1. Severe lack of Mac support from RIM

RIM (Research in Motion), the manufacturers of the Blackberry are still yet to provide formal support for the device with Macs. This means that you have to rely on the glitchy and somewhat unreliable PocketMac for Blackberry which still doesn’t support music synchronisation for the latest range of Blackberrys. One key functionality that is lost for me here is the ability to get my latest podcasts and listen to them on the move without the aid of an iPod! This, alone, renders the Bold’s 1GB memory a bit redundant for an Apple user.

2. The Bold’s browser is good, but not great

While the Blackberry Bold sports a vastly improved browser compared to that featured in the Curve, it is considerably overshadowed by the scaled down Safari found in the iPhone. Although you “sort of” get a proper web display on the Blackberry, it fails to properly support javascript (even when you specifically enable javascript support). This means that I can’t login to most of the day-to-day websites that I use, including my online banking and admin areas of WordPress sites. Coupled with the fact that sites often don’t render correctly, the Blackberry’s browser is plainly inferior and can often cause a lot of frustration. For example, if you do try and visit a WordPress admin area, the screen just goes blank. Furthermore, while you can get a mobile version of Opera for the Blackberry, it’s very time-consuming to use and just feels generally clunky and difficult to operate.

3. There is a distinct lack of third party apps and those that do exist aren’t great

Again, the Blackberry falls down on its third party apps and the new Blackberry app store isn’t a patch on the Apple one. Since getting my iPhone, I now have a beautiful National Rail app that can tell me the live departures of any train station in Britain as well as tell me the location of almost every single train in the nation, and for good measure plan my route from anywhere to anywhere. I also have a fantastic application that can tell me the latest status of the London Underground and, once more, tell me how to traverse my way across it if there are problems. I can read eBooks, listen to my music, check my eBay, and actually view a compact version of Facebook (without having to open a browser). On top of that, I’ve got apps that tell me where I can get free Wi-Fi, enable me to listen to the radio, enable me to watch BBC iPlayer AND entertain me endlessly if I find myself cooped up on a delayed train or bus.

In summary then…

Everything about the Blackberry is second-rate. It “sort of” has Facebook (but you’ll need to change your settings so that you start receiving all those bloody emails again – it needs them). It “sort of” allows you to view the web and it “sort of” allows you to listen to music.

However, when it comes to the crunch, if you want to be totally in touch with the world and be able to do your day-to-day tasks without any hassle and with as much beauty and efficiency as possible – get the iPhone, and not its decrepit rival.

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This is the first site that made me begin to realise what all the WordPress hype was about and its brilliantness means I’ll have to give it the number 1 spot.

Featuring the most venerable reviews of techno-guru Walt Mossberg, the site is one of the most up-to-date technology news sources out there. Its utilisation of WordPress is a thing of beauty and its creative approach to implementing the various features that the CMS offers is pure genius. All Things Digital proves WordPress’s capability as a credible solution for big news websites. It’s also one of the best demonstrations that WordPress isn’t just for blogs any more.

2. Richard Branson

I suppose I should admit that this one is more down to personal preference for the content than the actual implementation of WordPress itself. But, screw it! It is a neat website and part of a trend that top level celebrities have begun recently to keep their fans up-to-date. I was very pleased to see Sir Richard joining such personalities as Stephen Fry and Boris Johnson in the celebrity blogosphere and I’m even more pleased that his entrance has been met by a nomination for a Webby.

Back the beard!

3. Matt Mullenweg

It would be a crime not to put exalted WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg in my top 3 for good WordPress sites. What’s brilliant about this site is that Matt probably isn’t bothered what people think of his site – he’s just let his creativity flow and spewed forth a beautifully artistic site that is presumably a reflection of his true character. Again, it is a great example of how thinking outside the box can allow you to produce almost any site with WordPress.

