Fast and Easy Site tuneups - Jeff Wisniewski

For this, I’m just looking for more ideas about how to punk our city’s cms. I heard Darlene and Jeff when I went to Monterey a few years ago.

Him and Me

• Improve the site incrementally. Iterative change - small stuff instead of big stuff. This model is so much easier on us web folk… especially with other responsibilities.
• Update your copyright date and last updated automatically. People DO pay attention to your site’s freshness.
• Outdated information = NO credibility. We’re always preaching about credibility, but we ignore how civilians judge it for themselves.
• Add photos to contacts! YAY! Put a face on the library Increases a users trust with the library website.
• Turning contacts into microformats, hcards. Note to self: order a book for the library on microformats hcard creator = cool! Firefox extensions for microformats: tails and something else I missed
• Replace all “click here’s”
• Three question survey: What is the purpose of your visit? Were you able to complete your task today? If you were not able to complete your task today, why not?
• directory links need final slashes.
• web 2.0 stylr for web 2.0 logo creation.
• Say things visually. Use icons. commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Clear/
• Stop slow loading. Diagnose at firebug with yslow FF extensions
• Get site-wide static content into the users cache. In the server config file set certain file types to stay fresh/not expire. Image file types, css, js files, pdfs. Have an .htaccess in your server root and add a FilesMatch for pdf, jpg, jpeg, png, gif, js, css, swf and set to expire in 2010.
• Eliminate inline scripts - put that stuff in external files and call it, except for the homepage. Even CSS should be inline.
• Spring cleaning with w3c validator. validator.w3.org/#validate_by_uri+with_options
• Clean css - looks for redundant and improperly nested. Also compresses it and makes it smaller.
• banner blindness. people read webpages in an F. I always thought that was interesting
• SEO, get good page titles. Check into Google Webmaster
• Format title tags: document title | section name | Library/site name
• Add labels to your forms
• Radio buttons = mutually exclusive; check boxes = one or more option
• SMO (social media friendly): add social media bookmark links to your pages. Use: Social Bookmark Creator

I have to admit that I was skeptical of this session, but it was super terrific. I’m going to take some cues from Jeff for my NELA talk.