Every now and again we’re going to feature a site we come across that we just happen to love, and of course is built on WordPress! Then we’ll give you a run down of why we think the site works
So, to kick off, I’d like to draw your attention to the website of top notch DJ/music collector and broadcaster Gilles Peterson. Not only is the site a beautiful piece of WordPress coding, its also built on our favorite framework, THESIS. I’ve listened to Gilles’ stuff off and on for some time and i can especially recommend the podcasts – great sounds and also fun informative interviews -such as the one below:
http://www.gillespetersonworldwide.com/2009/09/joels-joints-vol-1/
By the way – you’ll notice the podcasts are also fueled by the WordPress engine. Sure, you can go and download them on itunes, but the great part is, this is an EASY way to make the content instantly available to
listeners.
Anyway, lets get on to the site critique shall we? I included a screen shot of the site to easilyreference the elements of this thesis build that i particularly think stand out on this site, so lets roll!
Clean Logotype: Easy on the eyes, gets the message across the moment a visitor hits the site.- Simple, effective “Follow me” Twitter badge: It’s such a simple thing to incorporate and will doubtless bring Gilles more twitter page views and follows, possibly even as many as go through the Twitter stream boxes below.(Hmmm, wonder if they tagged their Analytics to see which link gets more Twitter page views – I would, but then I’m just that kinda person)
- Well designed menu navigation: Easy to identify the active page, and the way the type gets chunkier when you hover over it, again simple and effective use of the hover over state.
- Headline Font Replacement: Through various plugins (We like CUFON personally), you can now easily change out your site headlines to almost any typeface you want. You just type your article headlines in the WP admin editor as usual and the plugin changes them to images. BUT! the best part of a good font replacement plugin is, not only do your viewers get some nice eye candy on the pages, you won’t lose any SEO “points” on switching out the headlines. Well worth the extra time to set this effect up if you want your headlines to stand out. Bundle it with a clean stylish font (like papyrus or Comic Sans – or not!) and your pages will look tres stylish.Note: We used this on Smilayproperties.com, and the font just completes the overall look of the site so much more than the standard Arial/Verdana/Times typefaces ever could!
- Perfect sizing of in post video: This is one of these things that again doesn’t take much work, but looks so sharp on your site. Also I love that the video is streaming from Vimeo.com – their player looks so much more “pro” than youtube. Now, whether you use Youtube, Vimeo or some other video host is purely your own choice. There’s some SEO benefit to hosting through youtube, but its less than it used to be. A lot of where you end up hosting that video is going to be down to your goals with using video on the site in the first place. (Which in itself could be a whole blog post)
- Magazine style “Teasers”: If you have a lot of content on your “blog” section (Remember -you can call it whatever you want!), then a treatment like this could benefit your readership stats. Gilles has only the visuals and the headline to draw you to the story, which if you have a keen eye for a great headline and choosing a good visual to go with it, could really be a good way to go. but unfortunately we’re not all so clever -so maybe you want to add a compelling sentence or two before the read more tag.Hint: “read more’ tags on a blog can be a great way of looking into which types of article people like best on your site. Think about it: if you just post all your content in the main blog page, your stats show lots of eyeballs on that page, and hopefully lots of juicy page time, but what are they liking, what are they hating? Obviously commenting gives you some insight into that, but if you actually give people a compelling opening to your article and throw a ‘read more” tag in – you can see if people like that content and how long they spend reading it, etc
- Easy to find and read Twitter streams: Forget about finding the coolest looking widget from a 3rd party site – you want your readers to see what you’re talking about, not the eye-candy. Ideally you want them to click through and follow you because you are somewhat credible on Twitter, not because you went to “widgets.com” and added some flash driven thingy, which incidentally is more load on your site and not as good for your SEO anyways. When it comes to your Twitter stream on your site – as Gilles’ site shows, simple is best!
Lastly : take a look at the footer – bloody genius! Every possible follow you could need in one cleanly laid out box. (Again simple enough to do in Thesis!) personally speaking I’d have had the newsletter signup in the sidebar of the site somewhere too – seems like you’re reducing the amount of newsletter sign ups by limiting the capture box to only the footer, but again, thats personal preference more than anythingelse. (Again – thats something you could tag in your analytics – maybe try a sign up box in different locations to see where people click best…)
And also a big shout out is due to Electric Studio, the creators of this nice easy to use WordPress/Thesis combo. The write up on the site credits page is a great little simple publicity piece and much more subtle than a big old “created by” badge slapped in the site footer. Their work is actually all pretty nice looking, if you want to work with them be our guess, because I doubt we’re in the same price bracket or have the same “chaosophy” as they do anyway.
