clear.your.mind

Toda y I saw a post at WebmasterWorld (actually, a friend of mine saw it and let me know!) it is one of those useful posts at a forum you can’t let go very easy. As the title says, it shows 25 signals to identify a crappy web site… some discussion has taken place on the web about the 25 points on the list, but it’s clear that if your site contains one of those, you don’t need to worry, just contact your webmaster or fix the error yourself. For example, my blog has sometimes misspelled words, that’s obvious, because English isn’t my first language, but that doesn’t mean my blog is a crap! that just means I have to get better at my English!

So here’s the list!:

1. Reciprocal link request pages.
2. No Privacy policy.
3. Outdated copyright date or last modified date visible on the pages.
4. Error pages that don’t send 404 headers or send content regardless of the page requested/querystring entered.
5. Massive numbers of incoming links from link farms.
6. Dead/404ing links.
7. High link churn.
8. No published contact address, email address or phone number.
9. A high bounce rate (surfers clicking back on their browser and selecting another search result).
10. Too much duplicate content.
11. Whois info for the domain which is the same as other domains previously penalized or banned. (Could also be true of adsense publisher/affiliate ID’s and other identifiable footprints)
12. Use of/links to affiliate programs that are known scams
13. Domains previously used for spam or that are blacklisted.
14. Stagnation (Site never changes)
15. Excessively long URI’s/URL’s (query strings or folder and file names)
16. A high percentage of affiliate links vs regular outbound links.
17. No / very few outbound links.
18. No / very few inbound links.
19. All inbound links are to homepage only
20. Outbound links to questionable/spammy/crap sites.
21. Profanity or explicitly adult language on a non-adult site.
22. Too many spelling errors.
23. Contains unrelated subjects (ex: a site that reviews toys and tries to sell insurance or viagra).
24. Lack of interest from social bookmarking sites.
25. MySQL or PHP errors in the pages

Privacy Policy can be also in form of Legal Notice or just the word “Terms”, like some sites have. Either ways, not having a Privacy Policy doesn’t mean your site is crap, just means you don’t have posted yet your Privacy Policy and you might need to do it quickly! :)

Today, I opened my email and I found that one of my clients sent me an Off Topic email. We usually discuss other things besides work with some of my clients (others wants to keep it professional and don’t discuss “Life, the Universe and Everything™” with me); anyway… he is a nice fellow and sent me this email with an attachment that for a second, worried me:

Hi Javier,

It looks like someone “loaned” some inspiration from your 15Tags logo.

Later,
XXXX

So I’m guessing it is just coincidence. Maybe they got inspired, but it is just coincidence. And it is more worked than mine (it has a glass effect on it, more colors, etc) but I was thinking on taking it to another level; this will give me the chance ;-D

Hey, designers of the world, get inspired!

I don’t know where I read this today, but if you go to http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=URL you will see any page ready for cellphones or screen readers.

Try this blog for example and see how it looks like.

It’s pretty handy, instead of install another .css in your server, you just can give the gwt url to anyone who wants to look at your page through a cellphone. Cool ah? spread the word!

Some time ago (a very long time ago actually) I read at the Signals vs Noise blog an entry about how designers should not use Lorem Ipsum when they are producing a design.
For those who don’t know what Lorem Ipsum is, here’s the definition:

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged.

So, the 37signals guy said “We recommend that when you build out interfaces you use real and relevant words not “lorem ipsum” representative text.”. They are right, but they are also wrong. What a problem!

A little bit of History

Something happened when graphic designers moved to the web. Suddenly, web sites replaced questions such as “how do I get a loan at this bank?” or “this health care plan fits my needs?” for new ones like “how the hell do I stop this animation?” or “How do I contact this guys to ask about their health care plan?”. And of course, it was obvious. They didn’t have any training on making websites, it was a new thing going on so everyone want to be in. Now, we have Interaction Designers, Information Architects and other disciplines that help the user on his visit to our website.

But, we still need design. They still need design. People love style, people love design. Apple sells millions of IPods not just because it plays music well, but because it looks great. We like good stuff, nice stuff. We love design, we love looking at something and say “damn, it looks good!”. Cars, Houses, etc; everything have to look good and still, be useful for the user. You see, Lorem Ipsum isn’t a “tool” for interaction designers, but for designers.

So what do we do with Lorem Ipsum?

Is just a small step. That’s it.

How NOT to use it
To place objets around the page, to place important information. Dummy text will only slow down things when you need to replace that dummy text with real text and you find out that you need to start moving things around to make the content coherent.

How it SHOULD to be used
Once the web architecture is already done, and you placed all the real text and content where it belongs, where it will be more comfortable and useful for the user, then you need to replace all that text with dummy text to make sure the visual design communicates what the company really wants to transmit to the end user, in terms of design of course.

See? don’t throw anything away people! Its all about practicality people! and making things that work well, look even better.

Related External Links
The Signal vs Noise entry about Lorem Ipsum.
Get the Lorem Ipsum text here.