About the gee-whiz design features: many of us use older computers with dial up connections, and get frustrated with waiting for cybertrashy special effects to download when all we want is a simple bit of information.

Design your web sites attractively, but for a lower level of assumed technical capability at the receiving end. Why frustrate those potential customers who you use the web site to theoretically attract?

Anything that takes more than about 20 seconds to download at 42 K modem speed is off-putting and provides a negative first impression.

dave

My resistance to using rollover images and other "enhancements" is part of why I was removed as SCRM's Webmaster. I believe in the KISS principle, so if I can do something with plain vanilla HTML, that's what I do. Recently, I've become enamored with database-driven dynamic PHP sites, as you'll see from a visit to http://www.scrmcurator.com. However, PHP is just a way to create plain HTML on the fly, so it doesn't slow things down much as long as you enforce KISS.

My idea of the perfect museum website:

- Put the schedule and fares on the front page. I can't emphasize this enough!
- Along the left side of the page, have a list of links:

- Directions on how to get there.
- A contact page that includes both email links and a telephone number someone knowledgable will answer.
- A complete roster of equipment, preferably with photos.
- A link to one of the online donation services.
- A page of event flyers downloadable in PDF format.
- Membership info, including an online or downloadale form.
- (optional) Current news.
- (optional) Some other "fun" content, like a joke, what is it?, volunteer blooper, etc.

SCRM's current site doesn't follow all these rules, particularly the one about having the critical info on the front page -- again, that's why I'm no longer Webmaster. Using a PHP/MySQL CMS is certainly an option for stuff like the roster, but a simple page of descriptions with a link to a photo is just fine. The hard part is designing a site so it's easy to update.

I disagree. Only if all you are selling is a ride. To some of us, discussing money on the first page is, well, tacky.

The sites I like the best tell me something about the experience I'll have: what I can expect to see, what I can expect to do, the general ambiance of the location. That is what makes me decide if I even want to go there.

But I agree, once that decision is made, I find it a real bummer if I can't find the hours of operation, schedules, and fares without a lot of searching. And, since I may be coming simply to photograph, research, measure a specific piece of equipment, having the roster available somewhere on the site is a real plus, to me at least. If you have a photo roster and I know you have a specific car or engine, you might even find me using links to your site to illustrate discussions on other lists, because I know where to find the web pix quickly.

But, all that is for the hardcore foamer. The average public needs to know at a glance that they even want to visit in the first place. Schedules, fares, maps, and hours are all second page stuff.

Since we are on the topic, the website for the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society under went some changes in design and content a few months ago to take the focus from NKP 765 and place it equally on the Society, our museum site and heritage, volunteers, restoration work, local railroad history, and the steam locomotive itself to give visitors who may not be familiar with railroads and the like a good context to begin exploring and learning in. A new section also details the history of the 765.

New pages:

http://www.765.org/volunteers.html

http://www.765.org/insidetheshop.html

http://www.765.org/nickelplate765/introduction.html

Feedback one way or the other would be appreciated; feel free to email.

There are two problems with your point.

The first problem is that most people come to a museum website -- even a non-operating museum's website -- looking to answer one simple question: when is it open? And immediately after that, they want to know how much it costs. Tacky? Maybe. But a successful website needs to answer the questions the vast majority of visitors have.

The second problem is that most Web surfers are lazy idiots. They don't want to follow links -- that's either too much effort, too hard to understand, or both. Face it, most of these people barely know how to turn the computer on! Making it even slightly difficult to find the answers to the two most common questions the average Website visitor has is just asking for stupid, foolish questions by email.

And before anybody says anything about there being no such thing as a dumb question... A foolish or dumb question is one you could answer yourself by actually using your head for something other than a hat rack -- like looking at the huge sign right in front of you that says "rest rooms" instead of asking a busy volunteer where the bathroom is, or by clicking on the link that says "train schedule" instead of emaling the overworked volunteer Webmaster wanting to know when the Museum is open.

THAT is why schedule and fare information needs to be front and center. We're all weird here -- we generally use our brains. The average person doesn't!

