Dark Black LLC

[darkblackllc]

Site Audit - blogjobshow.com

PURPOSE

I will now perform an audit of a website as a demonstration of my capabilities as a web developer and search engine optimization artist, and also as a cool fun analytic exercise for nerds. Then after I'll make appropriate updates, then re-audit to evaluate improvement.

I’ve never done something like this before. I expect to learn a lot!

THE SITE

I launched blogjobshow.com in July 2012 to support and promote the web series I wrote, directed, and co-created: BLOGJOB. I put out 15 episodes, curated supporting accounts on Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook, and waited for the Internet to be set ABLAZE. Blaze it did not. Gunning for Internet fame is a difficult game.

I remain extremely proud of the work and I've kept the site up and chuggling without any meaningful style or content updates since prolly spring 2013 when the last episode aired on YouTube.

I spend $5/month in Akismet comment spam protection. Theoretically it would be cool to figure out a way to use the site to recoup that investment.

Here's how the front page looks. No mobile‑specific development. Yahh if anything this is solidly in-the-time-before-mobile development. Modified from the Minimatica theme.

ANALYTICS

Ok let's check out some analytics! The Blogjob channel on YouTube has a lifetime total of 6,279 views. Woo! That feels good. Deep into four figures feels real good.

Thankfully I had the foresight to implement Google Anlytics. The site has 12,000 total pageviews from over 5,000 unique visitors and a one‑day high of 57 viewers on June 30, 2015. On that day I was visiting parents in Vermont. That high viewcount coulda been a botnet, coulda been something else. Rando, as farsa know.

Average time on the site is over a minute, which sounds high to me! Cool! It means that the peope who find blogjobshow.com give it a good once over even if they bounce out.

Pages that get the most hits: Home, Blog, the most recent Blog post, and About. No surprises there!

Visitors come via the following channels:

I was surprised how many visits are direct! That's cool. And surprised as well by how few hits are tagged “Social” but then, I'm not sure what this means and suspect it's an imperfect measure.

A weird assortment of search terms in the Organic Search section. Although maybe the “not provided” queries would have more answers.

SEARCH

Ok yes here's the money may be: search engine rank! And by “search engine” I mean “Google”. So let's take a look at some queries. Today I found this SERP Checker tool which seems legit and is for sure fun to use:

Pretty sweet ranking of #1 for blogjob web series and #3 for blogjob. No surprise that blogjobshow.com is out of the top 300 for a super competitive query like “web series” but I was surprised it's not in the top 300 for “chicago web series.” The first actual web series hit for “chicago web series” is The Dreamers. I watched a little of The Dreamers just now. It had lots of being young and white and stressing. Lotta stress.

ACCESSIBILITY

I used WAVE - Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool. I was originally using W3 Easy Checks for Accessibility but in the process of writing this post discovered WAVE (not “WAET”?) which is wae easier. This is cool. I've already learned a lot!

The WAVE audit shows roughly equivalent errors on each of three of the most trafficked pages.

Foolishly I removed outlines for :focus events which is a bummer for tab accessibility. Color contrast is substandard for the red links against white. And the header/tree structure needs some love.

From W3 Validator options the images generally have their due alt tags.

But many of the alts are overly simple and miss out on opportunities for keywords. And by keywords, I mean keyword stuffing. Like so for instance this image in one of the most recent blogposts has an alt tag of “Awake” and no title tag:

PAGESPEED/PAGELOAD

I used Google Analytics's PageSpeed Insights and Chrome's Timeline tool to evaluage this. PageSpeed gave me a Desktop score of 72/100 and Mobile 59/100.

A lot of the improvements suggested by PageSpeed Insights require HTTP header and deeper server knowledge. Like, understanding what gzip is. I don't know what gzip is. I certainly don't understand it. And I don't know of a simple way to compress and minify Wordpress HTML content.

But for sure I can minimize the CSS and optimize Javascript. For sure I can move images to the Amazon Cloud.

It looks like the homepage takes 1 to 14 seconds to load, and 4 seconds to load on Chrome on my machine. I want to diet that down to half a second.

