WORDPRESS.COM
Take an existing website that includes significant user transactions. Diagram the site’s information flow, with particular attention given to user management – login, passwords and preferences. Critique the way the site handles that flow: how could it be improved? Compare the site’s approaches with alternatives used by similar sites and explore why they might have made the decisions they did.
WORDPRESS.com
I have chosen WORDPRESS.COM as the page I will be critiquing on its information flow.
WordPress.com has a lot of pages insides pages, with a lot of subheadings. All of the pages get opened in the same window, so if you need to look at a few subheadings, there aren’t a lot of windows opened at the bottom of your page. The majority of pages link back to the home page (except for the “Wordpress for ipod” page. The page doesn’t have a link back to the wordpress home page, which I found unusual.)
WordPress has a lot of information on their site, and in some cases there are a few ways to get to that information – for example: on the home page, there is a tab for Blog, and a section in the first column about the blog as well, giving you two variations of how to get to that page.
The process to sign up is very straight forward and easy to understand. It only takes a few minutes to sign up, and there is even a strength password protector – stating whether or not it would be easy to hack into your account. This is a great idea, and would make people think otherwise about the passwords they are entering.
The site has a neat flow to it, having things in categories which then in turn have sub-categories if needed. For a site that has a lot of information, it could be confusing if you were a first time viewer, but once you have been on the site for a few minutes, the feel of the site becomes familiar and distinguishable. The amount of words on the home page can be daunting – I was confused and hesitant about using this site to begin with, but that was due to the fact that I was unsure of how a blog worked. I didn’t understand that words, script, typography etc had so much meaning to this site – but now that I understand that, the site doesn’t seem wordy at all.
The layout has a clean look to it. There are three columns which are clearly labelled and have extra links to click on to enter further.
You can find information on one thing just by one quick movement of clicking the tag in the tags column.
The most popular blogs are right in front of you, so generally you might find something that interests you as soon as you log into the site.
You can bring other webpages into your blog as widgets, such as twitter.
HOME PAGE – (index page)
There are 6 tabs at the top to indicate where you might need to go.
Home, Signup, Features, Blog, Our story, Advanced
• The header has the WordPress logo and type on the left-hand side, and if you click on it, you are directly taken to the same index page, but the curser is not in the username section to encourage the viewer to either signup or sign in. • There is a search field on the right-hand side to search for blogs throughout the wordpress.com site.
• There is a border underneath the header telling you to “Express yourself. Start a blog” and “sign up now!” The “sign up now” button is clearly visible, which also gives you options to see the free features in the block surrounding the sign up button. The block tells you what wordpress entails as a free blog space, and gives you the option to sign up today on that page instead of having to go back to the home page.
• WordPress tells you how many bloggers there are, how many posts have been made, and how many words that were written today – which I found quite interesting.
• The index page is broken up into 3 columns.
First column
• Section for Username and password
• You have the option to click ‘Remember me’ if you want your username and password remembered on the computer you are on.
• ‘Lost your password?’ link.
• ‘From our blog’ – Has info from wordpress’ blog – There is also a tab at the top to get to it also, so they are making sure you look at the page.
Second column
• ‘Hawt Post’ and ‘Hot community posts’– Random blogs that are very popular.
• ‘Hot VIP posts’ –Blog of the day highlights the most popular content on wordpress.com – If you click on the arrow, you are taken to the page that has multiple posts that people have visited the most. There are subheadings on this page also –
1. Top blogs, The most popular wordpress.com blogs are ranked here according to a special formula
2. Top posts The most popular wordpress.com posts are ranked here according to a special formula
3. Growing blogs – gained the most popularity recently
4. Archives – Archives for each month on top posts, top blogs and growing blogs.
5. About. – How blog of the day works
“We count up the visitors to all public blogs and posts in a rolling 24-hour period. No personally identifiable information is stored. Several times throughout the day, we summarize all of this data in different ways to produce lists of blogs and posts that might be interesting.
BOTD does not use numbers shown on the Blog Stats page of your Dashboard. Some page views are excluded for various reasons. We use proprietary formulae to calculate the popularity of a site.”
