A question for folks who *aren't* developers:
What would be the most important things/qualities for you in a website/page builder? Specifically, in the kind of builder that lets you build in some limited amount of interactivity (like forum functionality).
Developers, sit this one out please. Boosting is of course appreciated, though.
@joepie91 Clarity.
I think I'm in the half-way point between knowing what stuff does and what it normally doesn't do or how to prod something into working, so I'm probably not the *best* target on this question. But the one thing I always notice is that a lot of things are often left out and force me to waste way too much time digging around looking for how to do something *very simple*.
Take for instance: Right now I'm playing around with what Yellow (https://datenstrom.se/yellow/) looks like and how it acts. The editor is fine, but there's also no clear indications of what other attributes I can use with images and how to resize them (e.g., what tag do I need to decrease size to 25% of original). Compare to WordPress which has that whole thing automated and doesn't really require more than a few button-presses.
In this instance, all the editor needs is something *right on screen* that goes "Hey, you need to use [thing] to do this" for very basic and very common needs.
@joepie91 (For the record, I've figured out most of my issues. It's just that some things aren't easily accessible or automatically clear, and it presumes that everyone holds the same knowledge on formatting.)
@joepie91 I'm an ex developer (over 5 years since I gave a toss now, and I don't even have a proper code editor on my computer anymore) so I can make computers do my bidding if I *have* to, but I just want to absolute ease of making new stuff. I don't want to have to worry about anything, which is why I set up a static site generator that uses Markdown and use ghostwriter to make posts. That plus a simple deploy script that uploads the built files to my server and signs off a commit to git (when that part wants to work, bash scripts with input hard) means it takes next to no effort for me to make a post anymore
But it took quite a bit of knoweledge and setup to get to that point, so just making it easier to get to that point.
@joepie91 Accessibility features! If you’re making things interactive I’d love to have that be inclusive from the start. As a disabled user that’s frustrating me a lot with free/low cost build your own website makers.
@gullvinge Hmm, could you elaborate on some of the common issues you run into with (the output of) those existing website makers? To make sure I'm not missing anything.
@joepie91 Sure!
I'm a partially sighted disability advocate bridging many types of physical / cognitive etc disabilities.
In short: Inaccessible CMS (incorrect tags/semantics, low contrasts that are unable to be easily changed)
Output of code is the wrong semantics (screenreaders depends on this)
Not able to customise the language title tag (again, screenreaders depend on this, as well as SEO)
No easily locatable alt text boxes.
@joepie91 The working assumption seems to be that audiences may be disabled, devs or content aren't, so the front/backends have different levels of accessibilities.
Made me give up on easy-use resources such as wordpress altogether (wordpress has some accessible themes, whereas the CMS remains clunky, cognitively.)
@joepie91 I'm also someone who is very impatient with my tech. I don't have the patience for a lot of mucking around. Either it works, or it doesn't :p Just to give you some perspective on where I'm coming from. I can't troubleshoot; don't know how.
@joepie91 clean (ie semantically sound, gunk free) output, good UX (preview, knowing when to hide options / declutter, different viewport previews), allows easy CSS overrides & targeting, fast. Clean output is the main one - many add so much odd nested bloat.
@nicol "CSS overrides & targeting" in what sense?
@joepie91 to add block-specific css overrides isn't great practice but useful for quick fixes. Targeting needs the block to have a unique selector/id that you can target it in a theme css file.
@joepie91 to me the most important thing is: take away my ability to "bikeshed". The less I can customize, the better, so make smart defaults and give limited options that all work together consistently. This is especially true for layout stuff. Components need to arrange themselves simply and neatly without me having to worry about convincing this margin or that whitespace to behave, or else I'll spend all my time pixel-pushing (and usually fail to ever make it look right anyway 😫)
@joepie91
I don't want to make websites that are super flashy and hard to navigate and slow computers down. I want to make a simple ass 'old looking' author website without 600 bells and whistles.
(I might be a little opinionated on this particular matter xD)
Accessibility as the base line. Simplicity. Post/update scheduling. Moderator tools (for the interaction part.) A person to talk to if problems arise.
tangent about interactivity
@joepie91 We're mostly not devs - we can write static pages with basic HTML and PICO-8 carts with PICO-8 Lua...
...but as /instance mods/ our immediate reaction is: "forum functionality" isn't a limited amount of interactivity - that's actually a huge feature which requires specific design for moderation with documentation and risk models to ensure proper handling of all kinds of bad behavior. Like (a) spam (b) toxic users (c) people's credentials being stolen etc. etc. etc. And ideally you wanna be able to delegate some things to mods without giving them access to everything.
- Packbats 🎒💧
@joepie91 I want a website builder that doesn't create websites that slowdown my computer, and if I'm adding comments/forum functionality I want posting as a guest really easy, but not 4chan easy (like the smackjeeves comment section back in the day).