This is a list of items that I, and many others, do not like to see on websites. Consider this when you’re designing a site, because it’s important. So what if someone doesn’t like it? Well, there are tons of websites out there, and unless you’re the only website selling your product or service, you should care. Some things on this list will cause me to automatically leave a website, regardless of what is on it.

1. Under construction signs - Why? Why do you want to take a visitor to a page that only contains a message that there is nothing on this page? Better to have a message when they hover that tells the visitor that option is not yet available. Or, perhaps leave the option off entirely until it’s ready. Just don’t make me go to a page for no reason.
2. Stock pictures of people made out to be employees or customers. I don’t even know why websites think this will attract my attention.
3. Ad pages that you’re forced to view when you click on a link. I may stay on a site that does it, generally because I need to be there. But still, I find it irritating.
4. Splash pages. In the early days of the web, these were common. I even confess to having created one many, many years ago. But they truly serve no purpose. To those who think they impress the visitor - They don’t.
5. “This site best viewed in ” - This sentence is usually completed with some version of IE. I don’t know why they would create a site that is best viewed in only one browser. That just speaks to the shortcomings of the developer. And it doesn’t take into account the fact that many people can’t or don’t use IE. I work on a Mac. The last version of IE created for a Mac is 5.2. It has a copyright date of 2001. Microsoft has decided not to update IE for the Mac. Because of its age, IE for Mac no longer works well with most sites. And that’s just the Mac users. There are other operating systems as well as other people who prefer other browsers to IE.
6. Sites that feel the need to adjust your browser’s window size. I think these sites are misguided in their intent. They are trying to accommodate lower resolution PCs by making the window larger - so that the entire site can be seen. But it irritates me when they do that. I have a fairly high resolution monitor. I like my screen arranged the way it is. If you insist on messing with it, I’m going to insist on going elsewhere.
7. Sites that check if you are running IE and won’t let you in if you aren’t. I’ve even heard that some sites are already insisting that you run IE7. This is an extension of item 5, but it is worse. Suggesting that a site is best viewed in IE is one thing. But not letting me in unless I’m running IE? I cannot imagine a website that I would want to get to bad enough that I would change computers in order to visit. This is further evidence of developers with a limited knowledge of web development.
8. Flash and other moving things - even animated GIFs. This is much more than a preference. I suffer from migraines. The motion on a page can trigger a migraine for me. There are also many people that are bothered by motions for other reasons - such as those with epilepsy and cognitive disorders. If your website has much motion on it, many people, myself included, will have to leave your site immediately.
9. Websites that play a video ad when you first get to them. This is so annoying. If nothing else, consider the fact that your visitor might be somewhere that they don’t want sound playing - at work, a coffee shop, etc. There is a local website that had a video ad for a car dealer on it. It took me several visits before I even associated the voice with the ad. So, not only was it annoying, but it was ineffective advertising.
10. Music and Sound - If you’re a musician, I can understand having music on your site. Even then, it’s annoying if I’m not expecting it. If you have music, provide me an option to turn it off. Better still, provide the option to turn it ON and leave it off by default. And please, never have someone start talking to me. I’m not going to listen anyway because I’ll be busy hitting the Back button! More importantly, consider those who are visually impaired. They use screen readers such as JAWS in order to ‘view’ a website. If you have sound playing automatically, it could interfere with their reader. This would make your website inaccessible to those with vision problems.

If you notice, many of the items on my list refer to advertising. It annoys me that advertisers are turning the web into an commercial nightmare. There are better ways. Use text ads or ads with static graphics instead. If you have an annoying ad, I’m likely not to buy the advertisers product, and I’m likely to leave your website. Remember, your website is not unique. If people don’t like what they find on your website, they can easily vote with their feet. And your left wondering why you have no sales…

That’s my 2 cents, your mileage may vary. Have something else you find annoying? By all means, leave a comment.

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Perhaps you’ve noticed that some websites are listed with “www.” at the beginning while others are not. What is that all about?

Back in the Dark Ages of the internet (you know, last century?), WWW was used to specify the http:// protocol. But now, all the browsers assume that anyway, so there really isn’t much purpose left for WWW. Except that for some websites, you have to type it in. For others, you don’t.

The reason you have to type it in for some domains is that the website owner hasn’t set up their DNS to allow for entering just the domain name without the www. Why not? You’d have to ask the owner or the administrator. It makes sense to me to set it up that way to accommodate lazy typists like me. Plus, then I don’t have to stumble over saying double-u double-u double-u. (Why did they pick the only 3 syllable letter, anyway?) I also expect that one day, www will be dropped entirely.