META

There's already a robots.txt

But there's no xml sitemap.

There are no open graph tags.

There are not neeeeearly enough favicons! I refer to audreyr's favicon cheat sheet.

And blogjobshow.com is an http site, not https. I've heard before that “all sites should switch to https” but I don't know how to do that or what it would accomplish, so more research is needed.

WHERE I GO FROM HERE

I'm going to do a full rewrite on the template starting from HTML5 Blank, my favorite Wordpress template foundation. I'll make sure that the new code comes up clean on WAVE checks. Improve pagespeed in the ways I know how. Add meta information. Improve search rank.

And then watch the traffic roll in as the Internet is set aBLAZE!!

[darkblackllc]

About Me

Much enjoyed this piece about development and management (natural enemies ... or ARE they???)

[darkblackllc]

Real! Via http://www.novolume.co.uk/blog/all-websites-look-the-same/

[darkblackllc]

[darkblackllc]

i’ll still use “responsive” and “adaptive” interchangeably; posting this gif as a helpful reminder. Shout out to froont.com for making it.

[darkblackllc]

Why do so many people have crappy experiences with web developers

It happens to plenty of people. If you’ve worked on a website with a web developer, it’s probably happened to you. Web devs have a reputation about on par with home contractors and mechanics. The work will be late, it’ll be more expensive than you thought, it’s very invasive, the late and expensive work prevents you from getting on with your business and your life. You probably have a strong sense that they’re not being completely honest with you. 

Compare with, say, hairdressers. A similarly personal one-on-one relationship. Comparable hourly rate. But where are the hairdresser horror stories? Is it just that hairdressers are honest folk? 

i work hard to not only deliver great work but also be great to work with. i don’t always succeed. But for the clients who had the crappiest experiences working with me: the feeling was definitely mutual. Those clients were crappy clients. Which, the idea of being a good customer isn’t talked about very often, with the exception of Uber ratings. i’m not a fan of Uber per se but mang do i think rating customers is beautiful, disruptive! The mirror has two faces! The knife cleaves as it cleaves!!

Anyway generally capitalism, or the way capitalism is often played, operates as if money buys obedience. Haha, not my obedience!! Just hire me, and find out!! ... ... ... watch the market for web developers change and i delete this post and swear i’ll be the most obedient servant ever-ever ... you guys i would sell out so fast if i had to ... 

Here, offa toppa my head, are some reasons i believe that people have crappy experiences with web developers:

“TECHNOLOGY IS HARD”

A lot of people cultivate or feign ignorance about tech. They’ll say something like, “I’m tech illiterate!” often while expertly using the powerful computer they keep in their pockets. This sentiment is especially frustrating from clients intending to structure their business around their websites. It’s difficult to communicate about the work when one party stubbornly self-identifies as inept. 

IT’S DIFFICULT TO APPRECIATE WHAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND 

You can kindof appreciate it, but not, like, really. With a haircut, you’re there in the chair, you see the results in real time, you look great, it’s unambiguous, you were present for every minute of the work. Most of the web developer’s work is opaque to the client and occurs out of sight. 

IT’S DIFFICULT TO [MONETARILY] VALUE WHAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND 

i get it. This shit is expensive. Why is this shit so expensive? Because it takes years to get passably good at it. 

EVERYONE USES THE INTERNET, SO EVERYONE FEELS LIKE AN EXPERT 

This is not incompatible with claiming to be tech illiterate. They often go hand in hand. It’s a little like combination self-hatred/narcissism, cf “the piece of shit the world revolves around.” This naive expertise and its resulting unending requested changes is a quick way to burn through your web developer’s morale until there’s nothing left but scorched earth. 

WEBSITES ARE PERSONAL 

So if the website doesn’t look exactly perfectly right, it’s frightening, it triggers anxiety, kai ta loipa. The web developer becomes the enemy to your face!

. . . 

In conclusion, i would like to make my work more like a hairdresser’s. Easy to understand. A fun experience. Yielding a fun fresh face you’re excited to show the world. Making people happy. 

