01. Optimized code for maintainability & indexability

Invest time (and research if necessary) in writing clean code. Doing so will reduce the amount of time wasted on debugging, ensure browser consistency & compatibility, allow for search engines to crawl your pages more effectively, and save time (no wasted time if code is easy to traverse and you know where everything is).

• W3 Schools – Resource for anyone interested in dropping all-in-one editors like Dreamweaver. Online tutorials & references.
• Break or prevent bad habit(s) – plain text editors: BBEdit (Mac), TextMate (Mac), or Notepad++ (Win).

02. Code indexability taken a little further – SEO

There is a lot of chatter concerning "search engine optimization". The SEO goal is to maximize traffic referral from search engines. Fortunately, WordPress – by default – provides a lot of the basics to ensure that search engines see your content. Yoast put together a thorough guide on WordPress SEO for reference.

• All in One SEO Pack (plugin) – Automatically generates meta tags and titles.
• Google XML Sitemaps (plugin) – everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.
• Google Webmaster Central – Better understand how Google works + tools to optimize your site.

Recommendation for code organization in templates: (1) header / navigation, (2) main content, (3) secondary nav + extras.

03. Simplify WordPress site administration

The WordPress admin dashboard works well when you’re in front of a computer. But how about when you’re mobile? Rather than sitting down at a Hotspot, why not simplify the management of your site? It’s all about rich mobile handsets and mobile internet.

• Clean Notifications (plugin) – Mike Davidson contributes his solution to heavy comment moderation emails. Notifications are reformatted with a reduced visual footprint.
• iPhone / Mobile Admin (plugin) – Together with Clean Notifications, mobile users can now manage their WordPress site(s) from their back pocket.
• WordPress for iPhone – Write posts, upload photos, and edit from your iPhone. Still no comment moderation though.
• Moderator (plugin + desktop) – A WordPress plugin + Adobe AIR desktop app for that brings comment moderation to your computer desktop via Blogging Pro.

04. Improve the built in WordPress search bar

For some, the integrated search feature in WordPress falls short. By default, search queries are limited to posts with no support for booleans or indexing pages. The resolution / solution (depending on how you look at it) requires installing plugins or opting to use an external search service to index content.

• Search Everything (plugin) – Picking up where WordPress left off, Search Everything offers configuration options to index pages, categories, tags, drafts, excerpts, custom fields, and attachments.
• Google Custom Search – Use to replace or supplement the existing WordPress search. The power of Google.. Without the aesthetic coherence.
• Lijit (plugin) – Search powered by Google + the addition of providing your "other" social sites as search results. E.g. a query for baseball on your WordPress site will display results from your blog and photos tagged baseball on your Flickr account. Also lacks visual coherence with your design – results are displayed as an overlay.

05. Understand traffic

Analytics data is no longer for statistics junkies. Understanding your visitors is vital to the growth and success of your website. Compare traffic figures prior to and after the implementation of new featured content containers, advertising links, design changes, and or content focus. Understand where readers are coming from, know how long they’re staying, and see where they’re going. Are visitors landing on your home page and promptly leaving? Or, are they reading and exploring older content? Questions like these can be answered by collecting and understanding visitor data.

• Mint – Beautiful analytics package + extensions via Peppers.
• Google Analytics + Google Analytics for WordPress (plugin) – Google Analytics cann be run sans plugin but without loses the ability to track outbound links from within posts, comment author links, links within comments, blogroll links and more.
• Crazy Egg – User behavior tracking and visualization.

06. Promote similar, related, or completely random content

Congratulations, you have fresh eyes on your site. Why not try and lead your new visitor into the archives to continue reading?

• The content "explore" block – Utilize built in WordPress functions to promote related content to a visitor. Link to content which shares similar categories and tags.
• WordPress Related Posts (plugin) – This plugin goes beyond using tags as links to similar content. Add a list of related posts to your RSS feed, or anywhere else in your template to link with titles.
• Random Redirect (plugin) – Create an attractive button to click + this plugin to link to random posts in your archives.

07. Improve the discussion

Visitors are more inclined to explore content which has corresponding comment activity. The current iteration of WordPress supports Gravatars by default. Custom avatars coupled with select plugins and visual accoutrements transform comments into a valuable aspect of a published article.

• Subscribe to Comments (plugin) – At some point or another, we have all contributed to a discussion and never gone back to check for a reply or rebuttal. Subscribe to comments provides visitors with an option to follow a comment conversation from their email inbox.
• DISQUS (plugin) – A comment aggregation service with support for threaded replies. A direct replacement for the standard WordPress comments backend.

08. Combat spam

As of this post, the site has has over 5,500 comments / trackbacks. A small percentage in contrast to the number of spam filling up the moderation queue. WordPress ships with Akismet by default, but there are recommendations.

