Please let me know whatchya think of my "Under Construction" page:

[Bamm Bamm]

Welcome to the Show&Tell Forum (http://showandtell.bammbamm.org/index%20(Under%20Construction).html)!


:)

[dotancohen]

Leave just the first graphic. The rest of them make you seem perverted.

And something started loading (video or music) but I didn't let it finish.

[KDLA]

Yikes.
What's the point?

If your site is "under construction," it shouldn't be out there for others to see in the first place. ????

[felgall]

There are two types of web sites.

1. Those that are under construction.

2. Those that are dead.

If you are still maintaining your site then it is in the first category and if you are not maintaining the site then after a few weeks it will move to the second category and will then proceed down the search engine rankings until no one finds it any more.

There is no need to tell prople which of the two categories your site is in because 99.999% of web sites that people find when looking for anything are ones that are under construction.

If your site has sections that are yet to be developed then either omitting them from the site completely until you have them developed sufficiently to be of interest or removing the link tag from around the link and labelling it "coming soon" are the best alternatives.

[Bamm Bamm]

Tnx, dotancohen. Pity you didn't have the patience to let the audio load. It goes a long way toward explaining the four visuals.

And in case you hadn’t noticed, my title is clickable too!



Actually, KDLA, this is merely the “Under Construction” page that I employed until just recently. My Show&Tell page is now active, albeit a little sparse on content.



Felgall, I’m so new at being a webmaster, if I told you how new, your head would probably explode. ; ) Honestly, my web presence is still in its infancy. Although, I do think I understand you about “search engine rankings”. If I remember correctly, I’m supposed to give some keywords to my web host? I don’t think I’ve toggled the switch to allow my site to be submitted to the search engines. I’m not quite ready for all the publicity.


As always, I’m grateful for everyone’s feedback! : )

Bamm

[felgall]

If you can get other sites to link to yours then the search engines will find your site without your having to tell them. It is possible that you will get a higher placement if the search engine finds your site itself than if you tell the search engine about the site. Certainly incoming links are a big part of the ranking anyway.

Most visitors will give up within 15 - 30 seconds and go elsewhere if your page doesn't finish loading. Your home page needs to be under 40k and other pages on the site under 80k if you want most people to actually stay long enough to see the whole page. This size includes the HTML, stylesheets, Javascript, images, sound files, and anything else that has to load for the page to display. Back in the early 80s I was told that if a computer couldn't display the page in under 2 seconds then it was too slow and to go back and rewrite the whole thing - to get a 40k page to load in under 2 seconds requires a T3 internet connection or better.

[Bamm Bamm]

I hear ya, regarding slow-loading web pages. I’m the same way. If I have enough time to stand up, walk all the way to the kitchen, grab a cold one, get into a heated argument with the wife over two or three of the twenty-seven thousand honey-do’s I haven’t honey-done, and finally return to the computer (with a now room-temperature beer) just in time to see that only 3 or 4 5K gifs have loaded, along with about a hundred little red X’s in little white boxes, that’s about the time I usually click elsewhere.


My primary focus is on becoming more familiar with the language itself: learning by seeing what other folks have done, experimenting on my own, and generally just trying to break something! ; )


‘Question for ya: If a person’s cable is 384k/sec d/l speed, why would it take so long for a 40k home page to load?

[wh666-666]

Leave just the first graphic. The rest of them make you seem perverted.

And something started loading (video or music) but I didn't let it finish.


lol totally agree with dotancohen!! the first is nice but the rest does make us think your coding with one hand and doing something with the other. Also the background is very amatuerish and overpowering. Please make an interesting site ... maybe draw it on paper first to get a site with groin grabbing attention but easily usable with many features

[Bamm Bamm]

lol totally agree with dotancohen!! the first is nice but the rest does make us think your coding with one hand and doing something with the other. Also the background is very amatuerish and overpowering. Please make an interesting site ... maybe draw it on paper first to get a site with groin grabbing attention but easily usable with many features
‘Sorry you feel this way. I take it, then, that you, like dotancohen, failed to allow sufficient time for the audio to load too.

Pity.


Anyway, thanks for weighing-in, "Dr. Phil". :p


:)

[felgall]

Over 50% of people will have left a web page within 30 seconds of it starting to load if it hasn't finished loading and caught their interest by then. Anything over 80k will have progressively fewer people wait for it to load. If you are going to include sound it is best to provide it as a link that people can click on to start it after the page has loaded that way it is effectively a page by itself and can be up to about 100k. Plus that way you don't annoy the majority of visitors who prefer the web without sound.

[wh666-666]

Totally agree with felgall and its something worth considering bamm bamm. People cant be arsed waiting for a page to load. otherwise they'll just go to a competitor or alternative. Thats why you can get 24meg plus broadband because peoples attention span can be just as long as goldfishes memory

[Bamm Bamm]

...peoples attention span can be just as long as goldfishes memory.
What were we talking about again? ;)


Listen. You two are right as rain. I fully understand that any site worth its salt should necessarily be tailored to an audience who may or may not be indulging in copious amounts of Crystal Meth. From what I’ve learned on this thread, we webmasters need to remain cognizant of the fact that most people don’t have the extra 30 seconds to wait for a content-rich page to load. I’m just now reluctantly accepting this as gospel.


I, more than anyone, should realize the value of fast-loading sites. You see, I host my very own online game show, and I know how crucial it is for my contestants to be able to quickly refresh the page. Of course, we’re playing via message board, so I have no direct control over the layout. And, when I’m not presiding over the festivities, I simply like to shoot the breeze, talk politics, razz friends & enemies alike, and generally just have a good time online. Even then, though, it’s important for the forum to react with little lag.


And felgall, if you look at my source, you’ll notice that I’ve included the option for the viewer to stop the audio by clicking the square “VCR” button:

<P dir=ltr align=center><EMBED src=http://showandtell.bammbamm.org/Audio/Under%20Construction.wav width=290 height=42 type=audio/x-wav AUTOSTART="true"> </P>

I’m still pretty proud of my work, and it’s too bad that no one here has even given it a listen-to. I sure wish I could compress that massive wav file (2.1 MB) to less than a tenth of that.

[felgall]

You need to compress it to less than 1/20th of its current size if you really want people to listen to it. Wav files are only suitable for about 1/2 second or less of sound on the web. Try converting it to a midi format and it might come down to something a bit closer to a usable size.

[Bamm Bamm]

Stephen, I'd be happy to convert it to a midi, but the sound file contains synthesized speech, so I don't believe that's an option. :(

[felgall]

You might want to look into what other sound formats are available as options for you to convert your file into because wav files are not really usable on the internet as even a fraction of a second of sound can result in a file that is too big.