivalents are available on other platforms – WAMP is available for Windows and you can just install a regular LAMP stack (using apt-get on Ubuntu or Debian, or simply install XAMPP) in Linux

Once that’s done, you’ll need to define your site.

Go to Site -> New Site…
Fill in your site’s name and the location of the files on your hard drive
In ‘Servers’, click the ‘+’ sign to add a new server
Name it whatever you want, then change the Connect using: to ‘Local/Network’
The Server Folder is your web root – usually ‘htdocs’ or ‘www’ – and the installation of your local testing server should have told you where it is on your drive. Put that location in this box.
The Web URL is how you access your site through a browser. This usually defaults to ‘localhost’ (e.g. http://localhost/)

To use Site-Specific Code Hints for a WordPress site, simply go to the Site menu and click Site-Specific Code Hints....

Select WordPress from the Structure: drop-down list and hit OK. Now, open a file and start typing a WordPress function and you should get the hint from that function:

Defining Your Own Sites

It gets better, though. If you’re developing your own site or PHP application, then you can set up your own structure and have it scan through and create code hints for your functions! Let’s take a look.

Here’s a very basic folder structure:

index.php
- includes/functions.php

I’ve defined a nonsense function in the functions.php, and I want to be able to access the hinting while I’m coding away in index.php. Go to Site -> Site-Specific Code Hints... and select New from Blank from the drop-down menu.

Click the ‘+’ sign next to File(s): and then click the folder icon next to File/folder:

Choose the folders you want to include (in this case ‘includes’), and then click Add. If you have nested folders, then click on the folders in the window and make sure that you check ‘recursive’. It will then search through all of the subfolders.

Click OK and it’ll ask you if you want to save it as a custom structure. If it’s a structure you use a lot in different sites, then it’s probably worthwhile – otherwise, just hit cancel.

You should now have access to the defined function and if I go to index.php and start typing the name of the function, I get this:

Of course, there are a bunch of other great new features like Live Preview and the updated CSS panel, but the new code hinting feature is definitely the one I’m using the most. I hope you’ve found this useful – if you have, consider sharing it or subscribing to my RSS feed or to my mailing list.

How We Got Over 8,000 Visits In Less than Three Months

Simon — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:00:22 +0000

The launch of Never Ending Voyage was one of our most successful website launches to date, receiving over 8,000 visits and over 5,000 unique visitors in its first three months. Our site was launched on February 19th 2010 and the image above is a picture of our Analytics account for those initial months (until May 18th 2010).

We launched with one post and a posting schedule of 3 a week (which we managed to keep to until we ran out of internet in Paraguay!) and we’ve been fortunate to have over 470 comments in the four and something months we’ve been live. We’ve also managed to earn some income through affiliate sales which has paid for the hosting costs for all of our sites for the year. Not bad for such a young site!

There are many possible reasons why it has been so successful, but I’d like to share what I think are some of the major contributing factors.

1) Unique Design

Design matters, it’s as simple as that. Well-designed does not have to mean lots of fancy graphics and crazy animations, but it does mean something that is easy to read and navigate and that stands out from the crowd.

We’ve had a lot of very nice things said about the design of the site. I’m sure it gives us an advantage over other travel sites that use free (or even premium) themes on their blogs in that it’s unique and recognisable.

2) Quality Content

My partner wrote a number of very in depth, high quality articles about selling all of our possessions and about saving money for travelling. She provided lots of details on how we did it and what worked and what didn’t and they proved to be very popular, getting shared around the web and ReTweeted on Twitter.

Of course, now the bar has been set we have to maintain that quality!

3) Regular Posting Schedule

We have been religious about updating the blog and I think that it does make a difference in keeping the site talking about – especially in the early days. Perhaps after a certain tipping point, the site will have enough momentum that regular updates are no longer as important, but in the beginning I think it’s important to show your commitment.

4) Social Media

My partner was incredibly active on Twitter from the outset, asking and answering questions and getting involved in the travel community. She has built up a following of nearly 600 people through her constant engagement and, as a result, Twitter remains one of our top 5 traffic sources.

