1. WP Super Cache – Simply activating this plugin will increase the load times of your site, especially on shared hosting environments.
2. Maintenance Mode – A great utility plugin that allows you to activate a branded “maintenance” page, ideal for when you are deploying big changes or updating your data.
3. Advanced Custom Fields – A recent addition to my standard library. This plugin allows you to add groups of meta boxes to your posts, pages and custom post types. Field types include date pickers, text, HTML editor and many more. Spend $25AUD on the “repeater field”, you won’t regret it.
4. Custom Post Template – This plugin allows you to selectively choose templates for any individual post. For example, you can assign an entirely different template to posts in a particular category. Your chosen template will replace single.php for the specified post.

It did however get us thinking about a bizarre irony. The devices we carry around with us are often the ones connected to lower bandwidth networks, like 3G or Edge or occasionally even less – sure they can serve up the most amazing images and type but this comes at a cost, larger downloads for the user. How are we meant to take advantage of these amazing screens but remain responsible in terms of the files we ask our users to download?

Just as we are now finding elegant ways to handle responsive images, for example we used Josh Emerson’s Responsive-Enhance script on the Viewport Industries site, it will be interesting to see how the problem of serving images “responsibly” will be solved, be it in CSS, JavaScript or natively in the browser.

Towards the tail end of 2011 I was chatting with my good friend Greg and he asked if I had tried out Sass. I mentioned I had heard about it but hadn’t really tried it in anger. After a quick demo I was a convert.

Whilst I don’t use the nesting capabilities that much variables, mixins and selector inheritance make creating CSS quicker and more maintanable. If you write more than a few lines of CSS a day then I encourage you to give it a try.

Couple this with a utility like CodeKit for Mac and you won’t even need to open up Terminal and start installing Ruby and Gems. Next on my learning list, spurred on by Mr. Bodien, is Compass.

I love chatting to and learning from people who excel at what they do – whether it be a designer, coder or the owner of a small business. It’s a fact of life that people like talking about themselves and are usually happy to share their experiences with you. By working out how talented and successful people approach things we put our own ways of working into context. It can often reinforce our own ideas, inspire us to do even better or occasionally make us realise that a certain approach isn’t as good as we thought.

Even if you work at home all day or design or code is something you do in your spare time there’s still ample possibilities to surround yourself with talented people. If you admire someone in the industry drop them a quick email with a very specific question – they might just reply. If you happen to be in their town for a day why not suggest meeting for a quick coffee? Be sure to have a couple of questions lined up to start the conversation when you meet. Alternatively you could get in touch with local agencies and offer to help out for a day or two. Don’t forget to include details of your experience and why you are a perfect fit for them.

It’s not always easy to achieve but I guarantee that it’s well worth the effort. Surrounding yourself with experienced, talented and successful people will undoubtedly inspire you, certainly help you and ultimately give you a broader perspective on your work.