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Making it easy for readers to learn about updates to your blog is vital. Subscription is the most compelling method to gain readers and retain them. There are more than 22 million blogs tracked by technorati so competition for readership is buoyant. What’s the point in providing quality content that’s hard to subscribe to and difficult to navigate. Chances are, someone else is providing similar content with user friendly subscription and navigation. So, improving the user experience by providing a friendly navigation and easy subscription method makes your readers feel that you care.

Its not rocket science, a few tweaks here and there in your blog template code is enough. Naturally, if you run out of fuel and need specific help, just post a comment and I’ll help you out.

Allow readers to subscribe to comments

Some readers may only be interested in the ongoing discussion of a specific post, rather than the whole blog. This is especially true when they’ve posted a comment themselves and wish to be updated when others respond.

There are two popular methods to enable comments subscription; comment feed and email subscription. Personally I prefer using both methods at the same time, as that gives readers a choice.

By automatically emailing people who comment on a blog post when someone else has added a comment after them, you are significantly increasing the possibility of them coming back to post more comments. In turn, this increases the possibility of them becoming more active on the blog to possibly even become a member of your community.

Method one: Via comment feed Adding an RSS feed to your posts is very simple. WordPress already has a global comment feed present, which you might have noticed if you installed a new theme. You can access this by placing the following tag in your sidebar (sidebar.php) or footer(footer.php).

<?php bloginfo(‘comments_rss2_url’); ?>

But for showing RSS feed of a specific post and let readers subscribe you need a different function, actually a WP template tag.

<?php comments_rss_link(‘text’, ‘file’); ?>

The “text” parameter represents the anchor text to display the comment’s RSS feed and “file” parameter represents the file the link points to. The default is ‘wp-commentsrss2.php’. Better to leave the file part at the default if you are not playing with your feed core file.

Place the code below in your themes comment section header (usually comments.php) just bellow the #postcomment call (as shown in the image). Replace the Anchor Text to suit your test.

<?php comments_rss_link(‘Anchor Text‘); ?>

Method Two: email subscription

Via email subscription, your readers can be notified by email when a current discussion has been updated (someone leaves a new comment to which they may wish to respond). The advantage of adding this feature to your blog is that you are giving your readers an update alert even when they are away from their feed readers, through email which can easily be accessed via phone or PDA.

The easiest way to to add this feature is using a plugin (Subscribe to Comments). Alternatively you can implement it with a few tweaks in the comment form (Moderate PHP and SQL knowledge necessary).

Place this code snippet just bellow your comment form (comments.php) function call. Note that the classes can be configured in CSS. You can customize it further by adding subscription management, auto subscription (off course all in PHP).

<form action=”http://<?php echo $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . wp_specialchars($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); ?>” method=”post”> <input type=”hidden” name=”comment_subscribe” value=”comment_subscribe” /> <input type=”hidden” name=”postid” value=”<?php echo $id; ?>” /> <input type=”hidden” name=”comment_ref” value=”<?php echo urlencode(‘http://’ . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . wp_specialchars($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'])); ?>” /> <p class=”subscribe_comments”> <?php _e(‘Subscribe without commenting’, ‘subscribe_comments’); ?> <br /> <label for=”subscribe_email”><?php _e(‘E-Mail:’, ‘subscribe_comments’); ?> <input type=”text” name=”email” id=”subscribe_email” size=”22″ value=”<?php echo $user_email; ?>” /></label> <input type=”submit” name=”submit” value=”<?php _e(‘Subscribe’, ‘subscribe_comments’); ?>” /> </p> </form>

Go the extra mile – Subscribe to categories

This is a very simple yet highly adorable feature you can offer to your readers. You may write about lot of things in your blog but that doesn’t mean your readers are interested in everything you have to talk about, that’s why you sort them into categories. Now if you can offer your readers the ability to subscribe to specific categories, it would be wonderful, don’t you agree? The method is simple, as WP already has a template tag ready to take care of it.

<?php wp_list_categories(‘arguments’); ?> [for WordPress 2.1 and above] <?php wp_list_cats(‘arguments’); ?> [Prior to WordPress 2.1]

These two functions work almost the same, they dynamically list categories available to your blog. There are two ways you can let your readers subscribe to categories.

