Treasure Chest

What Should a "Fishy" Site Look Like?

Written by George J. Reclos Thursday, 04 May 2000 02:00

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There are literally hundreds of thousands of websites on the net today and thousands more are added by the day. Most of us surf the net and we visit many of them but in the end we end up visiting only the ones we enjoyed, the ones that were interesting enough to be added as a "Bookmark" or a "Favorite". Thus it is obvious that all sites are not the same. There are some things that distinguish a "good and interesting" site from a "bad and annoying" one. Of course we, as visitors, can do nothing to change the "quality" of any given site (apart from sending a polite E-mail with our suggestions). It is up to the webmaster, being him a professional or just a hobbyist like you and me, to do it.

There are many reasons we build websites. Usually it is just to present ourselves or the things we like and care about. Some others want to feel that they have something personal on the web, that part of them is on line. No matter the reason we build a site, the aim is to have people visiting it (otherwise we can keep it on our hard disk). The question, which seeks for an answer is: What should a hobbyist, starting his own site pay attention to? More specifically, if our aim is to create a website about fish keeping what should we know beforehand?

Although I do not feel that this article covers every single aspect of building and maintaining a successful "fishy" website I am sure it gives the basics which will help the cyber-aquarist to do it. The major points (not listed in order of importance) are divided in subjects:

• Size of the site
• Host of the site
• Information content
• Photos
• Links, and
• Layout

Some other points are also raised alongside.

Size: Although size is not necessarily an indication of a worthy site, still it is indicative of the intentions of the webmaster who built it. Thus, a three-page site usually is an abandoned one or one which somehow didn't satisfy its owner. Usually this is the classic "Me - My tanks - My fish - Links" kind of site (each subject being covered in one page at most). The other side of the same coin is a site with 2-3 pages completed and another 60 pages with the permanent "Under Construction" sign. This trick may work initially but after two consecutive visits no one will visit your site again. As I said, although there is a threshold to this, size is not by itself a decisive factor, but it can serve as an indication. Of course, when we finally see a good site we all hope that it will be large enough to keep us busy for a week.

In contrast, I have seen websites consisting of just 25 pages, which were - in one word - excellent. On the other hand, I have seen monstrous sites (300+ pages), which were just puzzles of pixels from different pictures, they didn't even make sense.

A reliable Host: Of course, size means many MB, which in turn require a lot of space. When we come to this factor, most people prefer to find a "free" host. There are many places on the web offering this (Yahoo among others) but there is more than a catch here. The first drawback is too much traffic in the main server, which may render your site unreachable at the time most users are connected. The second is the banners or "pop-up" windows, which are quite annoying. Thirdly, there is a "general" policy by the provider, which leaves little space for flexibility. Last, it results in URLs (addresses), which are impossible to remember. Usually these URLs look like this: "host server/host section/your name/your section/page.html" For these reasons I think that a good Host server is essential. Prices have dropped considerably during the last years and you can find a reliable one for less than 100 $ / year.* After all, when you pay for something, you automatically have the right to complain or ask for more, isn't it?

Keep your URL constant: There are very few things more embarrassing and annoying then finding out that the "favorite" you marked two weeks ago is not valid anymore because the site has moved. It is even more annoying if the owner didn't leave a message in the old address to tell you where he is now. This is the reason for the many "broken" links which seem the accumulate by the day. One way to bypass this is to register a domain name (such as http://www.malawicichlidhomepage.com/ in our case)**. Thus, no matter who the host is, the URL remains the same and all your fans can follow you.

Language: Although I may not like it, I have to admit it. English is the language spoken in the net. Publishing the best fishy site in another language (Greek for instance) makes very little sense (if any at all). You have to bear in mind that most search engines as well as the vast majority of your visitors will be English-speaking people. In addition to linguistic matters, it is true that fish keeping is a very common hobby in the States, which makes the use of the English language a must. This has been a painstaking issue for our website, since English is a foreign language for all three of us.

Information: This is what people look for when they visit your site and this is what may bring them back again in the future. Since you named you site "Fish Corner" or something like that, they only visit your site to get info about fish. The visitor is a person who has already visited tens of similar sites, has already evaluated what he wants to see and now you have to offer him what your site's title promises. Your cat or any other pet may be really playful but have no place in such a site (apart from a small photo and a couple of words). If you feel like devoting two pages on it, you have to change your site's title to "Pets Corner". Very often when I visit a fishy site I may stay there for less than a minute. Just looking at the front page and the sections it has to offer me, I know that there is no reason to stay there any longer. I can simply visit the next site on the list or one of my favorites. The information you have to give your visitors should fulfill some criteria in order to be useful to him.

Accuracy: Your information has to be as accurate as possible. Please avoid generalizations and rule of thumbs if you are not sure that they are valid for other tanks. It is better to express your own opinion as such or just search your library and then give the correct information. A "big fish about 15 cm with blue color" could be almost anything. You have two solutions: describe it in full detail or add a photo of the fish. The same is true (and far more important) when you describe a technique you use or a DIY plan.

