Our New Site using: Xara Web Designer 10 Premium Supersite with XT-CMS 1.9

Just wanted to post the new website I'm working on.

Its 96% done and will be "live" October 28th. Working on tweaking the "speed"...especially with the home page picture widget.

The test url is here:
http://new.clintonhealth.org


it will be replacing the "current" website (made with FrontPage 2000) http://www.clintonhealth.org
and will switch over to that url on the 28th.


Its designed with Xara Web Designer 10 Premium and XT-CMS 1.9. I based some of the cool ideas from Xara's site here: http://www.webdesigner-v10-demosite...._page_products

The site is a "super-site" which is made from 1 Xara file with several pages in it, and the CMS template is made of 1 Xara file with 2 pages in it. NOTE: both Xara files also include a variant for cellphones.

We have approximately 51 pages of content, and there was no way we were going to try to build all those individual pages. Thank goodness there was a CMS program that works with Xara!

So all the bells & whistles part -- like the home page and all the Services & Programs' own main pages is just using Xara, as soon as you click on actual topic (example: Go to BUSINESSES then click on Public Water Systems) you are now looking thru the XT-CMS program. Very cool!

We using Windows IIS 7.0 and hosting on own website.

We're very happy with both software applications (Xara and XT-CMS).

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!


(Special shout-out to Tom at XT-CMS for ALL his patience and tweaking, and to Egg, Gary, and Acorn, at Xara for helping me out -- teaching a "newbie") :)

Karen

Hi Karen

I like it. Congratulations!

Please give your pages a title (Website Properties > Page > Page Title. Right now your home page in the browser tab says Home. Also give each page a unique title and add page descriptions as well as a general overall description in the Website tab.

Thank you very much Gary :)

Yes that's what I have left to do is the fine-tuning. Page title, meta tags, (meta tags on the CMS side too), just tweaking here and there. OF course I haven't initiated any web crawling as I don't want it to crawl on the test url. Plus I have not put the "search this page" in yet for that same reason.

If you guys figure out a way to be able to open something in a new tab that would be great (on that home page photo widget thingy).

If its going to a topic in the CMS then opening in "self" is good, but when I have a flyer like the rabies clinics which is a pdf file, I would like that to open up in a new tab for the user, so they don't close the whole website when they are done reading that flyer.

Something else, if I do that photo optimization thing, what do I put the size at? Is it 192?

Karen

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Originally Posted by KarenC

that home page photo widget thingy

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Karen, try this in the image's link:

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javascript:void(window.open("http://www.clintonhealth.org/BulletinsPress/PR09152015.pdf", "_blank" ));

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When it is the live site, you can drop the http://www.clintonhealth.org/ part; it will probably end up as javascript:void(window.open("index_htm_files/BulletinsPress/PR09152015.pdf", "_blank" ));

Acorn

Karen, I also like the Google translate touch,
Acorn

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Originally Posted by Acorn

Karen, I also like the Google translate touch,
Acorn

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Thank you Acorn :)

I will also try the code you suggested to see if that will open the page off the photo in a new tab, when I get to work tomorrow.
I wonder why they didn't enable that option like all the other links?

Karen

The way I have my Chrome set up your page doesn't load. Works well with Edge fairly quickly but the slides take longer to appear. Thought it might be Add-block but no it must be as Gary stated "#xl_xr_page_home" is causing the problem.

Hmmm Albacore,
The "#xl_xr_page_home page names shouldn't affect if its blocked, must be something in your Chrome? Chrome on my Samsung and from the destktop and tablet works great.

Karen

Oh yeah....can you guys give advice on the photo optimization tool? what do I set it to in the settings (ex: for the photo widget thing).... 192?

Thank you,

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Originally Posted by KarenC

Oh yeah....can you guys give advice on the photo optimization tool? what do I set it to in the settings (ex: for the photo widget thing).... 192?

Thank you,

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My advice is to optimise all your images before you put them into XWD, preferably using Adobe Photoshop/Elements

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Originally Posted by nazf355

My advice is to optimise all your images before you put them into XWD, preferably using Adobe Photoshop/Elements

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No need to use another program for this task.

