Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
We don’t allow questions seeking recommendations for books, tools, software libraries, and more. You can edit the question so it can be answered with facts and citations.
Closed 6 years ago.
Improve this question
I've just picked up a contract to sort out a vipers-nest of e-commerce websites that a previous 'developer' left for one of my clients. There's about a couple of dozen of them using a custom shopping cart and CMS system that's too embedded to dump and works well enough, but desperately needs cleaning up, re-factoring, and bug fixing, so a reasonably substantial recoding job.
As part of this my client is desperate to ensure the best search engine placement he can get. Like many developers I've a nodding acquaintance with the idea, but no real knowledge, and it seems that it would be helpful to get up to speed on this so I can build appropriately into the code.
So can people advise on useful quality resources - books, websites, blogs etc? I do not wish to obsess over every last detail on this (he can use a specialist if he decides to pull every last ounce out - although I've always regarded such as little better than snake-oil peddlers), but I would like to build code and reconfigure templates in a manner that helps rather than hinders placement.
Look at Wikipedia with styles off. See how they order their content? See how they use correct tags to label the content? These are the keys to long term success.
The most important SEO advice is to create a semantic, logical site. The content comes first and is ordered by importance. Use the correct tags, don't do tables. Then apply styles. Then apply script to make it fancy. (Like Tomas said)
Know the difference between what is content (pictures of your products) and not (your logo tiled on the background). Basically do your best to present good content in a good way. You can't game the system for long term gains.
This will give you long term placement. Most SEO companies just do tricks or links farms or worry about keywords and meta tags, so they are temporary at best. I think it is good to assume that Google works just as hard to drop that crap from it's index as the SEO marketers do to include it.
According to Google's patent
Age of domain.
Important sites that link to you.
Content. Make it real and accurate.
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20050071741&OS=20050071741&RS=20050071741
A main concern when thinking SEO should always be usability. Make sure the mark-up is semantic, make sure the site works without javascript, css and images - in other words, make sure that 'low-level browsers' are able to read the contents of your page. Think of optimizing the site for a screen reader for the blind and visually impaired, and you will automatically cover the search engines, because that is exactly what they are - blind browsers.
A standard no-no is a table layout, mainly because it does not order the site content by relevance. To a human being reading your site, it is no problem looking two inches down instead of at the very top of your page, but the screenreader reads the code, not the visual view.
Thus, you should make sure that you have the important things - a high-level heading (preferrably <h1> or <h2>), the main menu (in a <ul> list) and the content in divs at the top of the source, and less important content (the logo, banners, quickmenus etc that aren't really crucially needed to be accessible) further down. You are always able to re-order where the stuff is actually shown in your css.
New tag to use called CANONICAL can now also be used, from Google, click HERE
Related
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
We don’t allow questions seeking recommendations for books, tools, software libraries, and more. You can edit the question so it can be answered with facts and citations.
Closed 8 years ago.
Improve this question
I help make promo/event websites that shoot up and come down anywhere from a month to six months.
Clients ask for minute text edits a lot during the creation period, and during the live period they sometimes like to swap out images or text every few weeks to function as updates. It's inconvenient for the client to do this all through emails and phone calls.
I have been asked to do research to find a CMS that will let the clients do minor edits like this.
I was pointed to big dogs like Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, and Typo3, but these are all very heavy-handed.
I settled on trying ImpressPages because of its inline editing and undo log but it too began to ask for a lot - I tried to adapt an old project to it but it insists all content calls and form submissions adhere to its framework so it's definitely not easy to drop in.
I don't need a CMS that handles page creation or any sort of overhead.
What I need is a CMS that doesn't care about any facet of the page other than editing text, swapping images, and probably a pretty secure login. Since we take care of the backend and it's only live for a few months it doesn't need detailed project maintenance and certainly the client should not have access to that.
Do you have any suggestions for lightweight CMSs that are easy to pop into a project?
