Following is a guest post from InSights Enthusiast Todd J. List, one of InSights 2011 People Worth Knowing: The Geek Who Speaks People. Todd simplifies web technology for small businesses.

If you own a business, your website’s first task is to leave a positive impression on visitors. A very, very close second is to explain how you can help.

An interior designer friend wanted a theme that matched her bubbly, quirky, colorful personality. She found one adorned with doodles, fabric, needlework, buttons, and color that met those criteria beautifully. One day she asked me for some help with her blog.

I pulled up her site. “That’s cute. I like how you called your landing page ‘Hmoe.’” I asked.

“What do you mean?” she replied.

“Look. Your first menu item is spelled ‘H-m-o-e.’”

She looked, then cringed. “Where do I go to change that?”

I skipped through the dashboard to find that she had not misspelled something. I started digging into the theme, and I found several problems.

• Lack of contrast. This had prompted the initial call for help. The page title didn’t stand out, and the byline was lost in the beautiful but busy background.
• The main navigation menu was hard-coded into the theme, but the user couldn’t edit the links to the landing page. Hello, 404 error! The designer incorporated common page titles into the theme, probably in an effort to make things “easier” for the user. But what if you only have three pages, or name one something different, or blog in Spanish? The theme screamed creativity, then restricted the user blog in a tiny box.
• The menu elements were also graphics, not text. Without the funky font the original designer used, there was no way I could fix the misspelled word and have it match the other items. As it turned out, I found an updated version of the theme that fixed the typo.
• The default sidebar widgets had custom graphic headers. Adding user-defined widgets to the sidebar deleted those out. This obviated the need to try to match graphic text, but the new text didn’t fit the rest of the theme.
• Sharing options were built in to the theme. Again, this was a nice gesture by the designer, but it had limitations. What if your primary market is on a social network not included in the defaults? Without knowing code, the user can’t change this. This is better handled by a plugin.

My friend is now on at least her second replacement theme. Time will tell how long that one lasts.

Following is a guest post from InSights Enthusiast Todd J. List, The Geek Who Speaks People. Todd simplifies web technology for small businesses. He just announced a series of WordPress Classes.

An interior designer friend wanted a theme that matched her bubbly, quirky, colorful personality. She found one adorned with doodles, fabric, needlework, buttons, and color that met those criteria beautifully. One day she asked me for some help with her blog.

I pulled up her site. “That’s cute. I like how you called your landing page ‘Hmoe.’” I asked.

“What do you mean?” she replied.

“Look. Your first menu item is spelled ‘H-m-o-e.’”

She looked, then cringed. “Where do I go to change that?”

I skipped through the dashboard to find that she had not misspelled something. I started digging into the theme, and I found several problems.

• Lack of contrast. This had prompted the initial call for help. The page title didn’t stand out, and the byline was lost in the beautiful but busy background.
• The main navigation menu was hard-coded into the theme, but the user couldn’t edit the links to the landing page. Hello, 404 error! The designer incorporated common page titles into the theme, probably in an effort to make things “easier” for the user. But what if you only have three pages, or name one something different, or blog in Spanish? The theme screamed creativity, then restricted the user blog in a tiny box.
• The menu elements were also graphics, not text. Without the funky font the original designer used, there was no way I could fix the misspelled word and have it match the other items. As it turned out, I found an updated version of the theme that fixed the typo.
• The default sidebar widgets had custom graphic headers. Adding user-defined widgets to the sidebar deleted those out. This obviated the need to try to match graphic text, but the new text didn’t fit the rest of the theme.
• Sharing options were built in to the theme. Again, this was a nice gesture by the designer, but it had limitations. What if your primary market is on a social network not included in the defaults? Without knowing code, the user can’t change this. This is better handled by a plugin.

My friend is now on at least her second replacement theme. Time will tell how long that one lasts.

If you are like most people in our society, you have been cloaked with the idea that we each have a specific purpose for our lives. It almost seems that the universe would have a scribe sitting in front of a computer 24 hours a day typing in profiles and filling roles for each human born. When put in this context, to me, it seems crazy.
I think that we develop an interest in something if we go and seek it. Once found we develop a purpose, a thing that gives us value, and as a result our purpose comes to light. I do realize that this is probably not the most popular approach to life and may appear to be contrary to most world religions, but it is not.  Most religions believe that we are given the free will choice to make decisions. These decisions include choosing interests, hobbies, passions, etc. Often times they don’t appear to be choices but they are. We are the products of our environments including but not limited to heredity, social status , oppurtunities , race, sex, upbringings, etc. These environmental pressures develop us into the person we are at the point we choose our purpose. Once we realize that we can control how our experiences create our worlds, we can conciously chose to live the way we want. If you surrender to the universe and let go of the appearance of control over your life, you will find a purpose that has a joy and freshness like no other. Does anyone have an example of the development of a purpose that just sort of happened? I’d love to hear some examples!!!!   Al