4. Boris Johnson

London’s Mayor has had a WordPress site for some time now and it’s gone through numerous different overhauls. One of the first mainstream WordPress sites I came across was Boris’s and it has only gone from strength as his popularity and political notoriety have grown. Of course, Boris’s site does follow a more traditional WordPress layout and is effectively just a blog – but very clean, clear and entertaining.

5. <img/> is everything

Phil Thompson’s blog is another favourite of mine. With a combination of witty banter and informative, thought-provoking articles, his site is a useful resource for web developers and technology enthusiasts alike.

Good news for Phil at the time of writing – he has been nominated for a Big Chip award for his freelance work. Best of luck to him.

6. Johnston North

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Stuart Johnston and I was very impressed with his clear approach to projects and the incredible attention he pays to usability. His freelance design studio and blog, entitled Johnston North, provides great information on the work that he has done and what he’s currently up to.

It’s also a good way to keep up-to-date with the latest Apple apps and other technology news.

7. Freakonomics

As with most things The New York Times produces – I’m a big fan of the Freakonomics blog. An extension of the bestselling book, the Freakonomics blog carries on the same theme of how bizarre and interconnected many aspects of life are.

Along with, I believe, all of NYT’s blogs – Freakonomics is powered by WordPress. Beautiful.

8. WSJ. The Wall Street Journal Magazine

Carrying superb features and the sharpest opinions and reviews from the Wall Street Journal, its magazine’s website is a superb source for entertainment and information. Again, a great application of WordPress. Rather than blather on, I’ll just leave you to have a look.

As they say, the proof is in the pudding.

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It would be an understatement to say that a steep learning curve was involved in this redevelopment.

The project broadly involved three distinct stages:

1. Initial groundwork and migration of content

This meant setting up a new WordPress installation on a subdomain of Moneymagpie (http://new.moneymagpie.com/). Once this was done, the laborious task of moving all of the content from the spaghetti-like 130-odd tables of the old database to the wonderfully neat and tidy 10-table WordPress configuration had to be done.

Astonishingly, the information relating to some of the articles was spread across six different tables! The solution here was to create a PHP script that collated and compiled the data on the old database so that it was ready to be inserted into the new WordPress database (with an archive of some 500 articles using several different layout formats, this was no easy task). Therefore, the “Transfer Script” was born.

After a few days of fiddling and tweaking, we had a new WordPress installation populated with all of Moneymagpie’s articles and static pages. So now it was time to begin work on step 2.

2. The creation of a heavily customised ‘Moneymagpie’ theme for WordPress

Fortunately the concept design of the new site was carried out by highly respected London creative consultants Lisa Tse Ltd.

Although previously experienced in tweaking WordPress themes, this was Bold Media’s first outing creating a new theme from scratch for a client. Thankfully, the wonderfully crafted WordPress system makes it relatively painless to carry out this task. For the new site to have all the functions required, we needed to employ a number of WordPress plugins and widgets, some of which we had to create ourselves.

With the completion of the theme, the new Moneymagpie.com really began to take shape.

3. The transition

There were certainly some lessons learnt here. The change over from old to new mainly involved changing the files over on the FTP server and making final tweaks to the WordPress configuration. Of course, with the transfer taking place over a weekend, it was also required that a final synchronisation take place.

With this done, the new Moneymagpie.com was, in essence, live. What was then necessary in the following weeks was the ironing out of many creases and of course the addition of many plugins and tweaks to embellish WordPress and make it more suitable for the easy upkeep of Moneymagpie.

Since the redevelopment and using Google Analytics, Moneymagpie has seen its bounce rate drop by around 30%, user time spent on the site has almost doubled, Google’s PageRank has gone from 4 to 5 and the pages per visit have also almost doubled. So all in all, a great redevelopment – if a bit turbulent along the way!

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Hopefully this blog will become a place of interest as far as the ‘blogosphere’ is concerned. I also hope that the Bold brand will go from strength to strength and evolve into a notable player in whichever market(s) it may enter.

For the time being, back to work! I’ve got plugins to write, modifications and embellishments to make, a newspaper to design and, not to mention, a degree to pass!

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