(Note: You may not always notice that www is required because modern browsers will add it for you, if needed.)

But, just because your domain is set up to work without WWW, that doesn’t mean everyone will specify it that way. And so you’ll find links on various websites that look like this:

bwhWebMusings.com

And like this:

www.bwhWebMusings.com

They will both get you to your website, but there is an important difference. The Search Engines will treat them as two separate websites. If you could make the search engines see them as the same website, it would result in increased rankings.

How do you know if your website is set up correctly? Go to a browser and type in your domain with www into the address bar. Open a new window and type in your domain without www. Once your site loads, look at the address bar.

Do they both read the same? Then you’re all set.

Or does each read just like you typed it? Then perhaps you should contact your webmaster or administrator to correct it. If your website’s server is running Apache, it’s a few lines added to the .htaccess file. Geeks can reference this page for how to set it up.

All websites built by bwh Web Designs are set up to work without www. Furthermore, typing either www.bwhWebMusings.com or bwhWebMusings.com will resolve to bwhWebMusings.com.

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First, what is a blog? The term originated as a shortening of the term weblog.

Here’s the Wikipedia definition:

A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and displayed in reverse chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

The dictionary on my Mac says:

a Web site on which an individual or group of users produces an ongoing narrative

So how might this be used in your business? A blog can be used as a means of keeping your customers informed about your business. You can tell them about sales, new products, new services, etc. It can do many of the same functions as a mailing list, and a bit more. To me, a blog is a more informal means of communication than your newsletter. It also allows for interaction - between you and your customers and amongst your customers. A blog can also help to bring new visitors to your website.

You can also use your blog to advertise your website. Do you read other blogs? Do you comment on these blogs? When you comment, most of them ask for your website. You can put your blog there to drive traffic to your blog and website.

In addition, you can use your blog to keep your home page continuously fresh and updated. As an example, take a look at the sidebar on the home page of bwh Web Designs. I’ll wait.

Back already? Did you see the “Recent Blog Entries” on the sidebar? That section updates each time a new blog entry is made. It always shows my 5 most recent posts. You could also show recent comments on your blog.

What could you put into your blog? Everything related to your business that you want your customers to know about. New products. New services. Sales. Shows. New features on your site. Changes to existing service. You could also use it to poll your customers about items they might be interested. The possibilities are endless.

Do you need another domain for a blog? I don’t think so. I’ve done some reading on this and the opinions are split pretty much down the middle. I chose to have separate domains for my website & blog. Doing so has created some challenges regarding linking the two. Having one domain for both is a simpler solution.

Contact bwh Web Designs today to get your own blog!

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We had our second Photography Class on Saturday, 07/07/07. For this class, we had 2 students. Each one brought their cameras and a couple of jewelry pieces for which they’ve had problems getting good pictures.

We had a really fun time. We started off with a presentation. I talked about theory and gave them basic information they needed in order to understand close up photography. The presentation had lots of images - both good technique and bad.

Following the presentation, we played with the cameras. I brought some jewelry, but we used the pieces the students brought. I took pictures with my camera and the students took pictures too. Then we uploaded them to the computer and compared.

The students took home a CD which had the full presentation, including pictures, as well as some pictures for them to play with.

I think that we ALL learned something from this class. And we had a great time!

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We’ve just scheduled Close Up Jewelry Photography Classes for the third quarter of 2007. They are as follows:

• Saturday, July 7
• Sunday, August 5
• Saturday, September 1

All classes run from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM. Click on a date above to sign up for a class. See bwh Web Designs for full class description. Can’t make any of those dates? Leave a comment here telling when would be a good time for you.

Hope to see you in a class!

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I just read about this on another blog.

The author suggested that the worst mistake an e-commerce site can make is to hide its domain information. This is done by registering your site with privacy. Apparently some people will do a lookup on a domain and will not buy from a site that doesn’t reveal any information about itself. Makes sense. You want to ask - What are they hiding?

I know many people who have registered their sites with privacy. And I know why they’ve done it. It’s because they are a home-based business and don’t want to list their home address for all the world. My suggestion? Get a P.O. Box and use that. I got one from the Post Office, the smallest one they have, and it was very inexpensive. I was fortunate , a new post office opened up less than a mile from my house. Before that I had a box with UPS, but they are WAY too expensive!

