The "Web Bloopers" book that we have on our shelves is a marvellous inspiration - a "there but for the grace of God go I" reminder when we put a web site - or even just a form - together - of catches to look out for.

My thoughts came back on to this a few minutes ago as I helped Wiltshire Council with a survey about their web site, which I had visited to learn about their financial investments in Iceland (found here) and how it might effect public transport (my specific TransWilts / rail view here). But that's another story ...

I was offered a choice of how often I visit the web site:
• daily
• several times a month.
Now - I would judge that I'm there a couple of times each week ... for which there was no suitable option between those two!

I was asked how I found out about the site and given ONE option to choose from. I would love to have said "I came via Google [link from another site] where I had gone to find the link to the right place on your site" but the nearest options were:
• I knew the sight already
• I found a link elsewhere to you.
Now - which of those should I choose?

I was asked to rank various elements of the site, including navigation therein. As I only went to the page that Google pointed me to, I haven't a clue as to how the internal navigation was working today ... but the survey through my lack of an answer back in my face and insisted I answer!

It's easy - VERY easy - to stand in a greenhouse and throw stones. But I do attempt to evaluate forms I put on the web to ensure that the more crass holes have been dealt with. What do I mean? Well - here's a different example.

One of the regular hotel chains that I use when away asks if you'll arrive before or after 8 p.m.; ironically, when I'm travelling a long distance the honest answer is "don't know" as 8 p.m. is almost exactly the time that I expect to get there and before / after is a guess. Now I know why the hotel wants to know - it's because they need to know which rooms to prepare earlier and which may be late, and I applaud them (a clap with just one hand, though) for attempting to gather the data.

Learning from the problems which I have as a user of their site, I opted to include a pull-down menu on our site asking people to ESTIMATE when they would be arriving, and giving 2 hour bands. That way, the customer should not feel worried by "will they let the room go if I'm not there by 5" as it was an estimate, and if the booker is a 2 hour "slot" out as regards their actual arrival, it's no problem at all to us - we still have an excellent broad brush overview of our need to have rooms ready. And, yes, we do have a "before 3pm" and "after 11pm" options to catch the extremes and not miss out any options.

Wiltshire Council's survey - with answers forced to conform with criteria that really don't match the user's view, and fed with false data on things like navigation - may give them some information. But the detail of the results will be statistically flawed, and the thoughtful survey completer frustrated, all due to a lack of proper form and survey design.
(written 2008-10-11 09:33:27)

