I have had a few people ask me recently, “Why is your blog the home page?” Well, several reasons really. First of all, it was too easy to not write something before I put the blog on my home page. Now, every time I go to the site, I am reminded that I have some writing to think about and a contribution to create.

Writing this blog is both a means of recording some work ideas and of showing the personality of The Design Mission. Work is much more than a job to me. Creating websites that make a difference in the world is the real goal here, and by highlighting issues important to me, I get that message across in other ways.

Finally, I have really come to understand that my work speaks for itself. I have more jobs than I can handle, and am happy with the clients I have kept along the way. Blogging allows for me to express opinions, present new ideas, and get things clearly defined for myself, simply by putting them in writing.

The blog has become the main focus of the website, it needs to be the home page.

I really love the power and flexibility of Joomla. (I know that I’m suppose to write Joomla with an exclamation point at the end, as that technically is the name for the project, but I just can’t do it.) The system is so powerful to begin with and so easily modified, I can’t imagine building a site today with out.

One simple hack I do to nearly every template I work with is to modify the call for the breadcrumb trail that one can use. That’s the so called “pathway” function within Joomla. Most of the time, you’ll find a line in a template that says:

mosPathway();

I change this to be:

if ($option!="com_frontpage") { mosPathway(); }

The results of this change is to simply hide the pathway on the home page. Why would the user need a breadcrumb on the home page? They are at the top of the tree and if that’s not already obvious, there are bigger problems with the information architecture and design.

Usability testing doesn’t have to be expensive. It doesn’t have to be time consuming. The most important thing is to actually do usability testing, and of course to respond appropriately to the feedback from the test.

Studies show that you really don’t need more than five people in a study. If all you can get is ONE person, that’s better still than not having any. However, having 3 to 5 people who have not been involved with your project, test your website’s usability, will yield really solid results.

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After six months, I’ve finally gotten back to some work on Advocacy - my Joomla component for providing non-profits and NGOs with a tool for creating email and letter writing campaigns. I originally worked on this component for the Nevada Wilderness Project during a Patagonia Internship and it was pretty bare boned at that time.

Now it’s feeling pretty polished. Read More…