11/11/14 EDIT:
Results so far:
I think a good alternative for this problem is Create.js and one of its children ContentBlocks, however they require node.js and REST which I have yet to really figure out. Quite different from what I know. However, this system allows for editing in-line on the page and saving right there, with no overhead menus or settings or anything. Just edit divs. Here's a link:
http://createjs.org/
children projects can be found by snooping the github
There are more CMS options out there than almost any other web technology. That said some are more and less easy to customize. It sounds like you've steered away from most of the common answers, although I really think you might want to look at WordPress again, with a little setup work and customizing the admin page it can be super lean and "dead simple" like Tumblr's interface.
That said there are a few more good options that are very light and yet full of potential!
Database back end
Perch – This one isn't free, but it's not expensive. It is built with the designer in mind (by other designers) and is also built with the end user in mind, thus it is light, flexible and the interface is not daunting to the non dev. And has very very good support.
Cake PHP – A lovely bit of OSS work, that will need some setting up by you or another dev, but once you have boilerplate/templates it should be simple to roll and unroll small sites.
Anchor – Another OSS project that seeks to be powerful but slight in it's footprint, but probably more structured (less pre-dev time required) than Cake PHP.
Flat file
No DB required, the user just puts their stuff in folders (like on their desktop) and then they get webpages - kinda brilliant and maybe just what you're looking for.
Pico – Uses PHP templates, but a simple file folder based structure, so there is very little learning curve to running or setting up the site.
Kirby – While this is not free, it is very well supported by original developers. It is designed with the goal of being dead simple to use and support.
Dropplets – This one is very very simple, possibly too simple, but there is very little to make a confusing interface out of. This one is very blog focused.
Hope that helps guide your search, as this list is far from exhaustive.
I have also been looking something easy and lightweight for clients to use for days. There are tons of options but there always seems to be something a bit off.
Finally yesterday I found two very good candidates:
Really impressed with both of them have been developing with Drupal, Conrete5, Wordpress.. but this is what simple sites need! Wow!
TidyCMS
http://tidycms.com/
Free / cheap license
Static pages hosted on your site + a connector that connects to the hosted editor. Basic package free.
"TidyCMS is a flat databaseless CMS that makes HTML-files editable and dynamic."
A Finnish startup who are creating a super simple product!
It could not be easier you just throw in a static html-template and put a TidyCMS-conector folder and browse to the subfolder. The subfolder connects to the hosted editor. The editor lets you click on page elements to make them editable. The interface is pretty okay. A bit rough though still, with some glithes. Seems to be in heavy development, but it's already pretty usable. The UI hangs sometimes, for instance when saving changes and you have to reload.
Instant Update
http://instant-update.com/
Open Source! Free! GNU General license.
This seems to be more mature. Also handles static html/php -files but the CMS seems to need a database. The inline editing is pretty good and stylish. The system also has backend with simple user and page management. Still in development by a small group of guys. I'm sure they'll welcome more people.
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
We don’t allow questions seeking recommendations for books, tools, software libraries, and more. You can edit the question so it can be answered with facts and citations.
Closed 4 years ago.
Improve this question
I've been searching a long time for some guidance or examples of web form design of large forms (dozens of fields - maybe 50+) for a user base that will be trained on the application.
99.9% of the guidance seems to be geared toward "accessibility" or "intuitiveness" which are, by all means, valid goals. The issue is that a form that will be used on a one-off or infrequent basis by users who will likely be encountering it for the first (or only) time has much different considerations required compared with a form for data entry to a business application that will be used repeatedly all day long by users who are trained on the app.
If I'm designing for a one-off (say a sign-up form) then I want to focus on designing the form so that the user can't help but flow naturally through the steps and end up completing their goal and feeling all warm and fuzzy.
If I'm designing for an experienced user that will use the form 20x a day, they are going to want it designed to minimize the clicks and navigations, etc. They don't care [as much] about looks or flair and subtle cues to help them work through the form. They know the form like the back of their hand and just want to be able to enter data as quickly as possible and see as much as possible in one view.
