shotlighter
Active member
Maybe because it's hosted in China!cap 'n chris said:
Your Club's Website
- Thread starter Peter Burgess
- Start date
whitelackington
New member
How come,
almost nothing on The B.C.A. Website has been changed since 2006, even their "news"
almost nothing on The B.C.A. Website has been changed since 2006, even their "news"
whitelackington
New member
even if that were true,graham said:whitelackington said:
Probably because "they" have worked out that you are the only person who ever looks at it.
do they remain relevant?
axbridgecaver
Member
whitelackington said:
Are you looking at the right versionn of the BCA web site -
The home page states updated on 10 March 2008
The last entry on their forum was 12 March 2008
Diary page has entries until July 2009
Membership pages updated in February 2008
The remaining pages are generally information pages that do not require an update, but as you said the news page has not been updated for a while
Peter Burgess
New member
whitelackington said:
I started this topic as a means for us all to make helpful and constructive comments on other clubs websites, and not for you to pollute it with your off topic cr4p, Whitelackington. If you have a beef about the BCA website and how they fail to meet your expectations, either offer to help out or bu88er off and moan about it in another topic somewhere else, preferably on another forum.
S
Scutchamer
Guest
Looking at websites from a coding rather than 'looks' and 'content' point of view most are poorly designed and almost none comply to any form of accessibility.* A well designed website will work in most browsers, I've done websites that conform to XHTML strict, CSS and WCAG AAA** and can be viewed in Firefox, Opera and IE with only slight problems in IE (larger space on the left than right of centered page, but otherwise fine).
To design a complient website just use the correct tag for the correct job
<p></p> defines a paragraph, not a "big gap"
<h1> is a heading, not big text
<table> is for data not layout
use width, height and alt for images
use relative font sizes em or %, not pt and px
don't use colour or images to convey information (obviously excluding graphs, charts etc.)
Use <label for=""> for forms
don't rely on javascript to make things work
Include document type declerations
Use CSS for layout and design, it can be a bit funny with I.E. but only if you abuse 'float'.
I'm working on a new NUCC website, the old one is crap and as Chris rightfully says "Just include everything, dammit" but if you compare
http://www.su-web.nottingham.ac.uk/~caving
and
http://www.incendiumhq.biz/ (temporary testing location)
excluding the different colours they are pretty much identical, when the new site is finished they near enough will be, apart from the back end "admin area" the front end is only different in that the new one is compliant to WCAG AAA, XHTML and CSS and the old one didn't make WCAG A, HTML or CSS. The new one does do some odd things in IE but it's not fully debugged and half the links don't work, when IE 8 comes out, they've said they'll fix these problems.
I'm impressed with the UBSS site as it coded well, although the menu appears halfway down the page when viewed with CSS turned off. (Haven't checked a lot of sites, just Chris said it was the best one so I tried it)
How many of you can validate your website and not get an error with:-
http://validator.w3.org/
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
I recommend using firefox for coding as you can get some ace extensions that really help with layout (especially css).
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5809
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2318
*ok so the chances that blind people, people without hands, cerebal paulsey, etc. will visit your site is limited. But I've spent idle minutes clicking away on wikipedia and ended up looking up crap, why should they be prohibited, hell I'm on this forum?
**http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505/
To design a complient website just use the correct tag for the correct job
<p></p> defines a paragraph, not a "big gap"
<h1> is a heading, not big text
<table> is for data not layout
use width, height and alt for images
use relative font sizes em or %, not pt and px
don't use colour or images to convey information (obviously excluding graphs, charts etc.)
Use <label for=""> for forms
don't rely on javascript to make things work
Include document type declerations
Use CSS for layout and design, it can be a bit funny with I.E. but only if you abuse 'float'.
I'm working on a new NUCC website, the old one is crap and as Chris rightfully says "Just include everything, dammit" but if you compare
http://www.su-web.nottingham.ac.uk/~caving
and
http://www.incendiumhq.biz/ (temporary testing location)
excluding the different colours they are pretty much identical, when the new site is finished they near enough will be, apart from the back end "admin area" the front end is only different in that the new one is compliant to WCAG AAA, XHTML and CSS and the old one didn't make WCAG A, HTML or CSS. The new one does do some odd things in IE but it's not fully debugged and half the links don't work, when IE 8 comes out, they've said they'll fix these problems.
