Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with website

tool to reblog and share a collection of web pages?

incandescentman — Tue, 21 May 2013 08:54:29 -0800

Is there a tool that will let me store/archive web pages or parts of web pages, and then create a little mini library of reblogged content along with navigation links? I'm planning a road trip with some friends, and I am collecting information from various relevant websites—national parks, campgrounds, Google Maps, etc.

I want a way to easily share this web content with my friends.

All the obvious ways to do this seem suboptimal:

1. Send an email with a bunch of links (they have to click through to see the content)
2. Copy/paste web content INTO an email, which gets long and cumbersome and is hard to reference/search/find later on
3. Build a website from scratch with relevant content

Is there a tool that will let me store/archive web pages, or parts of web pages, and then create a little mini library of archived content that we could all refer to and browse through? I'm envisioning a little mini website, with hierarchical navigation links in the left pane, and the reblogged web content in the right pane.

Sharing an Evernote notebook kind of does this, but there doesn't seem to be much control over the navigation on the left, nor the ability to easily add my own content.

Is anyone familiar with 90 Second Web Builder?

fruitopia — Mon, 20 May 2013 05:30:00 -0800

Has anyone used it or does anyone know anything about its functionality? Posting this on behalf of my boyfriend. He asks:

"I'm thinking of purchasing a web developing tool called 90 second website builder to create the building blocks for an article selling website. I was wondering if the community had any dealings with it and what they thought of its features and how much depth (development-wise) it has. Also, would anyone know if it was possible for a web developer to modify the created website and add his/her own code easily, or would they need specific knowledge of the builder itself?"

He wants to be able to do the first part of the website by himself (to cut down on some costs) and then hire a website developer to do the hard bits.

How to find a Web designer to improve a current design?

mark7570 — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:00:15 -0800

I have mostly completed a website design for a small company - logo, colors, info architecture - but the visual effect of all the elements together isn't.. quite.. "there" yet. How would I go about finding a Web designer who could improve the design "the rest of the way"? For example - take the existing elements and, either modify some, or add a couple of touches here & there, to pull the design together into a more attractive, visually "tight" design.

I know how to go find a design agency to create a new idea from scratch, but how do you go about finding a designer (or design team/agency) to take an existing design & *improve* it?

Help me learn old school web design

anotherpanacea — Sat, 11 May 2013 11:11:40 -0800

I have recently taken charge of an old webpage that is a bit out of date on a university server. I am primarily familiar with Google Sites and Wordpress, where there's a CMS editor, but here it's just an ftp site with raw index files that require Spry to run. What do I need to edit it? Would it be relatively easy to create a redirect to a site that I control running a CMS I understand? How do I keep that from ruining all the old backlinks?

Can you please help me find an example website with "floating" text?

jefficator — Wed, 08 May 2013 14:28:47 -0800

I'm trying to find an example website to send to my web developer of "floating" text. I'm sure there's a better name for what I'm trying to describe. Basically, I literally mean that different lines of a short paragraph are "floating" in different directions and different fonts over an image. Does this make sense? Can someone think of better words to describe? Best yet, can someone link to a site that has similar text? Thank you in advance!

Name that site

pete_22 — Wed, 08 May 2013 06:08:28 -0800

Please help me name a new website for discussing business ideas. The initial format will be a blog where I (and eventually others) write up each idea in the form of a 500-1000 word post that describes where it came from, what it would require, and potential risks and problems with it -- and then encourage commenters to discuss and critique it.

The ideas can be for anything from a non-profit to a tech startup to a new type of restaurant. The site itself will be totally non-commercial, free, no login wall, not in any way an "incubator" or "founder dating" or any part of the "startup ecosystem." That's the kind of hype I'm trying to avoid, so I don't want a name that invokes it. Just a place for people who like discussing business ideas, whether anything comes out of them or not.

My best idea so far for a name is "A Dime a Dozen," as in the aphorism "Good ideas are a dime a dozen, it's execution that counts." But that's obviously a winking reference, as the whole premise of this site is that good ideas aren't all that common. Does it sound overly clever or cute?

