Consolidating web sites

[Brian Ellis]

I have tens of web sites over three hosts and half-a-dozen domains and with different appearances. Quite frankly, their organisation is anarchic. Because of this, I want to consolidate them into a coherent set of a single website and a number of sub-sites.

I've started this Herculean task, akin to the Augean stables, but without a river to divert into cleaning them up!

What I have done, so far, is to make a new home page with a footer menu. The links on this point mainly to the old sites with two exceptions: Ozone and Cyprus Nature. These two point to brand new sub-sites, each with a different footer menu (the Ozone sub-site is all brand new material, while the Cyprus Nature sub-site is largely imported from the old website, but with updating an a few new pages.) These two sub-sites have a consistent appearance with the Home Page, which is linked in both (the old sites remain fairly anarchic).

The point I wish to make is that I need your opinions and help before I go any farther in this big project. Please go to

http://cypenv.eu/green/

and look at the footer menu. Then click on the Ozone and Cyprus Nature links to see how I aim to make the sub-sites consistent. You can explore the contents of both sites as you wish or you can revert to the original Home Page by clicking on Home at the bottom left. You can also link to the other sites/pages but these are not yet consolidated and don't have links back (the back button should work, though).

This is very much work in progress and there may be unforeseen problems with some browsers (tested with IE 11, FF 38 and Pale Moon 25 X64). If you see anything untoward or have suggestions, etc., please post them here, so that all can see and confirm your findings.

A BIG thank you for your help!


Best regards,

Brian

[Umfriend]

I find the use of all that green quite annoying actually.

Not that I would know how to do this but can I suggest you try to keep the footer at one location regardless of page and have the page, if long, scrollable within a fram between fixed header and footer?

Also, the footer is huge.

Wondering what the total site-structure woudl look like. Perpahps you could consider putting the links in a menu-like structure at the top?

Just a few cents.

[UtwigMU]

You could get a virtual private server, put wordpress on it and do all the sites in it - this would be most cost effective. Also wordpress has some responsive design out of the box (shows good on tablet, phone, laptop) themes.
Definitely don't go with 2000's site design in 2015.

You could also hire someone on elance to help you out.

[Brian Ellis]

I find the use of all that green quite annoying actually.

Not that I would know how to do this but can I suggest you try to keep the footer at one location regardless of page and have the page, if long, scrollable within a fram between fixed header and footer?

Also, the footer is huge.

Wondering what the total site-structure woudl look like. Perpahps you could consider putting the links in a menu-like structure at the top?

Just a few cents.

Thanks for your suggestions, Umf.

Noted re the green, but I could hardly put an environmental site in cobalt blue, could I? I could lighten the background in the CSS pages, perhaps.

I would be opposed to having the footer in a fixed position. If you look in Cyprus nature, there are just a few lines between the footer and the page title on the Home Page. The footer is therefore visible and usable without scrolling. Look at Birds, Butterflies or Orchids, the page is very long with the footer at the end. If, on the Home Page, I put the footer in the same place, there would be a kilometre of blank scrolling to reach it.

I chose a footer menu, in preference to a side or top menu a) because it is a popular layout and b) the page content can be addressed immediately after the title.

Yes, it's huge! I chose a 7x7 matrix for the menu as being a reasonable compromise; I would have preferred a larger one but I chose this as offering a navigability to the major places, while remaining legible. Some of the old sites have over 100 subjects and I wish to have only sub-sites, while ruling out sub-sub-sites which would make menu management unwieldy. 49 options is therefore already limiting as can be seen in the Cyprus Nature footer, where I could not find a logical place for Scorpions or Fungi.

Your few cents are valuable.

[Brian Ellis]

You could get a virtual private server, put wordpress on it and do all the sites in it - this would be most cost effective. Also wordpress has some responsive design out of the box (shows good on tablet, phone, laptop) themes.
Definitely don't go with 2000's site design in 2015.

You could also hire someone on elance to help you out.

Thanks. Yes, it's a 2000 design without bells and whistles. My philosophy is that at 83, on a state pension, my only resource is limited time and certainly not money. I therefore want to finish this before the Grim Reaper takes me, so I chose the simplest solution with the means I was comfortable with for speed, I looked at the WordPress site and found it incomprehensible to my dinosaur brain. I could probably get the project finished while still on the learning curve for WordPress!

Back to the Augean stables...

[Umfriend]

Well, when VW started trying to get/market a green image they started the Blue Motion line... If I were to do something I would replace green with environmentally friendly or concious or something. And yes, blue indeed.

I think you misunderstood my fixed-position suggestion. The footer should allays be visible. There should be a content-frame between header and footer within which you would scroll text for long-content pages.

If you have that many pages then, I would think, you would ideally have a menu-structure with two or three levels. Alternatively, given your type of content, you could perhaps change the setup to one where you would have articles? Use of tags and keywords could make it far easier for the visitor to navigate/search? Of course articles can reference each other. Again, I am not saying this is all easy, I could not do it, but if you want the contect to be found and used then I would advise things like this.

Thanks for your suggestions, Umf.

Noted re the green, but I could hardly put an environmental site in cobalt blue, could I? I could lighten the background in the CSS pages, perhaps.

I would be opposed to having the footer in a fixed position. If you look in Cyprus nature, there are just a few lines between the footer and the page title on the Home Page. The footer is therefore visible and usable without scrolling. Look at Birds, Butterflies or Orchids, the page is very long with the footer at the end. If, on the Home Page, I put the footer in the same place, there would be a kilometre of blank scrolling to reach it.

I chose a footer menu, in preference to a side or top menu a) because it is a popular layout and b) the page content can be addressed immediately after the title.

Yes, it's huge! I chose a 7x7 matrix for the menu as being a reasonable compromise; I would have preferred a larger one but I chose this as offering a navigability to the major places, while remaining legible. Some of the old sites have over 100 subjects and I wish to have only sub-sites, while ruling out sub-sub-sites which would make menu management unwieldy. 49 options is therefore already limiting as can be seen in the Cyprus Nature footer, where I could not find a logical place for Scorpions or Fungi.

Your few cents are valuable.