This is part of a series of articles on Internet basics.
Click here for the first installment in the series of articles.
The previous installment of this series described two kinds of descriptive web page: the 50-word description and the lengthy description.
Click here for the previous installment in this series.
The 50-word description is the basic unit in any web page. It explains the purpose of the page at a glance. The Jewish World page in our illustrative website, the Jewish and Hebrew Discussion Groups, is an example of a 50-word description.
Click here for the Jewish World page, which gives an example of a 50-word description.
That page actually really has 54 words in the descriptive paragraph, but a reasonable deviation from our guideline is acceptable.
A subsequent article will explain the fact that the 50-word description on that page is supplemented by other repetitive information, such as a series of links.
The lengthy description includes pages that people are probably not going to read unless they have no choice. Don’t try to entice your readers with those pages.
The Rules for Posting page for the discussion groups has an unwelcome lengthy description.
Click here for a Rules page for the Jewish and Hebrew Discussion groups.
It’s not a good page, and it certainly doesn’t welcome readers.
Those who were not permitted to post an item to a discussion group were sent to this page in order to locate and correct the problem with their postings. In other words, they were forced to read it.
That’s not a very good excuse for such a page, however. That Rules page was so bad that it is now being re-done. It will remain on that website as an example of how to prepare a bad page.
This format is not even acceptable for people who are forced to read it because they have no choice.
The next installment in this series describes better ways of handling that Background Article or Story format.
Click here for the next article in this series, which explains the Background Article or Story format.
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Your exercise for this article is as follows:
Explain the two types of formats described in this article.
How many words should a basic descriptive webpage include?
What may happen when readers visit a lengthy description page?
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