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1. Input Text Fields
Before Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and all the other social networking sites, people had personal homepages. 99.9% of them looked like crap, had 2 visitors, and no interesting information. A lot of these sites asked you to input your name when you first visit, and then it would display your name on the page. This was useless, annoying, and a waste of time. Also, it was a good reason to leave that page. These never served any real purpose, and people eventually caught on and stopped using them.

2. Animated GIFs
At one point in time people actually thought it was good to put up images of spinning globes, dancing babies, and e-mail us icons with blinking text. These never looked good. The worst part is business websites actually used these. 99% of the time these images were unrelated to anything on the site. Why people thought these were a good idea is still unknown to me. If you look hard enough you will still find websites that use these.

3. Background MIDI Music
Before YouTube and Napster you could find a lot of MIDI music on the web.  These were not the real songs but computer-generated knock-offs that sounded like they were created on a $10 keyboard. There are probably about three people in the history of the world that actually enjoyed listening to these things. But that didn’t stop thousands of website owners from putting this crap on their websites. The music would start when the page loaded, and often times the player controls were hidden so there was nothing to do to stop this horrid excuse for music besides leave the page, and that’s exactly what most people did. This trend isn’t exactly dead, as now people load up multiple videos or music players with auto-start, or 25 megabyte wave files.

4. Frames
People used to use frames because… well I don’t know why. Sometimes you would see a page with the logo in one frame, navigation in another, content in a third and a copyright message in the footer frame… and every frame had scrollbars. Frames aren’t completely dead yet, but HTML5 is working to kill them.

5. Scrolling Marquees
Scrolling marquees were a great way to make a user wait 10 minutes to read two sentences. I guess the reasoning behind using them is making the text stand out from the rest of the page. It did work… sorta. The user would see the text, start reading it, get annoyed and give up. Luckily this trend died out quickly… but not quick enough.

So what web design trends from the 90′s do you not miss? What sites still use outdated 90′s web design tactics? Comment below.

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Free Personal Joomla 2.5 Template with jQuery Slideshow
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Business Company Joomla 2.5 Template with jQuery Slider
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Viewport [ live preview | download ]

Gallery [ live preview | download ]

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Suburbia [ live preview | download ]

Portfolio [ live preview | download ]

Smashing Multimedia Free WordPress Theme [ live preview | download ]

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Vivee Free Portfolio Theme [ live preview | download ]

Install the Plugin

Under the Plugins tab on the left side of your WordPress admin panel, click “Add New.”  Search for WPtouch and click the Install button. WordPress will automatically install the plugin for you. Once that is complete you will see a link to activate the plugin. Click that.

• Customize The Plugin 

Under the “Settings” tab in your WordPress admin panel you will now see a link that says “WPtouch.” Click that link and you will be taken to the settings page where you will configure your new mobile site.

• General Settings
• Homepage Redirection – In most cases I recommend using your WordPress default.
• Site Title – Self explanatory.
• Excluded Categories – Input the categories you don’t wish to display on the mobile version of your site. This is useful for content that cannot be displayed online. For this site I don’t exclude any categories.
• Text Justification Options – Choose the one you think looks best. Personally I prefer full justification, I think it looks nicer and is easier to read on smart phones.
• Post Listing Options - You can choose between post thumbnails (like the WordPress logo on this post), calendar icons or none. If you have a blog site I recommend calendar or post thumbnails.
• Footer Message – A perfect place to put your copyright message.

• Advanced Settings

For this section I am only going to hit on a few important points. For the rest, start with the defaults and go from there. You can find  more information on these variables by clicking the question mark icon next to each item.

•    Enable Categories Tab in Header - If your posts are separated into categories I suggest checking this box.
•    Enable Search Link in Header - If you have a lot of content on your website I suggest turning this option on.
•    Enable Comments on Pages – I suggest using the same setting as you use on your desktop version of your website.
•    1st Visit Mobile Visitors Will See Desktop Theme - If you want visitors who visit your site for the first time to see the mobile theme, leave this box unchecked. If for some reason you want to take them to the desktop theme, check this box.

Style and Color Options

Play around with these options a bit. Choose whatever you think looks best for your site. I recommend using a similar color scheme as your main site.

Default and Custom Icon Pool

You can upload icons to use with your WPtouch site or you can use the ones provided. We will finish setting these up in step 5.

•  Logo Icon / Menu & Page Icons
• Logo/Home Screen Icon - The icon that will be your site’s logo and RSS feed icon. You will choose from the pool you worked with in step 4.
• Pages & Icons – In this step you can choose icons to associate with your website’s pages. This is optional, but it adds a nice little flair to your website.