Note that the important part here is engagement. You absolutely have to get involved and it has to be inolvement beyond the spammy ‘come and look at my site’. Chat to people, help them out, ask questions, make conversation – give freely of your time and effort and you’ll get it back in spades.

We also have a Facebook page, a Flickr account, a YouTube account and a Vimeo account to make sure that we’re in as many relevant places as we can actively keep up with.

5) Unique Story

Although I don’t think you need to sell all of your stuff and travel indefinitely to have a successful blog, I do think that having a unique story has helped. Many people go travelling for 6 months or a year, but the longer the travel period the less people there are blogging about it.

It’s been a great start and our visitor numbers continue to grow and there have been many lessons learned from this launch which I’ll be applying to all future launches.

Why You Should Be Tracking Your Conversions

Simon — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:00:26 +0000

Ask me what the most important aspect of a website is and I’m likely to reply ‘Conversion Rate’. I believe it’s even more important than visitor numbers and I would rather have a high Conversion Rate than a high visitor count (of course, having both would be best of all!)

Of course, you need to have a certain number of visitors to begin with, but even 100 visits is enough for you to start to see which aspects of your site are working.

What Is a Conversion Rate

Basically, it’s a number – usually expressed as a percentage – that tells you how many people are doing what you want them to do when they land on your site.

Everyone who has a website wants the people visiting it to do something on it – even if that’s just reading some content. Most actions that users take on your website can be measured (although there is one key thing that can never be measured by Analytics – we’ll come back to that later) and anything that can be measured can have a goal assigned to it.

Your Conversion Rate tells you how successful you are at achieving your goals. The most obvious goals are for eCommerce sites – making sales.

An Example

Bill and Steve both have online shops selling Flaming Death Skull t-shirts. The black shirts, adorned with a fetching bloody skull on fire motif, retail at $30 each. Bill is receiving about 200 visits a month and has a Conversion Rate of 1%. Steve is receiving about 50 visits a month, but has a Conversion Rate of 10%. Who’s doing better?

In terms of traffic, Bill. No question. But basic math shows us that, financially, Steve is doing much, much better, earning $150 a month against Bill’s $60 despite Bill have four times the traffic.

Although I’ve used a financial example here, the priciples can be applied to almost anything. Here are a few other things that could work as goals:

Number of comments
Number of pages visited
Time spent on your site
Mailing list sign ups
Number of repeat visits
Brouchure requests
Number of visits from a particular keyword
Downloads
Uploads
Number of phone enquiries (a little harder to track, but still very possible – for example, by using a website specific phone number)

This Sounds Great – So How Do I Work It Out?

Of course, in order to know if you’re reaching your goals you need a way to measure all of this stuff. Thankfully, the benevolent Google (All Hail!) has bestowed on us humble netizens an incredibly powerful (yet totally free) tool to help us – Google Analytics.

Installing Analytics is straightforward – you need a Google account and, once you’ve signed up, you just drop a small chunk of JavaScript at the foot of every page you want to track (that’s all of them) and then you sit back and let it collect the data. It’s very easy and there are plenty of tutorials out there, but if you need a hand setting it up, feel free to get in touch and we’ll work something.

Now you have your goal and your data, working out your Conversion Rate is simple mathematics. Analytics actually includes quite comprehensive support for goals that works out your Conversion Rate automatically within the program itself, but since that’s a fairly advanced topic we’ll start by working it out for ourselves.

Note: I’ll be writing more in-depth articles about using Google Analytics in future, so sign up to my RSS feed or email mailing list to make sure that you don’t miss them.

Let’s suppose that your goal is to get comments. You can work out your overall Conversion Rate by simply dividing the number of comments (spam comments don’t count!) by the number of visits and multiplying it by a hundred. If you had 4,000 visits in one week (hurrah!) and 200 comments, then your Conversion Rate for comments is ( 200 / 4000 ) * 100 = 5%.

That’s actually a really great rate – figure on 1% being an average rate. Of course, this varies wildly depending on what you’re doing, but as an extremely rough starting point it’s not too bad.

