Posted by Phil on August 16, 2007 – 11:58 pm
Load time for a blog is a really big deal. How well you economize your page will in part determine the amount of traffic to your site. Even though many users are on broadband, there is still a good percent of traffic coming from slow connections due to existing dial-up, wireless and international traffic.
There are simple steps to take that will have immediate affect on load time.
- Clear the cache on your browser and reload the page. If you notice significant lag in the time it takes your page to load, other users are surely experiencing the same wait or longer. Ask others to provide feedback on their experience.
- Use a blog layout that loads the content on the left and the sidebar on the right or in the footer. Web pages load from left to right and top to bottom. Even if it takes a while for the sidebar to load, your users can glean the latest information without having to wait for the widgets. This is my single biggest complaint/frustration with sites. You don’t have to be a professional web designer to publish a relatively quick loading page. If you wish to have, in the words of Scott at MyThermos.com, a lot of "blog bling", then load it second after the main content.
- Constantly evaluate the benefit of sidebar features. Don’t be afraid to drop widgets or plug-ins to economize. A Minimalist perspective will serve you well.
- Keep dynamic content from other sites to a minimum. Remember, the user will not only experience lag from your site, but lag from the other server as well.
Most blogs are by their very nature personal and the bells and whistles are part of that expression. Some authors seem to depend on those features to spice-up their site and draw traffic. If you author a blog, be passionate, relentless in pursuit of your story, your purpose and don’t let the load time inhibit users from appreciating your hard work.
You will notice I’ve recently added listening capability to my blog with Odiogo. This feature does affect load time. I’m committed to making my site as reachable across as many languages and user accessibility as possible. This is a deliberate decision knowing full-well that it can have a negative impact on traffic levels. I hope some of you find it useful and that the content is worth the slightly slower load time. Let me know if it proves valuable to you. With this feature in mind I need to trade-off on other aspects of the site to not overload the page with "blog bling". I’m giving myself a shorter leash.
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Posted by Phil on April 30, 2007 – 8:56 am
If you publish a website or a blog, you are an expert in what you know. Or if you don’t consider yourself an expert, most likely you know much more about your topic than many of your readers. With every topic comes a set of vocabulary that the reader must know in order to properly understand your message. While topic specific jargon is true of any area of focus, this is especially indicative of technical related sites. For many readers all of the acronyms seem like vegetable soup: What does HTML, CSS, and FTP mean they may wonder? As a techie, I am all too guilty at times of assuming my reader understands such words. At the same time, so as not to be guilty of logorrhea infanitum, I have employed two not-common enough, but accepted methods for assisting my readers:
- Cursor:help
- Site Glossary
Cursor:help
Cursor:help refers to an attribute in CSS. when you mouse over the acronym CSS you notice an exclamation mark and description. This is a help to users to know more about the meaning or significance of the word.
To add Cursor:help to your site:
- Place the following in your style.css or main style sheet:
.TSDef
{COLOR: #CC6633;
CURSOR: help;
TEXT-DECORATION: none;}
Change the text color to your choosing and bold the word by adding "font-weight: bold;"
- Employ the <span> tag to create the effect: <span class="TSDef" title="Hyper Text Mark-up Language. HTML is the basic language of the web.">HTML</span>
<span – opens the span tag
class="TSDef" relates to the class defined in the style sheet
title="" is the information you want to appear in the mouseover
</span> closes the tag
Example: Cursor:Help
Add Site Glossary:
- Create a link to the page and specific location on the page of the word:
<a href="http://www.thoughtsparks.net/glossary/#HTML">HTML [Glossary]</a>
Specific page is: http://www.thoughtsparks.net/glossary/
Specific location is: #HTML
- The text [Glossary] could be replaced with an image icon or just hyperlink the word itself.
To add a specific location place the tags <a name="HTML"></a> around or next to the location i.e. <a name="HTML">HTML</a> on the glossary page.
Example: HTML[Glossary Term] or HTML
Combine the Two
You will notice in the top paragraph that I actually combined the two methods into one giving brief explanation w/ a link to the glossary explanation.
Example: HTML
You now have two options for enabling your readers to more fully understand your subject matter. Both of these are fairly standard conventions on the web and will add value to your site.
Posted by Phil on March 20, 2007 – 1:21 am
OK, that may sound like an audacious statement to make. But disabling the back button on a website is a major no no. It is Hotel California, "You can check in any time you like, but you can never leave." Cool lyrics to a song, bad concept for web design. I wouldn’t rant about it, but that tactic is too alive and well on blog sites. Blogging has unfortuanetly revived some lost arts to poor web design and that would be the top of my list.