• Generally spam tends to offer up a nice collection of links mixed in with random garbage. For added moderation protection, reduce the number of permitted links in comments. Settings > Discussion > Comment Moderation – "Hold a comment in the queue if it contains 2 or more links". Change 2 to 1 if you’re willing to make sure safe comments are erroneously left in the queue.
• Defensio (plugin) – Similar features as Akismet. A spam filtering service which cross references flagged comments against a database of known spam.
• Postable (pre-comment) – If you anticipate discussions which might include code examples from readers, provide a link to Postable which converts code into a blog comment friendly format.

09. Offer more opportunities to connect & meet readers

The web is social. Providing the means for readers to connect and interact with you outside of your blog creates a stickiness that may translate into increased traffic. Use your WordPress site as a platform to represent your online footprint.

• Brightkite Location (plugin) – Fire Eagle and Twitter integrated Brightkite lets users update their status + whereabouts in real-time. Brightkite Location adds your most recent check-in to your site (links to your Brightkite profile).
• Twitter Tools (plugin) – two way integration of Twitter. Pulls a digest of Tweets down as a blog post, or pushes Tweets to the Twitter service.
• ShareThis – Provides readers with a myriad of options to push your content to their favorite social services.
• SimpleLife (plugin) – A "lifestream" of your social activities – Last.fm, Facebook, Delicious, Flickr, and more.

10. Reduce load times, prepare for traffic

Whether you’re planning a site for constant high traffic or throwing a site together for friends & family, WordPress performance plugins will improve load times and reduce server resource requirements – which is never a bad thing.

• What is web caching and why is it important? – Wikipedia
• WP Super Cache (plugin) & WP Cache (plugin) – WordPress caching benchmark results for both vs. a vanilla WordPress install.
• Paged Comments (plugin) – Technically, not a performance plugin. However, paged comments will reduce page load time for articles which attract hundreds of comments. Example post with 382 comments.

What do you generally do after a vanilla WordPress install? [digg this]

UPDATE 10/26: RayL re-confirms the advantage of mapping your client-side Sent, Drafts, & Trash with server-side Gmail labels – no duplicate labels created in Gmail by your email client(s). Experiment with Gmail IMAP setup; if necessary reference the Google Group thread below.

UPDATE 10/25: If you start seeing duplicates, check this Google Group thread. Google may have made updates to Gmail IMAP access. YMMV.

The latest news on the street is that Google is slowly rolling out a much anticipated feature – IMAP support. If you point your browser to Gmail Help documentation outlining the steps necessary to get your mail clients setup for IMAP, you’ll soon realize the the directions are the bare minimum. It is recommended that you follow the directions from start to finish, but the actual configuration does not stop there.

Take a look at both IMAP support pages for Apple Mail and the iPhone. Both share similar steps including:

• Incoming Server: imap.gmail.com
• Outgoing Server: smtp.gmail.com
• Authentication: email@gmail.com + email password
• ‘Use secure Socket Layer (SSL)’
• Ports: 587 Outgoing, 993 Incoming

There is nothing wrong with leaving your email clients as-is exactly as the Gmail Help documents instruct. Unfortunately, you will start to see a little inconsistency between your email clients and your Gmail web interface.

Diligent Gmail "labelers" will soon discover that those handy "tags" that they had been assigning to emails are now recognized as Folders in their email client(s). Your email clients will sync this Folders without a problem. In order to ensure your Trashed, Sent, Drafts, and Junk mail messages are sorted properly between your iPhone, Apple Mail, and Gmail’s webmail interface, you will need to add a few more steps to the initial setup instructions offered by Google.

Properly sort Drafts, Deleted, and Sent mail on the iPhone

Assuming that you have followed the iPhone IMAP setup instructions, it is now time to properly configure your mobile Mail client so that Sent Mail, Deleted Mail, Drafts, and Junk are reflected properly after syncing back between the webmail client and any other desktop clients you may have.

1. Open ‘Settings’ > ‘Mail’ > [Your Gmail IMAP account] > ‘Advanced’
2. Select ‘Drafts Mailbox’ > ‘On the Server’ > ‘[Gmail] Drafts’. Return to the ‘Advanced’ view.
3. Select ‘Sent Mailbox’ > ‘On the Server’ > ‘[Gmail] Sent Mail’. Return to the ‘Advanced’ view.
4. Select ‘Deleted Mailbox’ > ‘On the Server’ > ‘[Gmail] Trash’. Return to the ‘Advanced’ view.

Any emails sent from your iPhone will appear in Gmail’s ‘Sent’ view, any saved drafts saved on your iPhone will appear in Gmail’s ‘Drafts’ view, and any deleted messages will be reflected in Gmail’s ‘Trash’ view.