If you click on either the ‘Hawt post’, the ‘Hot VIP Posts’ or the ‘Hot Community Posts’, you are taken to the subheadings page.”
“We count up the visitors to all public blogs and posts in a rolling 24-hour period. No personally identifiable information is stored. Several times throughout the day, we summarize all of this data in different ways to produce lists of blogs and posts that might be interesting.
BOTD does not use numbers shown on the Blog Stats page of your Dashboard. Some page views are excluded for various reasons. We use proprietary formulae to calculate the popularity of a site.”
If you click on either the ‘Hawt post’, the ‘Hot VIP Posts’ or the ‘Hot Community Posts’, you are taken to the subheadings page.”
Third column
• ‘Right Now in Tags’ – Tags that are most popular
• Buttons for ‘WordPress for iphone’ and ‘wordpress.tv – your visual guide’
‘Wordpress for iphone’ is the only iphone app that let’s you write posts, upload photos, edit pages, and manage comments on your blog from your iphone or ipod touch. This is another page with 6 tabs at the top of the page. Download, Development, Blog, Screenshots, FAQ, Forums.
1. Download – Connects to the itunes store, opens itunes on your computer.
2. Development – WordPress for iphone is an open source project, which means anyone can play a part in its development. Gives you details on the development – headings are: Source code, Getting involved, Roadmap, and credits.
3. Blog – Newest versions to be uploaded, bugs that may in the new versions – blogs that are involving the iphone and its updates.
4. Screenshots – Examples of the application of wordpress on the iphone.
5. FAQ – Frequently asked questions regarding wordpress on the iphone.
6. Forums – Forums to discuss anything to do with wordpress on the iphone. You need to be logged in to make a post.
There’s a link at the bottom on the right-hand site which takes you to the itunes site to download the application or get information – The same as in the download tab.
There is no link to get to the wordpress home page however!
‘wordpress.tv – your visual guide’ is your visual resource for all things wordpress. This is another page with 5 tabs at the top of the page. Home, WordCampTV, How-To, Blog and Contact.
1. Home – A selection of the most popular videos – Latest videos, latest wordCamp videos, and popular videos. You can scroll down to the one’s you are interested in, and can click directly on them to view it. This is a quick way to find something that you might be looking for.
2. WordCampTV – You browse by category by: Audio, Behind the scenes, highlights, interview, presentation video or slides. You can click on those categories to check out more, or you can search by entering your own information for a more specific search in the search field – by entering the location, year and type.
3. How – To – Help and tutorials for beginner and expert alike. – Again here, you can browse by category or look at the featured videos.
4. Blog – A blog by the wordpress.tv crew on what is happening now, or what might be happening in the future – basically anything they feel they need to share about the site.
5. Contact – To contact wordpress.tv if for recommending a wordpress-related video, requesting a tutorial or giving some feedback. You must include your name and email address, and website is optional.
There is a link at the bottom of all the wordpress.tv pages which you can click on if need be…
Blog at wordpress.com, Contact Us, Dev Blog.
The footer at the bottom has extra links to click on as shown below.
The home page gives you a lot of information, but it is set out so the information isn’t given to you all at once. You get the basic knowledge of what the site is about on the home page, but as you delve into the site, you learn a lot more. The sub-headings and sub-category help this process by not overpowering the viewer and giving them too much information at once.
Sign Up
FREE SIGNUP
• You need an email address to become a member of wordpress.com. You will then get your own wordpress address such as you.wordpress.com.
A selection of over 60 customizable designs ranging from professional to crazy and fun for the blog – which can be switched anytime throughout your blogging experience.
3 gigabytes of file storage
Your blog can be public to the world or private for just your friends.
Premium features completely optional
Integrated stats system – up to the minute stats on how many ppl are visiting your blog, where they are coming from and which search engines are sending ppl to your blog. Integrated stats system is also available as a “plug-in”
Continuously saves your posts so you don’t lose anything.
The tags you add to you post are sent out to the public in their tag system.
WordPress uses akismet – a spam deterrent. Blocks spammers from leaving comments on your blog.