Scientific names: Use them at all times. There are hundreds of peacocks in Lake Malawi and your "Sunshine Red Top Yellow Fin" peacock may be the same with someone else's "Sunset Yellow Edge Red" peacock but in either case you are not helping me, the visitor, to understand which species you are talking about. Very often you are both describing a hybrid (much more often that you can think / admit). The correct scientific name eliminates all confusion and lets people help you more accurately if you need help with this species. It is a good idea to check your atlas or other source before using a name. If you don't you may be using an outdated (not valid any more) or wrong name. Cyrtocara venusta doesn't exist anymore and Cichlasoma venustus never existed. You may laugh at these names but they are listed in a "big" well-known site, last updated in 1997. Please note that the genus is always written with a capital while the species with lowercase letters. The word sp. means "species" and is used only if we are certain about the genus but not about the species. Other abbreviations (like OB morph) can be used, too.

Original: The information you include in your site has to be original, from your own experience. Of course, you have read some books on the basics but this is not enough to sustain a website. Don't copy this information in your site. Apart from legal matters this is not useful simply because almost all hobbyists have read the same books. The visitor is interested to see how you decorated your tank and not how it was supposed to be decorated. He wants to know why you chose to have more or less plants, a dark background, and crushed coral as a substrate - not what the book suggests.

References & Credit: It is a nice gesture to cite the sources you used or give credit to the person who allowed you to use his photos. Going around copying photos from other sites is not the right way to go. I have given permission to three webmasters to use my photos in their sites but I have found that at least 30 sites are using them. Moreover, there is no credit (or any other sign) to this site or me. One of them didn't even bother to copy the photo from my site he visited a copier's site. In an ideal world, this shouldn't be so. What's more, if you don't give credit to the owner (or creator) of the info you are about to use, everybody will deny you the right to do so in the future.

Update regularly: Although our aim to update once a month is really exhausting we believe that a site, which is regularly updated, is clearly a better site than one that is updated once every decade. We may decide in the future to update it once every two months but regular updates will always be there. I am sure that most of you have visited sites which were "Last updated in 1997". These sites usually have very little to offer mainly because the information contained in there is no longer valid (names, references, links etc.)

Photos: In a "fishy" site, photos are of paramount importance. Visitors want the photos either because they need to identify their fish or just to enjoy looking at them. I have spent hundreds of hours admiring other people's tanks and I have a private gallery (on my hard disk) of some excellent tanks.

Good quality & size: Your photos have to be of good quality. Blurred or out of focus shots should never be used unless temporarily till you come up with a better shot. A blurred photo will not serve any of the reasons it is published for. Bear in mind that a blurred or out of focus picture can't be edited to look like the picture of the century. Software can work miracles only if the original picture is of acceptable quality. The size of the photo is also important. The thumbnail photos usually present in the "big" sites are almost useless. They may save some space but they are of very limited importance. Big size is preferable but do not overdo it. A picture, which requires the visitor to scroll up and down and then, left and right to see it is not the best option. Usually, the maximum size, which is still pleasing, is that which will fill a 15" monitor. In this case, the visitor has a full view of the fish, plant or tank while he doesn't have to bother if there is something else in the missing right part.

Original photos: definitely add to a site about fish keeping. Scanning the same old photo from the same book simply makes no sense. There are hobbyists surfing the net for years now. They have come across the same photo in tens of other sites and they already have the book in their library. The only thing that they look for during their short visit to your site is to see how your fish look in your tank.

In the photo below you can see what we go through at the end of every month. After shooting hundreds of pictures we eliminate those that are out of focus, not correctly framed or inferior to ones already online. Despite this "culling" we are still left with tens of photos from which we have to select the few that will please you and us. In sort, less than 5% of all photos taken make it to the website. In this particular photo, only the photos which are meant for George's update are shown. We have more than 12.000 photos stocked in more than 30 CD-Rom. Photos which never made it to the site.

Color depth: It is better to scan your pictures at 32-bit color depth and then publish them as JPEG files. This type of file allows a considerable degree of compression without mush loss of data (definition and color). Again, a 10-15% compression is ideal. More compression will render a smaller file but quality starts to suffer. When we started this site all photos were in .gif format / 256 colors. I had to spend two months to rescan and load all of them (500+ photos) in JPEG format. I must admit that the difference in quality justified the hours spent.

File size: This is proportional to the quality of the picture. Although a .bmp file will contain all the information of your picture, its large size makes it unsuitable for the web. Very few people will wait till your 1 MB file downloads. You can use the JPEG format instead and send the .bmp file as an E-mail attachment to those really interested or have them as a download option.

Clearly notewhat is shown in the picture: It may well be that you only have one species of Aulonocara so the female shown is of this particular species. However, there are tens of other Aulonocara species in which the females look almost the same as yours. It will only take 5 seconds to note which is the species on the photo. If more than one fish are shown in the same photo include all of them in your note. It is a good idea to tell the visitors the age of the fish (i.e. juvenile, sub-adult, adult). Fish use to change their coloration as they grow so this is quite important. Since we know that there are many people out there who will not hesitate to copy your photos, it would be a good idea to place a small note on the picture with your name. This will stop most of them although the ones determined to copy and use it will still get it.

