I went over to Goody K3NG's blog today to read his latest entry when my eye was captivated by the title of one of his previous blog posts - "Why can't BOB IN TX Design a Website?"
It was a very good, thought provoking post. In fact, it caused me to take a few minutes to take a look at my own Website and re-evaluate things. I ended up making a few changes and got rid of some superfluous (and unnecessary) things that were slowing down the loading of the pages.
The basic content hasn't changed; and it seems to load faster now. I got rid of the link boxes at the bottom of each page. I figured that once you navigate away from the main page it's just a matter of hitting your browser's "back button" to get to the main page and do all the navigating from there, rather than navigate between pages.
I also got rid of the "Links Page" and replaced it with N2CQ's QRP Contest Calendar. Goody is dead on when he states that Google or any decent search engine can do a better job of providing links better than I can - why should you care what MY favorites are?
I don't consider my Website to be the best Amateur Radio Website by a long shot; but I'm happy with it and I think it has its purpose. I do think it's a little bit better than it was due to K3NG's observations about Amateur Radio Websites in general.
Thanks, Goody!
73 de Larry W2LJ
K3NG's post was aimed at websites that are a whole lot crappier than yours. There's nothing wrong with providing additional ways to navigate and sharing a few links that are liked and approved by a blog's author. If I like your blog and want more of the same, I appreciate having some well chosen links to explore. Furthermore, I doubt your pages are loading faster because a few links disappeared.
ReplyDeleteThat said, keep up the good work. This is a darn good QRP blog.
I agree with the above comment. I also agree with one of the comments to K3NG's post that said hams shouldn't be blamed because they don't know HTML.
ReplyDeleteSome of the ham radio businesses really have no excuse, though. If they don't know better they should pay someone who does. Elecraft's site still uses frames, for example, so if you arrive at one of their pages via a search engine you can't navigate anywhere else. Some of the small component suppliers over here don't have any form of online shopping cart, you're expected to email your order to them (including credit card details - no PayPal of course) or send it by post.
I think the original post was pointing out the "worst of the worst" and most blog platforms such as this site and most are in pretty good shape. Yes, anyone can go overboard with plug-ins on a blog, but as long as the main content is there, that is what matters.
ReplyDeleteI also don't mind links and contextual advertising. In fact, if Google Ads is accurately showing ads based on the site content, I appreciate seeing what others have. Same for blog rolls (links to other blogs) if they are relevant.
What I think we're all going to see more of is the coming months/year is at least a way to view sites better on mobile devices. I know there are WordPress plug-ins and I'm sure others that provide for better presentation on mobile platforms and that will probably continue for a while. The bad sites/forums are very obvious if you bring them up on a mobile device.