The requirements that I'm getting from the users is that they want to see "everything" on one screen. They don't want to have to scroll. They want to minimize clicking to other pages to continue working.
Does anyone have any suggestions/links/dire-warnings??
Thanks,
Dave
My instinct is to tell you to break it up into sections the user can navigate between, to minimize the amount of continous data entry they have to do, as well as keeping the sections you have to validate to a minium. Get all the way to the bottom only to have to scroll back up to the top... annoying!
Since you want a large form, however, my suggestions are:
Validate as you go. As soon as a user leaves an input or section let them know everything is okay. Don't glue them to a control though, use visual feedback (like backgrounds going red or similar).
Don't lose that page! Use whatever technique you can (including background submits) to store the user's states. Funnily enough, a certain user driven programmers community website does that...
Tab navigation! Set the tab order! Your keyboard wizards will love you
Although you might want to jam as much as possible onto one line, don't. Keep good spacing and vertical navigation - people are used to scrolling vertically, and good spacing makes things readable.
There's lots more, but, as you might expect, there's an even better answer, here
We touch on the key drivers for designing forms for high-usage, trained users in our book "Forms that work".
The key points are:
Try to cram everything onto one page, as described. Having to click from screen to screen becomes very tiring very quickly when you're using the same form all day every day.
If you must separate off some items, do extremely careful observational analysis to discover which items are genuinely used rarely. Put those ones on the 'extra click' screen.
Abbreviate the labels ruthlessly, taking advice from the users on what abbreviations are required. They'll rapidly stop reading the labels anyway, working mostly from the absolute position of fields relative to each other...
... which means: don't ever allow fields to move about. Make sure they retain their absolute position; this is essential for speed of completion
Make sure that the form is entirely navigable using keystrokes alone. This is essential for speedy completion by experienced users
Find out where the answers come from to go into the fields. If they are typing in stuff from another document (it does still happen, believe me) make sure that the field are arranged in the same absolute positions to each other as is shown on the layout of the document they are typing in from.
Don't worry too much 'intuitiveness'; these people are going to be trained.
Bounce rate is completely irrelevant, so you can skip any advice you see about 'conversion' or 'bounce rate'. These users don't have the option to go elsewhere and do a different form.
Email me directly if you'd like to discuss this in more detail: Caroline Jarrett. More contact details on Forms that work - our book's web site
I've got two suggestions. Keyboard and consistency. The one thing you want want when using a form like that so often is the ability to do it with your eyes closed.
The focus should be at the first field, from there on it should take the exact sequence if keystrokes to fill and submit the form every time. Normally this means and type till all fields are filled after which you can press enter to submit.
And try to get audio feedback in there when something goes wrong, often people type blind and have their eyes on a piece of paper and not on the screen, a simple beep to tell them to look at the screen really helps.
hmmm,
I understand that the client wants it done on "one" page however if this will rarely be used like you say I would give it to them in bite sized pieces or your bounce rate will go through the roof.
here are some links using jquery to forms similiar to what I am refering to:
http://www.thecodemine.org/
http://cardonadesigns.com/wordpress/thoughts/ajaxish.php
http://jquery.bassistance.de/validate/demo/multipart/
to name a few.
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
We don’t allow questions seeking recommendations for books, tools, software libraries, and more. You can edit the question so it can be answered with facts and citations.
Closed 5 years ago.
Improve this question
I am looking to revamp our CRUD web forms and would appreciate any examples of good UI design.
We have lots of database tables that have minimal editing needs by the user - Country Codes, Tax codes, Product prices, and so on - and these all currently use a simple format for CRUD, but it was designed by developers and looks very bland, and quite possibly could have far better usability, and certainly a better design.
