Test your site - for what it's worth!

[webado]

Well, for all those who are concerned with how good or bad their site is design-wise or feature-wise, here's a site that tests this according to some presumably set standards: http://www.silktide.com/sitescore .

You can make of this what you will. Some may be disappointed in the results and will promptly brand the tests as worthless, some will be happy.

My main site scored an overall 7.2, broken down as follows:


Marketing How well marketed, and popular the website is. 8.2
Design How well designed and built the website is. 8.2
Accessibility How accessible the website is, particularly to those with disabilities. 5.6
Experience How satisfying the website is likely to be. 7.9
Visitor rating Average user rating for this site's design (website needs more votes) No votes
(Vote for this site)
Overall Summary score for this website. 7.2

Good / bad points
This website appears to be in violation of the British Disability Discrimination Act (more detail)
A Google search for "Webado" finds this website as #1 (more detail)
This website is well linked to (393 websites link here) (more detail)
This website is very quick to respond (more detail)
This website is popular (approx #884,191 in the world) (more detail)



Why there should be 393 sites that link to mine is a total mystery to me. I expect maybe 10-15 at most. But I'm not going to complain ;)

Do I think for a moment my site is well designed? Hell, no! But it is exactly according to my own ideas and intentions. I have never bothered to submit it to search engines or link-farms, nor have I engaged in link-trading. No need, I sell nothing.

What do I personally think of Silktide's evaluations? Balderdash :lol:

But there are people who agonize over such things and many who actually set much score by these evaluations.

Take it all with a big grain of salt and you'll keep your hair on your head much longer :lol: And if your site should score in the stratosphere, well, good for you, but remember to come down to earth too :lol:

[JWJ]

Cool. :)

Yeh, I agree it has to be taken with a grain of salt (or rock in my case :? ). I scored an overall 5.4, but I had a huge 9.4 for design which has obviously pleased me given my limited knowledge and recent efforts. (I ran my old site and it scored 7.1 for design)

Though I won't pay too much attention to all that it says, it will be interesting to pop back in a month or two's time to see if my score has improved any. It may just provide a clue as to whether or not I'm moving in the right direction.

[China Tea]

Chris,

I like the test ... I own up to the bad points( I am actually working on some before I read your post). l I like the analysis and recommendations they gave. I will try to work on them.

This report tested 5 pages of http://www.shopdrops.com (Is 5 pages enough sampling?)
Marketing 6.1
Design 7.7
Accessibility to those with disabilities. 5.6
Experience 7.6
Visitor rating No votes (Vote for this site)
Overall Summary score 6.3

Good / bad points
In violation of the British Disability Discrimination Act (more detail)
This website is well linked to (481 websites link here) (more detail)
This website is very quick to respond (more detail)
This website is popular (approx #605,918 in the world)

:( And now the serious bad points are ----

Google Popularity - Very poor - :shock:(I am just beginning to add page titles to individual pages; Bad Choice of keywords)
Use of style sheets - Very poor (what are these? - Accordingly, there are 5 pages found not using the CSS -cascading style sheets --- :roll: )
Use of Headings - Very Poor (This is true - I have not created a single head tag fo any page - No time, lazy and too busy :oops: )
Use of Page Titles - Poor (Yes, I created few page titles but have not published yet)
Table Based Lay-out - Average (Silktide recommends that I stay away from table based lay-out : i don't even know what table based lay out is --is it my use of lines?
Features - Good
Popularity - Good
Links To - Good
Speed - Excelent
Page size - Excellent
Number of Images - Excelent
Use of Interactive Elements - Excellent

Thanks for sharing Chris....

China Tea

[paulzon]

Apparently using 1 pixel INVISIBLE "spacer" images with no "ALT" text is illegal under UK law, so I suppose that I will have to phone my local constabulary and turn myself in :roll: !