Adsense, Stats & Custom Code

Here you can add your Adsense account information to display Adsense ads on your mobile site. You can find this information in by logging into your Adsense account. You can also use the custom code box to add your Analytics password to track visitor information.

Plugin Support and Compatibility

Here you can see how different plugins you may have installed will work with your mobile site and how to fix any potential problems.

Congratulations! Your new mobile site is done and ready to start accepting visitors. Once you get the basics set up you can go back and fine tune all the elements of your new mobile site! Now wasn’t that easy?

Mobile Devices WPtouch works with: Android, CUPCAKE, bada, blackberry9500, blackberry9520, blackberry9530, blackberry9550, blackberry9800, dream, iPhone, iPod, incognito, s8000, webOS, webmate

Author’s Note: The author of this post has received no compensation or incentives for this post. At the time of publishing, the authors of WPtouch had no knowledge of this post. We posed this article because we use the program and are happy with it, and think others may benefit from it.

There are literally thousands of  WordPress plugins avaliable. Here I list the top 6 essential free plugins every WordPress blog should have.

1. Akismet

Akismet is the greatest anti-spam plugin for WordPress, period. Akismet checks comments against their online database to see if a user’s comment is spam or not, and auto-magically moves spam comments to the appropriate spam folder. Like any anti-spam system, it will not catch 100% of spam comments, but it has always worked pretty well for me and has about a 99% success rate.

2. All In One SEO Pack

This plugin is SEO in a can. Simply install and activate this plugin, edit a few variables and BLAM! You now have a search engine friendly website. This wonderful plugin controls the title tags on your webpage, meta tags and more. You can have your post tags automatically be used as your meta keywords, and there are plenty of other options to easily make your site search engine friendly. This plugin is a real time saver.

3.  Share and Follow

Share and Follow is the ultimate social bookmarking plugin. This plugin automatically inserts the social bookmarking sites of your choice. You can also set up follow buttons for Twitter, Digg, Facebook and all the other social networking sites. With Share and Follow you can easily integrate you social networking into your site with just a few clicks  of the mouse! Works great with all popular themes!

4. WPTouch iPhone Theme

Creating an iPhone theme has never been easier than with WPTouch. You simply install this free plugin, configure a few simple variables and in a few minutes you will have your own mobile website. This plugin works with iPhone, Droid, and select other smartphones. Bloggers can easily configure the look of this theme with a few clicks of the mouse. Highly recommended and easy to use plugin.

5. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

A large majority of small and large blogs alike have related article lists with each posting. This is a great way to get more page views on your site with little effort. This simple plugin automatically inserts related article links at the end of each blog post. YARPP allows you to control how strict its filtering system is.

6. Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is a simple to use contact form plugin. The plugin’s built in editor allows you to easily create your contact form and will output a short code to place on your desired page.

While I often use other plugins to expand the capabilities of WordPress, the six listed above are my top essentials that almost every blogger and webmaster can benefit from.

What are your essential WordPress plugins?

• Make the mobile version of your site easily accessible.
  When a mobile user arrives at your site they should instantly arrive at the mobile version of your site. Ideally you should have a script detect if they are on a mobile device and direct them to the mobile site. Bonus points if your site can be accessed at m.yoursite.com and yoursite.mobi

• Size with relative units.
  Since you don’t know exactly what devices and settings are being used to view your website, you should size everything with relative units such as percentages and ems.

• Prioritize information. Don’t overload your visitors.
  Not everyone is on 3G all the time. Keep your site simple so that people with a slow connection will be able to easily use your site. Don’t use unnecessary images and videos. Make sure people can get to the content they are looking for in one to two clicks.

• Validate and make sure your site works on all mobile devices.
  Your mobile site may not look exactly the same on every device, but make sure it displays smoothly on all devices. Test out the site on a few devices. Borrow from a friend when needed. Then, validate your site.

• Make Navigation quick and simple.
  If you have 20 categories with only a few posts, consider combining them. The less navigation links you use, the better, but don’t cut out essential links.

• Keep your branding.
  Make sure your mobile site is consistent with your main site. Use similar design elements and colors when possible.

• Listen to feedback.
  If your visitors offer feedback on your mobile site (or any part of your site for that matter), listen to them. If you receive complaints it may be time to rethink your mobile site. If your site is small and not getting a lot of comments, ask your friends to review your site and offer opinions.