Lazy web designers

When is a door not a door? When it is ajar.

When is a website not a website?

When it only meets part of its functional requirement.

What, I ask you, is the point of a website that doesn’t propogate its changes and updates?

Hey?

Come on, come on. I’m waiting for an answer.

So tell me, what really is the point of a website that just sits there like a lump of nothingness, soaking up its changes yet doesn’t tell people who may be interested that it has something which has changed?

Right – it really is pointless.

Let me try and put this in to perspective for a moment.

Do people buy a newspaper or watch the news every day on the off chance that something might be different to yesterday?

Of course not.

They buy their newspaper or watch their choice of news broadcaster because they know something will be different.

And so it is – or should be – with the internet.

We should visit websites because we know something is different.

We should not have to visit websites every hour/day/week/month/year (delete as appropriate!) to check whether something has changed.

Because that would be madness.

Imagine visiting several hundred different sources of information every day and scouring every section on every source of information to find out whether something has changed or not

Absolutely bloody bonkers.

Any webmaster who has a website under their control that does not produce RSS feeds should be thoroughly ashamed.

Come on people, RSS technology is what powers the internet. Are you really still reliant on static html with no RSS feeds reaching out to people who are interested in your content?

Are you? Really?

I track 102 webfeeds through my RSS reader which is, frankly, what Web2.0 was invented for.  Can you imagine checking back through 102 webfeeds on the off-chance that something, somewhere on any/all/none of these websites may have changed?

And speaking of website administrators who should be thoroughly ashamed…

The British Horse Society website (www.bhs.org.uk) has a clickable map intended to present information on Riding Clubs throughout the UK.

Except it doesn’t.

Unless you happen to use Internet Explorer.

That’s right, if you are one of the 24% of internet users who use Firefox, the BHS clickable map is closed to you.

So that’s alright then.

Isn’t it?

B.