Ever seem like your software development plays out like a game of Oregon Trail on an Apple IIe?:
HaXOrCder has died of Dysentary…
Your wagon tipped as you attempted to ford the river and you lost 3 models and 2 controllers…
Pace: Grueling
Here Lies: m45t3rpr0gr4M|\/|3r
Food Remaining: 100 oz of Red Bull
With the holy grail of a perfect, amazing, l33t program at the end of the trail… maybe even more satisfying than the Hi-Res O-Trail screenshot:
Now I am as much of a programmer as I am a gourmet cook (and to put that in perspective, the pinnacle of my cooking ability is grilled cheese with a side of cheetos), but I can observe with the best of ‘em. With that in mind, I simply make the Oregon Trail statement because, we have survived to the end of the Backstage Development Trail to find these screenshots… You will have to forgive us if they are not quite as nice as the graphics on the Apple IIe… we tried to replicate them, but I fear we failed miserably.
Entrance
Dashboard
Account Permissions
Manage Accounts
Access NetAdmin Accounts
NetAdmin Loading
NetAdmin Through Backstage
MultiAdmin Through Backstage
phpMyAdmin Through Backstage
Webmail Through Backstage
That’s right boys and girls… It is awesome, and yes, phpMyAdmin and Webmail work through the system… Surprise! It’s now available for all Site5 accounts… Jealous? Want one NOW? Try our 11GB disk/ 400GB bandwidth SuperHosting Xtreme plan with full functionality for only $7.77/mo by ORDERING HERE! Be the first on your block to experience Site5’s Backstage.
As mentioned before in the NOC NOC… Who’s There? blog post, we captured the moment of server throwage on video, and I finally got around to getting it online. Call it the intimidation factor: to any of you servers out there… Step out of line, and you could experience the feeling of flying (followed by the subsequent realization that Isaac Newton was right).
I’m shoutin’ out to the old school Nintendo folks with this post… We all know it is Mario vs. Bowser, but I wanted to bring up the Browser race, hence: Mario v. Browser… I know, you are blown away by the creativity and mediocre Photoshop skillz…
We made a move from Clicktracks to Mint to watch and analyze our main site’s traffic, and we couldn’t be more happy with the result in our limited usage of the software. Clicktracks wasn’t necessarily bad for us since it provided so much great information, but we were paying hundreds of dollars per month and no one had the time to really pay attention to what it was trying to tell us (more info about your traffic than you could shake a stick at… if you are one to shake sticks at information about your traffic). We threw down the $30 bucks and within a few minutes Rod and Todd had Mint up and running. Unlike Clicktracks, we don’t get the detailed “these are all the people who came to your site and what each one of them had for breakfast” reports, but we can extract the meaningful data quickly and easily with no recurring cost.
From our first 2 days of Minty-flavored site reports, I saw an interesting trend that was moderately blog-worthy… We’ve got a Firefox crowd…
So naturally, my next logical progression was to get an “official” rundown of the Browser race from the first result when I searched for “Browser Market Share” in Google… [Sarcasm]Coming up first in Google search results inherently means the result is the authority on the subject, right??[/Sarcasm]. Check out the updated numbers, and be impressed like me:
Firefox has over 25% of the market, based on these very-arguable numbers which entitle me to pass the blame for their veracity straight to the site I got them from. This post isn’t advocating any browser in particular… I use Safari, IE, Opera, Firefox, and even Netscape now and then (just to mix things up), and I know how intense the “my browser is better than yours” debates can be, so I will have Mario end the post asking for peace…
Hi, my name is Kevin, and I have a problem… I am a website snob… Everyone chimes in with a monotonous “Hi Kevin”…
I don’t know when exactly it happened, but at some point in the 8 (or so) months I have worked with Site5, I have developed a chronic snobbishness directly related to what I would consider a good/clean/well-organized site design. The funniest part about my condition is that I feel like Simon Cowell… I can tell you what I think doesn’t “work” on the site, but I don’t think I, myself, could design a site that I would classify as “good” (I’ve never heard Simon Cowell sing, but I can imagine it wouldn’t be up to par on the lofty scale he is known to use to judge).
As a disclaimer, I understand that I am not artistic in any sense of the characteristic, and I don’t have a set of guidelines that qualify a well-designed site… It is definitely a case-by-case judgement, and the smallest changes can make all the difference, but I do have a quick reference of my design pet peeves that should often be avoided.
The List
Know What You Are Doing: This requirement is the one that keeps me from designing anything of substance… I have not taken the time to learn everything I need to know about site structure and organization. Take the time to learn the “Why?” of what the different code means. You can do plenty with the “How?” everything works, but you will be much more effective in communicating exactly what you want to and how you want to when you have a better understanding of what you are doing. A great example of this point is evident in most page-customizers for template-based sites like MySpace… People use things like “PimpMySpace” because they have no idea how to customize their site without it, and they wind up with sites that trigger a gag reflex in every web designer on the face of the planet.
Navigation is PRIMARY: Your site should be built upon a navigational structure… The pages shouldn’t just be thrown together with a sidebar of links that vaguely direct people to the right places. In addition to being more effective in SEO, it is a good thing to have people able to find what they are looking for (assuming they know what they are looking for). The KISS philosophy is great in planning this structure… As Todd mentioned in a discussion we are having on the topic, “If you make it complex, it doesn’t work. I don’t want a manual on how to use your nav.”
