I’ve said it before on this site, a good minimal WordPress theme is often more difficult to code than a complex, flashy one.  In looking at good minimal WordPress themes, I look for clean lines, mostly CSS instead of images, and grid-based or clear organization.  For example, a strong navigation system need not be overly dramatic or layered.  These are some excellent minimal WordPress themes from around the free and premium providers.

Currents

460×345

Wikeasi

460×345

Canvas

460×345

eList

Evolution

Web forms for a blog are typical means of converting casual visitors into engaged contacts. Once readers have made the step of dropping you a few lines, they are most likely to come back. However, feeding people’s appetite for filling out forms can be a tricky task. Here are some easy tips for increasing conversion rates. Further on, you can find out how to create forms that suit each blog using the 123ContactForm plugin for WordPress.

5 PRO-CONVERSION tips:

• Simple layout, catchy design. Make the form simple by using the minimum number of fields and a one-column layout. If you plan on building a more complex form (e.g. a survey), it’s best to group fields into separate topic sections. Forms are powerful elements and their design should match the overall image of your blog. That’s because our vision usually sorts out the page elements that do not harmonize with the ensemble and ignores them. So leave grey aside and be creative. In terms of words, you can use humorous or teasing messages to spice up your forms.
• User-friendly validation. Fields that prompt for e-mail addresses or phone numbers should have some simple hints below, stating which the desired input format is. This may seem redundant, but mistakes may occur in rush. If your form doesn’t have an autofill option, users should be aware of what they should pay attention to. This kind of interactivity is a must for a contact form, as well as for an order form for WordPress or any other type of web form that requires user input.
• Non-alien CAPTCHA. Have you ever stood dazzled in front of a hieroglyphic CAPTCHA saying to yourself: “Gosh, I don’t have the keyboard for that”? Oh yes, so did we. There’s no reason in chasing away visitors by using an IQ test when a simple CAPTCHA will be equally successful in preventing spam. The even better solution is smart CAPTCHA, which only shows up when there is a sign that the form has been abused (e.g. multiple submissions from the same IP address).
• Efficient error handling. Another means of good interaction with users is optimized error handling. A friendly way to do it is by highlighting the fields that contain errors, so that one can notice easily what needs to be corrected.
• Custom “thank you” message. Even if this comes after the objective of having the form filled out has been reached, it’s best to send a warm message to users, thanking them for their time and announcing that your feedback on their message is on its way.

5 ANTI-CONVERSION practices to avoid:

• Design clutter. Without a powerful motivation, users would be distracted when faced with a cluttered form and they wouldn’t fill it out. Keep forms stylish, yet clean and simple.
• Typing stress. Bad questions are the ones that don’t go straight to the point and call for too much typing. Use simple statements and include radio buttons or Likert scales, if suitable.
• “Reset” button easily mistaken for the “Submit” one. There are few cases when a “Reset” button is necessary at all. Don’t use it when you don’t actually need it because, when hit accidentally, it will lead to users losing data and, naturally, giving up the form.
• No interactivity. Users need guidance. If they spend more than 5 seconds all alone wondering what to do next, the following step will be leaving your page. Of course, you don’t have to stuff the form with explanations. Use them with generosity, but also with purpose.
• No motivation. You have to point out why you’re asking users to fill out the form on your blog and/or what they will gain by doing this (even if it’s just a big Thank you).

How to build a highly customizable form using the 123ContactForm plugin for WordPress

123ContactForm is a WYSIWYG form generator that creates any kind of forms and surveys in 3 easy steps. No programming experience is required as a drag and drop form builder handles the entire process of form generating. Features of 123ContactForm include 3rd party apps integration (SalesForce, MailChimp, VerticalResponse, WebHook, iContact, Google Groups, Yahoo Groups), payment processing (integrations with PayPal,
Authorize.Net, Google Checkout). At any degree of complexity, your WordPress online form will blend perfectly with the image of your blog as 123ContactForm allows full CSS customization.

Let’s see the wizard in action!

Install the 123ContactForm plugin for WordPress:
1. Download the 123ContactForm plugin from the WordPress plugins directory.