Paul www.zonicweb.net

[JWJ]

LOL ... my site's so illegal I'm changing my identity 8)

[webado]

LOL! Your name appearing all over the site too, now there must be a warrant for your arrest :lol:

[webado]

:( And now the serious bad points are ----

Google Popularity - Very poor - :shock:(I am just beginning to add page titles to individual pages; Bad Choice of keywords) - That's due to the keywords not finding your site in the top whatever.
Use of style sheets - Very poor (what are these? - Accordingly, there are 5 pages found not using the CSS -cascading style sheets --- :roll: ) - Well, as all W3C trigger-happy bodies they want you to use CSS instead of in-code formatting, so the moment they find a page without CSS definition they complain. Ironically if you just include an empty CSS and keep everything else the same they are happy in that respect.

Use of Headings - Very Poor (This is true - I have not created a single head tag fo any page - No time, lazy and too busy :oops: ) - Actually this refers not the the <head> ... </head> but to using <h1>...</h1> and the rest to emphasize your headlines on pages, probably instead of defining the same simply with a bigger font size.

Use of Page Titles - Poor (Yes, I created few page titles but have not published yet)
Table Based Lay-out - Average (Silktide recommends that I stay away from table based lay-out : i don't even know what table based lay out is --is it my use of lines? - That, as the name implies, refers to actually using <table> ..</table> and the rest that comes with it in the html code. W3C has decided that's no good and you should kill yourself figuring out in your CSS what a table should be like when you actually truly need a table ;)

Features - Good
Popularity - Good
Links To - Good
Speed - Excelent
Page size - Excellent
Number of Images - Excelent
Use of Interactive Elements - Excellent

[paulzon]

Designing websites that don't discriminate against the disabled IS a good idea though!

Paul www.zonicweb.net

[JWJ]

Yes ... all joking aside, I agree.

I am ashamed to admit that I didn't know what W3C was all about until today. I didn't even realise that Frontpage has a built-in tool for checking my site for accessibility issues. I'm far from certain that I'm going to be able to deal with every issue, but from now on I will be running the Accessibility Checker on every page before I upload it, and doing my best to be as compliant as I can.

Anyway ... as Chris said ... I've put my bloody name all over my site. :?

[paulzon]

I'm far from certain that I'm going to be able to deal with every issue, but from now on I will be running the Accessibility Checker on every page before I upload it, and doing my best to be as compliant as I can.
Good, clean HTML, design and acessibility for the disabled etc are undoubtedly very important, but personally, I think that it is best not to become TOO hung up about W3C "certification" and stuff like that as almost by definition, they are going to be very puritanical. As an aside, in the early days of WWW, Tim Berners Lee (who invented it as a way of sorting out the many documents at "CERN" in Switzerland and is the head man at W3C) used to be very dubious about the idea of including images at all within HTML documents, not because Internet bandwidth was lousy in those days, but because he felt that it would devalue a serious academic tool!

Although I strongly agree with "doing your best" statement, it isn't really worth making difficult revisions to a whole site, just so you can comply with one or two tiny infrigements of W3C recommendations etc if it is just to display one of those little W3C buttons at the bottom of your pages! however, as I touched on earlier, the principles behind W3C "good practice" are VERY important, and should generally be adhered to without being TOO pedantic ... that's my opinion anyway!

regards from Paul www.zonicweb.net

[motorwatchercounter]

What do they do? Sell web design. I see that W3C are there also.

http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/uk-website-legal-requirements.shtml

If you are interested in the Disability Act. I believe that it only applies to company's or services. So if you run a private (non commercial site) it may not apply. The test doesn't allow for this, it seems.

The link will tell you no one knows what has to be done. It also say's the W3C is the "Internet Governing Body" (?????) and mentions that a blind man sued over an "inaccessible website".

For me a large pinch of salt is how I would take this.

Sorry a quick edit. In a previous rant of mine I said questioned if logos or graphics can be disabled frendly. The question still applies. Next we will have a "disabled friendly" logo. The problem is that it will not be useful to the non sighted and can't be "read" by speech programmes. Lets take it a step further, We already have a no win, no fee compensation culture for accidents. Why not Lawers who specialise in sueing web sites for non compliance?

BTW I agree, totally, with equal Ops for all.

[paulzon]

What do they do? Sell web design. I see that W3C are there also. ....

It also say's the W3C is the "Internet Governing Body" (?????) and mentions that a blind man sued over an "inaccessible website".


