Educational Institutions and Universities need attractive websites to attract new students and serve exceeding students. Educational websites have lot of information to show, they need to provide details of admissions, syllabus, results, information of a student. So these types of websites need good designers to be worked on as UI is very important to make it reader friendly.
Last week we talked about the WordPress header and header.php. We continue this series and this week we’ll be touching on the WordPress menu. Visitors come to a website to find answers. How they arrive, whether via an organic search, a paid ad, or a sponsored link, matters little to these information seekers. These visitors come believing that they will quickly find the answers that they need. The operative word here being quickly. (The boon and bane of hi-speed internet is that it has turned a lot of us into impatient “speed demons”.) Once these visitors have what they want and they do linger on the site after, then that’s already a bonus.
Often, these new visitors aren’t really looking for a website with flashy, awesome text animation embedded in a huge full width slider-enabled $50 premium WordPress theme. Some might, but like we said, majority of them simply want to find a quick answer to whatever they are looking for. A lot of them will look for the link to the item that led them to the site in the first-place or go straight to the menu to find their way through the site. That’s why it’s important to create a website navigation menu that will make your visitor’s website experience fruitful and pleasant at the same time.
What is website navigation anyway? What is a menu?
Navigation Menu is a theme feature introduced with Version 3.0. WordPress includes an easy to use mechanism for introducing customised navigation menus into a theme. In order to incorporate menu support into your theme, you need to add a few code segments to your theme files.
Source: WordPress Codex
There are many navigation methods employed on websites. The simplest and easiest to follow, will allow your visitors to find your information pages and enjoy the visit! Simple HTML navigation menus also provide search engines with a clearly marked road map to follow, when they scan your website.
Source: Cal Poly
The process by which a user explores all the levels of interactivity, moving forward, backward, and through the content and interface screens. Users navigate through the project by clicking on interactive controls such as buttons, image maps, and hypertext, while clues such as special colors, backgrounds, or interface sounds help orient them to where they are at within the levels of interactivity. A good navigation scheme will leave the user with little question about where they are in the document and where they can go from there.
(from Lisa Graham, The Principles of Interactive Design, 1999)
A list of options displayed to the user by a data processing system, from which the user can select an action to be initiated. In text processing, a list of choices displayed to the user by a text processor from which the user can select an action to be initiated. A list of choices that can be applied to an object. A menu can contain choices that are not available for selection in certain contexts. Those choices are indicated by reduced contrast.
Source: Glasgow Caledonian University
“Good Website navigation is very important to every business website. Good text links help. When a visitor can’t easily discover where they are, what valuable business information is on the page, where to go next and how to find your Home Page or a good sitemap… they leave your website! You would never tell a customer to stand outside your business, while they try to do business with you. Poor website navigation creates the same visitor experience. Good page titles tell visitors what each page is about.
A well designed menu will allow search engine spiders and human visitors to navigate around your website and never get lost. A menu is simply a group of links to more information. Helping your visitors find information quickly, will impress potential customers. Finding good information is the key to a successful business website.”
(Source: SEOWebsitesdesigners.com)
There are several ways to set up your navigation menu system on your website: vertical, horizontal, or a combination of both. Beginning WP version 3.0, WordPress introduced a new navigation menu system and since then after numerous updates and improvements, the WordPress menu management system has made setting up navigation menus in the backend admin panel section more user friendly with lesser and lesser coding or technical knowledge required. Check out these great resources: this article by Justin Tadlock, or these tutorials WordPress menu navigation tutorial and Setting up Menus in WordPress to learn how to set up your menus in no time.
How does one become a certified WordPress professional indeed? Earning your stripes as a WordPress professional does not come from a course you enroll in and study for X number of years in your regular university. Neither do you get a degree or a diploma for the numerous WordPress conferences, seminars or webinars you attend. In truth, becoming a WordPress professional is not age bound, race bound, location bound, language bound or educational background bound. One key ingredient is the willingness to learn, make mistakes, and learn all over again.
Many current WordPress professionals and practitioners did not start out as such. Perhaps some have come out from the corporate world and taken a radical sabbatical from their daily grind while others probably started out in their dorm room or garage. Maybe others began tinkering with WordPress while they were in their teens while some are going through a second wind in their careers. The Internet has this built-in democratic leveling quality where anyone can make it regardless. Since the year is about to end, maybe some of you are considering a quiet change or transition into something else – a new career path of sorts. You don’t necessarily have to be a developer or a designer to be a WordPress professional. Here are a few options for you to think of if you are considering a shift into the exciting world of WordPress:
Web development is the back-end of the website, the programming and interactions on the pages. A web developer focuses on how a site works and how the customers get things done on it. Good web developers know how to program CGI and scripts like PHP. They understand about how web forms work and can keep a site running effectively.A good web developer will have excellent programming skills and be able to use a range of programming tools. He or she will be able to provide solutions to give a website the functions required. Web developers will use a range of programming tools such as ASP, Javascript, XML and SQL. The focus is more on the backend and the functionality of the site.
Web design determines the look and feel of a website. It covers the layout, navigation and colors of a website. Web design is more concerned with aesthetics and user experience than functions. A web designer will make a website easy to use and fit for purpose. A good web designer will have graphic design skills and a good understanding of marketing. He or she will know how to grab the attention of visitors and encourage them to explore a website. A web designer is concerned with how a site looks and how the customers interact with it. Good web designers know how to put together the principles of design to create a site that looks great. They also understand about usability and how to create a site that customers want to navigate around in.
Plug-ins and widgets are a great way to enhance the functionality of your site by adding in extra features. These can be placed anywhere inside your template by function hooks. You can start creating and eventually selling stand-alone plugins that add value to existing or new themes.
One of the most common deficiencies in the WordPress themes marketplace is the lack of or absence of theme support. You can start a career by being part of a support team that is responsible for providing after-sales support to customers who have purchased specific themes.
Providing consultancy services, networking, and hooking up clients with designers and developers is another option to becoming a WordPress Professional. Many times, a lot of great designers do poorly sales-wise because of a lack of marketing skills. You can offer your services to acts as a marketing consultant to WordPress designers and developers who have little or no time to do the marketing themselves.
With the explosion of WordPress themes in the marketplace, there is very little difference between one theme to the next and a lot of them look like clones. You can offer your services as a writer to create a marketing hook for designers and developers who would rather write code than a marketing spiel.
Providing appropriate and useful detailed documentation that is easy to understand even by WordPress beginners is another option. Transcribing the installation and setting up process in easy to follow steps adds value to the theme and a well written piece will mean less resources spent on support.
If you have acquired a certain level of proficiency in WordPress and you are confident enough about what you know, you can also try going into teaching and training.
These are just a few ideas to think of as you consider starting or shifting to a career as a WordPress professional.
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