July 24, 2009
Website Builder Tutorials: How to add the Time and Date to your Website
Another back-to-basics tutorial this one, and a little bit old school too. When you’re building a website it sometimes looks better if you add the time and date to your web page. It helps people know that your site is up to date, and what they’re seeing is ‘alive’. have a go adding the time & date and see if it suits your website.
I guess that the main danger with putting the ‘date last edited’ on the site is that you’d need to be in at it fairly regularly in order to make the site always look live.
What’s a reasonable length of time to leave your website without it looking as though you’re not bothering with it? Quarterly tweaking ok or would it need to be monthly? Or does it depend on the kind of site that you’ve got? An e-shop, one would imagine, should be changed/ restocked on a regular basis for it to look like a successful business?
AX
Comment by Alison Cross — July 27, 2009 @ 11:40 am
Hmmm, interesting question.
Easy answer? As often as possible! I think you want to make your website appear as dynamic and up to date as possible - as a real destination where things are happening.
The harsh reality is that few of us have the time to do it more than occasionally.
Maybe it all depends on the percentage of ‘business’ your website brings you. Is it all via your website, or just a little bit? The greater the percentage, the more important it is going to be to make your site appear vibrant and up to date.
Of course there’s no point in updating it for the sake of it: if you haven’t got anything new to say, don’t say it!
How often do you do yours?
Ken
Comment by admin — July 27, 2009 @ 2:01 pm
Hi Ken,
I was wandering if you could help. I want to be doing a surf report on our site on the home page where I can upload a picture of the surf and comment on the conditions at least once a day if not more.
Would the best way to be just keep changing the details or will there be a time delay before everyone can see it? or would I use one of those live feed things? Wasn’t sure if there was a way of getting pictures up on them?
Lots of other websites seem to have those live feed thingys so was keen to stay up to date and get one on my site some how!
Cheers for your help,
Ben
Comment by ben ridding — July 27, 2009 @ 2:17 pm
My Tarot one is currently undergoing a bit of a change of image ;-) But prior to that, I hadn’t changed it since I fiddled around with the Twitter html stuff.
Clients’ websites are altered as requested by them - sometimes once a month, sometimes just when an e-mail address changes.
Or if someone contacts me to say there is a broken link
AX
Comment by Alison Cross — July 27, 2009 @ 2:51 pm
Hi Ben,
Nice idea.
As soon as you upload the image / report, it will be live on the web – anyone visiting your site will see it, it will be live. What you could do is create an RSS feed so that you could send the surf report to people who subscribed to your surf report.
We’re updating our RSS stuff, but until its live you can still do it – but its a bit of a hack:
To do it you’d need the HTML widget: check this. http://www.webeden.co.uk/blog/product-news/how-to-use-html-on-your-webeden-website/
Then go to http://www.addthis.com. You can sign up for a bookmarking / sharing / RSS button. Just paste the code into the HTML widget, and then put the widget on your site.
Bear in mind that people looking at the site in Firefox 3 and below will see a bit of a weirdness. From our Google analytics, I reckon that means approx 15% of people.
Good luck!
Ken
Comment by admin — July 27, 2009 @ 2:53 pm
What I do is; i always put ‘Last Updated’ and place the date 3 days behind of the current date, this have increased my conversions about 30%… Guys you have to try this.
Erika
Comment by Erika Wirfield — August 3, 2009 @ 12:50 pm