Well in many respects they are! They are the World Wide Web Consortium, which is the leading organization concerning standards, protocols etc operating on the 'web. It was founded, and is led by Sir Tim Berners Lee, who developed a small program named "Enquire" whilst working at "CERN" particle research facilty in Switzerland. Tim subsequently developed "Enquire" into a suite of applications, protocols and markup languages, originally inspired by the need for organization and crossreferencing of documents within the very large CERN laboratory. He named this new hypertext environment "World Wide Web", and it subsequently became rather popular!

Paul www.zonicweb.net

[motorwatchercounter]

Not unless we let them.

As I have said before. This is a direct quote from them.

http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/IPR-FAQ-20000620#holds

Please read 2.1

"The W3C is not a formally incorporated organization, instead it is a contractual entity arising from agreements between the host institutions and our members"

Since when has this meant "Governing"? I never voted for them.

[paulzon]

Not unless we let them.

As I have said before. This is a direct quote from them.

http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/IPR-FAQ-20000620#holds

Please read 2.1

"The W3C is not a formally incorporated organization, instead it is a contractual entity arising from agreements between the host institutions and our members"

Since when has this meant "Governing"? I never voted for them.

I did a few years ago when I was studying the history of the ARPAnet / Internet / WWW

With all due respect, I think that you are misderstanding the way protocols / standards etc work within the Internet communuty, and what "the Internet" and "theWWW" would be without the appropriate "governing" bodies. How would you like a series of separate, closed "proprietary" networks with proprietary standards, all run by large commercial operations such as "Microsoft" and "AOL", and all of which you would have to pay for like cable TV? this is how Microsoft wanted things to be when they finally realized that "the Internet" and "WWW" were actually rather popular. It is the heroic efforts and consummate diplomacy of Tim Berners Lee which have saved us from that, and besides, without him (and perhaps Ted Nelson) WWW wouldn't even exist! ... There is also the fact that he could have been "proprietary" about it himself, and made tens of billions of dollars out of it. Instead he gave it to the world out of pure altruism. He (and his organisation) get my vote every time ... for anything!

regards from Paul www.zonicweb.net

[trackerm]

Marketing How well marketed, and popular the website is. 7.7
Design How well designed and built the website is. 8.2
Accessibility How accessible the website is, particularly to those with disabilities. 5.6
Experience How satisfying the website is likely to be. 6.2
Visitor rating Average user rating for this site's design (website needs more votes) No votes
(Vote for this site)
Overall Summary score for this website. 6.7


Good / bad points
This website makes no apparent use of interactivity throughout (more detail)
This website appears to be in violation of the British Disability Discrimination Act (more detail)
A Google search for "Mark ******" finds this website as #1 (more detail)
This website is well linked to (729 websites link here) (more detail)
This website is very quick to respond (more detail)
This website is reasonably popular (approx #2,793,025 in the world) (more detail)
Design makes proper use of modern technology (no table-based layout) (more detail)



Only 2 million pages less popular than Christinas and China Tea's. Where are those 2 millon scum????!!! Prolly porno pages!!!
BTW the links to 729 pages is crazy... it says 6 'quality' links. My other pages on the site?


This website makes no apparent use of interactivity throughout:
Forms are used to provide interactivity to a website, including search, login and subscription facilities. Although not required, they usually signify that a website is achieving more interactivity, and not simply displaying plain content on their pages.

Well, I don't need any of that..

[Proteus]

Since when has this meant "Governing"? I never voted for them.

I did a few years ago[...] It is the heroic efforts and consummate diplomacy [...] which have saved us [and] besides, without him [...] WWW wouldn't even exist! [...] Instead he gave it to the world out of pure altruism. He (and his organisation) get my vote every time ... for anything!



Is this some sort of a new religion?... oh well...

[motorwatchercounter]

http://www.motorwatcher.net/beat_heart.gif

Love is a many splendid thing.

:wink:

[Nomad]

(heh you just knew I'd appear for this one ;) )

First of ..(before i get stuck into silktide)


The problem is that it will not be useful to the non sighted and can't be "read" by speech programmes

If you use the 'alt' tag correctly then the speech program will have no problem. That is why it is there. The prgram obviously does not 'Read' images so an alternative needs to be given. The 'alt' (Or alternative?) is just that 'An Alternative for speech programs to img display.

