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07-31-2010, 09:45 PM
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BlaineSch is offline BlaineSch
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Join date: Mar 2005
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Expertise: Web Applications
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  Old  Single Page Portfolio's

I've seen a few portfolio's with just 1 page. Which makes it appear more like an application since you can do everything without reloading the page.

There are many reasons to not do this, and listed below here are a few.

The next user who says:

that's just a useless remark.
I'll be pointing to this thread :]


Statistics
The bounce rate on Google Analytics is defined as a user coming to your site, viewing 1 page, and leaving. This measures the "quality" of the user, which is inaccurate with 1 page sites since your bounce rate will always be 100%.

What do you need to improve on your site? Usually I try to improve the pages that are viewed the most which are usually the landing page (index.php) and the portfolio page. But if it's a 1 page site, what exactly are the potential clients looking at? You'll never know with a 1 page design.


Speed
With a page design you also have to very closely watch how many graphics you have. If you have a few graphics for displaying text, one for the "Contact", another for the "About Us", and graphics showing up when you browse your portfolio slideshow you probably are downloading a ton. If the user only wanted to contact you, you've wasted bandwidth, and make it take longer for it to load on his computer which could result in the loss of a customer.


JavaScript
Typically if your using a 1 page design it won't work if JS is disabled (A few I have seen worked without JS). Just because the user does not have JS enabled does not mean they are an old browser with no JS support, some users just browse without JS enabled for security reasons. If your site does not contain non-JS support you WILL lose customers which means LOSING MONEY!

Making non-js support is not difficult. I typically put all the JS content inside one big div, and automatically I'll use CSS to hide it, then simply use jQuery to remove that class making it visible again. Then using a noscript tag. This makes it so Non-JS users will only see the noscript tags, and js users will only see the visible div.

For contact forms, simply use some server side checking which is not difficult if you can figure out the js part of it. Again use jQuery to change the onsubmit dynamically.
Testing non-js supoprt is not hard

Firefox
Chrome
IE
Safari
Opera

Conclusion
I'm not saying all 1 page designs are bad, I've seen a few rather good ones, and not saying that multi-page sites are for everybody. I am simply stating that that are good reasons not to have one, I am sure there are a few good reasons to have them as well.

This is simply my opinion on the matter, I'm not suggested multi-page sites to all, just suggesting 1 page designs have flaws, like any other type of website.

I hope you all enjoyed and learned a little bit of why a 1 page design is not always best.

Edit:
I hardly consider this an "expert article" but there was not a "articles for the rest of the losers" section.

BlaineSch

Thanked by 3 users:
Gaz (08-01-2010), hakem (08-01-2010), KewL (11-08-2010)