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Web Site Tips

Cool Tools for Webmasters

Oct 27th, 2010
by pollyalida.
2 comments

Internet Librarian – Frank Cervone (and Darlene Fichter – who couldn’t be  there)

This is always a very userful session, full of great tips and  tools  Looking forward to  testing out some of these that are new to me. Will blog about the ones that I find particularly useful.

Tools for web site makeovers

Usability testing

  • Gomockingbird.com – wireframes on the fly – web-based, easy to share
  • Pleasecritiqueme.com – social site, ask designers for feedback
  • Userfly.com – usability testing, free version allows 10 tests/month. Install 1 line of js on a web page and record interactions with page?
  • Openhallway.com – create scenarios, get others to test remotely.
  • Crazyegg.com – track what people do on your web-page, view hotspots, etc.
  • Labsmedia.com/clickheat – opensource, implemented on webpage with javascript. Have to install on a LAMP server. (more…)

Google’s new Browser Size tool

Dec 17th, 2009
by pollyalida.
2 comments

(larger photo)

Google Browser Size is a handy new tool that helps you visualize what portion of your website viewers can see on various browser screen sizes.

Looks like 98% of viewers can see my first headline, but none of the text of that post. 90% of viewers can see the lovely photo of Sara Kelly Johns (who would really rock as President of ALA by the way!)

Should I be changing anything on my blog layout as a result of using this tool?

(via Mashable: mashable.com/2009/12/16/google-browser-size/)

Blogs as websites – CIL2009

Apr 1st, 2009
by pollyalida.
No comments yet

Computers in Libraries – Blogs as websites session – Track E105

Aaron Schmidt – DC Public Library

10 reasons to use wordpress to create your website

  1. Free – wordpress.com – remotely hosted version of WordPress, totally free, can be limited in the selection of themes, widgets and plugins. Good place to start. Your domain name will have wordpress.com as part of it, unless you pay a little extra to have your own domain name.
    Cheap – Download WordPress and install it on your own server. If you already have your own server, that’s free! If you don’t have a server and need to find one, lishost.com is a good library oriented hosting site. (I’ve also used bluehost, hostmysite and some others) All are inexpensive, as in roughly $100 year.
  2. Open Source – strong user community sharing tips and tricks, search the WordPress forums for help, if you can’t find an answer, post a question. There’s a nice section of forum on using WP as a Content Mgmt System. (Also a community for libraries using WP)
  3. Allows for interaction – customers can comment, staff can reply.
  4. SEO – Search Engine Optimization – WP writes really good code that search engines like.
  5. LESS WORK – makes it possible for everyone on staff to contribute to your website, without having to know any html code. User interface is easy to use. Administrator can assign different permissions to different contributors, give them access to only what they need.
  6. EASY - easy to get started at wordpress.com to test it out and get your feet wet. Web based interface makes it easy for you to add your content from wherever you have an internet connection.
  7. Themes – Easy to make your blog look good – all magic of CSS – click a button you can have a new look. Tons of free themes available. Or you can hire someone to create one for you. Or create your own. Mentioned Thematic, a newis wordpress theme framework.
  8. Widgets- all the great stuff on the sidebar of your website is done through little bits of coding that others have written. If there’s something you want to add to the sidebar of your site (photos, comments, links to other sites, twitter stream, etc), widgets make it possible. Lots of widgets available on wordpress.com and many more can be used if you’re running WP on your own server.
    Plugins – Extensions to WP functionality, built by community and shared. Some popular plugins become incorporated into the core of WP when it goes through upgrades. Plugins can do things like filter spam comments, help you create photo albums, keep track of statistics, add “share this” buttons to your posts and much more.
  9. Flexibility - All of this adds up to great flexibility. WP is very flexible and customizable. Love the No 10 Downing Street is using WP!
  10. People – Lets you create a website that is useful to your community and lets your staff keep it up to date with ease.

(I’ll add another # 11 – PAGES let you have pages of static information in additon to your newsy bloggy stuff.)

Carol Garland from Sodus Free Library in NY

Showed their blog on blogger.com. Very small library, short on staff and resources. Their web site had gotten very hard to maintain through Front Page. Needed a new solution. Moved all their static content to Google Pages and put all their news on blogger.com. Links to their static pages are on the sidebar. They now have an easy to update site, that has new content, videos, and more.

Dave Lisa – NJ State Library

Currently at NJ State Library, but showed blogger based website that they’d created at West Long Branch PL in NJ. They use blogger to revamp their site as well. They wanted to be able to have pages of information on different topics as well as newsy posts. They bent blogger into doing this by writing blog posts on particular topics and then making links directly to the posts on the sidebar of the sidebar of the pages. Gives the feel of having some static pages for things like hours etc. They also have created some static pages that have the same look and feel as the blog pages and are hosting them on the same server.

Great program highlighting some easy, low overhead ways to create a spiffy new library website.

—

Note – if you’re in New York, NYLA will be offering some workshops on WordPress soon. And I’ll be teaching some ‘WordPress as website’ classes in CT soon too.

Time to Clean Up Your Web Site & Give Your Customers What They Want

Jun 12th, 2008
by pollyalida.
2 comments

Curtis Rogers’ post The Library’s web site shouldn’t be a PUZZLE to Patrons (which is in part a summary of a post from The Marketing Blog) makes some great points about our how we can use our library web sites to engage our customers.

  1. Is your web site cluttered?
  2. Does the navigation make sense to customers?
  3. Is their initial interaction with the site relevant to them?
  4. Is your content up to date?
  5. Can you interact with your customers?
  6. Does it provide support when needed?
  7. Does it make sharing easy?

These are just a few of the things that we should all be asking about our library web sites! Read both posts for more details.

My soapbox lately has been the 3rd point. When customers get to our web sites, is it relevant to their needs? Can they find what they want?

And if what our customers want is to find is information, then lets give them some BIG search boxes right there on the main page (and on all the other pages!). And I don’t just mean the catalog search box. Give them an internet search box too. And put your meebo or other IM chat box right next to it to offer them some help if they can’t find what they want. Better yet, give them a search box that gets info from our catalogs, our databases and the web all rolled up in one. I know, that last one really isn’t so easy for many of us to do.

We can also create custom web search tools that focus on the types of information our customers ask for over and over. I bet you have a list of great web sites for different topics hiding somewhere on your web site? Pull out some of the most information rich sites and create a custom search tool that searches just those selected sites. Easy to do with tools like Google Custom Search and Rollyo.

And please, please, as Curtis suggests, do this one simple thing:

PUT YOUR PHONE NUMBER AND ADDRESS ON YOUR START PAGE! Many times, that’s all that people are looking for…

Better yet, add it to the footer info on all your pages!

Video, slidehows, photos – widgets add fresh content to your web site

Mar 21st, 2008
by pollyalida.
No comments yet

Ever wondered how to add a flickr slideshow to your website? Or a YouTube video? Or a PowerPoint slideshow? Check out this great article by Aaron Schmidt: Widgets and Widgetry for Librarians: Copy, Paste, and Relax in MultiMedia & Internet@Schools (Posted Mar 1, 2008)

Widgets pull in updated content, making your web site less static (and less boring?)

Adding a widget is easy. Usually just a short form to fill out and then a snippet of code to copy and paste to your website. You really don’t have to know anything about the code. (Though you do need to be able to edit your web pages.)

With widgets you can have your del.icio.us bookmark links updating on your page, the most recent YouTube videos, photos from your flickr account, books you’re recommending via LibraryThing and so much more.

If you want to see a whole bunch of flickr photo widgets in action, check out my flickr slide show examples page.

Go get widgety!