In recent correspondence I offered some advice to a person working on a relatively new web site. (After five years the ^zhurnal is roughly at the half-million-word mark, so fogeyism is setting in, eh?) A few thoughts, all rather obvious:

• keep it simple — content is infinitely more important than fancy frilly frou-frou. Simpler site design means that search engines can index your pages and find them reliably when folks look for interesting words. Simplicity also ensures maximal compatibility with browsers as they are upgraded, as people try to view your pages from different computer systems, as people with visual impediments visit, ...
• keep it fresh — post something new (especially on the home page) every few days, to keep people coming back to visit (and to encourage search engines to check the site reasonably often). Have fun; surprise the reader once in a while with an unexpected item ...
• name names — people love to "see themselves in print", and they (and their friends) often search for themselves, so try to mention them specifically (while respecting privacy and avoiding embarrassment). Take pains to spell names correctly. Encourage contributors to write their own prose, mini-autobiographies, anecdotes, whatever (but don't expect many of them to oblige) ...
• use images — especially if you can keep the graphics small, so they load quickly. But don't go overboard with eye candy that doesn't help tell a story ...
• attend to detail — check spelling and grammar, fix broken links, repair formatting or layout errors, identify and connect up orphan pages (ones which can't be reached by existing links), ...
• expect nothing — or more politely, be extraordinarily patient. Don't anticipate large numbers of visitors to the site for the first few years, or for that matter, ever. Don't count on others to contribute much ...
• persevere — accumulate material long enough, and you'll have a site that folks can refer to in years to come. Preserve informal historical records of events, mini-profiles, "where are they now?" retrospectives, and other memorable tidbits of enduring value ...

Things always sound better in Latin. As Ovid wrote, "Adde parvum parvo manus acervus erit." — which is to say, "Add little to little and there will be a big pile."

(see also AnnalsOfJournals (4 Apr 2000), WikiQuickStart (13 Oct 2001), PracticalProductivity (20 Jan 2004), ... )

TopicJournalizing - TopicPersonalHistory - 2004-07-08

(correlates: John McPhee, GoodFortune, OnFailure, ...)