FAQ Archives - Pint Sized Sites

What’s with the words surrounded by the green boxes?

I’ve added a [tooltip content=”a set of software components that adds specific abilities to a larger software application – from Wikipedia” url=”” ]plugin[/tooltip] that will display extra information about a term. When you hover your cursor over that text in the green box, a little popup will appear that explains what the term is all about.

That little popup is called a tooltip. You’ve seen them already in computer software you use. I decided to add tooltips so that I don’t have to use as many parenthesis (which I seem to love almost as much as I love commas).

What are tooltips?

A tooltip is a graphical element that appears when you hover your cursor over an item. You don’t need to click on it and it will fade away a couple of seconds after you move your cursor off of the item.

I’ve setup my items so that they are surrounded by a green box. This should make it obvious that the item contains some extra information.

I use a lot of unfamiliar and geeky terms on this blog and I don’t want to force you to have to do a web search on their meaning or wander away in frustration. For more advanced users, you won’t be stuck reading through information you already know in order to get to the meat of the post.

No ads

I hate the tooltips that pop up an ad for a product and obscure everything I’m trying to read.

No audio or video

My biggest pet peeve now is when audio starts playing just because my cursor wandered over an ad. Those people must die! (are you listening msnbc.com? Yea, I’m talking to you!)

Do you like the tooltips or do you find them annoying? What kinds of terms would you like me to use this with? Let me know in the comments below.

One question I get asked by potential clients is: why do you use WordPress to build websites? There are 4 reasons I use WordPress to power your website.

#1 – WordPress has a large installed base

There are over 40 Million websites using WordPress. In fact, 13% of the top websites in the world are built on WordPress. (these statistics come from WordPress.com)
There are over 900 books listed in Amazon on WordPress, including WordPress for Dummies (a pretty good text for most users), Teach Yourself WordPress, Beginning WordPress, WordPress 24 hour trainer, and others geared for the beginner to the Uber-Geek.
WordPress is open source and free to use. It has thousands of code warriors writing, testing, and documenting the latest updates.
Even though WordPress does not generate any income for the developers (they make their money in other ways), they have spent many thousands of dollars on usability studies to make sure that the user interface is intuitive enough that novices can get comfortable with it rather quickly.
Because it has been widely adopted and heavily documented, the number of people competent in providing ongoing support is huge. In other words: if I were to win the lottery (I don’t play, so no worries there) and immediately retire to a beach in the Carribean, you could easily find someone to come in and take over your WordPress website. (I’d probably head to New Zealand first because I’ve never been there but the pictures sure look nice)

#2: Search Results

Google loves to see fresh content. It also loves to see quality content (changing your banner image every week is not an SEO strategy). Google also loves to see order in websites, good tags, semantically written code, and a lot of other terms that make no sense to you. Just know this: WordPress delivers the code in a format that is Google (and Bing and Yahoo) friendly.

WordPress also allows you to create new, meaty content on a regular basis which gives the search engines a reason to come back on a regular basis. My other blog, Massage Therapy World, is indexed almost daily and my posts will show up in the top 2 search results less than 5 minutes after posting. A static site just won’t achieve those kinds of results.

#3: Empowerment

One of the other reasons I chose WordPress: it allows the client to make updates and edits without needing to contact me. Over and over, I hear from clients that they can’t get their web designer to return their calls (thanks for all the new business, guys!) or that the firm is too busy to put up the client’s holiday specials and take them down.

What if the client could do that himself? No more $80 maintenance charges. No more scheduling your updates months in advance. Have a handful of last year’s product sitting in the back room you don’t want to inventory next week? Post a a quick blurb about a clearance sale that day, take it down next week. You can do that on your own without having to contact your web designer.

It’s not Rocket Surgery

It has always made me a little crazy when technical experts hold their secrets close to the vest so they can remain ‘the smartest person in the room’. This is usually a misguided attempt at getting job security or ego stroking. It’s your website and you should be able to update it on your own. At the same time, if the client breaks something, I’m here to put it back together. Or, if they’re are simply too busy, I provide the manpower to add new content.

And this brings us to item 4:

#4: Cost

Because I’m not developing custom websites from scratch, and because I’m starting from a template or framework, I can shave months and thousands of dollars off of the average website project. We’re not staffed to do custom work; all of our time goes into quick, cheap websites for businesses on a tight budget.

While WordPress, or templated, sites is not the right solution for every business. For the micro-business, kitchen table business, pint sized business, solopreneur, or whatever you want to call your small business, it can be the best solution to getting your business on the web when you don’t have a big budget.

Tooltips – I’ve got them!