Properly sort Drafts, Deleted, and Sent mail in Apple Mail

Similar steps must be taken to ensure that any emails sent, saved as drafts, or deleted are properly identified by Gmail’s servers. After completing the IMAP setup steps for Apple Mail, instructing Mail is a few simple clicks away. Once your Gmail IMAP account is added to Mail, you’ll notice your [Gmail account] in the left sidebar.

1. Highlight ‘[Gmail] Sent Mail’ in the sidebar and select ‘Mailbox’ (menu bar) > ‘Use This Mailbox For’ > ‘Sent’.
2. Highlight ‘[Gmail] Drafts’ in the sidebar and select ‘Mailbox’ (menu bar) > ‘Use This Mailbox For’ > ‘Drafts’
3. Highlight ‘[Gmail] Trash’ in the sidebar and select ‘Mailbox’ (menu bar) > ‘Use This Mailbox For’ > ‘Trash’
4. Highlight ‘[Gmail] Spam’ in the sidebar and select ‘Mailbox’ (menu bar) > ‘Use This Mailbox For’ > ‘Junk’

Once properly configured, managing email from Apple Mail or the iPhone will be no different from managing emails within the Gmail web client – sent, drafts, trash, and junk properly sorted between your various email clients and web interface. [Digg this]

IMAP Gmail gems for Apple Mail & iPhone

I am certain that Gmail’s IMAP documentation is far from complete. The following will serve as a running list of details I have noticed – found by sharp readers or myself – not yet included in the Help pages.

• Flagging messages in Apple Mail (CMD+SHIFT+L) is the same as adding a Star to a message in Gmail. Try it out for yourself. Flag a message in Mail and check your Gmail account online. The same message magically appears as ‘Starred’.
• In order to "label" messages multiple times from within Apple Mail or the iPhone, you must copy the message(s) to each respective ‘Folder’ which corresponds with your Gmail Label. I think it’s time to move back to the idea of Folders as opposed to Labels.
• If you wish to Archive mail from your iPhone, simply move the message to ‘[Gmail] All Mail’.
• gec added this comment: "when you delete something from a folder other than trash, the message will effectively be archived, and not deleted. that means, the label corresponding to the folder you are deleting it from will be removed. if however you *move* it to Trash you will remove all labels assigned to it. bad for filter rules."
• Jonathan added this tip: "if you’d like to use a custom from address when sending from iPhone (not your Gmail address) just pop it in the Email Address field (not the authentication fields) and it will use that address instead of your Gmail."
• Want to send mail as a different email address on a case-by-case basis with Apple Mail? Follow the directions outlined in this comment. YMMV
• MSK added: "if you want to get rid of that extra [Gmail] hierarchy. Go in to your advanced email settings and for ‘IMAP Path Prefix’ type [Gmail] now go back and reassign your Sent, Deleted, and Draft mail boxes, if needed."

Similar rules apply for any other IMAP desktop or mobile client that you might be using. In order to prevent unnecessary labels from being created during synchronization, make sure that your Sent, Drafts, Junk, and Trash Mailboxes are configured properly.

Business Email Solutions

If you like to have your email on the go you’ll love the freedom that comes with an outlook exchange server. When you use intermedia as your email hosting solution you can access your email from any internet connected windows device, and take care of business on the road!

Since registering 5ThirtyOne.com with DreamHost, I’ve despised the SquirrelMail interface. By forwarding all incoming mail to a personal account, I’ve managed to bypass any unnecessary interaction with the interface. While some users may prefer the simplicity and stark layout options, I prefer the familiar interface of my personal Gmail account. Fortunately, Google Hosted dropped an invite allowing me to register and setup 5ThirtyOne for the hosted [Gmail] service. I’ll walk through the painless transfer [DreamHost to Google], basic customizations, and final thoughts.

Some of the following may bore you. For that reason I’ve provided a mini index to navigate:

• Introduction – Yes! No different from Gmail!!
• Transfer – Great, so how do I get my domain email?
• Customize – Very basic, but subtle details work!
• Administrating – I am root!
• Thoughts – Kiss Squirrel good bye

Welcome to Google Hosted

Before going willy-nilly with the idea of Google hosted email, understand that standard accounts are no different from personal Gmail accounts. Aside from the custom logo and the “powered by Google” moved to the footer, the average user wouldn’t tell the difference. Wait, I guess the new username@5thirtyone.com in the top right corner is different. Rather than highlighting the similarities, a brief run through of the differences will suffice.

• No tabbed interface for jumping between your hosted Gmail account and Google Calendars.
• Hosted Gmail account credentials do not work with Google services that require a ‘Google Account’.
• Administrative access can be granted to normal accounts on a per user basis.
• No option for invites. [Might have been a sweet feature to pass out hosted accounts.]

Again, aside from a few minor details, Hosted accounts are really no different than general Gmail accounts.

So I’m hosted, now what?

