Website Rant

From the nz-folk list, Jo Foster writes:

"I am going to offend at least one person without doubt but it has to be said. I keep coming across club pages, individuals websites, and a plethora of others just like this

"If you have a website advertising your group club or event take the time to build a reasonable quality homepage. A hastily erected homepage with broken links half completed pages, cute but unreadable fonts and backgrounds, full of moving graphics, files and links which dont work are detrimental to the growth and wellbeing of your organisation.
People use search engines, when they look for a band name in a certain area and you have a website or a homepage with details on that band, your site will be somewhere on the top of the search list, take the time and the care to do it properly. If your site is not up to scratch, fix it. It doesnt have to be fancy, it has to be not broken. There are thousands of guides and templates available online, if html in its raw form scares you, use your word processor.
A simple well laid out website is by far much better than a website with graphics leaping all over the place, a giant watermark in the background, 3 year old details to people who have either passed away or moved, and a bunch of broken links. Forget cute javascript popups - just about every user these days has a popup blocker of some sort, forget anything difficult to use, many users have difficulty (believe me - helpdesks are a real eye opener on skill levels).

"To the outside world this is your advertising, your personality. People will judge your organisation based on your website, if no one has the time keep it as simple and as dateless as possible, add a photo gallery for interest, and encourage members to submit photos. If you cant dedicate time do not put information online that can become dated quickly."

Mike adds:

"When I'm putting together publicity for festivals or concerts I go to the artists' websites and look for some quotable text. Often I find their gig information, latest blog entry (aimed at people who know them, i.e preaching to the choir) or quirky flash files which are not pasteable into my document. You'd be amazed at how many sites have the most useful text as a graphic file.

"What I'm looking for is a succinct description of the artist and what they've done, that will be informative to someone who has never heard them before. It's lovely to have an interactive website for your fans but unless you're catering for the first-time visitor and providing useable copy for promoters, you're wasting your webspace."