In the meantime, this The Oatmeal comic resonates in a big way:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell 

[darkblackllc]

Please don’t send Word docs, docxs, or dox.

Please don’t send your web developer information for the website embedded in a Word doc. The information is equally viable in the body of an email. Don’t gate your information behind a Word doc. 

If you’re sending text changes for the site, O CRIMEY ok Word adds all kinds of nasty formatting invisible to the naked eye. Think of Word as like germs. When you put your website content in a Word doc, you’re covering it in nasty nasty germs. And in order to use that information, your humble web developer needs to invest time tediously sanitizing it. Usually this time doesn’t translate into many dollar dollar bills of sunk cost for the client, but it reduces morale. And you want your web dev to have very high morale indeed. 

ALTERNATIVES TO EMBEDDING TEXT CONTENT IN WORD

Please for the love of, consider writing your text in the body of an email.

If you simply must send an attachment, please use plain text or rich text. The default text editor for Windows used to be Notepad, might be different now. Default on Mac is TextEdit. 

If you’re like, “nooooooohhh I needs my Word doc!! The clean white page triggers necessary writing habits and standards,” then please print it as a PDF. 

[lifeinchicago]

This is a pictograph used by ancient web developers to prioritize workflow. FYI the correct answer is “not cheap.” 

[darkblackllc]

Please use a favicon

i don’t have a good reason for “why” except that um cuz i like favicons isn’t that a plenny good reason already? (yes) 

“What is a favicon?” OH THE HORROR ok fine i explain: a favicon is the little picture icon next to the page title in your web browser. Best practice for we humble web devs is to create about a dozen versions of varying sizes for like iPhone, Windows tablet, old computers, new computers &c. But generally if you make only one single favicon version in like Paint and size it 32px x 32px and name it favicon and click "Save” and they’ll force you to pick an image format like favicon.bmp or favicon.png or whatever you say “fine” but then you DEFY them! and you rename that file favicon.ico mothafocka because you will NOT be commanded by a MACHINE, and you ‘plode it to your root directory then that’ll DO, you now have a FAVICON, no coding NECESSARY. 

We’re all chronic multi-tabbers. i’m also a mondo bookmarker. Favicons add flavor(con) to the tabs, coded memory to the bookmarks. Favicons are identity markers. Favicons are highly distilled information. Always a good thing. Can you think so deeply about your site that you can summarize it in 1024 pixels? 

“Digital fingerprint” sounds TED-talky (barf) and the analogy immediately breaks down because gazillions of sites lack favicons and, like, only a couple dozen sociopaths are walking around without fingerprints. But neglecting a favicon is kindof like walking around without a digital fingerprint. 

In conclusion, we’re all agreed, yes every site should have a favicon.

[darkblackllc]

Web Design Philosophy Manifesto

i drafted this manifesto on the train this morning. Also, for the purposes of Tumblr.com, i’m going to continue my current practice of de’capitalizing my name and pronouns that refer to myself. Sortof anti-German where they democratically capitalize EVERY noun. i started doing this de’capitalization thing maybe six months ago and really liked it and continue to do so on my personal blog and in personal correspondence. It makes me more aware of how often i refer to myself. It makes me more aware in the writing process in general. i also like being weird and experimenting with identity, like a teenager. Why the hell not, right? 

WEB DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

Many people want websites that are cinematic, televisionary experiences. Thus in the name of creating narrative, they demand design that delays, obscures. or occludes information. 

The most popular websites in the world are like the phone book. Google, Wikipedia, eBay, Amazon. Imagine if you had to sit through a splash page before every Google search. Imagine if Wikipedia played a video in the background of every page. Imagine if Amazon had a thick header photo 800px high on every page so you had to scroll down almost window-height before you could actually look at the markers and t-shirts and stuff you were buying. 

Wildly irritating, right? 

i want to build you a site like the most popular sites in the world. i want to build you a site that’s like a beautiful phone book. 

And then you can focus on generating quality shit to post on your site, and put a Google ad in the sidebar, and quit your job and live off the AdSense revenue.

That is my dream for you.