Responsive Design Themes are beginning to show up in larger numbers. 

Ahmed Esam – @drtemon
Good Minimal A Responsive WordPress Theme. #wordpress http://t.co/tj017Vr9

As responsive design continues to move into the mainstream, we’re going to be seeing a lot of themes pop up with responsive design characteristics built in. The Good Minimal theme’s menu breaks down at one point in the page width adjustments, but it’s a good example of what’s to come in this area. What are your favorite themes that have responsive design built in?

Dre Armeda on WordPress Security

bkmacdaddy designs – @bkmacdaddy
#WordPress End-User Security by Dre Armeda – http://t.co/iOvaLm0g

Dre Armeda is our favorite WordPress security expert. If you’ve never seen one of his security presentations, here’s a chance to see him in action online. Even if you have seen his presentation before, chances are you’re not doing everything he suggests, so watch it again.

WordPress 3.3 is on its way

beAutomated – @beAutomated
As of today, we are a steamroller paving the way to WordPress 3.3 launch http://t.co/m9qixnCw #web #cms #WordPress

Yes, WordPress 3.3 is on the way. For those of us lucky enough to have been given indepth tours and insight into coming features, the update is eagerly awaited. This is a great post by Jane Wells, and she rightly comments, “For the people working on the release, most of whom run trunk on their own sites for at least a month or two (if not longer) before each launch, it’s easy to forget that features we had done months ago — flyout menus, drag and drop uploading — are still being hoarded by us (and more recently by the lucky recipients of a merge onto wordpress.com) and are not available on the sites of regular users.” This kind of sentiment is what makes the WordPress community and platform so great. We at Zeek are proud to be a part of it.

And some thoughts from Mashable on important 3.3 features:

dean guadagni – @deansguide
Do you use #wordpress for your business? http://t.co/1mrtmIUZ v. 3.3′s 11 most important features

Resist the urge to take shortcuts

Todd Carpenter – @tcar
How ghetto is it to use an HTML table to format a WordPress Page? #idontwanttowriteacutompagetemplate cc @housechick @zengy @ReggieRPR

The answer, and I know that Mr. Carpenter knows this, is yes, and it’s also just a bad practice. “The problem with using HTML tables,” according to Steve Zehngut, “is that page sizes are much larger, the tables often take longer to load and by using tables, you’re not really future proofing your site. In addition divs are simply more SEO friendly.”

And A New Feature in Jetpack 1.2 – Email Subscriptions

beAutomated – @beAutomated
How to use Email Subscriptions in Jetpack 1.2 http://t.co/qqMB8es3 #WordPress #Automattic #Jetpact #Email #Subscriptions

According to Automattic, “All features in Jetpack 1.2 are on by default. So subscriptions, like all other features in Jetpack, requires no magic to activate. Visitors to your blog can choose to subscribe to new posts, or to subscribe to new comments on a post they have already commented on.”

Where will the email subscription links appears on your blog? ”Two places. One is on by default, the other you have to activate manually. By default, you will see two new checkboxes on every blog post, at the bottom of the comments form. To add the Subscriptions Widget to your sidebar, go to your Dashboard. Then click on Widgets. You will see a widget called ‘Blog Subscriptions (Jetpack)’. Click on it, and drag it to the sidebar on the right.”

Gahlord Dewald clued me in on this one. He knows how much I desire to listen and we have shared a common listening strategy for years. We try to listen to help. Gahlord likes to look for “the special hashtag people use when looking to be helped.” It’s called a question mark. And it’s a powerful hashtag indeed.

The folks at inboxQ understand this: “We started InboxQ because we realized that there were lots of questions being asked by people on Twitter but most weren’t receiving very useful answers. In fact, most questions go completely unanswered on Twitter.” And that’s a fact.

What inboxQ does is find that special hashtag for you. Pop in a few keywords and inboxQ begins scouring twitter, looking for people you can assist. Your first step is to create what they call “campaigns.”

A campaign is simply a category of keywords or hashtags used to delineate possible questions to be answered. You can create as many campaigns as you wish. The campaign opened for view above is called “wordpress.” And I’ve been using the inboxQ Chrome extension to answer questions using the Zeek Interactive account on Twitter for a few days now.

