Homepage Content: Need Opinions

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So, I went and registered a domain name and all that, and I’m working on putting my new and improved webpages together.

I’m curious how the general populace feels about homepage content. Whaddya like? Lots and lots of pictures? Thrilling graphics? Sounds? Interactivity? Eh?

Of course I’m going to do it the way I want, but I’m open to input and suggestions. As it stands it’s going to be just your basic personal homepage stuff, with a little bit of a focus on catering to homebodies like myself. Lemme know what you think! Best suggestions will get a free link to the page when it’s finished.

Ok, EVERYONE gets a free link to the page when it’s finished…I just wanted make this seem REALLY exciting.

“…being normal is not necessarily a virtue. It rather denotes a lack of courage.”

2

Pictures. Pics of you & the family. Bazillions of 'em. And pics of the SDMB gatherings you’ve been to.

And text, too, as much as you can cram in between the pictures. That’s because you’re particularly good with words, and I like reading what you write.

Let me know when it’s done!

Changing my sig, because Wally said to, and I really like Wally, and I’ll do anything he says, anytime he says to.

3

Make your homepage welcoming and to the point. If you can pull it off, avoid a background on the homepage, and minimize the graphics, so people will stick around long enough for at least the homepage to load.

Segregate material and make it obvious where stuff is. Sure, put up all the photos you want, but on a page or pages designated as such, so people will know to expect a wait.

Do not get abstract with titles for sub-pages, or title them as you feel appropriate, but subtitle them so their content is clear.

I guess the guts of my thoughts are: load up all kinds of subpages with all kinds of whatever you want, but make homebase easy to get to and navigate from.

Let us know when it’s up!

4

Thanks, dearies. Anyone else? Don’t be shy now. I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t value your opinions.

Cristi: There will be a photo section devoted to SDMB gatherings, with a special page for all the little lovey-doveys who got together after meeting on the board. (You can’t tell that I love and adore this place, can you?)

Plugging away,
Chris

“…being normal is not necessarily a virtue. It rather denotes a lack of courage.”

5

I personally flee from any homepage that has Java content. It’s bad enough to have to slog through unnecessary java on commercial pages, much less shoddily written java that crashes my browser.

As was said, keep everything in its place. Maybe make a fairly minimalist index page and let people decide from there if they want to wait for 1.5megs worth of pictures to load.

Give people something to return for, if you care about that. Otherwise, once we’ve seen your pics and read your rants we never have reason to come back.

“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”

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Nothing that blinks.

7

No frames. No background music. Minimal animation. Interesting and changing content. Well-defined and well-organized pages/sections. Enough contrast between text color and background that the text is readable.

8

Chris,

I am a web designer part-time.

Personally, I think personal pages are a waste of time, but that’s me. The only time I bother to look is if I know the person directly.

That said, here are my thoughts on web design in general.

Index page. Get a simple message across without overwhelming the visitor. Let them know first hand what’s to follow. Opal Cat may disagree with me, but she knows my thoughts on the subject, never use “splash” pages without at least some sense of what’s to follow.

Use a simple design that is true and the same for all pages. Meaning, don’t use a black background with purple stripes on the index page and a green with purple polka dots on another. (both gross examples) but if you choose the black background with purple stripes, use that throughout the site.

Be sure to include links to all your pages on each page. Back and forward buttons are lame, especially if I want to overlook a page that you listed.

Graphics, keep them minimal in size. If you don’t have a good graphics program, check out http://www.jasc.com, Paint Shop Pro is a great program (30 day trial too) that’s around $100.00. I use Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and Micrografix Picture Publisher…Paint Shop Pro is a great tool.

Remember to design for people with crappy video cards and crappy eyesight. Keep your page visable to no less than 800x600. I have seen many great sites ruined because they use only 1024x768.

Hope this helps from a design aspect. Sorry if I seem down on personal pages, but I find many have little if any purpose. I have 3 domains all of which are content oriented. (well one is not developed yet, one is my business site and one is a political site that is in the design and implementation stage, in which I may be using the same software that The Straight Dope uses for the message boards ) Otherwise I am strictly a commercial page designer (not developer, I hate writing code, heehee.)

9

Nudity is always kewl…

Seriously, stay away from the annoying GIF files and unnecessary animations.

Those of us forced to use a 56K connection hate having to wait for GIF’s and needless Java Script to load…

And no sappy sound either - that just takes forever to load at 56K.

How much deeper would the ocean be if sponges didn’t grow in it?

10

Everyone’s advice here has been excellent.

I am a web page geek, and also bought a domain name, just for the helluvit. Parts of it get a “reasonable” amount of hits. (Not a lot, but not nothing - I am easily pleased when it comes to web page hits.)

I started out writing web pages with the typical “Here are some pictures from my latest trip” and “Here are some examples of my artwork”. They were OK, but a little boring. I started to get more hits on my pages when I focused on trying to provide information that people might be searching for specifically.