More Content ≠ “More Good”: Sites should be designed to get the important information across immediately and cleanly. SEO makes this tough because there is a tradeoff between crawlable content and actually communicating the content well. Website visitors are like résumé-checkers in the job interview process: Guide them to the important information and don’t write more just to fill a page.
CSS is Your Friend: It is important to have a single design for your site (not multiple independent styles going on in different places). Rod has been doing a lot of work on the Site5 corporate site to get this done, and it is not easy by any stretch of the imagination because it is an amalgamation of old, static content as well as new, dynamic content.
Use Divs Instead of Tables: Well-designed sites don’t necessarily need to be “standards compliant” to look good, but it is painful to see tables gone wrong on a webpage… And from my limited knowledge, divs are easier to modify and update (to keep them dynamic).
Have Reason to Have Music: It is an instinctual reaction for me to close a site that decides it wants to play some random song as I visit the page… I can see the exception to this being a musical artist’s page, but even then, it should be an optional feature, not default-on. I think I am picky about this because I always listen to music on my computer, and the garbled mess that erupts in the cohesion of iTunes and FireFox is less than pleasant.
Leave the Splash in the Water: On a few occasions, it may be okay to have a splash page for your site, but in general, it is a bad idea. You are essentially putting up a barrier between the visitor and your site (especially if it requires them to click something)… Don’t believe me? Put up a splash page on your site and watch the exit-rate on that page. Site5 made the mistake of having a splash page up for a semi-extended period, and we saw a whole lot of lost traffic before people even got to see the content of our site… It is much better for someone to leave your index page: At least then they had a chance to see what you wanted them to see.
Know Thy Graphics: Make sure your graphics fit your site and look good… It is not good to see pixels in a graphic, and having an 8 megapixel digital camera picture load after 20 seconds is both painstakingly slow and most likely much too large for any good site: I run a 24″ monitor in 1920×1200 resolution, and that size picture is probably too big for my screen maximized. If you want peopel to get to a big picture, thumbnail it and have the picture accessed directly… Your site visitors will thank you. With the Web 2.0 Invasion, simple designs get you the most points… Only use a few colors, clean lines, gradients, and empty space to your advantage.
So half an hour later, I realize that I probably have a lot more to complain about with regard to web design, but I will cut the post short so other people can chime in with their web design pet peeves. Leave a comment about what “Grinds Your Gears” (thank you, Family Guy) or if you disagree with one of my sweeping statements. We are constantly and improving our site design, and Todd wanted me to remind you that “any comments about our design will be killed immediately”… just joking… maybe…
George: You wanna sell computers? I will show *you* how to sell computers! Hello, Mr. Farneman. You wanna buy a computer? No? Why not? All right, I see! Good answer! Thank you! (Lloyd rings his sale bell) Serenity now!
Now, I would fancy myself a Seinfeld enthusiast, so I was quite excited to hear that I would get a chance to hang out with Jason Alexander, of “George Costanza” fame. One of my good friends, Brett, works with Jason on a semi-regular basis, so I was (thankfully) introduced to Jason when he came up to Northern California for an event. In addition to the expected “Kevin: You are awesome … Jason: Thank you” dialog, I was invited to eat dinner with Jason, Todd Schroeder (his accompanist for the night), Brett, and a few other friends at a swanky Italian food restaurant on Friday.
I have had the privilege of meeting a few “famous” people in my time (like Jamie Foxx, William Shatner, Seth McFarlane, and a few other moderately big to very big names), but I have to say that Jason is easily the most down-to-earth, “nice” guys out there… He took time out to take pictures with people walking by the table, autographed everything from NY Yankee baseball caps (he was the “Assistant to the Traveling Secretary” when he worked for the Yankees on Seinfeld), and spent time hanging out with us when he could have just secluded himself in his hotel suite. I’d like to say that Jason was going to be the official Site5 spokesperson or something like that, but unfortunately, I was so busy laughing at his hilarious stories to actually tell him about Site5 (Note: Matt, don’t fire me for not guerrilla marketing).
As a sidenote, I hadn’t heard of Todd before the weekend, but he had some amazing stories about working with Nell Carter, Disney, Universal Studios, and Paramount Studios. One of the most interesting was his depiction of the opportunity he had to meet with Ray Charles… “It was just me, Ray, and a piano, and Ray was just there to listen.” Needless to say, he is an amazing piano player.
**Update** Todd sent me the song he played for Ray with the permission to post it here for everyone to check out: No One Sings Georgia Like Ray. Thanks Todd!**
To those of you requiring some hardcore Site5 info, I am sorry to say that this post is more for entertainment value than official Site5 business, but it is important that this blog also reflect our personalities (or at least that is my justification). The most fitting conclusion to the post would have to be the message Jason left on my “Timeless Art of Seduction” print:
If we have any Seinfeld fanatics in the audience, you will definitely appreciate the humor of the autograph. Serenity now, insanity later… I just hope my insanity doesn’t affect my work… Wait.. Who said that?
This post isn’t advocating any browser in particular… I use Safari, IE, Opera, Firefox, and even Netscape now and then (just to mix things up), and I know how intense the “my browser is better than yours” debates can be, so I will have Mario end the post asking for peace…
