Building a Better Media
The election highlighted both the poverty of thinking in the political class and the narrowness of outlook in the media class. The media is structurally biased, opposed to anyone who proposes real change and owned and controlled by billionaires. Everyone knows this, everyone sees this. But if you want to create and sustain a difference then you need to support it.
Support us here: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/bella-caledonia-2020
It’s not just about Scotland. In a world of disinformation, propaganda and absurdism the need for independent media is more crucial than ever.
Our fundraiser is about creating a vision for Scotland and Scottish media looking forward.
Our new projects include:
- Create opportunities for new young writers and content creators
- Commissioning research and writing that looks to the future and imagines a better Scotland in 20 years time
- Rebuild our website to include collaborations with other alternative media
- Reach out to new audiences on new platforms
Support us here: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/bella-caledonia-2020
But because we are going to have to move to new servers and new digital hosts as our current hosts have closed down [New Hosts Required – Bella Caledonia] – we are looking to refresh the website when we move. We have a list of things we’d like to fix on the site, but we’d like to hear from users too. Is there something about the website you’d like fixed, changed or upgraded. I’m mainly thinking about technical things and user experience, but if you have editorial suggestions, then fire away too.
Over to you.
Web-standards-based web optimisation is recommended, for:
accessibility
performance
user-experience
low-bandwidth/shared connections
responsive design (mobile-friendly, adapts well to all devices and window sizes)
part of defence-in-depth to DDoS attacks
search-engine friendliness
archives will work better
being a good web citizen and reducing energy footprint of website
It’s been too long since I studied the subject, so I can’t give you a specific reference, but I’d recommend this as your top technical/user-experience priority (above even information architecture and page design). Users won’t be able to admire your articles if they can’t download them.
Essentially your pages should load immediately even without caching for most users. I’ve done this work before, and we’re talking about possible file-size savings from multi-megabytes to just a few dozen kB, depending on hosting platform. Your designers should be able to point you to online tools for the new site (which usually won’t work through intermediaries like Cloudflare, which should provide your own testing tools).
Obviously content will add to the template load, so image optimisation will be the ‘lowest-hanging fruit’ for you. Using SVGs are one route for non-photo graphics, but they have to be correctly optimised too. Watch out for script-heavy optional effects and gadgets. Try to set the lowest imaginable specifications as a bar, and make sure your article text loads and is readable first. Use HTML5 best practices for structuring text, to give semantic grip to browsers.
I’ve signed up to the newsletter twice but never received it.?I’ve emailed about it but never received an answer, so I can’t tell if your setup rejected my emails or mine rejected yours. I know that several newsletter platforms have problems with servers defining them as junk even before it gets to the spam folders but could you please do something to make sure the problem doesn’t continue?
Hi Elizabeth, yes this No 1 on our list. Will sort asap. Apologies.
I miss the RSS feed, I think it broke when you added the Cloudflare DDoS protection. It would be great if there was a way to have both. Cheers!
Yeah we can fix that
Hoping we can remove the Cloudflare to be honest
Last year we changed the sharing options as we move over to BlueSky and Mastodon. Do any readers actually use Mastodon?
I am hoping to integrate more alternative media into the site with feeds from podcasts and other independent sites.
Also thinking about removing the book advert as its not doing very much.
Hi Mike, I tried to donate to the crowdfunder, but it wanted to charge me £4 for the privilege so I just donated using the normal channel.
It’s strange that, in the past, when we’ve asked readers for feedback on the site or for changes they’d like to see, we’ve been inundated with suggestions. This time nada. I wonder why that is? An insights?