I'm impressed with the UBSS site as it coded well, although the menu appears halfway down the page when viewed with CSS turned off. (Haven't checked a lot of sites, just Chris said it was the best one so I tried it)
How many of you can validate your website and not get an error with:-
http://validator.w3.org/
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
I recommend using firefox for coding as you can get some ace extensions that really help with layout (especially css).
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5809
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2318
*ok so the chances that blind people, people without hands, cerebal paulsey, etc. will visit your site is limited. But I've spent idle minutes clicking away on wikipedia and ended up looking up crap, why should they be prohibited, hell I'm on this forum?
**http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505/
S
Scutchamer
Guest
(Also firefox has a spell checking extension) :-[
D
Dep
Guest
Scutchamer said:
I totally agree with everything you've said there.
Especially misuse of tags, inconsistent/nonexistant !DOCTYPES - obsolete browser detection rather than object testing and so on...
I have to be honest that as soon as I have had a quick glance at the initial page the very next thing I always do on most websites is view the source code to see how they've gone about it.
I can usually tell pretty much straightaway if the site is competently built which has a major impact on how it will appear.
Although this thread is about content over code, I have seen examples where perfectly reasonable content is ruined by poor coding.
Use of a validator is well recommended.
whitelackington
New member
Peter Burgess said:
Peter you can be absolutely certain, that I would never join a club that had you in it :tease:
Peter Burgess
New member
If you addressed this comment more generally to the rest of the forum members, you would go a long way to making a lot of people very happy.whitelackington said:
S
Scutchamer
Guest
Rhian said:
No problems, some people for whatever reason turn off javascript (usually those with disabilities as they can't work out what is going on), if you have form validation using javascript then you can enter any nonsense with it turned off, if you use php, perl, python or similar then it's (almost) fool proof. Also using javascript menus where they cascade nicely and popup like a windows menu will render the site completely inaccessible to people who don't use it, these are becoming rarer. A simple example you see everywhere is "if you don't get redirected within 5 seconds, click here to continue", javascript is used but not relied upon (same for meta-redirect). If you use facebook when you go to (for instance) poke someone you get a popup box, if you disable javascript it comes up as a new page with an ok and cancel button.
Basically definitely use javascript as it makes things ace (much faster loading and nicer looking), but don't rely on it to make your site 'work'.
Opps, sorry, originally I understood Peter's post to be open ended, although on second read I see "rather than comment on the technical features", so I'll keep schtum. :ang:
D
Dep
Guest
paul said:
Yes - hence my caveat about good content spoilt by non-functional coding.
whitelackington
New member
whitelackington said:
Still the same
http://british-caving.org.uk/?page=18
Two years since updating for "news" ?
Glenn
Member
whitelackington said:
Following that link to page 18 provides the following options:
- Subscription rates 2007
- Newsletter 7 now available
- BCA 2007 AGM Nomination forms here
- BCA announces Youth and Development program
Even though there is a clearly out of date caption reading: "Page last updated 31 December 2006" it's not that difficult to see that it has been updated, on several occasions.
langcliffe
Well-known member
Glenn said:
With respect, Glenn, the "Subscription rates for 2007" and "Newsletter 7 now available" messages are compatible with the date last updated. The "AGM Nomination forms" may well be as well. I don't know about the "Youth Development program".
Moreover, Newsletter 9 is available, but that isn't reflected by the News. In recent weeks the British Caving Library website has appeared, but there is no mention of that.
Reluctant as I am to concede it, I do think Mr. Whitelackington has a point. I appreciate that maintaining such a page requires effort by volunteer labour, but if a commitment is made to have a News page and it is obviously out of date, it doesn't look good. It would be better not to have the page at all, rather than have one which is obviously not used.
On a secondary point, it is trivial to ensure that the "date last updated field" is automatically changed whenever the page is updated, so it really should reflect the last update.