Tag Archives: web design

aneclecticmind.com Has Moved

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Didn’t notice, did you? Good!

As stated somewhere in Murphy’s Law, “A Web server will run smoothly every day, for days on end — until the Webmaster takes a few days off.”

Well, I got a little tired of my office-based Web server going down when I went away for a few days and decided to do something about it. I’ve begun moving my Web sites and the other sites I host off my Web server and onto a Deluxe Hosting account on GoDaddy.com.

GoDaddy.com is a domain registration/hosting company that is either loved or hated by everyone who knows of it. I happen to be on the love side. The rates are incredibly low, all account/server maintenance can be done remotely without contacting a GoDaddy representative, and online help and technical support are reasonably good (although I admit far from perfect).

I’ve been hosting theflyingm.com on GoDaddy for years now. I don’t use it as a Web site. I use it for reliable e-mail and to host the podcast files for Maria Speaks and KBSZ-AM.

The Economy hosting plan, which should be good enough for 95% of Web publishers, offers 5 GB of hard disk space and 250 GB of bandwidth per month. theflyingm.com was using up about two thirds of the disk space and maybe a quarter of the bandwidth. (Remember, I’m hosting podcasts, not high-def movies.) That cost $3.99/month, but you can get a 10% discount if you sign up for a year at a time. The Economy plan also includes subdomains (for example, maria.theflyingm.com) mapped to their own folders on the server (I didn’t use this feature) and 5 mySQL databases. There’s some other stuff, too, but I don’t use it.

The Deluxe hosting plan offers 100 GB of hard disk space and 1000 GB of bandwidth per month. I think I’m paying $6.99 for that each month. The same discount applies and there are higher discounts for longer renewal periods. This plan supports subdomains as well as multiple domain hosting. So although my account is set up for theflyingm.com, it can also host aneclecticmind.com, wickenburg-az.com, etc. It also supports up to 15 (I think) mySQL databases, making it easy for me to keep individual databases for all of my WordPress-based sites. I can set up all of my sites on one account, so I can shut down my pesky server without spending an arm and a leg for hosting.

And, as Miraz told me the other day, if you use the coupon code DIGG when checking out, you can save another 10% on the purchase. Unfortunately, I got that message too late to use it. (Next time.)

You can learn more about GoDaddy’s hosting plans and features on their Web site.

So now I’m in the process of moving my sites to the new setup at GoDaddy.com. aneclecticmind.com and MacCowboys.com are both done. wickenburg-az.com is next.

I will be writing a detailed article about making the move as a how-to article for our WordPress VQS book companion Web site (which will also be moving soon). It’s a relatively tricky process, but not difficult if you know what to do.

Now if you’d like to comment about your experiences with GoDaddy.com, please use the comments link for this post. If you’re a hater, try to keep your temper in check and explain why you don’t like GoDaddy.com. If you’re a lover, tell us what you like best. If you’re sitting on the fence or have questions, don’t be shy about speaking up.

Melon Investor Services Online

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A poorly designed Web site.

You think that with the money they obviously have to spend, the folks at Mellon Investor Services would have used some real talent to build their Web site. They obviously didn’t.

Sure, it looks pretty, but it’s nearly impossible to navigate without clicking a bunch of wrong navigation buttons. And half the buttons you press spawn a new little window that displays a stop-light graphic and the message that the information is being accessed. The thing that bugged me the most was when I was required to change my pin to a 6-15 character number. It took me four tries to enter a number the system liked, and when I did, the dialog that appeared gave me the impression that I’d screwed up so bad that they were offering to do it for me. I later discovered that the PIN Manager wasn’t a person but a feature of the site that had been unlabeled as such.

Jakob Nielsen of Web usability fame would have a field day with the Mellon site.

I called for help when a feature I was trying to use kept displaying an error message. After various discussion and hold sessions with two different people on two different calls, I was asked to confirm that I was using Internet Explorer. I told her that I wasn’t, that I was using Firefox on a Mac and wouldn’t waste space on my hard disk with a Web browser that hadn’t been updated for four years. She obviously didn’t understand my sarcasm because she told me to “exit” Firefox and “start” Explorer. I repeated that I was on a Mac and if their site didn’t work on a Mac they were alienating a lot of users.

After another hold, I was told that her supervisor could duplicate the error message and that there was probably something wrong with the site.

Duh.

She then suggested that I try another time. By this time (30 minutes after my initial attempt to use the system), I was fed up and ready to hang up. But she had to get one last dig in: “Have I helped you with all your concerns today?”

“No,” I said. And I hung up.

Prioritizing Web Usability

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“Don’t defend your interface. Fix it.”

Designing Web Usability : The Practice of SimplicityBack in 2000, I read Jakob Nielsen’s Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity. This excellent book reinforced several theories of Web design that I had already suspected: simpler was better, Flash animations and splash pages were idiotic, and sites should be built to convey information in a way that was easy for visitors to find and understand.

Nielsen’s book was a summary of thousands of hours of usability testing with people and Web sites all over the world. It wasn’t just the opinions of an outside observer. He could make statements because he had proof that his statements were valid.

I liked his book so much that I mentioned in — and I believe I even quoted from it — in my own book, Putting Your Small Business on the Web for Peachpit Press.

Prioritizing Web UsabilityPrioritizing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger revises and and expands the information in Designing Web Usability. Using new test results and taking into consideration new technologies and user experience levels, Nielsen and Loranger revisit many of the problem exposed in the first book, summarizing how important they are today. The goal of the book is to help Web designers create sites that are effective, easy to navigate, and informative. These are the sites that people want to visit and spend time on, the sites that communicate information and sell products or services.

Nielsen and Loranger are not shy about voicing their opinions. The book has hundreds of full color illustrations of Web pages, each with a detailed caption that points out page problems. For example, a caption for Burger King site page begins, “This is an example of the misuse of visual metaphors…” And, for a page on the Montblanc site, “Montblanc makes nice pens, but it’s impossible to find out anything about them on the company’s Web site…”

While I feel that some of their criticisms are a bit nit-picky, illustrating and commenting on what they see as problems gives the reader plenty to think about. You might not agree with what they have to say about a site’s problem, but you’ll remember it when you design the pages on your sites.

As for me, I learned a few tricks I can apply to my sites. But I’m more relieved that my sites don’t have most of the problems their book points out.

Do you design Web sites? Get and read this book!

[composed on top of a mesa in the middle of nowhere with ecto]