Dave will like http://www.tmny.org. Still dial-up friendly. It doesn't meet all of Scrmcurator's points, but has a lot of content for a small museum.

Folks,

A lot of good sites have been mentioned here; but my pet peeve on museum sights is the out dated news pages.

It is now late Spring of 2007; I just hate it when I open a site and see a news page for Winter 2005. That is five quarters behind!

Have the museum just been sitting on its hand all this time? don't they care enought about what they are doing to write something about it?

A museum that keeps its news up to date is the WW&F museum site in Maine. One that does not is the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Pennsylvania.

And the current issue of the Railway Museum Quarterly shown on the current issue part of the ARM site is spring 2005!

If an organization does not have the money or man power to keep their news up to date then they should stay with th what, where, when and how much it costs kind of web site and let it go at that!

Ted Miles

As a newsletter editor, I really don't want our Museum posting the most current issues. Two months late is fine with me since if someone wants to read the newsletter, they can pay dues and receive their news more timely. As far as PR, I doubt our markets care too much about some of the minutia reported on some museum news pages.

Does anyone have anything about railroad safety listed on their website, brochures, informational packets, hand-outs, etc?

http://www.765.org/railroadsafety.html

http://www.ebtrr.com

Simple, but it gets the job done.

Sometimes simple websites are the most effective. Several organizations where I am a member have far too much information on their websites, as well as website design that is much too complicated. In any organization relying on volunteer help, if the original webmaster departs after designing a masterpiece, it may be very challenging for anyone else in the group to take it over and keep it going. Having helped to help bring a website designed by someone else up to date, I can tell you it will be much easier for someone not familiar with it to do editing if the design is kept very simple.

I have also seen a couple instances where truly brilliant railroad enthusiasts designed magnificent websites with background panels and text in the appropriate colors of their favorite railroads, without realizing that it would be impossible for some people who are color blind to read their creation.

Sorry, I'm a late-comer to this discussion since I have been busy (among other things) updating our website. I have read many of the postings here and viewed a variety of the mentioned websites-- many of them deserving credit for the work put into them. I have a few observations (and rants) when it comes to web design. Please know that these comments are not directed at anybody or any website in particular... except a certain major corporation. So here are my thoughts:

1. Something Better than Nothing: First of all, having any website is better than having no website at all. Even without fancy artwork and little bells and whistles, if you can at least get your address, phone number, and a reliable e-mail address up there you'll see a few more ticket sales and/or visitors than if you had nothing. The ability of being found on the Internet allows you to reach a far bigger audience than the area that your local phone directory covers. Also, I'm willing to bet that not every out-of-towner who rides your train has a copy of the latest Kalmbach Tourist Railroad Directory, or even subscribes to any kind of railroading publication that you might be advertising in. When these people start planning their vacations, they search on the Internet for things to do in the area.

2. Search Engines: An interesting study done on our own website found that the top search engine used to find our website was Google. Ironically, our site is hosted by Yahoo!. To simplify the statistics, I believe Google was used 60% of the time, Yahoo! only 20% of the time, and the other 20% was attributed to people finding the site by some other means (RYPN making up a good portion of that...) Sometimes it takes more than just designing a good website... sometimes you should do your homework and find out how you can better promote it and make it useful. If you have even a little money, you can make those search engines work in your favor.

Someone made the earlier comment about outdated content. Search engines HATE outdated content, and as a consequence will push your site further down the list of results. Keep the content on your main home page up-to-date with something recent (within a few months at least) even if it means just changing some dates on the main page or changing "Merry Christmas!" to "Happy Fourth of July!".

See if you can cooperate with other businesses, organizations, etc. in your community to get a link to your site place on theirs. A good example is if your local Chamber of Commerce website has a "Things to See and Do" page. Make sure your website has been submitted to be placed on RyPN's "Links" page. Thinking along those lines, and you'll find there are a lot of "easy" advertising opportunities...