Can anyone suggest a better name? I want something that's not too cutesy but not too generic either. Does the word "startup" have too tech-specific a connotation these days? Is "entrepreneur" too long to be part of a name? What are some other keywords to think about?

What hardware recommendation site am I thinking of?

caek — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 04:12:49 -0800

Some time in the last year (maybe two years, at most) I saw a simple, modern site that recommended a single device in multiple categories of hardware (monitors, laptops, vacuum cleaners, electric toothbrushes, etc., etc.). The home page was a grid of the categories, and then you clicked through to ~2 paragraphs explaining why the particular device was so great. I think in some categories there were "budget" and "money is no object" recommendations, but the basic idea was to do your thinking for you, and tell you exactly what model to buy. Does anyone know what site I'm thinking of?

Help me own my name.

cmoj — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:59:40 -0800

How do I approach someone about buying their domain name, and then what do I do if they agree? I have a highly unusual name. In fact, as near as I can tell there is only one other person with my Firstname Lastname. He owns firstnamelastname.com, but doesn't seem to have updated it in a couple of years and I'd like to buy it from him. I have no idea how much to offer or what to do if he accepts. I'd also prefer not to create an enemy of the other me by swiping it when his registration expires.

Strange, short surge in visits from Opera Mini users

elgilito — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 06:53:40 -0800

Today, one page of our website experienced a 1 h surge: about 600 unique visitors landed there after doing a highly specific search on Google. The question was relevant and our (non-commercial) site ranks 1rst for this question, so while unusual this can be explained except for one thing: all those visitors were using the Opera Mini browser on a mobile device connected to a service provider that Google Analytics calls "Opera software asa". Also, the surge peaked at 11 am GMT+1 and then was basically over (no tail). Any idea of what happened? The question was "characteristics of centrosema" and variants thereof. Centrosema is a tropical fodder plant that's only interesting to cattle. Visitors used different variants of this question and spent about 5 minutes on the page so it looks like they did a real search and then read the page (no bots ?). The languages were en-gb and en (not en-us, which is usually on top). The country was "not-set". Until now the page was consulted 5-7 times per day. Google Analytics reports low and regular usage of Opera Mini and the Opera provider until today 10 am GMT+1. The surge did not cause any problem (the page was cached as HTML).
My main theory is that the Opera Mini browser showed something for a few minutes on its home page that made curious people react to it. On the other hand some oddities have been reported with Opera Mini traffic before. The not set issue for Opera Mini seems to be explained here.

Cheap Rates Now!

maryr — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:11:17 -0800

What's the best website for finding inexpensive car rental? Emphasis on last minute bookings (I'm traveling in two days). I usually use Kayak. I have an AmEx and am happy to sign up for any free frequent renter club you like. I'm near a major airport, but I'd prefer to pick up a car in the suburbs, bonus if the company will shuttle me to and from their location.

Google Analytics hiccup?

jrchaplin — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 11:58:11 -0800

Trying to figure out what gives with a Google Analytics anomaly for the website I manage. In essence, GA reports that the average time mobile users spent on a page increased tenfold in the last month. Trying to figure out what gives with a Google Analytics anomaly for the website I manage. In essence, GA reports that the average time mobile users spent on a page increased nearly tenfold in the last month.

In February 2013 we had approximately 317,000 visits from users mobile platforms, spending an average of 00:02:25 on each page. Last month, March, we had 311,000 visits, spending and average of 00:20:53 on each page. That's 2.5 minutes in Feb., and almost 21 minutes in March, which seems highly unlikely. All other metrics seem within the realm of normal month-to-month fluctuations, except for overall average time on page, which is out of whack (4 minutes in Feb., 7 mins, 51 secs in March) due to the huge spike in mobile time in page.

I'm no Google Analytics guru, but I know how to run basic reports. I've run basic reports today for each of the last 12 months, and while we've seen gradual growth in mobile visits, last month's spike in mobile time on page is way out of whack.

Any ideas on what could cause this?

Looking for specific website to create quick animated videos.

