c0rn d0g productions

Whenever anybody asks me about creating a website, the first thing I ask them is if they have bought the domain name yet. Nobody ever has. If I even momentarily think about a domain name, I usually go and check if it’s available and then buy it. Once you have your hooks in a domain name it is yours forever (unless you are infringing on somebody’s trademarked name then can have it back at cost). Sometimes I don’t hang on to these things but others I will (like this one).

I usually do my domain purchasing at godaddy.com. I know I complain about them but at this point, I have so much of stuff there that it’s easier to just keep using them. And if you have a choice on things, always go for a dot com. It’s classier. It’s also usually a bit more expensive, but I think worth it. Also, if you’re buying a domain name for a business you might want to start up, it never hurts to buy domain names for the misspelled names of that business as well and you can just redirect them to the correct url. Most big websites do that.

Oh, and this rule doesn’t apply in Vienna where I tried to buy wiegehtswien.at with the idea that I was going to mirror my whatupvienna.com blog in german. They wanted like $60/year for it. Nein danke, jerks.

I have been looking at a lot of wordpress blogs lately and I’m seeing some rampant design shitstorms. Here are some do’s and don’ts I have hastily put together for your new person blogging educations:

Don’t put your nav on the left side. Users more often than not scan left to right. You want to put the content in front of their faces immediately not throw a mess of links at them.

Do put your navs on the top, right side, bottom or all of the above. Top is good for the main sections of your site, the right side is good for some more specialized links like most recent posts, most recent comments, twitter follow, facebook fan, etc. And the bottom is good for a text version of the main nav.

Don’t have a huge graphical header at the top of your blog that takes up half the screen when users arrive at your site. Why do people need to see that self-indulgent waste of space every time they go to your site? They want content. They don’t want to see your pretty picture.

Do have a minimally-graphic, non-garish font having, easy-to-read, not-too-height-greedy header. The header, ideally, should stand out but not overwhelm. And note that I am not advocating just html system fonting your header. You just gotta find that balance. The header should brand your site but it shouldn’t divert focus from the content of the site.

Don’t have more than two columns. You with your text ads, blogrolls, badges, tag clouds, facebook, twitter, newsletter, rss, affiliates, skyscrapers, translation tools, and on and on. It looks like craigslist up in there with some most people’s blogs. It is distracting.

Do try and stick to two columns. Have your main body with the content and then another column for all your stuffs. Put the things you want people to take action on towards the top (twitter follow, facebook, newsletter, etc) and the farther you go down, the less important things get. Also, try not to make the content in the right-hand nav longer than the content on the page. Always design erring on the side of the full page of content being longer than the nav.

Like everything, there are exceptions to these rules. It’s just a general guideline for those people venturing out into the blogging world to get going in a good less-irritating direction. And by all means, leave some more good do’s and don’ts in the comments.

This is a very simple easy-to-follow easy-to-implement suggestion: Link everything.

I have worked for many content-based websites and one thing that is driven in your head is clicks, clicks, clicks to get page views, page views, page views. So if you are linking to some sort of piece of content from the front page of your site, let’s say, apart from a conspicuous “Read More” like link, everything else should be inconspicuously linked. Inconspicuous meaning try and avoid doing anything fancy on hover that might make your index pages look like the Vegas strip when dragging a mouse around. You want to be prepared for an idiot internet user to click on any thing in that general area of that content to take them to another page to see more of that specific content. So that means, for example, the accompanying image and headline should always be linked. And don’t forget “border=0″ people. This isn’t 1995.

Site: Classmates.com

You lured me into signing up with you years ago and it seems that you auto-subscribe me to a new e-mail of yourn every month. I don’t want none of them! Finally, I managed to take a step beyond just trashing them in my inbox and I went to the classmates site to see about unsubscribing myself. Now, I used to work for Dell sending out all those annoying consumer marketing e-mails and we had to follow all these stringent rules about adding people to the e-mail list and giving them an easy way to unsubscribe. And then when I moved to Los Angeles, I worked for Evite where we also were well-versed in the appropriate ways to use e-mail lists. So with that background, I think I can rightly say that Classmates.com is an effing jerk.

Here are my demands:

1) Create an unsubscribe link on your emails that will let recipients unsubscribe from any or all of the email lists WITHOUT HAVING TO LOG IN TO YOUR WEBSITE. I have started to try and unsubscribe from your emails many times and given up when I confronted with a log-in screen asking me for a log-in and password I have long since forgotten. And I don’t think that deterrent is by accident. Dirty pool, Classmates.

2) Create that aforementioned page where logged-in users can easily unsubscribe from any and all of your email lists. After having my password reset and successfully logging on to the site, I found it difficult to unsubscribe from all the different emails. There are two different pages at least listing the emails with very unintuitive, confusing directions as to how to unsubscribe. And, honestly, I don’t even know if I was able to actually to successfully unsubscribe from everything. I guess I’ll find out. Can’t wait for that ruined day.