OK Silktide,

First I check there code with there html 4.01 W3C icon. Very good valid 'Transitional' html 4.01.
Very good in the sence that they got 8 years old outdated code to validate. There claim however that (In a test run on there own domain) it is accessible by disabled voice synthsis/speech programs is not.

html 4.0/4.01 gave a lot of problems in this area due to the use of 'Tables' and attributes for tables. It confuses the programs and the program starts to read all sorts of garbage.

I also tested my site and the results were ludicrous to say the least! No css? What! My whole (Main) site runs on css!

This is there quote on coding,
Basic HTML design This website does not appear to have been programmed correctly. It is missing elements that are required for all webpages to work properly on all computers.

Yes right - I am using valid xhtml 1.1 - along with valid css

There quote on css,
Use of style-sheets A single page was found not using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). This page is likely to be either very old or not well designed. CSS enables better, more consistant control over layout and design, and has been commonplace since 2000.

The problem I think relates to the forums there and the old code - I am about to upgrade the forums to the latest IPB 2.0 which is fully xhtml compliant..

So I am being told that the latest upto date recommended coding standard as set out by W3C is no good, whilst 7-8 year old Transitional 4.01 (get by coding) is?

I'd swear here if I didn't actually find this so funny.

btw I messaged them on this and await there answer - should be quite humourous...

Obviously there site is the bees knees every thing up in the 9.x - there just using a clever gimmick to tout for business...Oh ny god my coding won't operate in web pages!! shock -- how much do I pay you silktide to fix it for me...

Well untill they can at least do valid html 4.01 strict without the 36 errors they can go wee wee them selves :)

Do not fall for this ... It is an obvious scam!

I do however recommend that following guidelines for coding standards to be a good thing, specifically as I stated weeks ago about the disability issue. It was the main reason for my switch to the 'Latest' W3C xhtml 1.0/1.1 coding standard along with accompanying css 1.0/2.0. Using it I know I am fully compliant and that my site displayes 100% in text based browsers and for speech sysnthesis. I know this because I have had it physically checked for one thing but also because I follow the latest W3C recommendations. I spend hours there to make sure so I know I'm giving the best I possibly can.

Wouldn't listen to that crowd myself or pay that much attention to what they display as a result.

Think I'll go over 'webproworld and see what they make of it. I know a fair few from W3C hang about on that board - should be interesting what they have to say on it...

btw - My apoligies if I do come across as 'Hard Line' on this stuff. Maybe I am - maybe not. I just reckon as I've said before if your gonna do a job, do it right and stay current with the latest standards.

It's like say a car..what would you rather do? give it to some guy who worked in a garage 10 years ago to fix or give it to a mechanic who is upto date in mechanical standards for that vehicle?

I know where I'd be taking mine! and it wouldn't be to the guy who is 10 years out of date.

[Peg-as-is]

I got 5.5 for my score, which is better than I expected because I'm not really interested in interactivity or advertising my site. It's a personal site. I was surprised to get 8.5 for accessibility, though. I guess having a text-only page paid off. ;)

Do I take the test seriously? About as seriously as I take anything else about my site. It's a useful guideline but it's not the end of the world if I don't match up to it.

About the only thing I ever worry about is the W3C standards. If I code a page to meet those standards, I know I'm going to have a fairly good chance of having the page show up properly on any browser on any platform.

Oh, and one thing I did notice about the test - I have over 100 pages on my site, not just the 5 main pages. The test doesn't like iframes, and I'll bet it isn't much fond of frames, either.

Peg

[paulzon]

Since when has this meant "Governing"? I never voted for them.

I did a few years ago[...] It is the heroic efforts and consummate diplomacy [...] which have saved us [and] besides, without him [...] WWW wouldn't even exist! [...] Instead he gave it to the world out of pure altruism. He (and his organisation) get my vote every time ... for anything!



Is this some sort of a new religion?... oh well...

:roll: Erm, no, just giving credit where credit is due. There are two kinds of cynicism, cynicism that is based on knowledge, and cynicism which is based on ignorance!