By showing a text RSS link beside category name-

<?phpwp_list_categories(‘orderby=name&feed=RSS’); ?> [for WordPress 2.1 and above]

<?phpwp_list_cats(‘orderby=name&feed=RSS’); ?> [Prior to WordPress 2.1]

By showing RSS feed image link beside category name-

<?phpwp_list_categories(‘orderby=name&feed_image=/files/rss.gif‘); ?> [for WordPress 2.1 and above]

<?phpwp_list_categories(‘orderby=name&feed_image=/files/rss.gif‘); ?> [Prior to WordPress 2.1]

For feed images do not forget to replace /files/rss.gif with your own feed image location. You have to place these codes to your sidebar template (usually sidebar.php) above </div>.

Good luck and give me a shout if you need a hand with anything.

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Again, another nifty little tool which I thought deserved a follow up post from my first post about such tools.

The following information is taken from the FAQ section on the iOpus Web site, what it says on the tin is enough, enjoy

What is iMacrosâ„¢?

In a nutshell, it is the world’s first browser-based macro recorder. It allows you to easily record Web surfing and replay it.

The web browser is probably the most frequently used software today, but many tasks are repetitious: checking on the same sites everyday, remembering passwords, submitting to search engines or testing web sites over and over again. With iMacros, you record these tasks once and then let iMacros execute them whenever you need them.

Any combination of browsing, form filling, clicking and information gathering can be recorded into a macro and iMacros even assists you during the recording with visual feedback.

Do you need to extract price lists, stock information or any other data from websites?
iMacros can do this for you. It submits data from a file to a website and stores the result from the website in a text file. No programming skills required!
Do you need to test web sites automatically?

Have you ever spent hours browsing your website to re-test it after a change? Our advanced PRO and Scripting Editions can automate almost any kind of web regression and verification testing for you!

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Yesterday I wrote a post about how Mozilla’s CTO is way off the mark with his view of the mobile web (in my opinion). Mozilla has since responded to my post over on the BIMA blog, where I decided to duplicate the post.

A (somewhat heated) debate appears to be forming so why not post a comment on the BIMA blog, so we keep it going in one place.

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OR

I was astonished to read (on Dan’s blog) that Mozilla doesn’t think users want to access the Web on mobile devices. Hence my picture above of what Mozilla must have in mind when it comes to the Web on the move, anytime, anywhere.

Dan was commentating on the Browser Panel at SXSW which was run by Arun from AOL (a colleague of mine from the W3C MWI). My buddy Charles from Opera took part too.

Brendan Eich, CTO of Mozilla is the reason for this post though. According to Dan, Brendan said

I don’t believe people are going to browse the Web on their phone. I don’t believe people want to use Wikipedia from their phone.

I’m absolutely amazed by Brendan’s view and I sincerely hope it’s his personal view and not Mozilla’s. Otherwise this $300m business faces the prospect of ending up in the bin alongside it’s parent, Netscape. For a guy who’s incredibly smart working for an organisation that has gained a market share of 10% to 12% of desktop browsers within 2 years, his comments are a little surprising to say the least. Brendan’s comments in my opinion, lack vision. Hell, they lack logic.

I couldn’t disagree more with Brendan. There are more people in the world who don’t have access to the Web than there are people who do. Of those people, most of them are in developing countries. The vast majority of them are extremely likely to use a mobile devices as their primary access point to the Web as it’s more difficult and more expensive to roll out fix lined networks than it is mobile.

Google announced some statistics recently that back up my view. BANGALORE, India (AFP) – Google vice president and chief Internet evangelist Vinton G. Cerf has predicted that mobile phones, not personal computers, will fuel growth of the worldwide web as countries like India snap up millions of handsets monthly.

From 50 million in 1997, the number of people who have logged onto the Internet has exploded to nearly 1.1 billion, Cerf, who is considered one of the founding fathers of the Internet, said Tuesday.

Yet, the Internet only reaches a sixth of the world’s population, Cerf told reporters during a visit to this southern city, known as India’s Silicon Valley, where Google has a research and development facility.

Worldwide there are 2.5 billion mobile-phone users, whose numbers are growing rapidly in developing countries led by China and India, the world’s most populous countries, Cerf said in his presentation.

India, a country of 1.1 billion people, alone is adding seven million mobile-phone users a month, a powerful enough lure for British telecom giant Vodafone to pay 11.1 billion dollars for a controlling stake in local mobile firm Hutch-Essar this month. Read the original new article.