_DB_ — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 07:20:21 -0800

A month or two ago I saw a video someone had made of an exchange they had with a customer at work. The video had two cutesy CGI dog-like animals talking with very basic gestures and motions. It googled the watermark in the corner of the video and it took me to the site the guy had used to create the video. The name was four letters long but it wasn't a real word. There were multiple themes or scenes you could select, enter dialog, etc. Most of the themes were very cutesy- animals, flowers, etc. The speech seemed to be rendered by some typical voice-to-text software as it was very flat with no inflection. Overall it was a pretty easy to use website. Fastforward to today... I can't find this site. I swear I bookmarked it but obviously I didn't. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Name/domain for private photo network for parents.

signal — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 18:39:54 -0800

Please help me pick a name and domain for our website/app. We're a private network for parents to upload, backup and share their kids' pictures. Strong privacy and backup should be the main differentiators over the competition.

Initial market is Latin America, but looking to expand to English speaking countries and rest of the world quickly, so it should work in English (and not be too weird in Spanish). We'd prefer a .com, but other TLDs might work as well.

Hey, Art!

heyho — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 18:26:37 -0800

Please tell me of your favorite art/design/architecture blogs, pages, and websites — the more obscure, the better. I see a lot of art, but I don't see enough art. I'm looking not so much for current-happenings type links, but rather pretty much everything else, including no-longer-updated-but-still-standing art/design blogs that are very well curated.

Or a particular art/design school's website that is brimming with interesting galleries. That sort of thing. Something I'm not likely to find by tripping down a Wikipedia path. An extremely fascinating (amateur) Flickr or Instagram account, even. Or an art or artist fansite that is particularly detailed or otherwise compelling. Or a small-museum website that can't be missed. Or the site of an obscure-but-amazing artist who no one seems to be aware of.

I'd rather not describe which styles, periods, or media I tend to prefer because I'm getting bored with my own direction, so show me what's great!

Low-cost, low-maintenance web infrastructure for volunteer group?

tel3path — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:37:00 -0800

I have been tasked with finding a web solution for a volunteer group associated with a university. There are already pages on one of the departments' websites, however, it will be months before any changes can be made to that as it's under the rule of a CMS which is about to be migrated and to which we won't be able to really do anything until November. We want all the usual stuff like a blog and a Twitter widget and latest news and yadda yadda, but anything we add - and possibly anything we remove - would have to wait till November if we use the existing hosting arrangement. This is why I want to stick up another web infrastructure for us somewhere else, probably not hosted by the university. Because of the slow change control process, it might be necessary to embed some of the existing page content in iframes rather than having it in two places at once.

Meanwhile, back on the intranet side of it, someone has started sharing documents on a hideous Sharepoint back end which is also part of the university's infrastructure.

Meanwhile, another person has started a Google Plus group.

We would like to pull together a beautiful, easy-to-maintain web architecture over which we have total creative control and which will cost little or no money. (Our budget is around the $0.00 mark.)

I am a programmer, have a good amount of web programming experience, but have not attempted to create an entire website end-to-end before. I have very little spare time, and I also don't want to be the only person capable of maintaining the site. So I'm looking for the fastest cheapest solution for front-end and intranet, that can be implemented quickly by an expert, but also maintained easily by a nonexpert.

Best business website in a box for an absolute beginner?

Ghidorah — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 05:43:43 -0800

I'm finally taking the plunge and starting a business. We want to get a website up and running, but I've never really done anything like this. Can you recommend where to go, what to do, and all that stuff? We're starting a business based on cured meats, catering, serving food for events, and eventually online sales. At first, we need to have a general website that has information about the company, as well as an updatable events page so people know where we'll be and what we'll be doing.

Later on this year, if things start to take off, we're going to want to have a shopping cart type storefront where people can order meat products and game from us. That probably means credit cards (which scares the hell out of me) and a secure website. I have absolutely no idea what to use, or where to get started. I'm not likely (thank god) to be the person in charge of the website, but I figured I'd at least see what people here think is a good idea and pass it on.

For bonus levels of difficulty, the business is going to be based in Japan, so we'll need to have a bilingual website. Any advice or help you can give me will be greatly appreciated.