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Originally Posted by pauland

No need to use another program for this task.

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Why?

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Originally Posted by nazf355

Why?

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You can either use Xara's inbuilt optimisation feature, or use Xara to take each image and export an optimised image of the right size and compression.

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Originally Posted by pauland

You can either use Xara's inbuilt optimisation feature, or use Xara to take each image and export an optimised image of the right size and compression.

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Adobe Photoshop/Elements does the best job when it comes to image optimisation, and since images tend to make up the most in terms of kb size of a site you really want the best compression you can get, I have yet to see and app reduce image size whilst retaining quality better than Adobe.

You would be hard pressed to see any differrence between a Xara-optimised image than one from Photoshop/Elements.

I would never suggest that anyone even consider purchasing Adobe software for this purpose if you have Xara. If you already have the Adobe software, then fair enough.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pauland

You would be hard pressed to see any differrence between a Xara-optimised image than one from Photoshop/Elements.

I would never suggest that anyone even consider purchasing Adobe software for this purpose if you have Xara. If you already have the Adobe software, then fair enough.

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The url http://new.clintonhealth.org/ has 2MB of just images, even if Adobe software was just 10% better the resulting 200k saving would be worth it from a loading point of view, especially so if you are using a supersite (which I don't recommend).
Do bear in mind that Google now takes into consideration the speed of a site for search index ranking purposes, so it's doubly important.

I think that optimisation isn't just down to the software. There's no evidence that Adobe software is 10% better at optimisation.

Some people have single images of 200K.

As for a supersite - the styling of this site I would class as 'traditional'. It would fare better if it had a more modern structured design - the kind of thing that Cloud does so well. I'm not a fan of the design of this site, though I see a lot of work has gone into it.

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Originally Posted by pauland

I think that optimisation isn't just down to the software. There's no evidence that Adobe software is 10% better at optimisation.

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I can take the image of the dog in the slider that is currently 67kb and optimise it to 56k with no discernible loss of quality, that's 16% better in terms of file size, it would probably be higher if I had the original image. I have yet to find any software that beats Adobe for image optimisation, not GIMP, not Paintshop Pro, not PhotoPlus. INMHO it really is the best. Of course I would be happy to test any image against Adobe if that would be evidence for you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pauland

Some people have single images of 200K.

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I never recommend more than 100K, unless you are doing something really image orientated and you lay down the expectation that the user will have to wait for images to load to see them at a reasonable quality, such as for photography sites.

I think most people use Xara to build a functional site that suits their individual purpose and design abilities. In that respect this site is perfect. We can't expect everyone to be open to attending to all of the small details and what is often a matter of personal judgement.

I say "well done" to Karen and while the design is not what I would have done, the site works and will do the job.

Half the dimensions of an image - 75% "compression". Using a pop-up if image is that important.
Use IrfranView (http://www.irfanview.com/ free for non-commerical so read the licence) for good compression.
Compression isn't everything though; it has to be what makes the site zing.

Acorn

If there's a will to continue all this stuff about Adobe and compression, etc then perhaps start it on another thread. It's somewhat off topic and I think we've already given a heads-up to the issue and should leave it rest. The OPs site is perfectly functional, regardless.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pauland

If there's a will to continue all this stuff about Adobe and compression, etc then perhaps start it on another thread. It's somewhat off topic and I think we've already given a heads-up to the issue and should leave it rest. The OPs site is perfectly functional, regardless.

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Normally, I would agreed but the OP asked about compression and there was a digression into going down an expensive Adobe rabbit hole. I suggested a free solution that might be of use. The last point is I do not think the site is functional as, for me, it takes 13 seconds to render the image carousel. Compression may assist but I think the site design needs to reduce this overhead and probably as it is a Variant site and Supersite, lose the super bit to get the home page loaded as quickly as possible.

