Back on track, and I’ll post a bit about theme selection.  Theme selection is obviously personal, so this post is intended more to introduce theme elements the webmaster should be aware of when selecting or designing a new theme.

Variable (fluid) vs. Fixed Width isn’t unique to WordPress design, but it’s an element that is fairly important when choosing your design.  Fixed width themes have a standard pixel width that doesn’t deviate based on screen resolution.  GeekEstate is a fixed width theme.  If you shrink your window size, you’ll see that you start losing elements of the site.  http://screencast.com/t/N2YzYTM5  Variable width will fit any screen size (to a point.)  Fluid Blue is an example of a nice variable width theme.  As you minimize the screen, it automatically fits.  Fair warning: Fixed width is much easier to design, so there are many more fixed width options available.

Site width: If you’ve chosen a fixed width theme, it’s time to choose how wide you would like.  This should be dictated by common screen resolution.  You’ll notice that, as technology matures, websites typically get wider.  Many older websites & wordpress themes were designed to accommodate 800X600 screens.  That size monitor (in my opinion) has effectively become obsolete, so most themes are typically built for 1024X768 screens.  The width is the most important element to note, as any user can scroll up & down.  It’s a good idea to check browser statistics and decide what % of users you’re willing to lose in order to provide a better experience for the rest.  Personally, I stop supporting a user group after it falls below 5% (come on IE6!!!)

Widget Ready Sidebars: This is a fantastic feature of WordPress that was introduced some time ago, so I would recommend avoiding any theme that’s not widget ready.  These allow you to easily customize your sidebars by dropping widgets…which we all know do really cool things.

1, 2, 3 Column (or template options): You see little to no 1-column WordPress templates, but plenty of 2 & 3 column designs.  A little used and powerful feature in WordPress is “page templates” which allow you to choose, well, different templates when adding pages.  I’ve incorporated this into my designs, and you can see a 2-column template here, and a 3-column template on the blog page.  Bear in mind that your blog posts will always be composed in the “default” template, so you will want to decide 1, 2, or 3 column as your default.

Advanced Features: Many premium WordPress themes offer advanced features in the backend.  Agentpress (and Revolution) offer home page widgets that provide a robust index page.  Other themes allow you to easily upload banner slideshow images, change color schemes, and change the default column count.

While there are many, many more personal choices to make when choosing a new theme, these core decisions should be at the top of your list.  However, the best part about WordPress is, if you don’t like the theme you just chose, you simply find another!

I’m a huge proponent of WordPress.  I use Drupal for ecommerce sites & am familiar with Joomla.  They both have steep learning curves, and are both overkill for real estate websites.  I currently integrate WordPress with a custom IDX solution on all of my real estate sites, including ericbramlett.com.

WordPress can be a fully functioning CMS, and can be very SEO friendly.  Google’s Matt Cutts went so far as to say that WordPress takes care of 90% of SEO.  So, how to get the remaining 10%, and how to turn WordPress into a fully functioning CMS?  Plugins.  Here are the plugins I use & recommend:

As a side note, there are plugins that have more features than these, but I choose these plugins because of their combined features & support.  There’s nothing worse than upgrading WP only to find that one of your plugins is no longer supported, and so breaks your site (which has happened to me.)

1. Akismet – Comes out of the box with WordPress for good reason:  It kills 95% of potential spam comments with very few false positives.  Easy to enable, but you do have to sign up for an API, which is free.
2. All in One SEO Pack – Feature rich SEO plugin that takes care of your title tags, meta data, and canonical URLs.  Lots of nice automation.
3. cforms II – Flexible & design rich contact form plugin with auto confirmation & landing page functionality.
4. Google Analytics for WordPress – Allows you to easily add the Analytics javascript to every page, and is functional with cross subdomain tracking.  Nice extras like “exclude admin” which automatically excludes traffic from the admin (you) which can skew data.
5. Google Chrome Frame for WordPress – If you’re like me and you’ve stopped supporting IE6, then you can enable this plugin and prompt your visitor to download Chrome Frame, so they can view the web in a modern browser without giving up the oh-so-awesome IE6 (or 7, or 8 – it’s all in the plugin options.)
6. Lucia’s Linky Love – I run a dofollow real estate blog, but it’s very far from a “free for all.”  This is the most flexible dofollow plugin out there, in my opinion.
7. My Page Order – You can manage the order of your pages in WordPress with the default installation, but it’s pretty janky.  My Page Order gives you a nice GUI to order your pages.
8. Page Lists Plus – In order to act as a functioning CMS, your WordPress installation needs this plugin.  This allows you exclude pages from nav, change the link text, and perform a few other questionably beneficial actions to your page lists.
9. Redirection – I manage the page redirection of my main site through my .htaccess file, but use redirection for my other sites.  Redirection is really cool in that you can manage and track page redirection (which is why I use it to manage redirection, rather than Page Lists Plus.)
10. Reveal IDs for Admin – It’s often useful to know the page, post, etc IDs, and this plugin allows you to display them, and choose which level of user sees them.
11. Robots Meta – Allows you to tag your pages with robots meta data to instruct bots to follow, index, nofollow, or noindex specific pages.
12. Smart Youtube – Allows you to easily insert youtube videos into your posts, pages, or sidebar widgets.
13. Subscribe to Comments – Allows your readers to subscribe to comments in a post.
14. Tweetmeme Retweet Button – Allows your readers to easily retweet a blog post.
15. WordPress Database Backup – Protect your data and schedule DB backups often.  Complete with email functionality.
16. WP Super Cache – If your site ever breaks, disable this plugin first.  It’s typically the culprit.  I hem & haw over whether or not I like it, but I’m using it as of the past few months.  It caches your site so you can deliver it to your readers much more quickly.  If you’ve ever heard of “digg proof,” this is what does it for WordPress (plus a beefy hosting plan.)

