Blasi Blah

Today I woke up to check the sites I worked on that I was getting ready to submit to a few awards and when I got to PlayPumps.org I at first thought something happened to the DNS or the site template on Backbaud Sphere (Kintera Sphere) only to finally find out they did it on purpose.

Here is the site Before (left) & After (right):

PlayPumps.org was the main site for PlayPumps International, with the primary portion of the site hosted on Kintera Sphere (now Blackbaud Sphere) which manages all of their online forms, donation and constituency as well as most of their content web pages.

The blog, gallery, and the videos were all managed on a sub domain blog.playpumps.org which was running an instance of WordPress which I had customized while working for Changing Our World Inc.

The blog functioned straight forward like a blog, that is the main tool in WordPress anyway so the only change there was to styling and layout. For the gallery the Flickr API was used to create a custom layout and pull in all of the photos, comments and tags used on Flickr. The images could then link to a larger version in a light box or to the original image in Flickr whichever they decided. The video was all YouTube based, so using their API I pulled in all of the information you could see or want from YouTube including the video, rating, YouTube link, embed code for the video and the description used on YouTube for the video.

On the PlayPumps homepage there was a nice flash element that rotated through 4 tabs which could have their text and content changed via an XML document on the server. This means by editing a single XML file they can change the text on the tabs, the link to the button and the url for the image. Also in the flash was a sample pump, basically it was the pump on the left with a water tower on the right, the tower filling based on a value in the XML file to the level of donations received.

In the end this is all gone, and what is going on no one knows. There has been no outward communication from PlayPumps or parent Case Foundation about the changes happening at PlayPumps International. The only news is that they are investing in Water for People (waterforpeople.org).

After all of the brainstorming, strategies, suggestions and helping hands held out to them, it has all be denied. Anyway, it seems my hopes for this organization are falling away faster and faster…

Recently on LinkedIn the question was asked: “What 5 pages should every website have? From “mom-n-pop” brochure sites to fortune 500 companies, what are 5 pages any website needs to have?

I decided I would share my answer here since the question of content is something I often here asked. It seems everyone wants to know what they should have, need to have and can do without on their site.  Before I share the answer though I want to make it very clear that in general every site may have a few key elements they do not always need to be pages and the level of how much you need each element will vary greatly from person to person.

My answer was as follows:

“Well it all really varies greatly on what the goal of a site is. The fact is that some sites do not need 5 pages at all and some will need many more.

The example posed about a single page site actually dose work very well for some businesses in fact I know several that enjoy very high SEO ratings. Generally the single page layout works best with creative service companies such as web ad graphic designers and photographers. This is because they tend to have little content other than their work and it can showcase their work quite well. On the page it may look like a lot but in general there is not much code mucking it up or diluting its meaning.

I do feel there are certain things every site should have, either done as a page or piece of content on the page and those include:

About - In some form or another people hiring you for a service or looking or a product want to know about you, this is because it will show them the kind of person or company you are. It helps build trust and opens more communication on many ends which is always a good thing.

Contact - If they cannot reach you it is pointless. You can have the best results in the world but they need to be able to get in touch with you. This can be as simple as a small box with email, phone and postal address or an elaborate form they fill out whichever the design and architecture calls for.

Services/Portfolio/Product/Blog/Donate - What is it you are trying to do, sell, market on the site in the first place. There is no point to have a site if it is going to sit there not being used for any purpose at all. This is not to say you can have only one of those and it dose not need to be specifically those titles but there needs to be a clear purpose for the site.

Site Search - Make it as easy as possible for people to quickly find what they want. On a multi-page site with one level of navigation or multiple levels a search engine for the site always proves to be a very heavy traffic area when I look at a sites statistics. The fact is that people have come to know a search as the fast way of finding what they want.

As for the rest yes it is all nice but not necessarily a requirement, it all varies from client and purpose of the site.

Testimonials have no place on a blog but are great if you are selling a product or service. The view on testimonials I have seen very evenly mixed in that some people believe in them and some look at them as another form of marketing by the person selling the product or service. I feel the best use of a testimonials page is generally on a review site a good example would be CNet, people trust the authors and they are completely open in that they do not remove testimonials or comments unless they are argumentative and venture into undesired territories of personal beliefs.

Sitemap pages are OK if you are looking at a very large and difficult to navigate site. For a small business, professional or service oriented site I think if you need a sitemap then there are probably issues with the site architecture and usability. In most cases it can be nice to have anyway but I rarely see it as being necessary. At the same time this can be out maneuvered by a well built search engine. Also if the nav is well thought and coded then there is no concern about how well a search engine will crawl your site since every page will have the main nav elements. Instead it adds a page that has few keywords and relevant content. Also a sitemap can be done on every page and be more useful.

News or Updates are good if it is a site where the is always something newsworthy going on, if this is going to sit stagnant for days or weeks or worse without new content then the point of having it dissipates. It could be done instead with a small Homepage block.

For FAQs again it differs, some sites are so clear with everything there is very little to have FAQs for, others may need them. It will depend on the level of the site and its services/products.

To clarify and sum everything up I am saying that every site will be different and have different needs. Some will need far more than those I have mentioned including others mentioned like Privacy Statements and Terms of Use as well as other legal information will depend on the use of the site. For RSS feeds, that only requires a link to the feed your site generates not a direct page in the standard form.”

My answer was chosen to be the best response but if you would like to read the response of others who answered the question as well they can be seen here.