Our process is:
Find screen - which also has an ADD NEW button. Enter values for any parameters relevant to search for and press FIND button. Matching records displayed in a grid with an EDIT link. The corresponding Edit form allows CLONE, DELETE and SAVE.
Where appropriate an Edit form may display Child Records.
For very complex records / relationships the Edit form is replaced by a Record Card, which displays everything including the kitchen sink! and appropriate records / sub records have EDIT links.
Its functional, but uninspiring.
On an 80:20 basis the code is all mechanically generated, so re-generating it for a new metaphor shouldn't be too hard.
I like a lot of the UI in the Magento eCommerce Admin pages, but I would be interested in any other examples you can recommend
Here are some examples of UI patterns:
Input Controls
Stacked Tabs
Inline Input Adder
One Page Wizards
Overlay
Generally each section will explain the pattern, how and why to use, and gives a handful of graphics as real world examples.
As an additional resource, you can also visit ThemeForest's admin template site and browse through their many products and get pictures and live tours of very well designed and styled admin pages. I personally have used a few of these templates for data heavy sites.
Hope these help you out some.
7/25/18 Update: While it is hard to keep links from nine years ago working, it seem that the website which hosted the UI examples is now gone. Read Farewell from Patternry for further information.
Links worth a look:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/04/17/web-form-design-modern-solutions-and-creative-ideas/
http://somerandomdude.com/articles/design/form-design/
The Dynamic Data Web Site that you can create using .Net 3.5 is pretty handy. Good clean dynamic CRUD ability and yet very customizable. Routing makes it possible to default to generated pages when needed and custom pages if you choose to create them.
Dynamic Data Web Site
These guys have really nice examples-
http://wufoo.com/gallery/
To me, the Django admin interface is a good example of a CRUD interface.
I've just stumbled onto this one
there you will find a couple of REALLY GREAT templates!!!
http://www.webappers.com/2009/09/18/20-professional-web-admin-templates-on-themeforest/
I am interested in choosing a good structure for an online message board-type application. I will use SO as an example, as I think it's an example that we are all familiar with, but my question is more general; it is about how to achieve the right balance between organization and flexibility in online message boards.
The questions page is a load of random stuff. It moves quickly (some might say, too quickly) and contains a huge number of questions that I'm not interested in.
The idea, I imagine, is that we can use tags to find questions that we're interested in. However, I'm not sure that this works: you can't use tags negatively. I'm not interested in PHP or perl or web development. I want to exclude such posts. But with the tags, I can't.
Although discrete subforums are in a sense less flexible, as they generally force you to pick a category even if a question might fit into two (if SO had, say, areas for "Web Development", "Games development", "Computer Science", "Systems Programming", "Databases", etc. then sure, some people might want to post about developing of web-based games, for example) is it worth sacrificing some of that flexibility in order to make it easier to find the content that you are interested in, and hide the content that you are not interested in?
Is there any way with a pure tagging system to achieve the greater ease of use that subforums provide?
The real problem with subforums comes when you guess wrong about which topics have enough interest to get their own subforums. While some topics end up with their own vibrant subcommunities others end up as empty ghettos, with little activity or feeling of community. Topics that might flourish as occasional subjects in a larger forum end up fragmented among many subforums, none of which has the critical mass of people necessary to have an active, vibrant community.
Though I think that tagging is supperior to grouping, people tend to think hierarchically.
In general it depends on the target group for the forum.
Maybe you can go with a mixture: use tagging and later use tag groups to order to posts. Delicious uses this, for example, and I find it rather helpful.
If you're worried about the divide between specific forums and open tag-based systems, like Stack Overflow, consider making a query system that allows you to do a bit more complex queries than just the AND operator, like here on Stack Overflow.
I cannot make a query here that will give me all questions in .NET, SQL or C#, combined, and that is the biggest irritation I have with the tags. With such a query system, you can create virtual forums at least.
Other than that, I don't really have a good opinion. I like both, and I haven't yet decided which one is best.