Paul www.zonicweb.net

[JWJ]

.... and that's another thing .... search engine results.

My Popularity ranking is very poor, and I'm not in the top 10 million :cry: , my popularity on Google is very poor with the top 3 phrases on my site resulting in NO matches :cry: BUT if you google the word 'ponderables' ... BANG ... there I am in numero uno position ... No.1 ... top spot. :D

Which all goes to prove Chris's point that the results should be taken with a grain of salt (which is just as well, 'cuz it's too late now for me to worry about my hair :wink: ).

[webado]

.... and that's another thing .... search engine results.

My Popularity ranking is very poor, and I'm not in the top 10 million :cry: , my popularity on Google is very poor with the top 3 phrases on my site resulting in NO matches :cry: BUT if you google the word 'ponderables' ... BANG ... there I am in numero uno position ... No.1 ... top spot. :D

Which all goes to prove Chris's point that the results should be taken with a grain of salt (which is just as well, 'cuz it's too late now for me to worry about my hair :wink: ).

John, about your Google popularity, you have to give it some time, the domain is too new, the site such as it is hasn't had a chance to be fully spidered and indexed probably. Maybe more tweaking of the keywords will improve things for the next round of Google spidering. In any case, this silly program guesses at what may be proper keywords to search for and uses those, never mind that that's not what you had in mind.

Yeah, a huge chunck of salt and watch your blood pressure :lol:

[Momo]

I like this review. Here are my results:

Marketing How well marketed, and popular the website is. 7.6
Design How well designed and built the website is. 9.5
Accessibility How accessible the website is, particularly to those with disabilities. 7.8
Experience How satisfying the website is likely to be. 9.1
Visitor rating Average user rating for this site's design (website needs more votes) No votes
(Vote for this site)
Overall Summary score for this website. 7.8

[motorwatchercounter]

Hi all,

I am still thinking about running my own tester. All people using it will get high marks and will have a warm cuddly feeling inside. The marks won't mean anything as they will just be a random high number. This will mean that everyone will rush to put my OK logo on their site and I get to link for free un up my own reatings!

I already have the logo (created for a laugh). Looks pretty good if I may say so. Have a look at my site to see it.

Today the web, tomorrow world domination. Mind you this does include free beer for all.

[webado]

Oh, MWC, your site is sleeping now it seems :lol: Too much beer?

[activewebs]

Hi Guys

Is it a good test , well lets put it to the test , we submited 3 verry different sites as follows

www.activewebs.co.uk ( our own site ) rank 4.7
www.torquefast.co.uk ( one of our clients ) rank 4.6

And best of all www.webwhackers.co.uk ( a two page just messin around site I use for fun !! ) Rank ..... 4.5 !!

As usual we fell foul of the disability law

Make your own mind up but for us .. Pass the salt!!

Cheers
Richard

[China Tea]

Shan,

Thanks for the e-mail. I could say the same of your site . . . You wrote


Hi China,I just looked at your site and I must say I don't know why you
are on a user forum asking for help.
Your site looks Very Professional!

But my site looks like that now AFTER I joined the forum. You should have seen it BEFORE! The forum members gave me a lot of suggestions --- most I factored in (with their help) and others I did not do because I could not understand them (I am a cut and paste person). You are in fact more proficient in Weblish. I am completely ALIEN to the terms and lingo that webmasters use. Most of the time they painstakingly "translate" their scripts for me in a language I can understand: "cut and paste"! :lol:

Nice meeting you here. Now I have "company" :wink:

China Tea

[trackerm]

www.torquefast.co.uk ( one of our clients ) rank 4.6

I like that site!!!!!!

Thats a great tech site! No bull-twaddle, All the info on the home page, including location address and email (on every page) - no need to click on a Contact page and fill out an online form. All possible products in text on the home page without being cluttered. Good info in point form on the other pages. You dont have to waste time looking for information, its all there well laid out.
People in business, or just browsing, don't really have time to watch flicking stupid graphics unless they are on a party drug.

And everything loads FAST!!!!!

Its a 10/10 page for industry.

Well done.

Only thing I see is that Google page rank is very low, and google searches not too flash. Is it a new site? It should be coming up higher.

Mark