I feel so strongly about helping to bring the Web to more people, I decided to become a founding sponsor of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative (MWI). One of the goals of the MWI is to create best practice guidelines to help developers build Web sites that will work on desktop computers, but importantly, work better on mobile devices too.

Other founding sponsors include Vodafone Group, Nokia, HP, Opera, MobileAware, ftgroup and Volantis. Other active participants within the initiative include companies such as AOL, .mobi, Google and Telefonica.

One of my recent posts amassed a staggering word count that exceeded 17,000, with comments from Google, .mobi, Opera, WURFL and more. I had to splinter the conversation into a different post which is still ongoing and awaiting a response from me.

The mobile web is a hot topic and there’s always room for disagreement. However, I’m still amazed to hear the fastest growing desktop browser say that it doesn’t think people will want to use a mobile to browse the Web. Perhaps they should have a chat with Apple.

Mozilla, I love what you’re doing. Hell, we’ve got a cool Firefox extension ourselves. However, please pull your head out of the sand if you really believe mobile is only for calling your granny.

Thanks to Keith Waters (France Telecom) for the picture above.

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My motivation to write this post isn’t purely driven by ego. I want to highlight yet again to the yet-to-be converted, that WordPress is a compelling content management system (CMS) and not just a platform for blogs. So, if you don’t use WordPress for your blog, change now. If you use WordPress for your blog but haven’t thought about using it for your corporate Web site, then do it. It doesn’t take long and I’ll gladly allow a member of my team to put you in the right direction.

Not only is it simple and cheap to update and maintain, but your site will be automatically optimised for search engines to pick up your content.

Watch out for Kamrul’s post which will talk about all the plugins we use. He will explain how to implement them in plain English and the advantages of each one. He’ll also discuss the issues we experienced with accessibility and how to overcome them (we’re still making improvements to make the site more accessible).

You may notice that we make small tweaks every day as we strive to make our content as accessible as possible. Please feel free to provide feedback to help us make the site easier to use.

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Basically one of the participants of the group, Luca Passani, complained about the group using the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as a starting point for creating the MWI Best Practices document.

It was almost impossible to get across to Luca, that only relevant WCAG stuff was used. The group meticulously reviewed each checkpoint on conference calls and by email until it had exhausted each one. We then added best practices that were specific to mobile.

The conversation digressed into ‘why should we try to make everything accessible to disabled people anyway’. Nobody actually made such a claim in the first place and the conversation started to loose track as it did in my post. In fact, it’s still going on now so I’d like to take it to this post (if it hasn’t already died). Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far.

The post appears to be attracting attention from Luca’s corner of the world. That is, mobile developers who build WAP sites (and other types of mobile related applications). These are very qualified comments so I’m not putting them down in any way. I’m simply highlighting that the conversation needs to be balanced. I think this can be achieved by soliciting feedback from people who wish to see the desktop Web realised on more devices such as mobile phones. Apple and Nokia appear to think it will happen soon.

So, a little background to the MWI

The principal objective of the MWI Best Practice document is to improve the user experience of the Web when accessed from mobile devices.
It is primarily directed at creators, maintainers and operators of Web sites. Readers of this document are expected to be familiar with the creation of Web sites, and to have a general familiarity with the technologies involved, such as Web servers and HTTP.

Readers are not expected to have a background in mobile-specific technologies.

So, the MWI is not about encouraging more WAP sites, or any other type of content that is specific to mobile devices and which doesn’t work on other devices such as desktop computers. People who wish to develop such content can do so. So there’s no need to slate the MWI though.

Luca and I violently disagree when it comes to the future of the Web on mobile devices. In short, Luca believes that WAP is the way forward. Or at least, something that is created specific for mobile devices only.

My view, is actually more along the lines of what Tim Berners-Lee wants to see happen (although I’m not speaking on his behalf). I could be wrong, but at least I’m in good company. I believe we should bring the Web as everyone knows it today, to mobile.

Naturally, you can’t just browse the Web on a mobile phone and expect a great experience ‘today’. But we should look to enable it as best we can by delivering content that is a contextual representation of the device accessing it. This will be enabled through standardised mobile browsers, Web enabled mobile devices, cheaper tarriffs and of course, best practices design techniques for developers.