Contact support and forum 24 hours If you already have a blog and wnt to move it over to wordpress you can import your content from Blogger, LiveJournal, Movable Type, TypePad, or an existing WordPress blog.
WordPress is in over 50 languages
You can have as many blogs as you want
Sidebar widgets for Flickr, del.icio.us, Meebo, and more. You can add “widgets” to your sidebar and rearrange them without touching any HTML code or messing up your blog. Just drag and drop the sidebar widgets around, and instantly you can have fun stuff in your sidebar. We’re adding new widgets all the time based on your feedback and requests.
An email gets sent to you email address. you have to go to your email address and click on the link to activate your account.
If the email doesn’t go through directly, (it should arrive within 30 minutes) you can fill out details. Your name, last name, and something about yourself for your viewers to read.
If you want to sign up for multiple accounts using the same email address, there is a button to do so underneath after you have logged in. You can log in the new blog just created with the original password, or you have the option to change it.
If you want to sign up using the same email address, you cannot sign up the same way you signed up for the original account because it will say that email address is being used. You must use the button underneath “Register another blog”.
To sign up
• Create a username (only letters and numbers are allowed)
• Password
• Confirm password
• Email address
• Read agreement and accept terms of service
• Choose between getting a blog or just a username.
• NEXT
• Blog domain (example.wordpress.com)
• Blog title
• Language (There are over 60 different languages to choose from)
• Privacy – click “I would like my blog to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati, and in public listings around WordPress.com.”
Logging into wordpress.com
You enter your username and password into the field on the left-hand side.
You have the option for the computer to remember you.
If you choose for the computer to remember you, when you enter in your username, your password will automatically be added, so all you have to do is click LOG IN.
Multiple blogs
• To register for another blog is easy. Once you are logged in, there is a button underneath your username – Register another blog. You click on the link, type in another username, the language you prefer to type in, and if you want the blog public or private and it is now created. You can log in with your original password.
• When you log in, your dashboard has the names of all of your blogs in it, instead of just your main blog.
Logging out of wordpress.com
• To log out, you need to be in your dashboard and the logout button is on the top right-hand side.
• You have the choice to log back into your blog on the left-hand side in the header
• You can enter yours or another’s username and password and log in
Links at the bottom
• You have the option to get a free wordpress account
• Lost your password?
• Click on the logo to go back to the index page.
Features
The features tab goes through the features of wordpress.com
PREMIUM FEATURES
• Customise css code – personal touch – $15/year using the sandbox theme to create an entire new design.
• Get your own identity – domain name example.com for $15 per year, and mapping an existing domain name is $10 per year.
• Extra storage – 5 GB for $20/year, 15 GB for $50/year or 25 GB for $90/year.
• Ad-free. Logged out viewers see ads on occasion on your blog, so if you would prefer your viewers don’t see ads, pay $30/year.
• Unlimited users – $30/year
• Gifts – spend money on your friends who have wordpress and let them spend the money on the premium advantages.
So even though wordpress.com is a free blogging site to use, there are still a few things that can catch you out in which you might have to pay for. All in all, I believe this to be a fair trade. You are getting the basic service for free, as opposed to some services, and it is optional to purchase the items stated above – whereas if you were to pay for a blogging site, you have to choose how much limit space you would like, and the bandwidth etc.
Blog
Blog is where the wordpress staff blog their information. Currently there are blogs on twitter and P2: The New Prologue. This tab isn’t the only place to find these blogs. As mentioned earlier, they are placed in the first column on the home page also, so the viewer can easily access the page.
There is also a search field in which you can search something specifically – by a blog or the archives date. There are also tags on this page as well to help you with your searches.
Support
• This tab is where you would go for knowledge on how to use the wordpress.com website. There are some popular questions on the left-hand side for easy access, otherwise you can type what you are wanting to know into the search field on the top right-hand corner.
• There are ten topics to choose from if you wanted to sort through your questions by topic.
• The topics are on the page twice, once down the right-hand side column and a larger view with sub categories in the main centre.
Our Story
Our story fills you in on WordPress.com and the functions the site entails.
