Jeff Wisniewski
Web Services Librarian
University of Pittsburgh
Tools to make incremental improvements to your website
Most of these you can do in a minute
Update your copyright statement
- PHP and JavaScript example to update it automatically
Add “last updated” code to each page
- increase trust in your information
- have 1 script that you can from all of your pages
Add photos to contacts
- evidence shows that it goes a long way to increasing trust
Turn boring old contact info into exiting hCards
- Microformats
- Dreamweaver Microformats
- hCard Creator form
Don’t use “click here”
- “scanhostile”
Firefox Extensions for Microformats
- Talis
Harness the Awesome power of the 3 question survey
1. What is the purpose of your visit to our website today?
2. Were you able to complete your task today?
3. If you were not able to complete your task today, why not?
- ask for their email
Don’t make the server think
- Add trailing slashes on all links on your website
Web 2.0-ify Your Logo
- small chunks of large-screen type
- round edges
- Web 2.0 Stylr (optional Beta tag)
Be an Icon icon
- commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Clear
The Need for Speed
- Install Firebug + Yslow extensions in Firefox
- Tells you how quickly your page loaded
Cache cache’
- - exploit your users cache to speed up your site
- set certain file types to stay fresh (on server)
- image file types, css, js files, pdfs
- add code to the .htaccess to set expire
Combine small images into image map
- e.g. lots of photos on your navigation bar
- changes multiple image requests into one
Eliminate inline scripts (based on Yahoo research)
- Move JavaScript and CSS to external files
- Call them externally
- *Don’t do this for your homepage
- This is the first page where they will cache all this stuff
Spring Cleaning
- Use W3C validator
CLEANCSS site (compresses CSS code)
Move important information out of the blindness zone (heat map graphic)
SEO: Google Webmaster tools
- Site link > Diagnostics > Content analysis > title tag analysis
Rewrite title tags: doc title | section name | site name
Add <LABEL> tags to your forms
- accessibility and usability
Make your site social media friendly
- “Social Bookmark Creator”
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