• The number of people without access to the Web is greater than the number who do.
• Most of these people are in developing countries.
• Developing countries are more likely to use mobile as the primary access device for the Web as it’s cheaper than rolling out a fix line network.
• People in developing countries don’t give a toss about the weather or travel information as suggested by just about every mobile ‘expert’ I speak with or listen to. The world is bigger than Slough. And not every train goes from Slough to London.

However, there will *always* be a use case for mobile specific applications. I simply want to promote the Web so it can be accessed by anyone irrespective of their ability, device or location.

That doesn’t mean that every Web site must be accessible to everyone all of the time. It’s about best endeavours.

What do you think? Are you happy to continue using WAP sites or would you like to see better mobile devices, cheaper tariffs and best practices that help developers build mobile friendly Web sites?

When you go into a phone shop as I did recently and ask for a Web enabled phone, do you want to be handed a handset that only supports a list of WAP sites that the operator wants you to access? Or, like me, do you want to browse the Web on a mobile (assume for a second that it’s free) in the future?

I’d love to hear what you think, whether you agree with me or not, of course

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Permanent beta can be described as ‘constantly evolving a product or service based on consumer feedback’. It’s more of a mental state, or attitude that can be applied by an organisation which recognises the need to put the consumer at the heart of everything it does. In other words, we need to constantly modify our products and services based on consumer feedback. The alternative is to appear arrogant at best, or fall behind and loose out to competitors at worst.

Web 2.0 is also a point in time when we recognise the need to place more trust in the hands of the consumer. The marketing of our products is no longer entirely in our control. It’s now in the hands of the consumer. The Web is becoming more interactive, with communities, social networks and blogs springing up every day. The digital age we now live in enables everyday Web surfers to influence consumer choice.

I’d like to think Segala adopts all of these Web 2.0 principles, quite literally. We have just launched this brand spanking new Web site based on WordPress, allowing visitors (you) to express an opinion on almost every Web page, not just on blog posts. I say almost, because one or two pages wouldn’t look great with comment fields. Admittedly, the Web 2.0 colours and iconography to give it a fresh look ‘n feel has been, to a certain degree, done tongue in cheek.

My secondary motivation for writing this post is to express how we’re modifying our products based on consumer feedback. In October 2006 we launched a Segala Certified Partner Programme. The programme is aimed at agencies and freelance developers that design build or test Web sites. In summary, we provide them with marketing materials and tools that help them sell and deliver accessibility services. We also enable them to award clients with the Segala Trustmark (including Content Label) for accessibility.

We didn’t do any PR or marketing surrounding the programme launch as we wanted some very well established companies on board to act as a reference before scaling up worldwide. I predicted 19 partners by end of 2006 with revenue starting to come in at the end of April 2007.

By Christmas 2006 the partner network was up to 26 and spanned 5 countries – Ireland, UK, Hungary, Canada and Australia. Everyone we spoke to said that this was exactly what they needed to help sell accessibility to clients more easily. Their clients are saying it’s exactly what they need to help them demonstrate their commitment and conformance to accessibility standards more easily.

Membership was free, so there was no barrier to becoming a certified partner. Since putting a price tag of £247 / €370 / $480 on membership, we’ve only had one company join the programme.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that the price is a prohibiting factor. We only accepted payment via PayPal as our new shopping basket is still in development. So, this could have been a prohibiting factor for some people (but not for all surely).

If I’m honest, we only charged because we wanted to place some value on membership. So, in Web 2.0 style, I would like to admit that we got it wrong about the price points of our product. So, as of today, membership to the partner programme will be free.

If you’re wondering, we make our money from each certificate sold by a partner.

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Web 2.0 logos announce “who we are and what we do” and present a glimpse of the personality of the owner. Reflections, gloss and gradients are used to soften bold fonts and bright colors. And if you’re really serious, you can even add a Beta badge.

To help you get started in your own Web 2.0 transition, the Segala team have come up with a few illustrations we prepared earlier!

The Photoshop Lab Web 2.0 Design Kit takes you through the process step by step. Andrew dela Serna at Alleba provides a video tutorial on how to create that elusive Beta icon – glossed, gradient-ed and brightly colored. And you can get Web 2.0 “badged” at ajaxlessons.com’s web-20 badge tutorial.

Simple!

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