3) Make sure users know that they are clearly opting into specific emails. I can’t say for sure that I was opted-in to emails without my explicit checking of a box. However, it seems likely to me. Maybe there was some tricky wording of the membership agreement when I signed up allowing you to opt-in your users without their consent. If I was though, dirty pool. If I wasn’t, I’m sure it was deceptive at best.

In summation, if your site was so awesome, you wouldn’t have to be tricky.

I made my first website on Geocities (RIP) circa 1994. At some point, around a decade ago, Yahoo took over Geocities and after that, I had no means to get back up into it. It was there frozen in time. I emailed Yahoo Geocities support every once in the while, asking them for access to my own site or to at least take the site down. Those emails never produced a response. Then, sometime last year, it is announced that Yahoo is finally trashing Geocities. My prayers have been answered, right? Alas, I thought they were. Then I was writing about my old website and I felt a twinge of regret that I was no longer able to link to it. Sigh. Well, let’s just doublecheck with senyor Google to see if my old site has somehow gotten some sort of RIP reprieve. And, lo and behold, hallelujah. Well, maybe hallelujah is a tad effusive. Maybe, she says. And I apologize if this reocities business is a trojan horse filled with some shitty viruses. They played with my (our) emotions and won.

Don’t take me all the way through your purchase process and then as I select to purchase the tickets, tell me that I’ve waited too long and now the price has changed and then send me all the way back to the search page. Why don’t you instead add an option to pay the new price and continue with the purchase? I would have appreciated that. And I would have paid the new price and continued with the purchase. Get on the stick, product managers! Having to go through the whole rigamarole again almost soured me on the whole experience and sent me and my business over to travelocity. I’ll give them the extra skrill. You’re lucky though. I am just lazy enough to not want to click away so I just went back through the whole process again and purchased my tickets at the increased price. Next time though, I might not be able to fight the ire that sends me click, click, clicking away.

xxoo Michelle

At one point, I allowed you to sign me on to my Facebook account with Facebook Connect. Now, you have added features that show me what my “friends” are reading. HOWEVER, I am not Facebook friends with some of those people. I may have been when I initially did the Facebook Connect however long ago but now after my great Facebook Friend Spring Clean-Up 2010, I am not anymore. And I can find nowhere on your site where I can resynch my friends and if that’s not possible if I can just remove some of the friends you think I have. Harumph. Granted, I haven’t taken the step of emailing whatever sort of customer support they have. When I stop complaining into a vacuum, I might get around to it.

xxoo Michelle

Please stop emphatically telling me that I have to renew two domains with your emails and your red announcements all over your site. My domains are on auto-renew. And even though I know this, your emails and flashing lights make me think, wait a second, maybe I don’t have these two domains on auto-renew and maybe I AM GOING TO LOSE MY LIFE’S BLOOD BECAUSE OF LAZINESS AND IGNORZINESS AND IKNOWWHATIMDOINGSOGETOFFMYBACKZINESS. But then I check and, of course, I do have them on auto-renew. Of course! And I realize you’re just trying to squeeze some more money out of me like you do with your tactics of hyper-upselling through any purchase process. I give you enough of my money with all my domain registrations, domain hosting and recommending you to others. Can’t you just leave me alone now? I know what I’m doing.

xxoo Michelle

Site: Netflix

I’m going to assume you use Netflix. If you don’t, imagine you do. When you are on the page of a movie you don’t have in your queue, there is a button in the top right hand side of the main content that says, “Add to DVD Queue.” One would assume that when you click on it, Netflix adds that movie to your DVD queue. Click. It does!

Here’s my pet peeve. When you are on the page of a movie you have in your queue, that “Add to DVD Queue” button now says, “In DVD Queue.” Now without clicking on it, what do you assume happens? Well, I think the most intuitive thing would be to either a) have that button just not be clickable at all or b) have that button instead say, “Remove from DVD Queue.” Neither of those two things happen. Click. The button has the same function as it has on a non-queued movie page… It tries to add it to your queue. Now, there is messaging that says it is already in your queue and what position it is in and would you like to move it to position 1. However, I think that it is an extra step that doesn’t need to happen for it’s user. Another idea would be to have that “In DVD Queue” button say, “In DVD Queue, Move to Position #1.” That is kind of wordy for a button though. Or the button could actually just take you to your queue in the anchored position of that movie. Then you can do what you want with it.

I understand that this fix may be in some Netflix developer’s JIRA somewhere and it just doesn’t really have a high priority because nothing is really broken. It also may be the case that the product managers are using this as an excuse to shove more movies in their customers’ faces when they get the “Add to DVD Queue” lightbox. Regardless, these types of non-intuitive moves irk me and I think they are worth fixing.