The idea, I imagine, is that we can use tags to find questions that we're interested in. However, I'm not sure that this works: you can't use tags negatively. I'm not interested in PHP or perl or web development. I want to exclude such posts. But with the tags, I can't.
While it's currently the case that you can't use tags to hide content, it shouldn't be impossible. Using SO as an example again, there's no reason that a system similar to the ignore function on a forum couldn't be made for the tag system. By adding a right-click context menu or a small "X" link somewhere in the tag display, tags could be marked as ignored. This would also allow the current tag feature to function; Seeing everything (minus your ignore list), or clicking a tag to see only questions with that tag.
Ignored tags could be managed in your profile if you should later develop an interest in PHP or INTERCAL that you lacked before.
The real question is that of performance. In my head it's as simple as replacing a SELECT [stuff] WHERE Tag = 'buffer-overflow' with SELECT [stuff] WHERE Tag NOT IN ('php','offtopic','funny-hat-friday') but I've not put together any DB backed sites that get absolutely pounded on by thousands people.
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
I'm currently trying to build a personal website to create a presence on the web for myself. My plan is to include content such as my resume, any projects that I have done on my own and links to open source projects that I have contributed to, and so on. However, I'm not sure which approach would be better from a perspective of "advertising" myself, since that what this site does, especially since I am a software developer.
Should I use an out-of-the-box system and extend it as needed, with available modules and custom modules where needed or should I custom build a site and all of its features as I need them? Does a custom site look better in the eyes of a potential employer who might visit my site?
I've toyed with this idea in the past but I don't think it's really a good idea for a number of reasons. Firstly, there are a number of places that can take care of most of this without you needing to do the work or maintenance. Just signing up for a linkedIn account for example will allow you to get most of your needs catered for in this regard. You can create your resume there and bio information etc and make it publicly viewable. The other issue with your "own site" is that if you don't update it often, the information gets stale, and worse yet, people have no reason to go back because "nothing has changed" - and that's not much of an advert for you is it?
Now that I've said all that, I'll make another recommendation. Why not start a blog instead?! If you've got decent experience, why not share that. I'd be willing to bet that this will be the best advert for your skills because:
It's always updated (if you post often)
It's not like you're looking for work doing it - but your (future) employer, or their developers will check it out anyway to get a better insight into your character.
Putting something on your resume doesn't mean you can do it. I'm not saying that you'd lie about your skills :-), but there's no argument about your ability when you're writing articles about the stuff, getting comments and feedback, and better yet, learning EVEN MORE about your passions.
Best of all - you can run your blog from your chosen domain and also point to your resume that is stored in linkedIn. Just an idea...
That's my two pennys worth on that - hope it helps you come to a decision!
If you are a web-specific developer I would go with a custom site, but if you focus more on desktop applications or backend technologies, I think an out of the box system would be fine.
A nice looking, default, off the shelf, complete website could be more impressive than a poorly done, broken, tacked together, incomplete website. Perhaps start with something "off the shelf" but nice looking, keep it simple, professional, and then eventually add more custom functionality, style and content. Potential employers may like to see that you are capable of reusing tried and trued solutions instead of trying to create everything from scratch without a good reason. Or you could spend time combining great components into something even better than the sum of the parts, as Jeff Atwood talks about extensively in the Stack Overflow podcasts. Stack Overflow is a good example of writing lots of custom code, but combining that with some of the best Web 2.0 technologies/widgets/etc. into something coherent, instead of trying to prove that they could implement x/y/z from scratch.
(On the other hand, it's really fun to build your own login system, blog, or photo gallery. If you really enjoy it and you want to learn a lot or create something new and different, then go for it!)
Here's what I did (or am currently doing). First, use an out of the box solution to begin with. In my case, I used BlogEngine.NET, which was open source and easy to set up. This allows me to put content on my site as fast as possible. Now, I can continue to use BlogEngine.NET, and skin my site to give it more personality or I can start rolling out my own solution. However, I haven't found a requirement yet that would give me a reason to waste time building my own solution. Odds are you probably won't either.