 G902 - Well House Consultants - Web site techniques, utility and visibility
  [2668] Is it worth it? - (2010-03-09)
  [2569] How to run a successful online poll / petition / survey / consultation - (2010-01-10)
  [2552] Web site traffic - real users, or just noise? - (2009-12-26)
  [2532] Analysing Google arrivals by country of origin - (2009-12-10)
  [2519] Status Page / breaks of service in early December - (2009-11-30)
  [2410] Removal of technical resources from this site - (2009-09-19)
  [2389] Writing with our customers words - (2009-09-01)
  [2341] Koulutus, Open Source tietokone kielillä - (2009-08-09)
  [2340] ldning, Open Source dator språk - (2009-08-09)
  [2339] Opplæring, Open Source datamaskinen språk - (2009-08-09)
  [2338] Uddannelse, Open Source computer sprog - (2009-08-09)
  [2337] Opleiding, Open Source computertalen - (2009-08-09)
  [2336] Formação, Open Source computador línguas - (2009-08-09)
  [2335] Ausbildung, die Open-Source-Sprachen - (2009-08-09)
  [2334] Formazione, Open Source computer lingue - (2009-08-09)
  [2333] Formación, de los lenguajes de código abierto - (2009-08-09)
  [2332] Formation, des langages Open Source - (2009-08-09)
  [2225] How important is a front page ranking on a search engine? - (2009-06-09)
  [2065] Static mirroring through HTTrack, wget and others - (2009-03-03)
  [2056] Web Site Loading - experiences and some solutions shared - (2009-02-26)
  [1982] Cooking bodies and URLs - (2009-01-08)
  [1970] Plagarism - who is copying my pages? - (2009-01-02)
  [1961] Making our things easier to find - (2008-12-26)
  [1955] How to avoid duplicating web page maintainance - (2008-12-20)
  [1888] Find the link - (2008-11-16)
  [1856] A few of my favourite things - (2008-10-26)
  [1797] I have been working hard but I do not expect you noticed - (2008-09-14)
  [1793] Which country does a search engine think you are located in? - (2008-09-11)
  [1756] Ever had One of THOSE mornings? - (2008-08-16)
  [1747] Who is watching you? - (2008-08-10)
  [1711] Rapid growth leads to server move - (2008-07-17)
  [1653] How do Google Ads work? - (2008-05-25)
  [1634] Kiss and Book - (2008-05-07)
  [1630] To provide external links, or not? - (2008-05-04)
  [1610] PHP course dot co, dot uk - (2008-04-13)
  [1554] Online hotel reservations - Melksham, Wiltshire (near Bath) - (2008-02-24)
  [1541] Colour, Composition or Content - (2008-02-16)
  [1534] Where in the world / country is my visitor from? - (2008-02-07)
  [1513] Perl, PHP or Python? No - Perl AND PHP AND Python! - (2008-01-20)
  [1506] Ongoing Image Copyright Issues, PHP and MySQL solutions - (2008-01-14)
  [1505] Script to present commonly used images - PHP - (2008-01-13)
  [1494] A time to update pictures - (2008-01-03)
  [1437] Above the fold with First Great Western - (2007-11-19)
  [1297] Stuffing content into a web page - easy maintainance - (2007-08-09)
  [1237] What proportion of our web traffic is robots? - (2007-06-19)
  [1212] What brought YOU to our web site? - (2007-06-01)
  [1207] Simple but effective use of mod_rewrite (Apache httpd) - (2007-05-27)
  [1198] From Web to Web 2 - (2007-05-21)
  [1186] Two new pages / sites - (2007-05-14)
  [1184] Finding resources - some pointers - (2007-05-13)
  [1177] Sorting out for a site map - (2007-05-05)
  [1104] Drawing dynamic graphs in PHP - (2007-03-09)
  [1055] Above the fold - (2007-01-28)
  [1029] Our search engine placement is dropping. - (2007-01-11)
  [1015] Search engine placement - long term strategy and success - (2006-12-30)
  [994] Training on Cascading Style Sheets - (2006-12-17)
  [976] Santa at the station - (2006-12-09)
  [916] Driving customers away - (2006-11-07)
  [893] Visibility - (2006-10-14)
  [800] Effective web campaign? - (2006-07-12)
  [767] Finding the language preference of a web site visitor - (2006-06-18)
  [757] Horse and Python training - (2006-06-12)
  [732] Where is a web site visitor browsing from - (2006-05-24)
  [718] Protecting images from theft - (2006-05-12)
  [681] Mirroring a dynamic site - (2006-04-12)
  [658] Keeping the visitors happy and browsing - (2006-03-26)
  [649] Denial of Service ''attack'' - (2006-03-17)
  [533] Bigger Box Campaign - (2005-12-18)
  [528] Getting favicon to work - avoiding common pitfalls - (2005-12-14)
  [510] Dynamic Web presence - next generation web site - (2005-11-29)
  [492] New Navigation Aid - Launch of My Wellho - (2005-11-11)
  [414] Form Madness - (2005-08-14)
  [376] What brings people to my web site? - (2005-07-13)
  [369] CMS - the minefield of Choices - (2005-07-05)
  [348] Graveyard pages - (2005-06-15)
  [347] Frightening and from-friend viruses and spams - (2005-06-14)
  [322] More maps - (2005-05-23)
  [320] Ordnance Survey - using a 'Get a map' - (2005-05-22)
  [314] What language is this written in? - (2005-05-17)
  [311] Growth pains - (2005-05-14)
  [288] Colour blindness for web developers - (2005-04-22)
  [284] The Iconish language - (2005-04-19)
  [278] Cover all the options - (2005-04-13)
  [276] An apology to Mr Boneparte - (2005-04-11)
  [274] Our most popular resources - (2005-04-10)
  [268] Information request forms, cleaning up spam - (2005-04-05)
  [261] Putting a form online - (2005-03-29)
  [259] Responding to spam - (2005-03-27)
  [222] Who are all these visitors? - (2005-02-20)
  [202] Searching for numbers - (2005-02-04)
  [197] Allow for peak traffic on your web site - (2005-02-01)
  [182] Your personal Google ranking - (2005-01-19)
  [179] The hunt for unique words - (2005-01-16)
  [173] Data Mining - (2005-01-09)
  [165] Implementing an effective site search engine - (2005-01-01)
  [142] Colour for access - (2004-12-06)
  [117] A case of case - (2004-11-14)
  [109] URLs - a service and not a hurdle - (2004-11-04)
  [98] No more 'Error 404' pages. Something better. - (2004-10-24)
  [32] Web design platoon - (2004-08-29)
  [23] Skills and responsibilities - (2004-08-22)

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Forward to Seend, near Melksham, Wiltshire

Alfred the Great
Next in the sequence - courses next year (2009)
23:30 bookings and midnight checkins
Seend, near Melksham, Wiltshire
Web Bloopers - good form design - avoiding pitfalls
Processing all files in a directory - Perl
Text formating for HTML, with PHP
Caen Hill and Olivers Castle
Dont bother to write a Perl program
Perl - map to process every member of a list (array)