@Karen:

Change the carousel images to four square static pictures like the Services & Programs.
Lose the Menu - Services and Programs images are doing that already.
Use the B&W Quick Links as your unique feature along the top of your pages - they are very effective.
Switch away from a Supersite to a conventional one.
Footer - uses different fonts to no benefit.
Last one - I just can't see what benefit XT-CMS has given you - all they seem to do is lose context so I am forced to navigate back using the menu.

Acorn

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Acorn

Normally, I would agreed but the OP asked about compression and there was a digression into going down an expensive Adobe rabbit hole. I suggested a free solution that might be of use. The last point is I do not think the site is functional as, for me, it takes 13 seconds to render the image carousel. Compression may assist but I think the site design needs to reduce this overhead and probably as it is a Variant site and Supersite, lose the super bit to get the home page loaded as quickly as possible.

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This is exactly what I was going to say, it's not functional for me either on a 1.5MB per second connection it's still taking 11 seconds to load.
I also wouldn't call Adobe an expensive rabbit hole, you can get an old version of elements say v9 for as little as a tenner, but anyway, moving on.

To widen the subject somewhat I'd test your site in something like LINK which can give you excellent advice on reducing download speeds.

If I run your site through a site map generator it shows 64 pages which is huge for supersite.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

To widen the subject somewhat I'd test your site in something like LINK which can give you excellent advice on reducing download speeds.

If I run your site through a site map generator it shows 64 pages which is huge for supersite.

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I use this one

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

It's free

Hi nazf, not going to start a which on-line website optimisation site is the best to use but your link seems to be based on a book first produced in mid 2008 with no further editions. I'd suggest that a seven year old optomisation site is a bit out of date. For example it issues warnings that the total number of images on a page is over 100Kb. ???

The link I gave to pingdom was perhaps misleading, you can test any site for free HERE

Egg that's a great link.

I ran the OPs site and my placeholder site.

My site is not very complex and I have a 1.7MB image that needs optimization. The OPs site is smaller in terms of graphics download size, but a lot of different files, so the number of download requests is way higher and consequently the download was much longer than mine.

I'd advise anyone to use Eggs link - it will identify massive images easily.


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Added: Now I have an email from creatory.org telling me that my website has performance problems. That's not so great..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

Hi nazf, not going to start a which on-line website optimisation site is the best to use but your link seems to be based on a book first produced in mid 2008 with no further editions. I'd suggest that a seven year old optomisation site is a bit out of date. For example it issues warnings that the total number of images on a page is over 100Kb. ???

The link I gave to pingdom was perhaps misleading, you can test any site for free HERE

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I only included it because I couldn't see a free test on the page you originally linked to. Yes it may be a bit out of date, but I use it more for the information it provides rather than the analysis.
ATEOTD my advice remains the same, optimise as much as you can to provide the best user experience.

Just a heads-up about Eggs link for analysing websites.

The report that page generates looks excellent but be aware that during analysis the site seems to be scrapped for a contact email and the contact for the site will receive an email saying their site has problems.

I haven't seen any warning anywhere about this. I have tried this on three sites and one was Karen's site (sorry Karen) and two were mine. I received two emails directly having run the analysis and they are almost identical in content and purport to come from two different companies. I only have a single email on my sites - I hate to think what it would do if I had multiple email links.

I'm not sure I'll ever use this service again if it results in spam emails.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pauland

Just a heads-up about Eggs link for analysing websites.

The report that page generates looks excellent but be aware that during analysis the site seems to be scrapped for a contact email and the contact for the site will receive an email saying their site has problems.

I haven't seen any warning anywhere about this. I have tried this on three sites and one was Karen's site (sorry Karen) and two were mine. I received two emails directly having run the analysis and they are almost identical in content and purport to come from two different companies. I only have a single email on my sites - I hate to think what it would do if I had multiple email links.

I'm not sure I'll ever use this service again if it results in spam emails.

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Where on your site is your e-mail address?

Where on your site is your e-mail address?

It isn't, but there is a form handler and I think they've opened the PHP file to scrape the recipient.

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Originally Posted by pauland

Where on your site is your e-mail address?