Note that we have barely even scratched the surface of what Analytics is capable of in the right hands. It can tell you where people are coming from, how long they’re staying, what they’re looking at and even what they’re clicking on. You can also have it work out all of your Conversion Rates automatically for up to 20 different goals. The trick, however, is not to focus on the numbers (or metrics) but on what the data tells you (it’s all too easy to get hung up on visitor numbers when, as we’ve seen, that’s not really what counts).

OK, I Know My Conversion Rate – Now What

If it’s a good rate then now is the time to start increasing traffic! Use the methods you’ve been using but increase their effectiveness. For example, if Twitter is getting you good traffic that converts, then increase your Twitter activity. If commenting on other blogs is helping, do that more. If certain keywords are bringing you traffic, schedule a few more posts around those words.

If it’s a poor Conversion Rate, then you need to fix it first! Throwing traffic at a bad (or non-existent) rate is a waste of your time and your bandwidth because no one is engaging with what you’re doing. There are potentially many reasons for this.

We’ll assume that you’ve taken care of the basics – you have a great looking site that functions well and is full of top quality content – but, even still, users aren’t engaging. Unfortunately, we rarely know through Analytics the most important reason why users aren’t getting involved but this doesn’t mean that we can’t do anything about it.

That Important Reason

So what is this mysterious thing that all of this data cannot tell us?

User Intention.

We rarely know why a user is visiting a website. You can guess and conjecture all that you want but the fact is that, until you ask them, you’ll never be totally sure. Even if you ask them, they may not tell you the full story (‘I was on that porn site for research purposes! Honest!’).

There are ways to ask users why they visited your site, such as surveys, but even these won’t often give you the full picture because (apart from the innocent mistruths), the people that generally respond to surveys will be at the emotional extremes – incredibly happy or incredibly annoyed, for example – and may not be representitive of the majority.

So what can you do?

Test. Testing is the best way to find out what is engaging your users. Using your Conversion Rate as your baseline figure for measuring how successful your tests are, you can tweak and change to see what things will help you engage your users more.

For example, if you change the headline on your main sales page, does your Conversion Rate increase or decrease? How about if you change the main picture? What about floating it to the left or the right? Of course, the naysayers will say that they ‘know their users’ and that their users aren’t dumb enough to be swayed to change by the simple placement of a picture.

The savvy, however, will never be arrogant enough to assume and will test to find out for sure (and then they will, very often, be surprised at the results).

Obviously, this is a very brief introduction into the deep and wide world of Analytics and conversion. I’ll be exploring various topics in more detail in future posts, so sign up to my RSS feed or email mailing list to make sure that you don’t miss them!

How To Upgrade To WordPress 3 Safely

Simon — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:00:05 +0000

The recent release of the world’s most popular blogging platform has seen some huge additions, including the ability to add custom Post Types and custom Taxonomies, and support for multiple blogs.

Other improvements include support for custom stylesheets to style the post and page editors. What this means is that what you see in the editor more closely resembles the final product.

To take advantage of these amazing new features, you’ll need to upgrade. Upgrading your current version of WordPress to the new version is pretty easy and all of the core functionality should just continue to work as normal and you shouldn’t lose anything.

However, there have been reports of bugs in some plugins and themes after the new version has been installed, so some care should be taken.

WordPress recommends that you have a complete backup of your site before you attempt to upgrade, just in case the worst happens. In this post, I’m going to walk you through the steps of backing up your WordPress install before upgrading.

Prerequisites

There are a few thing that you should have to hand before starting:

Webhost control panel login details – note that I’m assuming that you’re using CPanel, but the steps should be similar on other providers like Plesk
Database name – this is the name you gave your database when you first setup WordPress. If you’re not sure you can use the CPanel file manager to browse to the root directory and open up the file named ‘wp-config.php’ – the database name is in there.

There are two main parts to a WordPress install, the files and the database. Both should be backed up prior to upgrading. The good news is that, if you’re host is using CPanel, both these jobs are relatively straightforward.

Backing Up Your Database

Note: There are plugins that handle database backups available as well, but I won’t be discussing them here.

1) Log into your CPanel account, browse down to PHPMyAdmin and click the icon to open it up

2) Once you’re in, select your blog’s database by clicking on the database name in the right hand panel (note: you might have more databases listed – make sure you choose the right one!)

