Following on from my post yesterday (wow – 2 posts in 2 days, a record for me) about the joys of WordPress, I came across a great post at Voosh Themes, regarding how to implement SEO correctly on your WordPress blog.

Now, personally, I find SEO to be dull as dishwater, but it is an essential element for all web designers and is something not to be ignored. I think most (if not all) web designers would agree. We’re artists (!), why should we get involved in SEO?

Well, if a site isn’t optimised correctly, who’s going to see it? There’s no point in building a beautiful site if it just sits in some obscure part of the web where nobody but the client and the designer can find it. Yes, the client has some responsibility in marketing the site correctly, but as the designer, there is a responsibility to ensure that the site has a modicum of SEO before the site goes live.

This includes the following:

1. Indexing the site on all major Search Engines
2. Ensuring all code is valid
3. Ensuring that all relevant meta tags (<title>, <description>, etc) contain the correct information

Obviously, this is very basic SEO and won’t get a site on to the first page of Google, but we have to start somewhere.

Don’t ignore SEO. It may bore you rigid, but it is a necessity. Unfortunately.

I’m currently working on a custom WordPress template, mainly to power this site, but also to extend my WordPressing skills. I’m a big WordPress fan and it has come a long way since the its first iteration, when it was just a lowly blogging framework, battling it out with Blogger.com and Typepad for the spoils of the (then) newly discovered world of blogging.

Now, WordPress is an extremely powerful tool that can be used for a huge range of needs – from CMS’s to E-commerce, WordPress is THE essential web-designers tool (IMHO). And the best thing about WordPress? It’s open source which means it’s free. Yes, that’s right, I said FREE. Of course, you can pay for themes, templates, widgets etc but WP is simple enough for anyone, and I mean anyone, to get a site up and running within minutes.

Of course, if you think that this might be too much for you, or you don’t have enough time, then you could always turn to a WordPress developer (like me!) and get them to do all the hard work for you.

Anyway, check back soon for more details on the custom theme….

So, after about a million years, I’ve finally settled on a theme for site. I was going to build my own theme, but time is against me and so I’ve plumped for a ready made theme. I’ll be customising it as I go and I will try and keep it updated more often. But then I say that all the time.

Much more work on at the moment, 4 sites in the pipeline and I’m aiming to get them live by the end of this month, all being well.

I’ll keep you updated.

Here’s a fantastic list of WordPress hacks, workarounds and general all round goodness, compiled by Jeff Starr over at Perishable Press.

I’m currently creating my first custom WordPress theme and this list will be invaluable to me. With WordPress, knowledge is definitely power as you only need to be armed with a little bit of coding, and you can create some amazing themes and plugins.

I’ll keep you updated on how my theme progresses….