For example, I am a Yosemite National Park fan, and when I made my web page on Yosemite, I started providing Yosemite Wallpaper. That got a lot of hits. I also made a whole seperate page giving my “reviews” of all the the lodging available at Yosemite, giving advice when to visit, when to make reservations, etc. etc. I figured these were things people would want to know if they were planning a visit.

I love film music. Instead of just writing about how I like film music, I made a lot of Real Audio clips of my favorite music, and that page gets lots of hits. I figured people would want to listen to examples of music, (I know I do) instead of just reading about how much I like it.

Same goes for my art page - I wrote an “art tutorial” page, giving hints and tips on drawing. It gets more hits than any of my mere “Here are some examples of my artwork” pages.

On one of my travel pages, I wrote a day-by-day travel and mileage itinerary of a recent road trip. I thought it had more to offer than just “here are some of my travel pictures” since people could get a feel for how long it would take to drive where I drove, what was along the way, etc.

The examples can go on and on. Instead of an “about me” page, I tried to offer information that people would be looking for. Maybe you were planning to do this sort of thing all along, but I thought I’d mention it.

11

Thank you smug for bringing up the sound thing.

Man I hate sound on web sites, I am usually watching TV or listening to a CD while surfing the web and there is nothing more grating on my nerves to have to shut my sound off.

As for graphics, you can use gif file formats if you save them properly. Maybe I am just used to having a connection at 26.4 because my phone company refuses to upgrade our area and tolerate it. But gif files have their proper use, like in transparancy, they tend to preserve the file format better (less pixelation unless you are AOL.)

12

DO NOT put ‘UNDER CONSTRUCTION’ on any page or anything that says something like that or,
‘COME BACK WE’RE GOING TO PUT UP SOMETHING NEW SOON’

No pages that have a load time of more than 15 seconds.

No pages that have graphics that belong to someone else, that contain mean or libelous items, copyrighted material that is not your own. etc.

13

www.stileproject.com

thats exactly what you need

14

For all designers and content writers, these are the two most helpful sites I’ve ever seen.

Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox
This guy writes simple, succinct fortnightly columns on web ‘usability’ - i.e. planning what it is you want to say and relating it to who your viewers are. A lot of corporate websites could do with his help.

Losers dot org
This is a collection of links to the very worst personal homepages around. If your design looks nothing like anything here then you’re on the right track.

mattk (with very little content at Crusoe Takes A Trip)

I never touched him, ref, honest!

15

Techchick, I use Paint Shop Pro, too, and love it. I’d enjoy seeing some of your work. I agree with your design suggestions, and used to feel the same way about personal pages until a friend explained their purpose to me. He maintains a site and posts pictures of his family and family anecdotes. His extended family lives all over the country and therefore can see the pictures and read the stories without his having to get copies made and write letters to a whole bunch of people. The site isn’t meant for the whole world to see.

Jophiel’s right about the Java. Every now and then I think about developing the “I Hate Java” website. All the other suggestions are good, too.

Good luck Chris!

16

Also, buy a real name people can remember. $70.00 for two years is worth it.

17

Gilligan,

Normally I don’t post my work, but what the hell my favorite creation is www.jacksoncreek.com . It’s really optimized for 800x600 resolution (my bad) but looks okay at higher resolutions.

If you use AOL, it may look weird, most pages do under AOL which is why I don’t use my AOL to surf, only to test my sites :slight_smile:

My domains are off line right now, one of which I apparently screwed up (hey it’s hosted on an NT server, I have never messed up my NT servers at work so it’s beyond me where I made a mistake.)

Anyhow, for Chris.

Chris: go check out the Yahoo! web design club if you are interested in some web design information. It’s located at:
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/webdesignclub
Good luck on your site :slight_smile:

< too many smilies? sorry >

18

BTW Gilligan, the graphics are mostly done in Paint Shop Pro, but some of it was intially done with Photoshop. I am a Photo Shop person myself as the learning curve was lower and the outcome pretty much the same.

The main thing that bugs the heck out of me is when using transparency (gif) there are still those stupid little white pixels that surround my graphics.

I have Picture Publisher for this main reason as you can get closer to the colors to ensure they help reduce the gif transparency is not as obvious. PSP and PS can’t do this.

19

stupid me, I meant, I am a Paint Shop Pro person myself…man, good thing that the copy in my sites is reviewed by someone else rather than me…I would be toast other wise.

20

NO BACKGROUND SOUNDS!! I hate that! And don’t make me have to download something special just so I can view your site. Very annoying.

Here are a couple of good articles that give you some of the basic no-no’s in creating web pages…

Top Ten Mistakes of Web Design.

Top Ten New Mistakes of Web Design.

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” - Anne Frank