3) Click on ‘Export’ along the top menu bar

4) Make sure that all of the tables are highlighted here (click Select All if you’re not sure) :

5) Check the box that says Save As File and then give it a name.

6) Click Go, and the browser ‘Save as…’ dialog will pop up. Save this file somewhere safe – I usually put it on the desktop while I’m working with it.

Backing Up Your Files

If you’re using CPanel, the quickest way to get a copy of all of your files is to backup your home directory.

1) Log into your CPanel account and browse to Backups.

2) Under Download a Home Directory Backup click Home Directory.

3) The browser ‘Save as…’ dialog will open. Again, save this file somewhere safe in case you need it. Note that it may be a very large file – perhaps hundreds of megabytes – depending on how many photos and things you’ve uploaded.

Upgrading WordPress

Now you have a backup of the database and files, you can get on with upgrading.

1) Log in to your WordPress Admin panel.

2) Go to Upgrade

3) click Upgrade Automatically. WordPress will download and install itself.

4) After installation, you might be asked to do a Database upgrade as well. Make sure that you do this.

5) Return to the Upgrade panel, and make sure that you upgrade all of your plugins.

6) You’re done! If everything’s gone smoothly, you should be running the latest version of WordPress. If something’s gone wrong, don’t panic. Go down to ‘Copying Your Upgraded Database’ below and follow the steps.

Disaster Recovery!

If something goes horribly wrong, don’t panic! All you need to do is restore your database and files and you should be all set. Once again, CPanel makes this easy.

Restore Your Files

1) Log into CPanel and click on Backups

2) Click on Restore A Home Directory Backup

3) Remember that entire home directory backup file you downloaded? The really huge one? Click Browse and go find it.

4) Click Upload, then go make yourself a cup of coffee – this might take a while

Restore Your Database

1) Log into CPanel and browse to PHPMyAdmin

2) Select your blog database

3) Check the Check All button to select all of the tables

4) Choose Drop from the drop-down menu labeled With Selected: . It’ll ask you if you’re sure you want to do that. You are (you DO have that backup, right? Triple check before you hit ‘Yes’)

5) Click Import along the top row, then click Browse...

6) Find the database file you downloaded earlier (it should have the file extension ‘.sql’), select it and then hit OK

7) Click Go and wait until you get the confirmation screen – if everything executed successfully, you can now close that down – that’s your database restored.

And that’s it! With any luck, your blog should be back to how it was before the upgrade!

If you still don’t feel very confident and would like some help in updating your WordPress Site, then please get in touch.

Competition – Win a Free Blog Consultation!

Simon — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 03:00:44 +0000

In order to celebrate the launch of my new site, I’d like to offer up to three people the opportunity to have their blog streamlined for FREE!

All you have to do to enter is refer someone to me who is looking for a website, a custom plugin or a consultation and, provided they purchase a service worth more than £200, you will get 2 hours free consultation on your blog or website. It’s that simple.

There are no limits to the number of referrals you can make, so if you are able to refer three people before anyone else then you can claim the full SIX hours of consultation!

Here’s what a previous client had to say about my consultation services:

Simon knows blogging. When I approached him with my ideas, he enthusiastically jumped on board and walked me through the process of hunting a killer domain name, setting up wordpress, creating memorable, well-presented content, and search engine optimization.

After his patient explanations, everything seemed simple! Simon approached both the technical and creative aspects of my project with equal aplomb and skill. In addition, his expertise and passion for online self-publishing was clear to see. But the thing which impressed me the most was Simon’s honest desire to help; I could tell that he was motivated by showing me how to achieve my goals. On top of all this, he is an easy person to work with or just to have a friendly chat. It was truly a pleasure to work with Simon and I will not hesitate to seek his services in the future.

Adam Smith
The consultation will, of course, depend on what you need, but this could include one or more of the following:

If you don’t have a blog, I can advise you on how best to set it up and optimise it.
Search Engine Optimisation – including keyword research and advice on post schedules.
Solving any technical issues that you might be having.
Installing and configuring the best plugins available to make your site faster and more indexable.
Installing and setting up Google Analytics, including goals, so that you know what your visitors are doing.
Setting up and installing your email list using MailChimp so that you can start building your most important asset.

