Category Archives: sites
Trickle-down economics of new Charlie Sheen
Do you remember where you were on that fateful Saturday night, March 5th, 2011, at 10PM Eastern, 7pm Pacific? I remember – I just brought in a take out order of dry wings, calamari rings and was getting ice-cold beer from the fridge. The house was quiet, and my wife and I got comfortable in front of … the computer monitor and tuned in to … Charlie Sheen’s streamcast. We knew history was in the making.
Caching external content for site performance
I recently had to re-install some twitter/tumblr syndication modules on a few small sites. Reason: sudden performance issues. The sites were medium-sized, and depended heavily on externally syndicated content. You’ve seen these busy sidebars before: a few recent twitter posts, a few more tumblr pics, another FeedBurner, maybe a dozen of Disqus/Echo comments, Amazon widget. This is all good, and wonderful, to spread your content/community around on multiple platforms, and syndicate them on your site. But keep in mind that all these services – while practical and very responsive – are relatively new technologies. Young start-up companies.
Project lifecycle, simplified
You’ve probably seen this cartoon before (if not, just google it), and if you have – it made you chuckle. Now how many will admit being involved with such challenging projects (web or otherwise)? How many will admit to managing (or rather, mis-managing) something that resembles the above? I hope a few hands are still raised in the air. It’s not fun to inherit such a project, and even less fun to do the clean-up afterwards. But I assume we’ve all done it.
Random thoughts on Canadian magazines
Magazines Canada has just finished an exciting week of MagNet. A four-day long marathon of seminars, galas, sold-out speaking engagements, endless networking, culminating, of course, with National Magazine Awards ceremony. While I couldn’t attend the awards (this thing runs late into the night – honestly), I followed the shenanigans vicariously, via twitter updates (and here), or website postings – in real-time (typically done by the winning teams)
Social sharing all-in-one tools
Social sharing has come a long way in so little time. Just a couple of years ago the concept of ‘viral’ or ‘widgets’ didn’t exist, and webmasters/publishers were happy just cross-linking to each other’s content, getting ‘contras’, asking to be listed in a directory, etc. But ever since the first ‘Digg’ icon showed up (or ‘tell a friend’, I forget what started it), the idea of letting people share and bookmark their favourite web destinations has grown into a separate web industry. Hundreds of widgets, thousands of chiclets (those little icons you see everywhere), and we’re all sharing, passing on, pushing the content further.
canadianeditors.com
BEFORE AND AFTER:
- the old site (below) had a clumsy vertical navigation, and had a lot of unused, empty space
- the new site (above) runs the most important channels across the top (as well as on the side), and uses effective visuals to keep the interface intuitive and informative
- the old site was managed manually, introducing many HTML and CSS issues, let alone meta-tagging and tracking
- the new site uses a content-management system (CMS) to easily manage and deliver various content types through a single back-end
- the old site had an external newsletter application, with little flexibility for unsubscribing/campaign optimization
- the new site has a newsletter module built into the CMS, as well as user-management tools which allow for easy subscription, quick newsletter production, and effective campaign optimization
altimateboots.com
BEFORE AND AFTER:
- the old site (below) had the storefront buried after an unnecessary ‘splash’ page, that needed to be managed manually
- the new site (above) updates the storefront which has ‘splashy’ elements, but also provides one-click commerce functionality
- the old site needed additional modules for dealers’ list, newsletters, site news, and was weak on meta-tagging
- the new site can manage news, dealers, newsletters in the back-end, and all products/categories are individually meta-tagged provideing for more flexible marketing
- the old site was running hard-coded banners/promotions that were difficult to measure/analyze properly
- the new site can maintain multiple house ads and external promotions, with Google tracking, to allow for valid, accurate data analysis
perennialandnurserynews.com
Before and after – sire revamp goals:
- the old site (below) had static pages, managed manually, and often at a high production cost (external)
- the new site (above) uses a content-management system that automates content production, eliminates unnecessary coding concerns
- the old site had inconsistent, clashing color scheme
- the new site has four seasonal, distinct color schemes that automatically change the entire mood of the site (without affecting navigation/content), to reflect garden growing seasons
- the old site had archived content that was difficult to find, external newsletter sign-up mechanism
- the new site has intuitive navigation that self-populates with recent/popular/related content, and the CMS has built-in user management tools as well as newsletter module that saves on production and marketing costs