2. Install the plugin to your WordPress database:
a. Unzip and move the folder 123contactform-for-wordpress to your wordpress/wp-content/plugins directory;
b. Visit your WordPress dashboard. In the Plugins tab, click on the Activate button for the plugin named 123ContactForm for WordPress.

Create your WordPress contact form:
1. Login/signup to www.123contactform.com.
2. In your Dashboard, go to Create New Form and choose Contact form.

3. Choose your fields (you can use the preexistent ones) and edit them to set the validation rules, label text and positioning etc.

4. Go to the next step – Form Settings. Here, you can customize the “thank you” page, choose the email address where notifications will be received and set the security options (anti-spam features include: CAPTCHA, smart CAPTCHA, password protection, country filter). This is also the step where you can customize the form theme or even the CSS code to style the form in any way you wish to.
5. The final step – Publish Form. To post the form on WordPress, choose the WordPress option in the menu on the left. It returns a line of code. In the Publish section, you can also opt for using SSL encryption for the data sent through your form.

6. Go to your WordPress editor (either in the visual or HTML mode) and paste the code in the place where you need the form to be displayed.

There is a second way of publishing forms on your WordPress page, which is particularly helpful if you have more than one form to embed, because it gives you access to all the forms at once, without having to copy the code for each one. This technique works as follows:

• Log in to 123ContactForm and go to your My Account section. Under Account Details, there is an API Key. The initial status of it is none. Press Create now. Copy the API Key that has been generated.
• Go to your WordPress dashboard and edit your post. Make sure you are in the Visual mode (not HTML). The 123ContactForm icon was added to your menu when you installed the plugin. Click on it, paste the API Key in the lightbox that appears and press Connect.

• Here, you can see a dropdown list containing all of the forms you have created with 123ContactForm. Choose the form that you want to publish and press Embed. You can edit the form at any time, to keep up with the updates in your blog design.

Authored by LAURA MOISEI

Being part of the team at 123 Contact Form, I enjoy keeping up with the latest trends in design, as well as with tech news, and share my discoveries.

Check out these 46 excellent WordPress lightbox themes!

Lightbox is a powerful but simple script that overlays images on top of the current page.  It has become the standard for portfolio and gallery pages.  Protecting your WordPress site from “viewer fatigue” means preventing unnecessary clicks and back button usage.  Lightbox allows you to do this by preventing the user from leaving the page to get a closer look at your media.

Lightbox is free and works in all modern browsers*.  Because the script is lightweight and universal, it has been seamlessly integrated into tons of WordPress themes.  These WordPress lightbox themes are the top of the line, and allow you to show off your media efficiently.

*No version of Internet Explorer is considered “modern”.

Found this nice infographic over at Mostash.com.  It outlines the true impact of WordPress on the content-driven WWW.  The market share of WordPress is amazing, especially when you add both self-hosted and WordPress.org sites.  There’s also some very interesting history of WordPress represented here.

I found this WordPress tutorial on how to add images to custom menu links helpful. This is especially handy for inserting an RSS image next to your feed link, or some other identifying icon or small image. It doesn’t fundamentally change the function of your WordPress site, but it does add a nice, small design touch that can make a difference in the user experience. Click the screenshot below to see the tutorial.  We at Pingable love new, helpful WordPress tutorials, so please send them our way.

Advantages of Tumblr

• Social networking aspects – Tumlbr makes connecting via social media sites very easy
• simplicity – Tumblr is very much an open and blog platform aimed at those that don’t want to know the guts of what is going on behind the scenes.
• Easy management from your phone – The iPhone Tumblr app is much better than the wordpress one.
• Can have you own domain – Tumblr still hosts it though….you can’t actually take your content else where like you can with a self hosted wordpress install.

Advantages of WordPress

• The ability to be self-hosted – This is big. It costs, but means you actually have complete control of your content.
• Large community with lots of addons & customization – The amount of free and premium WordPress themes and plugins is amazing. There is so much functionality in this regard.
• Great for SEO – Because WordPress gives you more control over your platform, you can seriously optimize every aspect of your blog, from URL structure, meta tags, pinging, and internal links, right down to theme structure.

Reasons to use Tumblr

• The thought of setting up and paying for hosting doesn’t appeal to you.
• You want to be blogging right now, and you don’t want to worry about the technical side of things, you just want to get your thoughts out there, so others can connect.

