[FM] Re: website

[BRIAN CLAUSS]

> i quickly put up a website today, for my writing:
> 
> what do you think people really want to see on a website. My opinion 
> would be that video and sounds to download as well as the souls of the 
> songs, and a sense of the artists spirit would be what would interest 
> passers-by.
> Ken

Hey Ken
before I get too prejudiced and specific by actually looking at the site, heres some standard suggestions.
General:
1)the power of a website is in multiple pages with various content that create different paths, and more important, guided by the viewer's choices. The best designs start with a welcome menu and go from there to multiple subpages.
2)"people" is too general.. websites are designed by "corridorization", assume all the different viewers you intend to serve and give them each the quikcest and easiest path to what they want, and/or where you want to lead them. Lay out the site on a piece of paper like a maze/flowchart/cpc
3) hard to design a sight as above unless you define your purpose(s) as well.
4)a website is not static, it should be a work in progress because updating it is one of its advantages, don't try to achieve it at once, start out and build from there.

Specifics:
avoid direct sound, video, and large graphics... people (in surveys) overwhelmingly prefer speed to flash, and all these add to download times. It is ok to have these things, but they should be a viewer choice, ie, a click or so away. 
In the same idea is that is is much better to have many small quickloading pages with specific information and choices than one huge slow page full of too much.. people prefer to click through multiple quick pages than search through one massive page. A few small graphics can have great effect.

Yes, using graphics, sound, and video is good, if that is what you are... but make sure the viewr choses to take the time to download them.
Allways ask.. "is this nescaessary to the point I want to make?" ie lyrics often need some (not nescessarily all) of the musical version to be clear..as to effect, tone, meter, feeling. so a sound file would be a good addition, if they want to hear it. or a picture might be better, worth a thousand words, right?

2) people like updated information, but seperate updates from static info, ie, once they've seen it they don't need to see it again, create a page just for updates/lonks to new pages etc, that they can bookmark and return to.

3) how do you define "an artist's spirit"... that is the question.. finding what defines you as an artists.. and it can be simple or complex.. a bio page or a story of a pivitol event, performance stories or a description of your day to day life, portrait or your own favorite picture, for a lyric.. what you were thinking, or experiencing, or the picture in your head (songs are often really images, "word-paintings)..or all of them; and on multiple pages because what illuminates your "spirit" to one viewer might not work for another. Some just want to look at a picture, some will read long passages.. use the power of links to let them choose.

4) it is good to create a thematic "look", eg, background color/tile, a logo, a layout... give consistancy to a multipage site. A good way is to create a template page an fill it in to create new pages, like a stationary w/ a bus header at the top.

5) put menus everywhere so people can head on, and every menu tempts them to go on.

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so enough , you can look at my site, which has probably a few dozen pages at this point, and get an idea of what I've done.. you can explore my site for hours, or (hopefully) find what you are looking for in a few clicks.
http://www.pan.com/folksinger

also, I could make it better... if I had the time, when I have the time. Though it would be along the lines I suggest. I'll have to to reformat my entire site to the new .xml standards, eventually.
as for updates, I just updated the BB/news page and added 2001 tourjournals and DAW update report, and project detail pages.


OK, so I've started.. who's next?
Folksinger