A.P. Lawrence

Site Review at Newsforge

(Traditional format)

Tue Jan 11 22:12:49 2005 Site Review at Newsforge
Posted by Tony Lawrence
Search Keys: this website
Referencing: http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/12/29/0420216

Newsforge has a review of this site. Overall it was positive, though I wish the reviewer had checked some things with me. I do think she did a nice review though, and thank her for it.

As usual, the comments cause me to vacillate and be indecisive.. I never know what the "right" thing to do is, but I do realize that I can't please everyone, so maybe I should just keep on truckin'.

I was surprised that someone said they couldn't find something, though I think the reviewer threw them off by describing the More Info page as a site FAQ. It *is* a site FAQ, but I don't have a link to it that way.. Oh well, as someone said, say what you want about me, just spell my name right.

Unsurprisingly, the bare ugliness attracted attention. They said it "looks a little ghetto".

Of course, I'm the guy who makes it look a little ghetto. First, I'm not an artsy type, so there was no hope of beauty anyway. But the spartan look is deliberate, and my reasoning is this: it's a resource and support site. It should be fast, and you should be able to access it with Lynx or even a telnet to port 80 if everything else you have is broken. But it's a tough call - I get that complaint all the time - "It's so UUUGLY!". I understand, but how do you keep it fast and character based friendly without that? I suppose I could put in code that would switch based on browser type, but that's a lot of work..

They also noted that some of the FAQ is ancient. Some of the FAQ material IS dated. I try to keep up with updates, but I don't take old stuff down because, again, this is a support site: when the guy at the gas station finally decides he's had enough and wants you to switch his old SCO system to Linux, you just might need to know something old, crufty, and dated. That's why I keep it there.

I have misgivings about it myself, because again, that "old" crap turns some people off and, as someone else noticed, it attracts a lot of SCO ads which tend to misrepresent the content. Still, I hate to take that stuff out because people do still need it. The SCO stuff bothers me, but on the other hand, a LOT of people still use SCO. The ads pop up because Google sees a lot of SCO info on my site. It's a rock and a hard place. People who use SCO need SCO information. It's not their fault the company got taken over by [expletives deleted].

People switching from SCO to Linux often need SCO info to help them switch.

A lot of the "SCO" articles are really just Unix articles and apply equally well to any *ix.

Finally, when you have strange problems, sometimes seeing something akin from a similar but different Unix can help you see the light.

For all those reasons I'm loathe to take down the SCO specific stuff or to refuse SCO ads.

Am I wrong?

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