Today, I have 41 plugins installed on my site, and I’m running these 16.  I’ve probably disabled & deleted 50 other plugins over the past two years.  The nice thing about WordPress is that if you want to do something with your site, there’s probably a plugin or widget for it.  If there’s not a plugin/widget for it, there are thousands of developers ready to write one for you.

Up next…Evaluating & Choosing a WordPress Theme.

There is no faster way to alienate someone you don’t know well than to bring up politics or religion.  There are typically two sides to any political issue, and by taking a side, there’s usually a 50% chance that you will disagree with the person you’re speaking with, or people listening in.  The more issues you discuss, the greater the chance that you’ll disagree with your listeners on some issue.  While that doesn’t matter much to an engineer, to a salesperson, it’s quite poignant.  If you publicly debate politics or religion, you’re probably alienating potential or current clients.

Over the past year or so, a few minor events have made significant impact on how I manage my web presence:

About a year ago, my business partner & I hired a development team to begin work on our RETS mapping system.  After the initial meeting with the main contact, I googled him and found his twitter page.  Scanning through his tweets, this guy was very politically & religiously opinionated, and I disagreed with him a lot. A few months later, we were approached by another development team, and we moved our project to them for a number of reasons.  While only a subconscious part of the decision, I would be lying if I said that his twitter account didn’t influence me at all.  I now protect my tweets from public viewing. Check it out.

About six months ago, I was working with a couple buying a home in Austin.  We’re roughly the same age, and we really hit it off.  After our second or third appointment, one of them mentioned a blog post I’d written on “my personal blog” that he thought was particularly entertaining.  While it entertained this client, I looked at the post and realized that it could have just as easily offended another, and I very well could have lost clients over it.  I audited the blog and buried everything potentially offensive (by changing the dates to 2007.)  There’s no such thing as a “personal blog,” as you have no control over who reads your blog posts, or comments.

Very recently, a local colleague forwarded ~100 of her closest friends & me a politically charged email that I highly disagreed with.  As I see email as a bit more personal than other forms of social media, I’ve always restricted anything potentially offensive to family & friends (who I don’t care if I offend.)  However, I don’t want to continue receiving email like this from someone I’ve done business with, and will do business with again, as I want to perform my job at the highest level.  I emailed her and ask that she refrain from sending me any political messages again. I’ll reply in this manner to any colleague that emails me political or religious messages, no matter if I agree or disagree with them.

The internet, and recent social media innovations in particular, have helped us get to know each other a lot better.  There are many people that I consider friends who I’ve never met, or spoken with on the phone.  If one of my friends would like to discuss politics or religion via IM, email, over the phone, or over beers, I’m game.  Friendship should be stronger than political or religious differences.  Professional relationships, however, rarely are.

As agents who use our web presence to find new clients, and ultimately pay our mortgages, we should be hyper-conscious of our online personae.  The next time you get the urge to write that post or comment about how great or horrible the latest political move by your favorite or most hated politician is, think about all of the potential clients who probably disagree.  Half of them do.

So, with that long winded intro, here are the apps I recommend for any Android device:

1) Google Apps:  Though not technically an “app” as you don’t have to download anything, move your butt over to Google Apps, if you’re not already there.  I manage my email, contacts, calendar, & docs with GA.  It’s successfully ousted Microsoft Office in my world.  It syncs flawlessly & immediately with your Android phone – you simply enter your login info, and you’re rolling.

2) Flashlight:  I’m not even sure which flashlight app I use, as they all do pretty much the same thing…help you find the light switch in an unfamiliar house.

3) Google Voice:  Using a hack I found on Nokia blog, I’m now managing my voicemail with GV.  The transcription isn’t perfect, but it’s useful.  I’m able to sneak a peak at my phone and see what the other client left me on VM while this client is looking around a house.

4) TasKiller: Though they offer a paid version, I’ve found no reason to go beyond free.  Android leaves many apps running after you close out, and your phone can get a bit sluggish.  TasKiller allows you to speed it up.

5) Fatsecret: No one likes a chubby agent!  Fatsecret offers a killer diet/exercise diary that will keep you honest.  Sync it with their online services & add it to your Google start page.  You won’t be able to escape that constant reminder.  This service is so great that I kept waiting (and was prepared to pay for) a subscription fee.  For some reason, it’s 100% free right now.