Content is king?
Feeling a bit flaky today so I thought I would take things easy.
I was sitting here idly pondering on the mysteries of life when the though crossed my mind that it would be a nice small project to attempt a redesign of this here site. Nothing serious, and the live site shall remain untouched [for the moment] but I set up a little web server type thing on my laptop and set up a copy of the site.
The first thing I tried for the laugh was the brand new Twenty Seventeen Theme that is bundled with the latest WordPress.
Fuck me but it’s woeful!
The main problem is that when I fire up the site all I get is a fucking great image which fills the screen! They politely have a little arrow at the bottom which I clicked, and lo and behold, the content appears. Will someone please tell me why it’s an excellent idea to force readers into clicking something before they can even read the site? Even worse, they give the option of using a video instead of an image, so we are going to be lambasted with fucking videos any time we want to read text.
There are several things that put me off a site to the point where I will close the site in a fraction of a second before reading anything.
There is this extremely irritating fashion these days of using very pale grey text on a white background! Where the fuck did that come from? Don’t these people even look at their own sites? Grey text on a white background is not functional and it really just says that the designer is more interested in form than in functionality. It’s horrible, horrendous and a cast iron guarantee that I wil instantly fuck off to a more readable site.
Pop-ups are instantly closed, and a note is made never to visit that site again. No, I do NOT want to fucking subscribe! And yes, I am using an ad-blocker and if I have to disable it to see all your flashy ads then I am as likely to read your site as I am to wander down a street admiring billboards. It’s akin to choosing a television programme on the basis that it has more advertisements than another channel.
Okay. We know that the Interweb is a lot faster than in the days of dial-up but that is no reason to pack as much imagery onto a page just to make a flashy impression. Graphics are fine but having to admire your image before I can even see any of the text [as per the new Twenty Seventeen one] is pushing things too far. When I click on a link I expect to enter a site and not some fucking entrance hall where I have to click again.
There used to be an expression that “content is king” but that seems to have gone by the board. Now we have to wade through graphics, photographs, videos and links before we can even start reading and even then the text is relegated to a pale grey as if the author is ashamed of what he has to say.
I mourn for the good old days of Geocities!
“There is this extremely irritating fashion these days of using very pale grey text on a white background! Where the fuck did that come from?
It’s fashionable!: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/low-contrast/
(Article describes where it came from and states the obvious about why it’s bad.)
Minimalism? It’s like minimalising a room by taking out all the furniture.
I can just imagine the scenario in the boardroom –
“Here’s your new web design”
“But I can’t read it!”
“But it’s fashionable”
“I still can’t read it. It’s all white and grey!”
“That will show the world how trendy and minimalist your site is”
“But I still can’t read it!”
“Look – you want a modern arty farty design and that’s what you have. It’s all the rage.”
“But I still can’t …. oh fuckit! I give up”
Hey.. I’m not defending it, just trying to explain it 😀
But yes. The reasoning behind it is bollocks.
I know you’re not! And there really is no rational explanation apart from following a “trend”.
Sounds like a holiday is in order.
That’s for sure….
Sorry but its everywhere pub menus,magazines,its the fashion to quote a phrase I read somewhere.The bastards should be bled white and printed on white card.
Hah! Nice one. Must remember that….
Guess that rules out snowflakes drifting gently across your pages then? 🙂
Dead right it does! They would only scream that I was being abusive or trespassing on their privacy or some such nonsense. They can stay in their “safe rooms” out of harms way.
Or do you mean the precipitation type of snowflake?
If your site works, don’t try to fix it. Leave well alone: the blog universe doesn’t need you to change anything.
Er, I did say I was just messing on my laptop? [the live site shall remain untouched].
I am a tiny bit concerned that the current theme may have some little problems in the future so am just poking around my options. I like poking my options.
I too have noted the irritation of website bloat, huge images you have to scroll past, poor text contrast and irritating “floating menus” that follow your scrolling. My own site (a quiet, out-of-the-way affair hosted on FreeDNS) is plain HTML with black text. How’s THAT for the 2016 “minimalist” approach. Heck, it’ll load quickly even on dial-up!
You may appreciate reading this article: http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm
That article is spot on.
This site – 334.2Kb [apparently faster than 96% of other sites, at 600ms to load]
A site I look after for a friend – 50.2Mb [apparently faster than 6% of other sites, and 25s to load].
I like to keep this place lean and mean!
Your comment made me grit my teeth and head off to check mine–383.4kb and I got a fine score for everything else as well except the fact that I don’t have an SSL certificate. Phooey, why would I want one? Am I Amazon?
Hmmm, according to the “source”, Twenty Seventeen “…sports a modern look and will make a good base for any business website or product showcase”….or…”Twenty Seventeen focuses on business sites…” depending on which WP.org blog post you read. So a great image and somewhat hidden and virtually unreadable text is what goes for businesses these days?
Somehow I believe it. Kind of reflects what passes for new businesses these days. Crowd funded startups that are here today/gone today?
As the saying goes – all mouth and no trousers.
You need to remember that if it wasn’t for changing things that don’t changing just for the sake of it then useless cunts would be on the dole instead of pissing us oldies off…
True enough. I’m only talking about changing this site to keep myself occupied!