Advanced
Advanced Services
We’ve got some things that might be of interest to our more advanced users:
• WordPress.com premium features — Paid upgrades for your WordPress.com blog.
• WordPress.com VIP hosting — Host your high traffic or commercial blog on the WordPress.com infrastructure.
• WordPress.org — Run your own WordPress installation (more info on WordPress.com vs WordPress.org).
• translate.wordpress.com — Help translate WordPress.com for international users.
• m.wordpress.com — Access your blog(s) from your mobile phone or PDA.
• Site stats — In the interest of transparency we share some relevant internal statistics about the site.
• WordPress.com Firehose — A real-time, XMPP based stream of newly published WordPress.com posts and comments.
When logged in and posting on your blog
• When you are logged in, your blog(s) is on the left-hand side when on the home page.
• You can upload an image as your profile image if you wish such as the black and white image below.
• Below is an example of what the dashboard might look like. There are many links on the left-hand side to help you with posting a blog, or maintaining your dashboard the way you would like.
• If you click on ‘Posts’ you are taken to a page that has all of your published posts. (If you haven’t published a post yet, there is an option to ‘Add New’.) You have the choice to edit them here if you need to.
• With blogging, there is so much you could do on your blogging site. The simple things are: Posting, adding media, linking, creating pages, commenting on people’s blogs, and polling. These are the subheadings in the dashboard. o Posting – You write text and post the text into your blog.
o Adding media – adding images or video to your blog.
o Linking – Linking text to a website or image.
o Creating pages – You can have as many pages as you like, one is automatically given to you title ‘About’.
o Comments – You can comment on other people’s blogs or they can do the same for you.
o Polling – To use polls in WordPress, you will need an account with the sister product, PollDaddy.com.
The information flow on wordpress.com
The website wordpress.com has a repetitive flow, so it is easy for the viewer to become accustomed to the site. There is a lot of information that needs to be understood before using this particular blogging service; however I believe the site has handled its information flow very well. The tabs and sub-tabs are a great idea, breaking down the information into six different categories. If you can’t find what you are looking for or have a question that needs answering, there is of course a support tab for any queries. WordPress has a lot of functions you can use to build your blog into something fantastic, and it’s a matter of using trial and error to see how the results shows up. Of course there are definitions on what can be done, but to truly achieve what you want out of your blog, you should play around with the functions and see where you get.
I think it would be extremely hard to hack into someone’s account, due to the password protector. This is a very honest thing wordpress.com has done. They want the protection of their clients as much as the clients want it.
WordPress.com uses multiple tabs in different areas on the page if they are an important link and the creators want the viewers to read them (or they are very popular, so it makes sense to have a few links to be able to get to the site). This is also very clever, and not too overpowering. It doesn’t feel like they have placed the links everywhere on the page – forcing you to go there. They usually have one in the main tabs heading, and a link in the main page also. All in all, I think the website has an easily compatible information flow, and could be understood by many.
Things that could be improved on:
Email addresses – When joining wordpress.com, it is said you can have as many blogs as you like. On the home page, after you have logged in, there is a link underneath your details ‘Register another blog’. If you want to register another blog and use the same email address, you have to sign up by clicking on this button instead of using the original way and clicking on the Sign Up button. I only found this out by trying to create another blogging account with the same email address – using the sign up field, but being denied access due to the same email as my original blog. This should be stated more clearly, as I created a new email address thinking I couldn’t create another blog with the same email address.
Main home page – Clicking on the button link to ‘Wordpress for iphone’ takes you to their page, but there is no way of getting back to the original home page of wordpress.com.
‘Wordpress.tv’ is similar, but does have a link at the bottom of the page to blog at wordpress.com. The link isn’t very noticeable. It took me a while to realise there was a way back to the wordpress.com website without having to type the site in again.
The wordpress.com button on the left-hand side which usually takes you home, is now the home button for those individual site – WordPress for iphone’ and ‘Wordpress.tv’. These sites should either open in a different window, or have a link to get back to the original home site.