Advice on making a website for a veterinary business

htid — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 07:12:07 -0800

I have a computer science degree so I know (or can learn) the technicalities of web programming, serving a site, etc. I'm looking for high level advice. If someone asked you to make them a business website today, how would you go about it? I am being asked by a family friend to make a basic website for his veterinary hospital. It will be a static site at first though might have seasonal / occasional changes, and we might want to add interactivity later. Like this one. I'm sure I can do it technically, but I want to use the right procedures.

If you work in web design, and your friend or family member asked you to build them a website in short order, how would you do it? (A particular language, software suite, or service? Hire someone for part of it?) I would especially welcome advice from anyone who has special expertise.

These types of opinions would be awesome:

-- "I'd register it on xyzregistrars.com, then I'd use xyzwebservers.com to host it, then I'd program it using Dreamweaver/Drupal/FooSoftware/FooLanguage/whatever."

-- "You are going to waste your time, I'd use xyzwebtemplates.com which is super fast and easy."

-- "I'd do this first aspect of it myself, then I'd hire someone from xyzwebdevelopers.com for this other aspect of it, and expect to pay in the ballpark of $ dollars."

-- "Be careful to do XYZ so that someone can take it over after you're gone."

I have a good computer science degree from within the past decade... but am not at all up to date on web stuff. There are so many tools and options out there. I would love advice about your favorites. Or, any high level guidance to get me started.

Thank you!

Online recipe organiser

snakeling — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 03:26:26 -0800

I'm looking for a recipe organiser where I can write my own recipes and clip recipes from the web. I can google with the best of them, and I can see there are lots of sites that can potentially do what I need, but I don't want to create a gazillion accounts for testing, so please give me your tried and true recommendations. Details inside : My computers are both Ubuntu and my phone Android, so no Mac- or Windows-only recs, please. Nothing phone only. In fact, a phone app would be nice, but it's not necessary. A web interface is enough for my needs.

I want to look at sites coded especially for recipes, so nothing generic, like Evernote. (Even if I might still go with Evernote in the end anyway.)

Ideally, I want:
- to clip recipes from the web. I think there are microformats for recipes, so compatibility would be a huge plus.
- to write my own recipes in.
- to be able to use both metric and imperial. Automatic conversion would be a plus.
- to add my own commentary or pictures to the recipe.
- to be able to search my recipes with the contents of my pantry : I have eggs and flour but no butter, what can I do?

Some sort of social features would be nice, especially the ability to search other people's recipes, and to "friend" people who have similar tastes to yours.

Thanks!

Hotel Recommendation in Orlando, Florida

dbirchum — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 05:30:37 -0800

Looking for a hotel recommendation in Orlando in a couple of weeks. Suggestions? Greetings all,

I will be traveling to Florida for work in a couple of weeks. I need to spend one week on the Gulf Coast, but I will be driving to Orlando myself afterwards. I am going to spend two days in Orlando before I fly home (weekend of the 20th & 21st).

Therefore, I am looking for a decent hotel recommendation in Orlando while I am there. Here is some of my criteria that might help:

- I am traveling on my own for these two days so I will be paying for this hotel stay out of my own pocket (so I need to be budget conscious).
- I am traveling myself (so I only need one room/one bed)
- I am only going to be going around Orlando to do some shopping, etc, so I don't need to be close to anything like Disney, Sea World, etc, as I won't be going to any of those. I will probably be around International Drive area in the day times.
- I will be only at the hotel in the evening, so I really only need it as a place to sleep (I won't require any 'resort' type stuff to do in the day at the hotel). A pool would be great, but I don't need a fitness center, or hotel bar, etc. A private patio in the room would be great for relaxing in the evening before I go to sleep.
- I am basically looking for something CLEAN, SAFE and affordable that will allow me to hang my head for a couple of nights and then drive to the Orlando airport.

Can this be had for a "reasonable price". I would prefer to pay under $150 per night, if possible...

Any suggestions/recommendations??

AND....what are the best websites to book hotels online for these deals??

Thanks in advance!

