Before getting to the reading, I’m wondering how many classmates had as much confusion as I did in choosing a web hosting service. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for: how much disk space do I really need? If it doesn’t say it’s compatible with Dreamweaver, will it be? Do I need a mirror site—and how do you do that anyway? I need a checklist of what to look for. Searching for a new phone service would be easier. Thanks to all the friends who offered suggestions.
My frustration with most everything digital often makes me wonder how small museums/heritage organizations deal with such issues. How do they go about choosing their web hosting? Perhaps they know about Techsoup’s overarching support for non-profits, and companies like Dreamhost’s free web hosting for non-profits. Or do they?
I thought Stylin with CSS (Charles Wyke-Smith, 2d Edition, 2008) was very helpful because it’s written in clear English, with great examples in the text. The accompanying website is especially helpful because it generously shares templates among many other tools. I think I found a mistake also, with the sample code on pp.21-22, and the sample rendering on p.23. On p.23 a sentence appears which is not in the code, “You can find more CSS related links at the Stylin’with CSS site.” If I’m right, it makes me happy to see that I don’t need to be a mater programmer to follow code.
The article “How People Evaluate a Web Site’s Credibility “didn’t seem particularly useful to me. The concept of website evaluation is important and necessary, but I think that non-commercial enterprises will need to develop their own metrics for evaluation, with more emphasis on qualitative measurements. If there are ways to garner qualitative measurements from website statistics, that would be wonderful. But my last reading in archives and metrics suggest that it is much more difficult to measure quality of experience in the non-commercial world. In other words, Target can look at sales figures contrasted with web advertising to see direct links to the action of purchasing. But online museums can’t measure what it means if someone spends 2 or 20 minutes looking at a painting.
I had trouble reading the Wrobleski article, “Who Are You” because the layout seemed so disjointed, and the fonts were so small. It felt like a web page crammed into a book, where it did not fit. I scanned it, but even that wasn’t as effective as scanning a website, where I could adjust the font size, and focus on sections of my choice.
Finally, I am happy to know that “Attractive Things Work Better.” I think we all know this intuitively, so it’s nice to see the science of brain functioning used to explain why we know this. I read this just after choosing a graphic principally because it makes me happy when I look at it. Unfortunately, I have to delve into copyright issues before using it in my banner or webpage.
January 25, 2010 at 11:42 pm |
I had a similar reaction to the Wrobleski article – I ended up having to print it out to read it. I actually liked it after reading it, but I too wish it had been less difficult to view on screen.
January 26, 2010 at 3:16 am |
Yes, I have been thinking the same thing about web-hosting services. I’ve used LunarPages in the past – but it was always difficult to get anyone on the phone if I needed to talk to someone. I know Professor Petrik mentioned Dreamhost. Did you end up going with them?
January 26, 2010 at 7:21 pm |
I’m experimenting with Dreamhost and Hostgator to see which is easier for me to work with. 30 day money back guarantee. But it’s hard to think of good domain names!
January 26, 2010 at 6:47 pm |
Hi Rachel – you make some good points here. You are right about non-commercial websites versus commercial websites. As you said with a painting – we can’t determine how long a person looks at it. They may have opened it up on their screen, walked away for a snack, and come back 10 minutes later. However, there may be some workarounds. Simple site visits are a good indication, but repeat visits would show that our sites can bring people back. If the experience is poor, visitation will be unique and eventually drop off.
As for the attractive nature of websites – it reminds me of the site we chose in Clio Wired about the Cold War. (http://www.wilsoncenter.org/coldwarfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.noflash) The homepage was fantastic and immediately caught our attention. The inner pages were nice as well, but it had hideous usability. So another piece of advice the author could suggest is not to be deceptive with beauty!
January 26, 2010 at 6:48 pm |
Is there a way to add a link into the comments of the wordpress blog without writing out the entire URL? Sorry.
February 1, 2010 at 8:05 pm |
Hey Lynn,
It’s easy when you’re posting. But I don’t know how to do it when you’re commenting.
This makes me think we should have a general class blog, where you could throw out questions or announcements to the whole class. Or perhaps there’s a way to communicate with everyone via a blog that I don’t know about.
We can ask the class on Tues unless any readers out there have solutions!
January 26, 2010 at 6:50 pm |
[...] Rachel asks some interesting questions about website assessments and qualitative experience in her blog. [...]
January 28, 2010 at 5:07 pm |
You´re right about the problems with evaluating a website, but it´s still nice to see someone attempt an evaluation. The problem that I kept coming back to while reading that article is that one set of criteria, even if based on thousands of people, just doesn´t cover so many kinds of websites. Still, I have a feeling that using criteria from unexpected sources–such as what people like in a sports or entertainment site–might be interesting to apply to more academic websites. Maybe the History Channel is an example of that.
Thanks for the comment about that Eastern European film expert. I definitely want to meet him/her. The more I think about it, the more I realize how complicated dealing with a film can be. Talking to someone with some knowledge would be nice.