It isn't, but there is a form handler and I think they've opened the PHP file to scrape the recipient.

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Who do you think they is?

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Originally Posted by nazf355

Who do you think they is?

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I think they're pretty outrageous. I don't trust companies that do such things. I still don't see how they could get the content of the PHP handler though. AFAIK it shouldn't be possible.

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Originally Posted by pauland

I think they're pretty outrageous. I don't trust companies that do such things.

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But do you know who is doing it?

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Originally Posted by nazf355

But do you know who is doing it?

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Yes, it's the company behind Egg's link.

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Originally Posted by pauland

Yes, it's the company behind Egg's link.

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Not necessarily.

Here's what I think is happening, everytime you go to that link and do a test, on that screen it lists the past two dozen or so urls tested, this can of course be picked up by anyone, and run the url through a whois search to get an associated e-mail to send a 'your website has issues' e-mail. To note creatory.org is a Romanian registered domain.

Yes, you could well be right. Very sneaky.

saw the same as Paul. and i don't believe they're doing it thru a whois search for the urls listed. probably scanning those dozen listed and grabbing from the site itself. i've got three personal sites (every email address associated is mine alone) and the only one i get that spam email on is the only site with a mailto:info@name.com

one of the other sites goes thru one of those contact widgets that utilizes Captcha and the other doesn't have any way to contact me from the site itself. no spam email generated on either of those two accounts testing them several times.

(hmmm. maybe a different thread is needed if there's some ideas about this so as not to hijack this thread any longer???)

Okay guys, thank you for all the constructive comments...
I tweaked the heck out of it!

SORRY - THIS POST IS LONG :)

It is now "live" :) http://www.clintonhealth.org/

I did the following:
Ran all images in the actual directories thru a free program called FileOptimizer: http://nikkhokkho.sourceforge.net/st...=FileOptimizer
Its FREE and really works with "normal" as the setting (png and jpeg).


Ran the GOOGLE web tools PAGESPEED insights against the live URL and fixed:
optimized images in FileOptimizer tool
minified javascript (used online tool)
minified csss scripts (used online tool)
enabled compression in IIS server
leveraged browser caching in IIS server

RESULTS on different testing websites:
Results on PageInsights: 71/100 on MOBILE - 89/100 on DESKTOP - user experience 92/100
Results on WebPageTest: all "A's" in the 5 green boxes at the top
Results on GTMETRIX : PageSpeed score was 86% (avg is 81% for other websites') - YSLOW score was 78% (avg is 79% for others' websites)

I know these test result sites don't necessary mean everything, but it does at least help you identify some things you can tweak. I definitely see a difference.

Just a FYI (@Egg Bramhill) - its not 57 pages of supersite. :)
Its one Xara file with 9 pages of supersite (mobile / desktop)
and another Xara file with 2 pages of conventional (mobile /desktop) - this part is used to display the text in the XT-CMS
Then there's the 57 pages inside the XT-CMS program where you type "text" (the content)


So
if you are looking at the "swishing effect" on the home page or any of the pages in the MENU (or services / program boxes) ...you are looking at the 9 pages of supersite
if you see the INFO Bar on the left pane ....you are looking inside the XT-CMS program with the Xara file that has 2 conventional pages only - this displays the content.


I still have meta-tags and Google analytics to add here and there, and such. I did setup users in the XT-CMS to allow them to change any of the 57 pages of "content" for their programs (hence the advantage of using a CMS).

In a couple of years we will move to the version 11 "style" (which I love) --- we already have version 10 and was quite a way thru building, when version 11 came out.

We are a "poor" local government agency with limited resources (staff and money) and a lot of programs.

PEOPLE RESPONSE:
The Director absolutely loves it
other directors in their depts. love it --- want it! :)
co-workers / staff love it
fellow IT (different dept) want to know what I used for software
It was on the local radio / had press releases / was demonstrated at the staff mtg / and will be demonstrated at the next Board of Health Mtg.

I'm good with that

Karen :)

PS: thank you Acorn for the code (opening pdf in new window from the photo widget) - I do appreciate it.