Fast and Easy Site Tune-Ups
Posted by Miriella on 7 April 2008
With Jeff Wisniewski: Web Services Librarian, University of Pittsburgh
Slides available at conference website about a week at the end of the conference.
I think I missed a few because I came in late…
- Add photos to contacts – it’s quick, easy, adds a personal element.
- Change boring old contact info into exciting hCards at http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator
- Replace every instance of “Click here” with something like “blah blah is available here”
- Firefox extensions: Tails and Operator(?)
- Help your server – if you use directory links add a “/” at the end of your links.
- Web 2.0 Stylr for creating nifty logos and text images
- Be an icon icon! http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Clear for tons of free icons
- Firebug + YSlow
- Cache – get as much content into caches as possible.
- For server admins: Server config files: set certain file types to stay fresh and not expire: Image file types, css, js files, pdfs.
- Yahoo! High Performance research shows that combining small images into an image map: combining multiple smaller images into a single image speeds downloads due to fewer http requests.
- Eliminate inline scripts. Calling scripts from external files will speed page download time. – Except for your homepage: inline scripts for your homepage – making http requests is much more expensive than the size of the data coming down.
- Spring cleaning: tidy your homepage: http://validator.w3.org/#validate_by_uri+with_options
- Does your CSS overfloweth? Use CleanCSS!
- Move important information out of the “blindness” zone – important information should be mid-center.
- Google webmaster tools – page titles – site link > Diagnostics > content analysis > title tag analysis – tells you pages w/duplicate titles, non-informative titles, titles that are too long, etc.
- Global find and replace: Rewrite page titles with the following format: Document title | Section Name | Library Site name (i.e. Interlibrary Loan Policies | Library Services | Danbury Library)
- Forms: Add labels to your forms: 1) Accessibility: read by screen readers and 2) user friendly: check box text and not just text box is clickable
- Use radio buttons and check boxes appropriately (one option only or multiple options allowed?)
- Add social bookmark links: http://ww.toprankblog.com/tools/social-bookmarks/
Looks like I’ll be putting a couple of these things to good use. I wonder if I can get the staff to have their pictures taken.