It  has been uncovering 20-30 questions each day.

You can answer the questions right in the extension’s window, without having to fire up Twitter or any of their third party apps, as you can see above. Of course, you can also see that I could be a bit more diligent about opening up the extension. Questions, after all, are best answered when someone is around to listen. Though, my results have been pretty good so far, even without constant attention.

Blog Post Fodder

Another thing the questions are good for is blog post ideas. I’m using the “TODO” tab to save questions I feel require more than 140 characters. Like these:

After a few days, the results have been very positive. I’ve been able to answer a few questions and create some good dialogue around WordPress, conversations we want to take part in. I’m not answering the question with any other desire than to help. But sometimes the questions open up an opportunity to talk about what we do as well. Witness this exchange:

I didn’t know James Hicks before I saw his question. And I know I would never have seen his question before inboxQ. I have no idea where it will lead, but I already consider the minute (total) I spent on it valuable. I hope James does as well.

What’s missing from inboxQ?

It does what it says it does really well, so there are only two things I’d really like to see added. First, the ability to add multiple accounts. I’d like to use the tool for other Twitter accounts I monitor, but it only allows for one account to be connected at a time right now. I can’t imagine this isn’t part of their future development strategy. Second, I’d like them to charge for it. I’m tired of seeing services like this drop off the map because they don’t have a way of making money. I’d pay for this one.

What kind of “listening to help” campaigns would you create?

My session was appropriately scheduled as the last session of the day. The title was “How to Speak Geek – Communicating with a Developer.” The sessions leading up to mine were about WordPress techniques, creating meaningful content, and some primers on how to dive into code. My goal for the session was to give the audience a bit of a reality check on how to go about working with a developer to get a custom WordPress site (or any digital project) built. It was also well received, so I’m turning the content into a series of posts, broken into these parts:

Interviewing Your Potential Developer
Planning & Project Managment
Version Control
Bug Reporting

Much of what I am about to write refers to boutique developers. These are typically smaller shops or freelancers where you will be dealing with the same people that are working directly on your project. Larger firms will typically have a project manager that acts as your point of contact. The project manager is responsible for overseeing the schedule to make sure deliverables are met on time and on budget. However, even some larger firms are guilty of the problems I am about to describe.

I asked the audience to share some of the problems they may have encountered working with a developer in the past. The answers were thrown at me fast and furious. Here are some of the common threads that I jotted down:

• “My developer delivered something that was not exactly what I had in mind. I then had to pay them to change it to match my expectations.”
• “My developer missed the deadline.”
• “My developer has gone AWOL. They refuse to return my phone calls and emails.”
• “My developer does not communicate effectively.”
• “The costs are spiraling out of control with no end in site.”
• “My developer takes suggestions personally.”
• “I found out my developer was outsourcing my project to another resource. They felt dishonest.”
• “My developer does not understand my industry.”
• “My developer does not have the core competencies to complete every aspect of my project.”

While the audience had a good laugh at some of these responses, none of them surprised me. I have heard them all before. The good news is that many of these problems can be avoided up front with proper planning and a bit of leg work on your part (as the client).

Interviewing Your Potential Developer

Developers are a rare breed. At the risk of stereotyping, I have found that hardcore technical people are lousy business people. The best firms that I have worked with in the past have on board technical people as well as business people. Knowing this ahead of time should help you to communicate better with a developer. Be prepared to listen with a different ear. The developer may not offer up details about your future working relationship so ask a lot of questions. Here are some important questions that you should ask when interviewing a developer:

• What is your hourly rate?
• Will my project be billed as hourly or as a flat rate?
• Once my project launches, is there a maintenance fee?
• Where does my project rank with the other projects on your production schedule?
• Do you have the bandwidth to give my project the attention it deserves?
• What is your procedure when something goes wrong?
• What is your process for bug reporting and bug fixes?
• Are you using a project management system, like BaseCamp or GoPlan?
• Who will be my day-to-day point of contact within your firm?
• What kind of turn around time should I expect?
• What version control system are you using?

