Instigator Blog

WordPress makes it very easy to change themes and completely change the design of your blog. That’s a great feature, and it allows non-designers and people with limited CSS/HTML/etc. experience to do some amazing stuff.

But, there’s a number of critical steps you need to go through after changing your blog’s design, in order to make sure it’s going to work perfectly.

1. The Sidebar Will Be Overwritten. Most people make a lot of changes to their sidebars, adding text, advertising, links, widgets, etc. If you’re using widget-enabled WordPress themes this isn’t an issue (because widgets stay in place when themes are changed) but if you made changes manually you’re going to have to redo them.

   Before you activate the new theme, save all of the code from your sidebar (just copy and paste it somewhere.) When you switch themes, edit the sidebar file(s) and re-apply your changes.

2. Re-apply Stat Tracking Code. Most people use a blog stat tracking tool of some kind (i.e. Google Analytics, 103bees, etc.) This is usually done with a snippet of code found in the header or footer. When you change WordPress themes, the header and footer files will be overwritten, so you’ll need to re-apply these code snippets. Otherwise your site will no longer be tracked properly, and you won’t be collecting stats. After re-applying these snippets, make sure the stat tracking tools are working properly.

   The same holds true if you’re using Google Webmasters Tools. Google Webmasters Tools require that you verify site ownership. This can be done by uploading a file (in which case changing WordPress themes is irrelevant) or by putting meta tag code in the header file. If you use the latter, make sure to put the code back after you change the WordPress theme or the site won’t be properly verified.

3. Check Which Plugins You Need. You may not need every plugin that you were using before. Some may no longer be suitable to the theme you’re using, some might be redundant. For example I was using the Optimal Title plugin (which I highly recommend.) It puts the post title in front of the blog name for the title of any page. This is better for SEO purposes. When I switched to this theme, I noticed that the post titles were already in front; the theme was coded that way. So the plugin was no longer necessary.

   There may also be some plugins you don’t want to use anymore. Now is a good time to clean things up.

4. Verify That Plugins Work. Any plugin that didn’t require you to edit the template files should be OK, but many do. These plugins won’t work anymore without re-applying the changes to the new template. A good example is the Related Entries plugin which requires a small snippet of code inside the WordPress files.

   Some plugins may display strangely due to new CSS code in the stylesheet file(s), and so you may have to change CSS as well.

5. Update The Design and Colors of Your Ads. If you’re running Google AdSense, Text-Link-Ads or any other form of advertising, chances are you blended those ads into the design and color scheme of your old blog. With a theme change there’s a good chance that you’ve also changed link colors, which means your advertisements won’t be as well blended and designed as before. For Google AdSense if you’re using AdSense Deluxe it’s easy to change the colors in WordPress. For Text-Link-Ads you can edit the plugin through WordPress as well.
6. Make Sure RSS Feed Subscriptions Work. Because RSS feed subscriptions are so important, just test this to make sure it’s OK. Try subscribing to your site. If you use FeedBurner, subscribe with the FeedBurner link and with the blog’s URL by itself. When you subscribe with the blog’s URL, your RSS Reader should auto-discover the available feeds. Make sure it’s pulling the one you want.
7. Test All Secondary Features. When picking a WordPress theme you probably won’t see all of its features in action, including pages, searching, categories and archives. As soon as you activate the new theme check all of these things out on your blog. You might be surprised what you find. The biggest issue will be that something isn’t formatted the way you want. For example, I tried searching here after updating the theme and noticed that the results didn’t include an excerpt of the post. So that’s something I had to change.
8. Test Using Multiple Browsers. Most people forget to test using multiple browsers, but it’s very important. If you’re using a PC it’s easy to test your blog in Firefox and Internet Explorer. On a Mac you can check it out in Firefox and Safari.
9. Make Changes Carefully. You may not have spent a lot of time experimenting with the new WordPress theme. So before you start radically changing things, take a few baby steps. Make a few small adjustments, test in multiple browsers and see how things go. It’s important to really learn the innards of the theme before you make huge changes.
10. Post About The Change On Your Blog. Make sure you tell people that you’ve changed the design of your blog. Ask people for feedback. People have all kinds of different setups; resolutions, browsers, screen sizes, etc. so they’ll be able to tell you how it looks. Remind RSS readers to come check it out too.

It was time.

I’ve updated the design at Instigator Blog with something that I hope works well for everyone.

If you’re reading this via the RSS feed, please come take a look!

So why did I do it?

