Following a question from someone in the Content Marketing Academy Membership Community about making a WordPress photo collage, I decided to investigate what plugins were on offer to do the job. I tested out 5 plugins, all free from WordPress.org. They were: Easy Image Collage Jetpack (Tiled Galleries Module) Collage Gallery H5P Wow Mood Board […]
The Amazing Disappearing & Reappearing Website Phone Numbers!
I was contacted this week by one of my clients, Jan Southern, with a strange problem. She’d just updated her site and added large hero images to some pages. Some white text was overlaid on the images, including her phone number. The issue was that the phone number didn’t show up properly on iPad and iPhone. […]
Accessibility Scotland: a new event for web accessibility professionals
Last Friday I attended the first Accessibility Scotland conference in Edinburgh. There were 7 speakers, all talking about different aspects of their work as web accessibility professionals. Here’s my review of the day. Mark Palmer Mark spoke about his 10 years in the accessibility field. In that time he’s seen the focus move from fear […]
How To Design A Frustrating Online Store Experience
The other day, I went to help my mum complete a transaction online. The objective was simple: buy an event ticket. It turned out to be far more complex than I imagined, and I soon ended up as frustrated as she did. Here’s my list of what went wrong, and how it could have been […]
What is the best WordPress permalink structure for SEO?
Updated 14 May 2018. When I install WordPress on a site, one of the first things I do is set the permalink structure. What are permalinks? A WordPress permalink is the URL generated for new posts or pages on your site. The name comes from a merging of the words “permanent link”. Permalinks always start […]
How To Add A New Twenty Sixteen Footer Menu
Twenty Sixteen is a popular WordPress theme, but it doesn’t have all the features that people want. One of the issues is with the Social Links menu in the footer: it’s only suitable to add links to social media profiles. Any other links added to this menu will show up as a strange symbol because […]
How To Tell If Your Blog Comments Are Spam
If you’ve blogged for any length of time, you’ll have soon discovered that spam comments are a nuisance. If you use self-hosted WordPress, you can deter spam by: Configuring appropriate options in Settings > Discussion. Using an anti-spam comment plugin. Examples are Akismet, Antispam Bee and CleanTalk. But sometimes spam can slip through, or comments can […]
wA11y – The Web Accessibility Toolbox WordPress Plugin
The wA11y plugin consists of tools to check and correct your WordPress site’s accessibility. (The name is derived from a11y, the shorthand way of writing accessibility, with “w” representing Web.) The plugin was developed by Rachel Cherry, a software engineer formerly at Disney Interactive and accessibility advocate. I decided to give wA11y a spin to see what […]
Want a simple & powerful way to show a grid display of posts?
A grid display of posts – that sounds cool… I’ve reviewed WordPress blog layout plugins before and found them a little clunky. They let you show a grid display of posts in WordPress. Themes sometimes have this built-in, but often they don’t. I’ve now discovered a new plugin to do the job and think it’s […]
The Importance of WordPress alt text for Accessibility and SEO
Updated 24 January 2017. What is alt text and what is it for? Alt text is short for alternative text. It’s a short textual description of the content of an image. People who are visually impaired can’t view any images on a page, so the alt text describes the images to them. The page content including […]