Alternatives used by similar sites:
I have looked at a few other blogging sites, such as Tumblr, Livejournal, Pixelpost, Typepad and twitter.
With all of the sites, the login is the same – very basic – entering your email address or username, along with your password. However there are a few differences in the preferences that one can change for the layout of their blog.
Tumblr – The preferences on tumblr were quite simple to fit in with the elegance of the site.
• Email address
• Password
• Editor – edit posts using ‘rich text’, ‘plain text/HTML’, ‘markdown’ = choose one
• (Choose yes/no) Dashboard – show full size photos o Show notifications on dashboard
• (Choose yes/no) Twitter – configure
• Login – email address and password
o With wordpress you have an API key which is stated in your personal profile that you don’t share – it’s just like a password. This gives the site just that little bit more safety.
o Other than this, the preferences for your profile are very similar.
Pixelpost – Free signup with 20GB storage. Once you have reached the limit, you have to pay to continue using the blog. Something you don’t have to worry about when you are signed up to wordpress.com.
Livejournal – you have to pay for livejournal – a downfall compared to wordpress.
Typepad – is a paid service however doesn’t have ads. The minimum is $4.95 per month with a bandwidth of 2 GB and storage limit of 100 MB. There are different prices you can pay; the maximum is $89.95 per month with 40 GB of bandwidth and unlimited storage.
Twitter – is a different type of blogging service, only related to one question “what are you doing?” This question is restricted to 140 characters, but it is a way to keep in contact with the world – and can be a great way to get information out there!
Signing up is easy once again, which seems to be a running theme with these sites. To create an account, you enter your name, a username, a password and your email address. If the username has already been used, the site will tell you to choose another one – so it is unique. The password also has the same thing as wordpress.com where it tells you if your password is weak or strong.
WordPress and twitter have the same stages of becoming a member and addressing the world with knowledge. They both use the strength protector which is fantastic! However twitter goes one step further and uses a security tag when joining – you have to type in the words above to be able to log in. WordPress doesn’t do this.
The two sites are similar again where they can narrow down their search by what they want to look for, as in wordpress you look at tags, and in twitter you can do the same thing also.
Twitter has the same preferences when you are logged in – just the same as wordpress. Although when you type about yourself, you are only restricted 160 characters, whereas in wordpress you can can as much or as little about yourself as you would like.
Conclusion
WordPress – I actually like the way wordpress is set out, and the functions you are able to use. There aren’t any new exciting things used in different sites that wordpress doesn’t use or at least touch on. WordPress.com has done a fantastic job at keeping up with the times, entertaining the public and giving them what they want.
There are some traps that you can get into with wordpress, such as wanting to customise the layout of your layout, but then finding out you have to pay to do so. After researching other blogging sites, I find this is fair and in its right to do so. There are a few blogging sites that you have to pay for just to blog on, so it is only fair that you pay to customise your layout – it’s just a bonus that you don’t have to pay to blog.
The benefits of paying for a blog is to have no ads at the top of the page, so if that doesn’t bother you, I would suggest WordPress.com. Obviously it depends on what it is that you are looking for in a blogging site, but to me, wordpress is a very good example of a great blogging site. I think WordPress has made the decisions they have to be different (such as not having to pay to use the site), which I believe has led to their popularity. A lot of the blogging sites are very similar, but have their own character and each site differentiates what you want in a blogging site.
You have to shop around before you settle down, because each site might seem similar, but there might be one difference which will turn your head. There is a vast variety of people that use wordpress. The layout can be very decorative – which for me was my ultimate decision maker. (I was looking at tumblr due to the easiness of the design, but discovered it was a little too clean for what I wanted.)
By not having to pay to use this blogging service is a great idea, and having add-ons that people might be interested in purchasing is an even better idea. This way, the customer gets what they want to an extent, and if they want to delve deeper, they have the choice to – it’s not automatically decided for you. This is giving the customer what they want… with extras if they so need. GREAT IDEA!
All in all, I actually don’t think there is much to be changed in wordpress.com – the only improvements I would make would be to add a home page link on the iphone page.
U124204 Cassadra King Networked Media Friday 930-1130