But that’s not all!

I’m currently running a Special Offer for my first TWO new clients – so not only do you benefit, but the friend that you refer benefits too! See my Services page for more details.

To enter, all you have to do is:

Contact someone you know who is looking for a website and tell them about my services.
If they decides to purchase a service worth more than £200, tell them to give me your name and email address before the work is complete and you will be eligible to receive the two free hours consultation.
As soon as the work is complete and the final payment has been received, I will be in touch with you to arrange a convenient time for your consultation

It couldn’t be simpler, but if you have any questions, then feel free to ask them in the comments!

Terms and Conditions

Closing date for entries is Monday, 5th July at 12:00pm GMT.
If the person you refer purchases a service worth over £200, you will receive 2 hours of consultation absolutely free and with NO further obligation.
Consultation will be by either email or Skype or both and will be timed.
You may be required to give access to your blog or your hosting or both. This access can be temporary. If you are unsure how to give temporary access, I can show you but this will form part of the consultation period.
In order to be eligible, the person you refer MUST have given me your name and email address at some point BEFORE final payment has been received and the work has been completed. Any referral claims made after the work has been completed will be ignored.
An entry is considered valid as soon as the person referred has made initial contact about having work done. However, the free consultation will not take place until the work has finished and final payment has been received.
Winners will be on a first-come-first-served basis, with the first three valid entries being eligible for one prize of 2 hours consultation each.
I cannot be held liable for any technical faults or other issues that prevent me from receiving valid entries, whatever the cause and whether it is caused by You, Me or any other outside force.
If the person referred cancels at any point, the entry will be considered null and void and the next valid entry will then be eligible.
You can refer as many people as you wish. Each person referred must mention your name and email address individually.
The Prize cannot be transferred. The Prize is for consultation only and the limits of the consultation are at my discretion. The Prize cannot be exchanged or traded. If you do not wish to take part in the consultation, no alternative prize will be offered.
My decision is final.

Hopefully that’s all clear, but if you do have any questions then feel free to get in touch or leave a comment!

Why WordPress Sites?

Simon — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:00:36 +0000

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a big fan of WordPress. I use it as a base to build all of my websites and here’s why:

1) It’s only good for blogs, right?

I think the upcoming release of WordPress 3 takes it closer to putting that debate to bed with a resounding ‘No’. WordPress 3 allows custom post types and taxonomies, which makes creating different content editing areas for different parts of the site a breeze.

They can also be managed by privileges as well, so if you’re creating a larger corporate site, you could have certain areas editable by certain people. For example, you could give access to your Product Pages just to your product team and access to your Press Releases and Latest News pages just to your marketing team.

The new Navigation menus and custom Taxonomies also allow you to compartmentalise your site a lot more, taking it away from the traditional ‘Blog Stream’ post format and giving you a lot more flexibility with how you arrange your own site.

2) Easy to update

Although all these custom post types and taxonomies sound complicated, WordPress has a well-designed Content Management System that is highly customisable. This makes updating and editing your sites very easy and means that you’re not having to pay someone to do it for you.

3) Fully extensible

The choice of plugins to extend WordPress’ abilities is phenomenal. Some of my favourites include Headspace 2 for SEO, Google XML sitemaps and W3 Total Cache. I also like Yet Another Related Posts Plugin and Popularity Contest for creating the ‘Most Popular’ and ‘Related Posts’ sections of websites.

4) Search Engine Friendly

It is widely recognised that WordPress is, with a little preliminary tweaking, highly optimised straight out of the box and, with a few extra plugins and a little more tweaking, it can be made into the kind of site that the Search Engines simply adore.

And because of it’s well designed interface, continuing to maintain your Search Engine Optimisation campaigns couldn’t be easier.

5) It’s Free

WordPress is an Open-Source platform that is entirely free to download and use with little restriction.

So those are my top five reasons why WordPress is awesome. If you’re interested in having a custom wordpress site or plugin built, get in touch.