• I wanted something a bit more sophisticated looking.
• I wanted to flex my design and WordPress editing muscles.
• I never really liked the fonts of the old design.
• I wanted to experiment with a 3-column layout.
• I wanted to shrink the height of the header and get more content above the fold.

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Rajesh Setty has a project going on at Life Beyond Code called Quought of the Day.

What’s a Quought?

Quought = Question that provokes thought. Questions are important. Thinking is important. Questions that make you think are very important!

Rajesh asks each participant, “So, what is the ONE important question a person should ask himself or herself in 2007?”

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So here I am thinking about nuts and having a good laugh about it too when I come across the brouhaha started by Justin Kitch, CEO of Homestead.

Justin suggests there’s a time and place for firing customers.

The resulting comments are generally not positive, with a few Homestead customers questioning whether they’ll stay customers for long. I can understand customers not being overly impressed with Justin’s comments but he’s not entirely wrong.

First, Justin isn’t talking about Homestead customers specifically (as far as I can tell), who sign-up for a product versus a custom service. The example he uses is from a previous business which did custom software development. If you run a product or web-based service business then firing a client doesn’t make a ton of sense because they rarely get enough access to your company to result in a need to fire them.

The main reason people recommend firing customers is that it costs too much money to support them.

Ultra-difficult customers take up a lot of time, and that costs money. They increase frustration levels and rarely result in as much profit as easier customers, if any profit at all. There’s nothing like losing money on a customer to question the value of that customer…

Bad customers are a problem.

Most companies in the product or web-based service/product businesses use email and support forums to handle customers, or ticketing/help desk software. Many of their customers buy the product as is, and they don’t require lots of handholding. So even if a customer is troublesome, they can be contained without having to fire them. In the service business - like software development - it’s another story.

Doug at Service Untitled does a 3-part series on firing customers reflecting on Justin’s blog post. It’s a great, very detailed read.

Laura Benjamin is going to be holding a free teleclass on how to fire customers today. You should still have time to sign-up!

Andrew Parker wonders about the bad publicity generated by Justin’s comments. Lou Hornick echoes similar concerns in his post Firing customers - bad move… when he writes:

Firing a difficult or abusive customer solves a short term problem (the drain on support resources), but creates long-term unhealthiness in your business. It puts former customers on the street with a never ending stream of terrible things to say about your company, and trust me, when you leave them out in the cold they’re not going to forget. They were probably unhappy to begin with, and now you have validated all of their negative sentiment.

Lou’s not wrong. Fire a customer and they very well might cause a stink-fest all over the place. And in the world of social media when a frustrated customer can get on the front page of Digg and instantly have a huge platform to rant from, you should be concerned about firing a customer. Still, one customer’s impact is typically fairly small.

Lou asks the question, “If you make a business practice of terminating difficult customers, and we all have difficult customers, how long does it really need to go on before you have critical mass of scorned ex-customers generating adverse financial impact?”

I’m not sure anyone, including Justin, makes a habit of firing customers. In my 10+ years of experience in the Web service and software businesses I’ve let a handful of customers go. Maybe less. Most of the time it was mutual, once or twice we weren’t paid and it nearly went to legal action. Shit happens.

Here are my recommendations:

1. Recognize the fact that crappy customers exist.
2. Ensure that you and your staff understand how to handle crappy customers.
3. Demanding customers are not the same as crappy customers. A demanding customer wants an excellent product and excellent service. A crappy customer wants more than that, they’re rude, ignorant and near-impossible to work with. I can respect demanding, but people do take it beyond that.
4. Make sure the fault is with the customer and not you.
5. After all options are exhausted, and it’s clear that the client is much more of a burden to the company as a client than otherwise, fire them.
6. Once you’ve fired your client be prepared for any backlash. It can be mitigated (if necessary) through direct communications with other customers, building positive buzz, responding to negative feedback, etc.

First, it was the email newsletter. We all signed up like wild beavers damming up our inboxes.

Then blogs and the nefarious RSS (or Real Simple Syndication.)

“Those people” keep making it easier and easier for us to sign-up and subscribe.

Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe.
Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe.
Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe.

That was me in 2006. Truth be told, it rocked. I had well over 1,000 feeds in my RSS Reader and I kept up-to-date with many of them. Going out and checking out so many blogs (and subscribing) let me throw myself right into the blog world. I watched, read, learned and participated. Super fun.

And then I got distracted. I watched the number of unread posts in my RSS Reader skyrocket. It started to get stressful and a tad overwhelming. I couldn’t keep up.

My attention was spread too thin. The result was less involvement in the most important communities, less digesting of important information, and less opportunity to find new stuff that really mattered to me.

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