Evolution of the Bicycle Touring 101 home page

While preparing some new article pages today it occurred to me that in the short time that this web site has been live the home page has gone through a number of changes.

I decided to take a few minutes and document the various home pages. Partly to remind myself how much things have changed but also because it's also nice to use it as a bit of a yardstick to measure how old the cached copies of the home page are in the various search engines.

In order to have the text as legible as possible in the images I've left them larger then normal so loading times for this page will be relatively slow compared to other pages on this web site.

Original Home page

It seems like an incredibly long time ago that I created this home page using Corel Draw. In fact it was so long ago that I had completely forgotten about it!

Luckily I rediscovered it while going through some old backup files.

This page was entirely graphical in nature so it was slow to load and the html was ugly. So ugly that I had reports that people on Macintosh computers and older browsers were unable to see the page.

Back to the drawing board! (I should point out that Corel Draw was the fourth web editing tool I used as I gradually worked my way towards better and better products that were also more and more expensive).

Text based home page

This was the second home page for the site and the first web page built using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004.

The touring image has been retained from the previous home page but all other elements on the page including the banner are now text based using a Cascading Style Sheet.

Loading times for this page were drastically improved over the previous version and I received verification from the previously excluded readers that they could now reach the web site.

The giant wheel

My next (third) home page for the web site featured a large bicycle wheel with the new site logo as the hub. The wheel itself consisted of a clickable image with links to major site areas on the wheel.

This marked an improvement in the home page because the bicycle theme was instantly recognizable due to the tire and there were many more links that some one could immediately use on their first visit to the web site.

There were a couple of problems with this page. People with smaller screen displays would not see the special links located at the bottom of the page without scrolling down.

Also this page was relatively static so that after a few visits there really wasn't a reason for someone to go to that page anymore. Either they would just quickly click through or they would book mark a more dynamic page like the Table of Contents or What's new pages and go directly there instead.

I have also read that a static home page can also play a role with search engines since they seem to at least partly decide how often to crawl a web site based on how often the home page changes.

The last reason to consider a change to this page was that I wanted the Bicycle Touring 101 banner on every page if possible.

The touring image that used to be on the home page moved to the What's touring section page so it's still on the web site. Since it's a picture from one of my bicycle touring adventures and shows my best friend Bob riding his touring bicycle, I felt that it needed to stay on the site.

Smaller wheel with dynamic updates and polling options

The fourth home page design is very new as I type this. A very visible change is the much smaller bicycle wheel on the left hand side of the page.

This page is much more dynamic with the addition of several new areas on the right hand side.

These new options include an area for Sponsors, Editorials, Interviews, Polls and the "Five recent updates" section. Most of these sections also include a link taking you to a web page with a complete list for that area.

Quick links are featured to take you quickly to various pages including a search page.

This page marks the return of the Bicycle Touring 101 banner to all pages in the web site. The new banner is a vast improvement over the original and nicely ties the various web pages together.

The only potential problem I have identified at this time is that the navigation method between the front page and the inside pages is different. I will monitor this over time and if it seems to be a concern to the readers then changes will occur once again!

An even smaller wheel allows much more information to be available immediately

The fifth version of the home page went live on February 11, 2005. A smaller Bicycle Touring 101 wheel is now located at the right of the page. (It seems like the wheel has gone from full sized touring bicycle wheel to a Bob trailer size wheel over the last few homepage changes).

The net effect of this change is to provide more space on the page for content links. Note that the page now contains the following Sections - Sponsors, Editorials and Interviews, Polls, Some recent updates, Featured Journal(s) and Special Highlights.

The link to the Bicycle Touring Guestbook has now moved so that it is located under the wheel. Quick Links are still present at the very bottom of the page.

I am constantly struggling with maintaining a balance between how much information is on the page and keeping the page from looking too cluttered or complicated and scaring people away. If you compare this homepage picture with the picture of the home page that preceded it you will notice that the site banner at the top of the page now seems smaller. In actual fact the banner is still the same, it's the length of the page that's changed to allow for more information to be present.

One of my favourite quotes seems like it would fit this page nicely since there has truly been a trial and error learning process involved with building the Bicycle Touring 101 web site and it still continues today!

"Those who refuse to remember history are condemned to repeat it's mistakes...."

Unknown (if you know then please let me know).

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