So you’ve managed to get your foot in the door and have the Hosted Email ‘Dashboard’ up on your screen. Now what? To the person thinking “duh, redirect your domain email to Google Hosted” you are correct! No reason to get squirmy here. The process is quite simple [aided with the necessary documentation from Google of course].

The key to a smooth transition is locating your Mail Exchange (MX) settings (usually under ‘Mail’ settings, ‘DNS Management’, ‘Mail Server Configuration’, or ‘Name Server Management’.). For DreamHost users navigate to DreamHost Control Panel > Mail > MX. Click ‘Edit’ next to your primary domain after which you will be presented with a screen similar to the one below. Notice the warning message? Incorrect values will prevent email from landing in your account.

As documented by Google, enter the correct Mail Exchange values for your account which can be found on the Dashboard MX Records page. Note: Google states that the transfer may take up to 1 business day for the MX settings to go into effect. Personally, received mail began landing in the inbox almost immediately. The ability to send mail may take longer.

Subtle customizations go a long way

While you’re sitting around waiting for full account functionality, why not familiarize yourself with the ‘Domain Settings’ [read customizations]?

Very basic customizing options which allow Google to retain much of minimalism familiarity of Gmail while allowing domains to accentuate the smallest detail(s). Negligible details to some, while just enough for others:

• General Information: Your domain name and contact information [for situations when users need an admin contact].
• Sign in page: Customize the sign in box background and border colors.
• User your own fancy logo: Probably the best part of customizing. Create your own 149 x 59 pixel graphic.
• Advanced settings: These settings rely heavily on your Mail Exchange settings. Gmail ‘Chat’ and ‘Catch-all’. Chat amongst fellow Hosted Email users. In addition, have all emails sent to your domain without an actual address caught by your admin address.

Basic indeed right? A bit of a change from the standard Gmail interface.

I am root – Gmail Admin

Google Hosted Email administrators have a great set of options for keeping domain email accounts in check.

• Create users: Self explanatory. Create individual accounts for users. Specify first name, last, address@domain.com, and assign a specific password or generate a random password for users to change after their initial login.
• Admin rights: Assign administrative rights to select users. Only do this for trusted users.
• Nicknames: Assign additional addresses to a single user. Example: Messages addressed to y@domain.com and u@domain.com can be configured to land within z@domain.com.
• Mailing lists: Simple and effective method for creating mass mailing lists for your domain. Create a mailing list address and add select users.
• Monitor: Monitor email account quotas and last user logins.

Personal thoughts on Google Hosted

All the features and functionality of a standard Gmail account wrapped in a nice “custom” package. My personal score pitting the two against each other:

• Paid hosting vs. Google Hosted: +1 Non-Google.
  Security and privacy wise, an included email or dedicated email host, is a far wiser choice. No peaking bots scanning emails for targeted text ads and the like. As my good friend from UNEASY put it: [using Google] is like letting someone always look in your bedroom window.
• Interface & intuitiveness: +1 Google
  Once you familiarize yourself with the standard keyboard shortcuts [or Gmail Macros GM userscript], there’s really no going back to something like SquirrelMail. Keyboard shortcuts, filters, and labels aside, with the power of Google search under the hood, is a comparison of SquirrelMail even necessary?
• Spam filtering: +1 Google
  Who’s going to deny the fact that Gmail’s Spam filters are one of the toughest in the industry? As stated earlier, emails sent to my domain were configured to forward to my personal account. Despite having DH’s built in spam & virus filter active, spam messages continued to slip through. Thankfully Gmail’s spam filter cleaned up the mess that DH filters dropped.
• User account quotas: +1 non-Google
  In all reality, giant mail box quotas and a users ability to maximize data usage are negligible topics for casual email users. However, because this is a comparison, the point goes to non-Google hosted email for the simple reason that hosted plans usually allow administrators to specify a users email size. Google Hosted are limited to a paltry 2GB.
• Playing all might root: +1 Google
  Setting up separate users with Google Hosted is a breeze. Specify a users name, email address, and assign a random password. Period. No unnecessary clicks, or drop down menus. Remember the username limit for standard Gmail accounts? Non-existent. You can create single letter / numeral accounts like z@domainname.com.
• POP usage and bandwidth: +1 Google
  Similar to standard Gmail users, Google Hosted users have POP access for retrieving mail. Bandwidth usage due to file retrieval may not dent most users bandwidth allotment, but every MB counts right? Why utilize your own bandwidth when the stuff grows on trees on the Googleplex farm?

Google wins 4 to 2 in my book. How will Google Hosted score for you? Where do you stand on Google Hosted email and would you switch if the opportunity presented itself? If you’re interested in adding the service to your domain, check the Google Hosted page for instructions. [Digg it!]

Business Email Solutions

Don’t let hosting woes slow down your business. Get a business email account set up with outlook exchange and let someone else handle the email headaches. Set up a small business email account with intermedia today!