Read the original post here

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For well over a year now, we’ve gone to dinner at Capparelli’s on Main nearly every weekend. It’s a local Italian restaurant. In the evening on weekends, they always have music. Quite often it has been Two for the Road. They are 2 guys playing piano and guitar and singing.

Then sometime in April, we got to talking about websites. They’ve been wanting one, but didn’t have the time to build it themselves. An idea was born, and this is the result:

Chris and Jerry play a wide range of music; everything from the ’50s on up to recent tunes. They’re great entertainers. Often, while we’re dining, we look around and see quite a few people singing along - me included.

For this design, I was given a business card and told that they wanted to keep the logo. Here’s the card:

I took the gold color, combined it with black and found some music symbols. The line at the bottom of the page “The more you drink… the better we sound” was my suggestion. Every time we’ve seen them play, they have said that at least once!

Check out their site. You can view the calendar to see where they’re going to be. On the music page you can hear clips of some of their songs.

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Today we held the first Close Up Jewelry Photography Class. We had only one student, but that was okay with everyone. Much more personal attention and it was a good first class for me. Our student was a friend of mine, I had built a website for his wife. I also have done all the photography to date for her website. He plans to retire in a few years and wants to do the photography and put her jewelry on the web for sale. (Currently, she doesn’t have any e-commerce on her site.)

It was a good first class, and we were able to determine some areas for improvement.

Our student comment “Thanks so much! This is a great start for me.”

The class was held at a local bead shop - And The Bead Goes On. If you’re in the San Antonio area and are interested in taking a class, visit their website calendar to see when the next one is scheduled.

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Friday morning I got a notice from my server that one of my hosted websites had exceeded its space quota. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I’m the only one changing that site, and I haven’t touched it in a few days. What’s going on?” It just didn’t feel right. It was Friday, but it was acting more like a Monday.

Upon further investigation, I found that I was NOT the only one changing things. Seems that the comment count on the photo gallery was over 73,000! Ugh. And all of them are trash. They’re scums that use automated systems to advertise their websites. You know the sites, the same ones you get all the spam about. Ugh.

So first thing I did was check the settings on the gallery. I changed it so that you have to prove you’re human in order to leave a comment. You know, read the funky letters or numbers and type them in - aka Captcha. I did this for all sites that use this gallery.

Still curious. How do 73,000 comments in a database increase the disk space used by the website? Easy. They apparently create files to go along with the comments.

So how to clean it up? I don’t want all those comments out there, and they’re taking up space. Checking the gallery’s website, I find that someone, bless their heart, has created a script to clean up all the comments. It only deletes 500 at a time, so I’ve got a long way to go. But at least I’m cleaning it up.

I’m always into counting and numbering things. So, among 4 websites galleries, I had a total of 106,181 comments! And, after cleaning up the mess, I had over 700MB more space on the server. Perhaps I’ll re-look at other photo gallery programs and see if there’s one that doesn’t take up so much space or that makes it easier to turn off comments. The one I’m using is, after all Open Source, and free - so I guess it proves once again - “You get what you pay for.”

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I had a conversation recently with someone struggling to build their first e-commerce site. They were using a WYSIWYG software package that actually prevented the developer from changing the HTML. (He did find ways to change his HTML using other programs, but as soon as he did that, his WYSIWYG package could no longer work with the HTML.

This WYSIWYG package was one of those that not only uses a lot of proprietary tags in the HTML, but it also stores your site in a form OTHER THAN HTML! That takes away from the whole beautiful set up that you have on the web. You have HTML files and CSS files that are purely text files. No magic, you really can see what you get there. It really serves no purpose to store your site in another format. And I’ve heard horror stories about what happens to your site if you try to upgrade your WYSIWYG software or if the file becomes corrupted.

I was looking at this fellow’s site. He was showing me the troubles he had when he actually sold an item. There was nowhere within his WYSIWYG software that he could indicate a quantity - it always ASSUMED your quantity was 1.

So what happens if he sells an item? My first instinct, of course, is to change the quantity. Well, we can’t do that. Idea two is just to delete the item. Makes sense, especially if you won’t have more of it to sell in the future. But, all of the items for sale are laid out in a table - four items across, and however many rows are needed. So if you delete an item, you’ve broken your table structure. All of this is static HTML (even if you can’t change it, it ultimately HAS to be HTML), but with tables, if you delete a cell, you have a mess. The other items won’t shuffle to fill the space. You just have a broken site.

The puzzling thing to me about this is that there are many long-time web developers who say that tables are so much easier than standards compliant HTML and CSS.

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