Author Topic: Seeking Input on Website  (Read 1438 times)

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Offline Farmtalk

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Seeking Input on Website
« on: May 22, 2020, 10:51:39 AM »
I've been working on a website since my weather station came in a couple of days ago! It's a WS-2000 and I'm a big fan of it so far!

Here's my work so far: http://www.charlestonwvwx.com/index.php

I'd love some input on things you all would think would make the site look better, as well as things you think makes it look good! Aside from the advisories script, I've tried to keep the site mostly proprietary (GR radar, station data, CoCoRaHS data, etc.). I just got my rain gauge set up, so I won't start taking reports until tomorrow.

Still definitely not a pro on building websites, but I've come a long way from when I used to start a lot of topics back in the day.  ;)

Appreciate all of the useful information on this forum - I've dived into some topics from a long time ago to get to the point in the website where I am now!  :-)
Joe Fitzwater
Chief Meteorologist for WVNS-TV 59 in Beckley, WV

Work Page on Facebook -> www.facebook.com/meteojoe
Work Page on Twitter -> https://twitter.com/meteojoe
Waterfalls -> www.wvfalls.com

Offline saratogaWX

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Re: Seeking Input on Website
« Reply #1 on: May 22, 2020, 01:11:55 PM »
Very nice, Joe!
Ken True/Saratoga, CA, USA main site: saratoga-weather.org
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Offline galfert

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Re: Seeking Input on Website
« Reply #2 on: May 22, 2020, 03:21:29 PM »
Very nice website. I appreciate the clean uncluttered look.

My constructive feedback:
There seems to be common trend among personal weather sites to not indicate more precisely where the station is located. At least yours has the city name...sometimes people just say something like "Bay lake" and you have no idea even what state it is. Just having the city name may be okay for some but when it comes to things like rainfall it can be important to know where your station is actually located. I understand that some people may not want to be located and so that is fine if this is the case for you ...especially since you are a TV personality.

But if you don't mind showing where you are truly located, the weather network icons on the left column could be direct links to your station IDs on WU, PWSweather, and Ambientweather.net. This then helps people dig further into the weather archive and know how relevant your data is to their location.

« Last Edit: May 22, 2020, 03:23:15 PM by galfert »
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Offline Farmtalk

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Re: Seeking Input on Website
« Reply #3 on: May 22, 2020, 03:49:52 PM »
Very nice website. I appreciate the clean uncluttered look.

My constructive feedback:
There seems to be common trend among personal weather sites to not indicate more precisely where the station is located. At least yours has the city name...sometimes people just say something like "Bay lake" and you have no idea even what state it is. Just having the city name may be okay for some but when it comes to things like rainfall it can be important to know where your station is actually located. I understand that some people may not want to be located and so that is fine if this is the case for you ...especially since you are a TV personality.

But if you don't mind showing where you are truly located, the weather network icons on the left column could be direct links to your station IDs on WU, PWSweather, and Ambientweather.net. This then helps people dig further into the weather archive and know how relevant your data is to their location.


That's a great point! Not sure how comfortable I am about sharing my exact coordinates since I'm doing weather on television (there's some weird folks out there). But I could definitely make it more precise for sure.

That's a great idea on directing the links on the left to the specific IDs of each respective weather site.

Very nice, Joe!

Thanks for everything you do, Ken!
Joe Fitzwater
Chief Meteorologist for WVNS-TV 59 in Beckley, WV

Work Page on Facebook -> www.facebook.com/meteojoe
Work Page on Twitter -> https://twitter.com/meteojoe
Waterfalls -> www.wvfalls.com