Reasons to use WordPress

Obviously we are big fans of WordPress here at Pingable, we are a wordpress blog, and we blog about wordpress related content. However, that doesn’t mean we won’t recommend another platform if we thinks it’s better.  Wordpress is going to be the better platform for most blogging professional, and business bloggers. It gives you more control, and you own your content. Tumblr however, is probably a better platform for those looking for simplicity. It’s a great platform for beginners, and those of us less technology minded.

You logged into Google today, viewed you referring keywords, and BAM: One of the top referrers was: “(not provided)”.

Google have introduced a new feature into their search where logged in users have search defaulting to SSL. Supposedly this is only meant to be affecting 10% of statistics, as apparently only 10% of queries to google search come from signed in users, however, we are seeing a much higher value for pingable. Sites that target a more technical audience will likely see similar statistics as us, where this number might become quite high.

Here’s is Googles official announcement on the topic.

What does this mean for web masters?

Obviously less data. The number 1 referral to pingable.org is now a keyword called (not provided). As annoying as this is, I guess the positive way to look at it is that it just scales down the data you can get from users. Overall, keyword referrals should be similar, however they will seem slightly lower, as you will not be getting the full picture.

The roll out has been taking place over the last few days, take a look to see how it is affecting out data:

So nothing to be too worried about. Your keyword performance is not dropping, Google are simply hiding the data from you.

WordPress started as a blogging platform, but quickly became a powerful tool to showcase your work. These WordPress showcase themes are the best of the best, available for instant purchase with no expensive subscription fees. They are made by professional designers that stand behind their work.

A good WordPress showcase theme is clean and minimalist, allowing the reader to move directly to the content being showcased, not the design. Another component of good WordPress showcase themes is easy user interface. This means the user can navigate the content easily and quickly. Quality WordPress showcase themes have a unique and tested user interface that uses AJAX, pure javascript or css menus to allow for easy browsing of content.

Click on any image to go directly to the theme page, and remember, there are more pieces like this all over Pingable. You might want to subscribe to our email newsletter to get updates. Don’t worry, we never spam or share your contact info.

Those amazing theme creators are at it again, producing some special new products. Always pushing the limits of what we thought WordPress could do, creating new ways to use this amazing content publishing platform. WordPress can no longer be considered just a blogging platform, it’s now a full fledged content management system. Check out these new themes from well known designers.

Teamster WordPress Theme for Multi-author blogs

Teamster is a theme created for blogs that are run by multiple authors. As content is key, more blogs are converting to this collaborative model because the time demands of creating competitive content are increasing. Teamster WordPress theme is designed to meet the unique needs of multi-author blogs.  Check out Teamster Theme.

Features:

• AJAX Powered author tabber
• Minimalist design
• Author content showcase
• Custom typography

Photocrati 4.2 Update

Pingable is a long time fan of the Photocrati WordPress theme. Why? Because it is 60 themes in one. When you buy Photocrati, you get 15 preset styles with tons of customization options. Although Photocrati has been around a while, they just released the latest version this month. What’s more, the sales of this theme go, in part, to the Photocrati fund which gives $5,000 scholarships to photographers working on environmental and humanitarian projects. Now that’s worth supporting.  Check out Photocrati Theme.

Features:

• IPad and iPhone compatible
• SEO optimized
• Powerful options panel
• Built in copyright protection
• 30 day satisfaction guarantee

Sky Whimsical WordPress Theme

Sky is truly whimsical. It floats your content in a nice sea of background texture. It is iPad compatible and utilizes a nice slider on the front page. Wow your clients with this professional theme.  Check out Sky theme.

Features:

• Four color schemes
• AJAX preloaded for fast page changes
• Built in gallery feature
• The famous ElegantThemes shortcode package
• Powerful control panel

Did you like these themes? Get more great WordPress resources sent to your email or via Facebook!

Minimalist WordPress themes are everywhere.  But high quality minimalist themes are surprisingly hard to find.  I have often said that creating an elegant, minimalist theme is just as tricky as creating a flashy, complex themes.  Lucky for you, Pingable is really good at pulling together some super high-quality themes.  We also threw in some html templates for good measure.  Enjoy!

Core Minimalist Photography Portfolio