Top do's and don't for websites

[Ken Lee]

No splash pages: splash pages are the introductory or opening pages to your site, which typically consist of an image plus a little "Enter" link. Get rid of these immediately. They are entirely useless and annoying and accomplishe nothing.

I like splash pages - as long as they load instantaneously. One of the most annoying elements of Flash-based pages, is that the plugin needs time to load.

From the overall look of the splash page, one gets a sense of the entire site, without having to wade into the depths, or wait for an eternity. I like to place an example of my most recent work on the splash page, to convey where I'm at artistically.

If the image resonates with you, you enter. If not, then... Adios, Gringos !

[cyrus]

What are exactly the adverse consequences of doing so ?

In the old days, layout of webpages was done with tables. Tables weren't meant for that purpose though, and the result was very bloated, complicated code. Now, we have CSS, which theoretically allows perfect layout control - except that it doesn't. Making a layout with three equal columns and footer is still a mystery to many people who are just starting out programming their own sites, so many give up and go back to a mixture of tables for layout and css for other design elements like fonts etc. Thankfully there are enough geeks on the web who have posted solutions to these little CSS problems so all it takes is a bit more research to get it right and so you can have a "pure" CSS page with no tables.

Also, another benefit of pure CSS - websites can display well on mobile viewers like cellphones and PDAs.

[QT Luong]

In a nutshell, separation of content and style results in smaller files, faster response, better searchability and increased accessibility.

On a photo site, where the bulk of the bandwidth is used by images, will a few dozen lines of HTML text make a difference ? Why would that improve searchability ? As far as I can tell, Google and other search engines know how to parse HTML :-)

[Marko]

On a photo site, where the bulk of the bandwidth is used by images, will a few dozen lines of HTML text make a difference ? Why would that improve searchability ? As far as I can tell, Google and other search engines know how to parse HTML :-)

Well, true enough, but something like a frame-based site, for example, will make quite a (negative) difference. We've had a few examples of photo sites (frames or not) breaking apart in various browsers on this very forum over the past year or so...

Which reminds me of another addition to my DO NOT list - framesets. They make the site impossible to search, bookmark or print. They also confuse the Hell out of most browsers' back buttons.

Now, seriously, there's always general navigation, gallery and ego...err...artist statement page.

As Cyrus said, the overal goal is to make the website usable and accessible in any browser, or, rather, any user agent, on any platform, anywhere. When done right, modern standards-compliant designs are supposed to "degrade gracefully" in those browsers that do not support all or even any features and at the very minimum display barebones content with no styling and no layout. It's not pretty but it is usable and accessible.

[gregstidham]

Don't forget your sitemap.xml and robots.txt files. Googlebots will love you for it.

One note on flash galleries. They don't just hurt your search engine results, they kill them. Your entire gallery is not indexed at all by the bots. Unless some new indexing tech exists I don't know about.

[jdc]

There are a lot of good points made in this thread regarding how to handle the physical build of a website, but I think these items are at best secondary. Way back in 1996 I managed a web development group. One of our constant tasks was to survey the web for good design. I'd use these sites as a measure against what we were doing and I still have the screen captures of some of the best -- both the ones we created as well as the ones we collected. The best designs are still pertinent, would look and function very well by today's standards, and used some very crude technology. This technology would work in *all* modern browsers.

I'd recommend these as the top do's

1. Limit the site to a specific business or personal goal. If you have multiple goals and some of these goals are incompatible create separate sites. If your first goal is to sell your work and your second goal is to discuss your camera collection or your home made developer then make multiple sites. 1 for each goal -- hosting and domain names are cheap.
2. Understand your audience and their expectations. Art buyers may like the flash of Flash or maybe they like spartan direct sites; understand their IT requirements: Are they older and less likely to have the latest greatest technology: older browsers, smaller lower res monitors or are they likely to have the latest greatest; what terms do they use to describe what you are presenting are the terms different than what you'd use? The list can grow large, but the answers can all be found online for free. Too often photographers build their sites for other photogs and then try to use the site as a platform to sell photographs. Photographers may be art buyers, but art buyers are not all photographers.
3. Identify what you need to build a site that is the intersection of where your goals and the audience’s interests over lap. This will include pictures, text, etc… and most importantly skills.
4. From the list in the prior step take an inventory of what you have on hand. Eventhough you may not have everything you need, build a site with your current inventory of assets and skills. The beauty of a web site is that it can always be, and arguably should always be in flux. If you can only build a site using basic html or a simple editor, then that is the technology you use for version 1 of your website. Hone your skills as you need to to meet your goals in future builds. Don't have under construction pages, simply build the pages that can live independent of the missing content. e.g. if you don't have the text for a bio page than don't create the link or the page.
5. Plan updates based upon what’s missing in version 1 and continue on.

In the end the plan is far more important than the technology used. More than anything the plan should dictate the technology.

FWIW I think flash is over used and often used incorrectly. For me XHTML/CSS/javaScript/PHP or Perl/MySQL and when needed Flash is where the web is or can be at its best.

[Geert]

Most of this thread seems to be written in 1997...

G

[cyrus]

Most of this thread seems to be written in 1997...

G

Perhaps because most of the sites are stuck in the 1990's

[Marko]

That's because most websites are either slapped together as an afterthought or delegated to the (already overloaded) network administrator...

What relatively few people understand is that the Web is a medium in its own right, with different set of rules and limitations. Unfortunately, it is still being treated as a fancy, online Word document or an online version of last year's printed sales brochure.

These discussions will inevitably sound the same as they did back in the late '90's as long as the majority of decision makers, be them individuals or corprorate suits, remain stuck inn the mid-90's.

[windpointphoto]

DO:


P.S.

If you don't know what majority of the above stated really means or at least you don't know how to do it, consider hiring a pro. Yes, good sites are expensive, but just think how much a bad site would cost you!

This is all good advice but I'm wondering how many people actually make any real money via web site sales. All BS aside is anyone out there making more than 2K, 10K, 20K, 50K or more a year? Heck is anyone selling enough to pay for the web site?