These questions are best handled in a face-to-face meeting if possible. If a face-to-face is not possible, conduct the interview on a conference call. Avoid handling the interview over email. When you are asking these questions, it is important not just to hear the developer’s answers. Listen to their tone of voice. Study their body language. Are they uncomfortable giving their answers or do they sound confident? Do they speak in “double talk” or do they seem like a straight shooter? This should give you an indication as to how they will handle themselves in a working relationship.

Make no mistake – if you hire a developer, you are entering into a relationship with this person. Take the time to find someone you can trust. If you need to interview a dozen developers until you find the right fit, do it! Finding the right person will save you a lot of headache and money in the long run.

Reality check moment. I am sorry to have to break the news to you, but no one will ever be as passionate about your project as you are. Most developers get off on creating cool technology. It’s a bonus if that can be married with cool content.

Feel free to post any additional questions you might have about interviewing a potential developer in the comments below. Part two in this four part series will cover planning and project management.

8:01 am: Gahlord is going to be focusing on how to improve your social media efforts using web analytic tools. Find him at meetwith.me/thoughtfaucet

8:04 am: @Gahlord is trying to jumpstart his geek brain. Scary thought. #retso

8:08 am: “I like to measure things because it helps me discover more about how things work” – @Gahlord

8:11 am: Analytics help us understand what we can and can’t control and how we respond and make decisions in the wake of those things we can’t control.

8:13 am: Analytics OODA Loop via Jonathan Boyd: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act @Gahlord #retso

8:18 am: “You can generate satisfaction without ever converting.”

8:19 am: “In social media there are two audiences – cheerleaders and customers.” – both have value.

8:22 am: Another objective of analytics is to get repeatable results. Amen.

8:26 am: “I think you should all wake up and say,’I don’t care how many Twitter followers I have.’” @Gahlord #retso

8:32 am: “Campaign tagging” – when you share a link to your site, it will give your more information about where that link came from and why. What are they responding to? Are they responding to a topic, or at a specific time?

8:32 am: “Is your audience awake?” analytics help you know for sure.

8:36 am: A poor man’s reputation management is Google alerts.

8:39 am: It’s important to orient based on channel, by action, by use, by human. “Learn to indentify who is influential.”

8:41 am: “You can develop a clear approach for aligning your social media plan with your business goals.”

8:42 am: Getting people to your website is never a final goal.

8:43 am: Free tool: Google Website Optimizer

8:44 am: Great session.

7:07 pm: Let’s test this live blog app.

Does Google email you your messages? How accurate are they at taking the spoken word to text? That is my biggest issue… that and my messages are getting cut off before I get the phone number. Does it go to your email (gmail) or to a text on your phone? (Do you use the Google Phone? or who is your service with) Do you have a blackberry or IPhone?

So I thought I’d take the advice I often give to others and write a blog post as the answer to her questions. I asked Amy to call into my Google Voice number and leave a message. I use an iPhone, so I’m with AT&T, but the Google Voice service doesn’t care. It’s entirely independent of my network. I have my notifications sent to send to me via SMS and email. It will send to any email you wish. You can see the images below. But Google Voice also stores every message online for you.

Here is Amy’s message. (Yes, you get an embed code for each message.)

This is the exact transcription:

hey jeff this is amy programer from cincinnati ohio thanks so much for suggesting that i’d give you a call to see how well google translates voice to text i’ve been having some trouble with my spending box the i guess it’s AT&T or cincinnati bell wireless and wanted to see how well it translated hi find that motormen messages or getting cut off prior to my client or customer is actually leaving their telephone number at the end of the message which is the whole point of getting it translated so that all i have to do is look in my email and just click on the number and call them back without having to almost rack my car reading the number down and then dialing it back so let’s see how long this allows me to talk and it it puts my number again my number is (513) 377-3637 i’m currently using a blackBerry and hopefully this will work very well i’m curious to see if it goes to your google mail your email or jess at text message because my current service because it’s a text message thanks so much again this is amy programer with facebook and i hope you’re having a great day and sunny california see you later bye bye

Here is how it came to me on my iPhone via SMS:

And here is how it looked in email:

I think you can judge for yourself how well Google did at converting the human voice to text. I’ve been very pleased with the improvements they’ve made to the old GrandCentral.com service. And this is one of the features I’ve enjoyed the most.

Amy, what do you think?