3. Bells and Whistles: In the computer graphics classes that I taught and assisted teaching at college, we always had a saying, "Just because you can doesn't necessarily mean you should." This referred to any and all types of design elements and tricks: Color blends, 3D effects for text, drop shadows, roll-over buttons, animations, sounds, scrolling text (ugh!), flashing text (double ugh!), fancy background patterns, etc., etc., etc. Use discretion and only put elements in that have a legitimate reason for being there and assist the site in function and appearance on all types of browsers.

MSIE is the worst contributer to this for the fact that they support formatting features no serious graphic designer would in his or her right mind ever use. No other browser even knows how to handle these proprietary features, so information may not even show up, or may cause malfunctions in browsers like Netscape, Firefox, etc.

Along the same lines as this rant is the fact that MSIE has shown lousy support for internationally established standards. (I hear that only recently with the new IE 7 is CSS properly supported... a standard that was being established 10+ years ago!) I better stop on this, because the more I think about it the more I feel like venting frustration by breaking #2 pencils with my fingers.

4. KISS Really Does Work: Meaning that your website can have a lot on it, and still have a simple and easy-to-use design. There is absolutely nothing wrong with breaking the content up into multiple pages; that's why hyperlinks were invented. As long as you have a simple, logical and well-thought approach to how the pieces of information are handled, visitors will enjoy using your site.

Sometimes as the business or organization grows, the website grows with it, and sometimes that means a complete redesign. What worked well for the small group of preservationists may not work as well when the now-restored steam locomotive operates a full summer schedule and selected off-season weekends and holidays.

I'll admit our own site may need some help in this area as the amount of content has grown quite a bit. The site has already been through one major overhaul in the little-more-than-2 years that it has existed, but at least it is now set up in such a way that minor adjustments can be made without much effort, which brings me to my last point...

5. Technology is Supposed to Make Things Easier: Someone else made a comment about Content Management Systems (CMS), PHP, etc. This message board is driven by PHP. PHP, for those that don't know, is a fairly advanced programming language that can be used to generate HTML web pages "on-the-fly".

The WRC website is driven by a PHP-based CMS. (That's why our content is so easily updated!) If the details of the technology are not something you are comfortable with, get some help and find someone who is. If the technology is good quality, it should make things easier for you. For instance, on our site: if I want to add some news about a new project, I have an Administration Page I can log into, type up the text, and click "save".

Yes, that's all! I don't have to worry about the page layout, making sure the text is the right color, making sure I don't wreck my other page links, make sure I upload it to the right place, etc. The software (technology) handles it for me. Not only that, but then it looks up a list of subscribers, and sends a little e-mail to them notifying them of the recent update. It is just as easy (and works in a very similar manner) as posting this message.

I'm sure I could go on and on and on about this topic, since it is one I have become most familiar with in the last two years as a website administrator. If anybody has any specific questions about anything I've mentioned, I'm more than happy to share what I know... just send me an e-mail or private message.

--

Title: Reply to a RyPN Thread, 2007
Medium: Binary bits with PHP Script, rendered in 24-bit RGB color on LCD.
Artist: Mike Lewis

Electrons are an art form. :-)

a agree with kiss

IMHO a good web site is:

Nice big pretty picture of the crown jewel, in a format that doesn't take a week to download

5 main links

1.Hours
2.Directions (NOT a linked map, something that someone that works there drew, LARGE so when I print the page I can read it and actually find the place (and I am always from out of town, so a "coase map of 50 mile radius, and one with 5-9 mile for the details is perfect))
3.Fare
4.History
5.Link to equipment/links/other

finish with a nice correct address, and email link, and a thank you
I will come out, check out your stuff and donate to the can (which should be something more steam related than a folgers can...lol)


by the way, 3 of the previously visited sites I didn't find any map at all

dr

I like http://www.lsrm.net/


Ferd

I have not seen anybody mention the California State Railroad Museum in this list. It covers both the Sacramento museum and Railtown 1897 in Jamestown, California. so you get two museums for one site!

The Sacramento portion is large and graphically interesting. The museum's roster is extensive and has images of any number of their locomotives and cars.

The museum's newest exhibit is one of the two gold spikes made for the joining of the rails in May 1869.

They are beginning to put their library onto the Internet.

Ted Miles