CIL2008, Day 1: Fast & Easy Site Tune-ups
Posted on April 7, 2008
Filed Under Computers in Libraries, Conferences, Cool tools, Web Design, Web Management | Tags cil2008, tools, webmaster, websites
Speaker: Jeff Wisniewski
Keep content fresh
- Update your copyright date! You can use code to do this
- add a last updated script to your page (do it as an external script so you use one script in many places
- add photos to contacts! Goes a long way in increasing user’s trust in a website
Turn boring old contact info into exciting hCards
- using microformats extension - allows you to import contact info into your address book
Don’t use click here. Instead, use Current articles are available here (with current articles text as the link)
- “Current articles” - a trigger word, it’ll be highlighted as a link, so it’ll stand out more
Harness the awesome power of the 4 question survey!
surveymonkey.com
Great questions to ask:
1. what’s the purpose of your visit to our website today
2. were you able to complete your tasks today
3. if you weren’t successful, why not?
ps - ask for their email
Web 2ify your site
update look with web 2.0 stylr, etc
Use graphics when possible
Speed:
Yslow (firefox extension) - helps figure out why your page is slow
Exploit the user’s cache to speed up your site
For server admins:
- set certain file types to stay fresh/not expire
- image file types, css, js files, pdfs
- this helps speed
add an expiration date code thing in your .htaccess file - another speed thing
single image rather than multiple combined images will speed the site up - fewer http requests
eliminate inline scripts - call scripts externally instead
spring cleaning - tidy your homepage
validator - will automatically fix your css
CLEANCSS - it will unbloat your css, compresses it, etc
Move important info our of the blindness zone (top header area, far right, etc - “banner blindness”
Page titles
Google Webmaster accounts? sign up for account, get lots of goodies, including title tag analyzer
page titles - best way to structure:
document title | section name | library/site name
accessibility
add labels - screen readers read this, the checkbox text becomes clickable - not just the checkbox itself
make sure to use radio boxes and check boxes appropriately
Make your site social media friendly
add social bookmark links
- social bookmark creator - select bookmark service, it spits out html code to dump into your website
Q from me - is it dynamic?
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