As I often do, I was looking at my friend Chris Bavota’s website this morning for inspiration to write a post about WordPress and it occured to me, why not share with all of you some of the things that I love about Chris’s WordPress website and do a little “review” of it so that others who might wish to create a blog can see some of the great things Chris has done with BavotaSan.

First off, Chris is an independent website developer and creative type in Montreal Canada, his website is all about how to build and design WordPress websites for small business owners and online marketing types, basically the same audience as mine but with a much more technical and WordPress focus.

His website, BavotaSan.com is packed full of amazing goodies such as his free themes for WordPress and a series of premium themes such as the Stationery Premium WordPress Theme , Illustrious Premium WordPress Theme and a great paid WordPress plugin called Delete Duplicate Posts Pro which surprisingly … does just that. It’s great for auto blogging website in that it scans for duplicate posts and ensures you’re not falling victim to Google’s duplicate post penalties but Chris’s website isn’t just a great resource, it’s a work of interface art. Let’s take a look at some of the features of this great website.

The Footer

I always start with the footer when I review a website, it’s often the last place a design thinks to look but the first place somebody looks when they’re lost … so it’s important. Actually, it’s a little like Walmart I think in that most people never think about customer service until they’re standing in line and really upset. Walmart is one of the few national chains that I can think of who put great thought into this fact, when a customer is trying to return or complain about something … make it easy for them, make it pleasant.

The footer on Chris’ website does just that. Finding things easily is a pleasant experience.

You can easily see the links he wants to promote in his footer, as well as a clearly defined link for Twitter.  His downloads and tutorials are organized to be effective and you’ll see this subtle use of a “Back to Top” option with an icon, a small detail often over looked by web designers in a rush. Ironically, Chris isn’t a web designer, he’s a web developer so his attention to detail is refreshing.

The Header

At the top of Chris’ website he promotes his internal links very well using a process we call deep linking but it’s done subtly and doesn’t interfere with users ability to navigate his website. In fact his menu is designed to accomplish two functions. First, he accommodates the users need to quickly reach content and two gives search engines the ability to easily feature content from his site.

Two things that I absolutely love about Chris’ website? First, his use of the Get image from post code (he uses the code as a part of his theme rather than as a plugin, which is very effective) and the great link to his RSS feed on the right.

Everybody should take a few minutes to visit Montreal Web Designer, Chris Bavota .