CoPress

It’s the little things…

You’ve invariably heard the phrase turned before, whether speaking about life’s pleasures or why a product is popular. Often, it applies to products on the Web; “It’s the little things that make Gmail so good,” or, “Why does WordPress dominate as self-hosted software? It’s the little things.”

And that it is. WordPress is quickly becoming the go-to solution for those who want ease of operation combined with a full feature set and nearly limitless extendability. The software’s popularity, however, is also part of its downfall: because of an enthusiastic community that pumps out new themes every day, oftentimes the product’s back end capabilities do not match up with what is seen by the audience.

Luckily, it’s generally easy to modify themes that were not necessarily well thought out or executed. Whether by enabling a plugin or hacking some PHP, college news organizations can greatly increase the presentation and functionality of their sites with a minimum of time and effort. Before doing so, however, one needs ideas.

Thus, I present to you a number of small improvements for your WordPress-based news site (in no particular order). Read more →