Chicken or Egg? Who comes first, copywriter or designer?

gravitypanda — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:44:39 -0800

I want an awesome website and I have wireframed the whole thing. I am planning on using the design contest process on 99designs and I have found an amazing copywriter on Odesk. Who should do their part of the work first? So, if I hired an agency to build this, obviously the copywriter and designer could talk, get coffee, have meetings and brainstorm. But I don't think I have that luxury. The way 99designs works I can get revisions, and in theory I could have my Odesk copywriter give input on the designs I get on 99design. But still, the essential question remains:

(1) --Who should do their job first?'

----1a----Do I get all the copy and give it to the designer with the wireframe?
----1b---Do I give the wireframe to the designer and give that output to the copywriter?

(2) How do the pros do it? What is the website building process in a crazy-cool urban shop?
(3) I am assuming that I bring in my coder once I have the photoshop design files from 99designs and the copywriting finished. Is this assumption correct? Is there any reason the coder needs to be brought in earlier?

Bonus Question.... As I go through this process, I don't have a budget to go around twice. Any tips for me to manage costs and get what I want as I go through the outsourcing process?

**Thanks to all of you that take the time to answer. I am continually amazed at the generosity and intelligence of the mefi community.

Looking for free Kindle books

lea724 — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 06:32:35 -0800

Which websites list Kindle-compatible books which are free for a limited time? I recently learned about Bookbub, where you sign up for free and everyday, they send you a list of Amazon books which have been discounted or are free for a limited time. I did some google searching and came across Ereader News Today as well as Pixel of Ink, both of which do the same thing as Bookbub.

What other sites am I missing?

I'm not looking for books which are out of copyright and therefore are free all the time. I'm specifically looking for books which are discounted to free for a limited time.

I've gone to Amazon's website and been able to muddle through to where they list their freebie Kindle books, but most of them are so obscure or on topics I have zero interest in, it wasn't helpful to me. These websites send out the links to books which people might actually have an interest in.

I also want to be able to subscribe via e-mail or (less ideal) through an RSS feed instead of having to check back on the site every day.

Thanks in advance!

How much does it cost to build the 4 page website of my dreams?

gravitypanda — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 09:13:28 -0800

I want to have a website to sell the neat stuff I make. In my mind I can see exactly what I want it to look like after having spent an absurd amount of time looking at other websites. I have written all my copy. I can make a wireframe (I just learned about that step... cool!) My friend who is filled with illustrator-awesome-sauce is going to do all the icons/illustrations for me. (But I don't have anyone to do the little banners, and zigzags and color blocks and such for separating sections... see examples at the bottom...)

So-- this is the freak out: How many bazillion hours have I looked at off-the-shelf themes with no luck? There are so many websites that look just like what I imagine (see below for 5 examples)-- but there are *no* templates (that I have been able to find) that do it.

QUESTION: To get what I want do I have to hire an agency? Is this $50,000 and an impossible dream, because I have like one percent of that. Or can I get this built for my budget? And who do you hire? Is it a designer (is that the search term I use on a place like guru.com) or an html5 programmer? So the big questions: --how much should this cost? --How do I find the person who will take my words, images, wireframe and inspirations and make it be?

Here is probably what you need to know. I am just a regular web surfing design-know-nothing, but I think these websites are beautiful and excellent and they are the 5 inspirations for what I want. (The 4 pages I want are= Home page, Price Page, Blog Page, About Page)

(1) grabaperch
(2) teamtreehouse
(3) giftrocket
(4) rateus
(5) kajabi

Thanks for either: crushing my dreams on the rocks of capitalism, or giving me much needed hope that I can really have my own little slice of internet with a website that I like looking at every day. Either way, I am happy to know :-)

Trying to find a website I forgot to bookmark

Jason and Laszlo — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:15:47 -0800

The website is a collection of images, and one images leads to the next, in an associative way. Like, one composition suggests the next image, like a group of colorful balloons suggests a pile of colorful trash which then suggests a crowd of people, etc., and it seems to go on endlessly.

Suggestions for how to write a privacy policy.

cosmac — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:21:30 -0800

I need to write a privacy policy for my commercial website. There are a number of online tools for this, I am looking for specific recommendations for such a tool or links to good boilerplate. The site is primarily providing information about a product (iPhone app). It does not collect any information but does have a contact form.