Author Topic: Anthony's Weather Survey  (Read 7319 times)

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Offline Anthony

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Anthony's Weather Survey
« on: April 11, 2007, 08:57:43 AM »
As juggested in the other thread.

My question is. What can be done to improve the usefullness of my web page? I have in the past had radars for several different locations besides just WV. I have also had warnings for most all of WV. But do to problems with that particular piece of software I had to remove them. So with that said any and all suggestions, good or bad are welcome.


Thanks,
Anthony
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Offline SLOweather

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Re: Anthony's Weather Survey
« Reply #1 on: April 11, 2007, 10:14:42 AM »
First of all, if you put a link to it in your sig or at least in the post itself, you'll probably get more responses to your question. I had to dig into your profile to find it.

Then, consider breaking that one long page up into at least 4 pages, and adding some links to each one. That will make your pages load faster, especially important for your users on dialup.

You could easily leave the top section on the home page, and then have one page for Weather Exchange, one for the mesomap, and then one for the affiliations.

Shortening up the header and or redesigning it a little would make more room on the page for the weather content, which is after all, the page's reason for being.

And, the Swiftwx image is broken.

Offline ocala

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Re: Anthony's Weather Survey
« Reply #2 on: April 11, 2007, 03:56:09 PM »
Anthony, I don't know if you want to get rid of the Weather Exchange or just modify it.
My suggestion would be look at all the web sites listed under the Personal Web Sites topic. Take that a bit further and go to Wunderground and type in a large city. All the stations with web sites will be at the bottom. (Large city because there will be more sites)  Take what you like from all the sites you see and make your own.
I'm not saying get rid of the Weather Exchange. It does the job just fine, but a  weather site planned and developed by you instead of a canned template would be more appealing to your visitors.
Chris and everyone else. If you click on WWW at the bottom of the post it takes you to the website.
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Offline SLOweather

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Re: Anthony's Weather Survey
« Reply #3 on: April 11, 2007, 05:03:03 PM »
Quote from: "ocala"

Chris and everyone else. If you click on WWW at the bottom of the post it takes you to the website.


Oh, yeah. Duh... :oops:

Offline Anthony

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Re: Anthony's Weather Survey
« Reply #4 on: April 12, 2007, 08:18:23 AM »
Chris, I have actually thought about getting rid of the weather exchange information all together. But moving it to another page might not be a bad idea. Also, with the meso map do I really need the weather exchange information. All in all it's the same information.

Chris, you brought up another good question and the is load time.
So for those of you who have visited my page. How long is it taking it to load and what connection do you have?


Thanks,
Anthony
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Offline kray1000

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Re: Anthony's Weather Survey
« Reply #5 on: April 12, 2007, 10:09:11 AM »
Based on what I see today, I'd either keep the Weather Exchange information and lose the mesomap, or keep them both, but put them on separate pages.  I'd choose the second option, except that the background for your mesomap has been resized, making it look distorted.

Personally, I'd consider removing the Weather Exchange advertisement below your Weather Exchange table... it looks too much like, well, an advertisement.  Besides, there's been no development on the Weather Exchange software for several years, and it has never worked right on my XP systems for more than a few hours.  Chances are, your visitors will experience the same.

The load time isn't bad for me (a couple of seconds), but I have a good broadband connection.  But sometimes the load time is a function of the web host's speed as much as the user's connection.

Offline anvana

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Re: Anthony's Weather Survey
« Reply #6 on: April 12, 2007, 11:04:13 PM »
Hi Anthony...

The area I live at requires me to do things a bit differently. But, I think this can apply to most other sites as well. I asked local residents and visitors alike what they thought was important weather information and the response was....

(a.) What's happening now
(b.) What's gonna happen later

Pretty simple. Based on this I came up with the following format with the most important items first:

1. Weather alerts and warnings (What's going on now)
2. Current conditions (What's going on now)
3. Weather forecast (What's gonna happen later)
4. Radar Image (What's gonna happen later)

I arranged the above three important items on the home page so that visitors can get the information most wanted right off the bat. The rest of the site adds more relevant content that, although important to know, is not as critical, according to my users. A simple text-based menu allows visitors to get to the other stuff quickly - like tidal and beach conditions as well as the offshore weather conditions.

My stats show a pattern when it comes to navigation around the site and this helps me determine how to structure the menu. For now, anyway. After June 1st, the beginning of the hurricane season, I change the menu to include tropical information and resources. As soon as the the first tropical depression shows up, the tropical information, maps, and reports become VERY important to my users.

The area my site serves is very much a vacation destination, so tourists influence the way my site is put together. Vacationers base their day's activities on what the weather is going to be like. Also, many property owners do not live here, but they have a great interest in weather conditions and tidal flooding - especially during the hurricane season.

Again, this works fine for me. Your mileage may vary.

Offline Anthony

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Re: Anthony's Weather Survey
« Reply #7 on: April 13, 2007, 08:32:01 AM »
Thanks to everyone for the input. In the process of upgrading my weather software I forgot to back up two of my directories. So needless to say I slightly $@#*&!% the pooch. So I temporarily have no meso map and no live data link from WU & my logos for WU WFY and are gone. But I can get them back. I just have to rebuild the page. And since I plan on moving the weather exchange data to a seperate page it won't be a big deal.

kray1000. my meso map came from MS Streets and Trips. I don't remember resizing the map but I could have and didn't know it. If you have MS Streets & Trips could you rebuile the map for me? You can e-mail me if you wish. That may be better as I only check this forum once a day.