I don't think it matters if your site is blatantly using a framework or other "generic" solution. The real question is "is it done well, with taste?" If you are using an out of the box solution, you should take the time and pay attention to details when customizing it as if you were creating it from scratch.
Alternatively, if you're looking for a great learning experience and something to spend a lot of your free time on -- write it yourself. But know that you are re-inventing the wheel, and embrace it.
edit
A recent post from 37Signals, Gearheads don't get it, really sums up a good point about not focusing on the technical details, but "content and community".
Reinventing the wheel is not such a great idea when you are building a personal site. Building your own CMS is fun, and to some degree is something to brag about, but not so much features you won't have the time to build and all the security holes that you won't have the time to fix.
It's much better to pick a good, well-established engine, build a custom theme, and contribute a module or two to it: you'll be writing code that you can show off as a code sample and at the same time creating something useful.
Knowing your way around an open source CMS is a good skill in just about any job: when your boss says - hey, we need a three pager site for client/product/person X in 10 hours, you can say - no problem.
For a simpler portfolio site, Wordpress might meet your needs.
You can set up 'static' Wordpress pages for contact information, various portfolios, a resume, etc. This would also give you a blog if you want to do this.
Wordpress does give you the flexibility to "hide" the blogging part of it and use it basically as a simpler CMS. For example, your root URL of example.com could point to a WP static page, while example.com/blog would be the actual blog pages.
If you self-host Wordpress on your own domain (which I really would recommend instead of going through wordpress.com), it should be trivial to set up a few subdomains for extra content. For example, downloads.example.com could host the actual downloads for projects you've developed linked from the Wordpress portfolio pages. Similarly, if you're doing a lot of web work, a subdomain like lab.example.com or samples.example.com could then host various static (or dynamic) pages where you show off sandboxed pages that are not under the control of Wordpress.
Keep in mind though that you'll want to make your page look good. A sloppy looking site can scare away potential clients, even if you are not looking to do any web work for them.
Putting your resume up online somewhere helps, I get a lot of recruitment emails from people who happened on my resume via googling. However I agree with ColinYounger in that you'll probably get more bang for your buck from LinkedIn.
My advice is this - if you want to take the time out to LEARN a CMS or something, to better yourself, then why not make your first project in one be your homepage?
Maybe enlighten us as to the "features" you want to have on a personal homepage? Outside of a link to an HTML resume and perhaps some links to things you like, not sure exactly what the features of a homepage would be...
It really depends on:
a) what services you provide
b) what your skill level is when it comes to web design/development
If you are primarily a web applications developer then running an off the shelf product or using blatantly using DreamWeaver to develop it may not be so smart -- or maybe your clients aren't adept enough to notice?
Likewise if you're primarily a web designer then it is probably a good idea to design your own website.
Just as a side question and following up on my 'ego trip' comment: why would you take anything on the web to be 'true'? IME printed submissions, while not necessarily accurate, tend to be slightly less, erm... exaggerated than web submissions.
Do those responding\viewing ever hire? I wouldn't google for a candidate. I might ego surf for a respondent, but would ignore CVs.
Rounding back to the OP, I would suggest that you need to SHOW what you're good at - participate in Open Source projects and POST on their forums, link to projects you can post details of and generally try to show what a Good Employee you could be. Just telling me that you're good at [insert latest trend here] means diddly.
I have come to see that the best way to advertise yourself is to put quality content out there. If you write about the technology that you have experience in, maybe create a few tutorials, and if you do all that often enough, that shows some authority in your chosen field of work.
This alone is one of the best advertisements. However, you also want to show passion. And online, that can be shown through how meticulously your site is done (it doesn't have to be a super great UI or something), but it should be neat, clean, and professional. It doesn't matter if its out of the box, or custom designed.
Either way, you will have to work hard to make it look good.