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Single Page Portfolio's

Thread title: Single Page Portfolio's
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07-31-2010, 09:45 PM
#1
BlaineSch is offline BlaineSch
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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

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08-01-2010, 05:11 AM
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Fez is offline Fez
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  Old

Now it isn't a useless remark. It was a useless remark in the other thread because you had said. "I" don't like single page portfolios. It's good that you elaborated but it would be even better whenever you say that you don't like single page portfolios you link to this thread right after it.


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09-05-2010, 02:24 PM
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  Old

@BlaineSch I could not disagree with you more.


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.
Your Analytics argument is silly. If it's such a huge problem for you then write your own stats program that tracks clickage as opposed to pageviews. Regardless of this, I could name several ways to get around your issue. i.e loading page content (contact.php) when in-screen. (analytics will pickup on that.) Heatmaps are also good to show where the user has been looking.


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.
Again. Have the content downloaded when the user is viewing that part of the screen. Technology is there.


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!
Same can be said for any website. 1 page or not. Though my opinion is, if they have JS turned off chances are they're a crummy visitor anyways.

Nice try though. (:

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09-05-2010, 06:03 PM
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  Old

Well I suppose we don't see eye to eye on this one.

I had an internship a few years ago where the IT users disabled all js using a firefox plugin by default before assigning computers to all the staff. So I have to disagree with you on the "crummy visitor" remark.

The second point is not valid much either since they would still be downloading, and if you've looked at a few of the portfolio's they contain a few mb's of data which is outrageous even if you load only parts of it at a time.

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09-05-2010, 06:13 PM
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  Old

Originally Posted by Dan View Post
Same can be said for any website. 1 page or not. Though my opinion is, if they have JS turned off chances are they're a crummy visitor anyways.

Nice try though. (:
To be fair, some of the people that are making 1 page portfolios are quite inexperienced.

For some portfolios that rely 100% on JS they can simply ignore non JS support but, a lot of the time it's not the case. For example, someone is using JS to hide and show different parts of the same page... there is NO excuse for them to not make the page fully display when JS is turned off and then use anchor tags for navigation.

Besides this, I completely agree with what you wrote.

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09-05-2010, 06:28 PM
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  Old


For some portfolios that rely 100% on JS they can simply ignore non JS support but, a lot of the time it's not the case. For example, someone is using JS to hide and show different parts of the same page... there is NO excuse for them to not make the page fully display when JS is turned off and then use anchor tags for navigation.
What you wrote applys to any website.


The second point is not valid much either since they would still be downloading, and if you've looked at a few of the portfolio's they contain a few mb's of data which is outrageous even if you load only parts of it at a time.
Repetitiveness. This be the same with any website, not just '1 page portfolios'.

You cant logically reason that one page websites are partially bad when the same reasoning can be said towards any website.

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09-05-2010, 06:46 PM
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  Old

Originally Posted by Dan View Post
What you wrote applys to any website.
Yeah, I suppose. It just really ticks me off when developers are lazy

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09-05-2010, 08:08 PM
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  Old

Originally Posted by Fez View Post
For example, someone is using JS to hide and show different parts of the same page... there is NO excuse for them to not make the page fully display when JS is turned off and then use anchor tags for navigation.
One doesn't need to have an excuse if they honestly don't care about non JS users. It's all highly subjective on what people think they should or shouldn't do. If someone wants all JS to be break down easily, by all means, that's his/her right. If someone just doesn't care about non-JS users, then.. well, same as the aforementioned.

I'm your example I quoted and honestly, if JS is disabled.. what I have 'hiding,' isn't a loss to the viewer--that's just how I look at it.

I don't need an excuse for what I do nor does it make me 'lazy.'

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11-08-2010, 07:56 AM
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  Old

Great post. I am trying to create my own portfolio but not able to make it.

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