Thanks,
Anthony
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Offline kray1000

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Re: Anthony's Weather Survey
« Reply #8 on: April 13, 2007, 09:01:18 AM »
Actually, I got mine from the same place, but mine was an OEM version that came preinstalled on a machine that I have since rebuilt with a different operating system.

Offline Anthony

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Re: Anthony's Weather Survey
« Reply #9 on: April 14, 2007, 08:17:14 AM »
Mine also came pre installed on a dell laptop. But that didn't keep me from moving it to my desktop computer. However I don't know how well it will run now. Because I sold the laptop and had to let all the disks go with it. So if I need the disk to run it, I'm SOL.

Ok well. What I have is better than nothing.


Thanks,
Anthony
WB8YUE

Offline katlon

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Re: Anthony's Weather Survey
« Reply #10 on: April 14, 2007, 08:31:37 AM »
Anthony
I can make you a map similar to the link below if you will send me either the area you wish to cover or the coordinates.

http://pulliamjr.com/mesonet.htm

Lonnie

Offline carterlake

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Re: Anthony's Weather Survey
« Reply #11 on: April 14, 2007, 09:25:04 AM »
Hey Anthony,

I'm not sure how much work you want to do but I would get away from the default VWS template.

Why?

1) It's designed for 800x600 screen resolution when the majority of folks are now on 1024x768. Ideally, the design should be flexible.

2) The base template is slow to load and really information overload. A lot of the info should be moved to sub pages (as has already been pointed out).

3) I find cloud backgrounds passé and they make the text hard to read.

4) Perhaps most importantly, the template is one big advertisement for WU and Ambient. Not to say you shouldn't support them, but aren't the links at the bottom enough?

5) And then there's the problem of: Most of the links in the template go directly to WU's website. Visitors are going to get the impression of "Why am I visiting this guy's site when all his info is already on WU".

One site that uses the templated elements well and still does her own thing is Ann-Marie up in Canada: http://www.beamsvillewx.ca/

She's also branched off into using Ajax and PHP to really provide unique and customized content (which isn't available anywhere else!)

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Offline weathergirl

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Re: Anthony's Weather Survey
« Reply #12 on: April 14, 2007, 10:26:55 AM »
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I'm not sure how much work you want to do but I would get away from the default VWS template.

Anthony: I think you should have a look at the templates Tom developed for Weather Display. You would just have to replace the WD tags with VWS tags.
Ann-Marie
Beamsville, Ontario, Canada

Offline Anthony

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Re: Anthony's Weather Survey
« Reply #13 on: April 14, 2007, 12:03:12 PM »
Katlon, Thanks for the offer. I will keep it in mind.

carterlake, thanks for the input. I have made some changes to the site to day. Take a look and let me know what you think.

weatrhergirl, I have actually downloaded the trial version of WD several times. But did not like that fact that you have to figure out an offset for the barometer before it will display correctly. It always drove me crazy. And I hate investing money in another piece of weather software when I've been using vws for so long. I'd like to be able to run both pieces of software side by side for comparison purposes. But the computer I have vws running on won't handle that much load. Maybe I'll be able to purchase me a faster machine some day.

Any way I think my page looks better with the changes that I've made so far. But it still needs improvement.


Thanks,
Anthony
WB8YUE

Offline ncpilot

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Re: Anthony's Weather Survey
« Reply #14 on: April 14, 2007, 03:02:13 PM »
Consider this site:

http://mysite.verizon.net/res8sscu/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/ricksplace.htm

Personally, I find the constantly updating weather site to be overkill, although interesting technically.

Too many sites are too cluttered on the main page with tons of detailed information.

What I like about "Curly's" site is that it is simple, you don't have to search or strain to figure out what you're looking at, it's clearly labeled.

There isn't too much information, just the basics, but also a cam image, radar, and warnings. Nothing to distract your attention from the weather data.

Even the menu system is kinda hidden to the left, not taking up space until you need it.

Hover the mouse over the Temp and Wind headings, and a graph pops up showing historical info.

I'm sure you could also use AJAX to update in real time if so desired.

He's also got a kick-ass enclosure for his station...

I spend a lot of time at work crunching tons of financial numbers for a $1B global company for presentation to the CEO, CFO, and Sr. level VP's... I am always trying to present the essentials in a manner that is immediately intuitive and easy to understand... that's why I like Curly's site so much I think... You just don't have to work to figure out what you're looking at...

He did NOT pay me hype his site, it's just one of my favorites visually...  :D
Marc
Wilmington, NC
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Offline ocala

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Re: Anthony's Weather Survey
« Reply #15 on: April 14, 2007, 04:53:58 PM »
Anthony a while back I PM'd you about putting SwiftWx images on your site. Why not add them. Visitors like to see different radar images other then the Wunderground and NWS data. Just a thought.
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