Include photos of both sexes: If, like in cichlids from the African Rift lakes, sexes show a clear dischromatism, it is essential to have photos of both sexes. Yes, the male has these shining colors, but it is usually the female we are not sure about. In this case, you are giving your visitor a great help and he will surely remember your site when he is in doubt again.

Links to other sites: You don't have to add hundreds of links to other sites. Your link section should have as many sites as you think but your links have to be regularly checked and updated. Although it is definitely not your fault that some people create one new site every week, it is better to avoid including them in your list. Having to deal with broken links gives the impression that you didn't pay enough attention on this section or you simply copied the links from another site. If you are in for some serious work, it is better to select or preview the sites you are about to link to. When doing so, provide the visitor with accurate comments so he can know in a minute if he should visit some of the sites listed. A good approach is to ask the sites you link to for a "reciprocal" link. Most of them (if your site is good enough) will not deny it.

Layout:; A functioning navigation bar containing links to the essential parts of your site is a must. Actually it is all you need to have. On top of that, webmasters usually use other tricks to make their sites more appealing. Very often they use icons (animated or not), interesting personalized backgrounds, streaming videos, music etc. If these add-ons are used wisely and sparingly they will add to the overall impression. However, more often than not, people simply overdo it. Thus, it may take 5 seconds for the text to download and then wait for another minute or so for something, which is downloaded. About the time you were expecting to see a fish or tank picture you realize that it was a huge animated icon. Generally speaking, the size of our site was reduced from 40 MB to 25 MB (!!) when we decided to remove all the animated icons. Which means that it will now take you 75 minutes less to download the whole of it or - on average - 20 seconds less per page.

Notification of updates to selected people: This is a policy that we have followed for our site. Instead of having our visitors coming again and again to see if something has changed in our site, we have a list of E-mail recipients who automatically receive an "update" E-mail when there is something new. You should pay attention to whom this notification is sent - most people will be annoyed to get a notification for an update they don't care about. You can always create a new address book and add the names of the fellow hobbyists, friends or web-lists you know.

Chain reactions: Once you start your site you have to work hard till it has enough information to satisfy the average visitor. Then you have to contact the people who have well renowned sites in the same field as yours and ask them to include your site in their links. Normally, when we receive such a request we visit the site and see if it is relevant to our main topic (fish in this case - cichlids in particular). We then pay a additional couple of visits during the next two months. If the site is still there and growing we include it in our links section. Once your site is linked from other sites, more and more people will visit it. If they are satisfied with what they see they are going to include it in their "links" section. So, even more people will come to see it. If you keep up the good work you will see that after a while your site will be listed in many places and you will get some really good comments about it.

Time and effort: Don't kid yourself. A website which is interesting, big enough and regularly updated with most of the elements discussed earlier in order, is something which requires time and effort. It requires too much time and too much effort. We spend an average of 2 hours on a daily basis to prepare each update and sometimes even this is not enough. Even now (March 2000) Francesco has already sent the material for the April update and is already dealing with his section's next update (due in June 2000) and I, while still writing this article (for May 2000), have finished the structure of my section's next update (due in four months from now). In the meantime, Patricia is working on something new which (because of the nature of her work) may take her several months to be accomplished. While all this is under construction, the photos are already taken or planned, they have to be scanned (and possibly rescanned or shot again) and then they have to be placed next to the articles or in the corresponding sections. When an update is uploaded, all three of us spend some hours spotting the mistakes, the broken links, the missing or overlapping photos or any other point which needs to be addressed in the next update. In short, we invest heavily on this site for one good reason (believe it or not): the nice comments we receive from many visitors, and the feeling you get when someone tells you that he found this site very helpful.

In January 2004, Dr. Michael K. Oliver, webmaster of http://www.malawicichlids.com/ sent in the following comment.

"By the way, today I found and read your article about starting a fish web site.  All good advice!  I didn't know that such an article existed before today. The only subject that might be added is how to get started with producing actual pages - if money is not a problem, purchase one of these programs; or, on a tight budget, here is how to view the code of existing pages to learn from them, and here are a couple of self-teaching books such as "HTML for Dummies."  I remember being completely mystified as to how to make a page displaying text, with links and photos, and that my learning went too slowly. I bought a not very expensive program called QuickSite (long ago taken off the market) which got me started (painfully), but I found the resulting pages so limited that this is what compelled me to explore and learn to make my own pages. Ever since then, I have coded my pages by hand. Now and then I pick up a new trick (from other sites, or from a book or two) and adapt it to something on my pages. Not efficient, but rather satisfying."

This was particularly important to us as Michael's website was the one that inspired Francesco and me to start MCH in 1999.

For more information on how MCH updates are prepared you can take a look here.

 

 Webmaster's note:

* Τhe prices indicated for hosting have changed since the submission of the article in 2000; prices may vary from country to country.

* * Currently updated to www.mchportal.com or www.mchportal.eu

 

 

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