[FM] Re: website

[Bill Pringle]

On Mon, 21 Jan 2002, BRIAN CLAUSS wrote:

> > 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.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I pretty much agree with what Brian said.  What he didn't cover, however,
is that you must plan ahead so that you will be able to maintain the site.

When I created the first Cheryl Wheeler web site, it was all hand crafted.
Each time Cheryl came out with a new song or album, I had to update a bunch
of pages.  It took longer and longer to keep the site up to date.

What I finally did was create a bunch of software to make it much
easier to maintain the site.  Now, when a new song or album comes out,
it only takes a few minutes to update the site, including all the
cross links between songs and albums.  

Furthermore, I can completely change the look and feel of the site,
and regenerate all the pages in only minutes.  When I first put up the
new and improved version, I got a lot of complaints about the color
scheme.  I changed a couple of lines of text, and then regenerated the
entire site in under 15 minutes. (Not counting uploading the new
pages.)

What is even better (IMHO) is that the pages are small and well linked
together.  You can link from songs to albums and/or albums to songs.
It is also pretty easy to add links to songs in the general text pages
(e.g., bio).  That means pages load very fast, and people only download
the stuff they are really interested in, and don't spend a lot of time
waiting for a huge page to load, just to click to the next link. :-(

If you go to my personal site (see below) and click on the "Downloads"
link, you can download the software that I use.  If you like the way I
have my Cheryl Wheeler site arranged, you can use the software to
build your entire site.  Alternatively, you can use the bld_page
command to create any kind of pages you want.

Anyone who download it and has problems understanding what to do and how
to do it, feel free to contact me at my PSU account (wrp103@psu.edu)


====
Bill Pringle
work: Bill.Pringle@unisys.com      home,school: wrp103@psu.edu
http://www.personal.psu.edu/~wrp103/  http://CherylWheeler.com