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Website Tests & Tips

Menu Structure


Structure

Menu Structure

The menu structure is very clear, but that is to be expected when using a Web Content Management System (WCMS).
I have developed my own structure for my test reports.

Meaningful Web Addresses (“Clean URL”)

As a visitor to my website, you usually use the menu or simply browse through. You don't need to think about the page names/web addresses. But I know from my own experience: sometimes you find an interesting page that you want to bookmark not only in your own browser.
You want to share this page with others and not forget it right away. My websites are easy to remember because they are labelled in a meaningful way.

So this page here has the web address (URL)
https://tests.tips/en/about/website/structure
(the/that + filler words are omitted, everything is written in lower case).

Web Addresses in lower case

24.06.2020: At afternoon I change completely to lowercase URLs. Special characters and umlauts have always been stored as ASCII characters. Now this URL character transition supports also the uniform storage of all web addresses in lower case.

This does not apply for jump targets at my glossary (anchor links with a hash # in the web address).

Three Examples for better understanding

https://tests.tips/en/?hardware/mobile-phone/google-pixel-7-pro#pros
https://tests.tips/en/?software/mobile-apps/threema#rating

But in my glossary:
https://tests.tips/en/?glossary/a#ASCII

 

Conversion with Side Effects

The changeover took only two minutes, but the reworking of thousands of older manually set links took two weeks. Thanks to the use of a good editor, I was able to save a lot of time by using “search & replace”, but still had to proceed very carefully.

Advantage

In the normal text and in the menus, the names are written in the usual correct spelling, as expected.
Only where it is really relevant and everyone knows and expects it, the text is converted to lower case: for the web address (URL).

Language Folders /en/ and /de/

19.11.2020: Created subfolder /de/ for German-language pages and moved them there. This results in a uniform menu structure.
There are various reasons (some of them software-related) why not all web designers do this. The development of many WCMSs began long before globalisation. For additional languages, a folder with a two-digit language abbreviation according to the ISO standard was simply added.
Advantage: nothing changed for the main language. Sufficient at the time, confusing for some international visitors and search engines today.

Background

Before I created the subfolder /de/ for the main language German, I saw many wrong page requests in the logbook every day.
That's why I was preoccupied with this, did a lot of research and finally solved the problem with a technical trick. The WCMS in use officially allows language folders only for second languages.
Read more technical details if interested.

Computer and Mobile Phone are Submenus of Hardware

Select Computer or Mobile Phone directly on the Homepage.
Or first select Hardware via Hamburger Menu and navigate from there to the desired destination.

Mobile Apps is a Submenu of Software

Select Software directly on the Homepage or via Hamburger Menu.
Afterwards select a review or navigate to the submenu Mobile Apps, if you are looking for Software for your mobile device (Smartphone/Tablet).

Website in new Design

30.05.2021: Newly received and tested yesterday, already adopted today.
The new design template was what I had been waiting for for years.
Due to a lack of sufficient programming skills, I could not adapt my beloved template with the forest motif to new requirements, hence the change to the current design.
It is a new design by a good template developer, which I have adapted to my ideas. Now I will go through my pages bit by bit and adapt or further optimise the design template myself.
I hope you like the new design as well, but I am always open to constructive criticism!

Read all on one Page

02.06.2021: Hardware articles will be converted: up to now, each hardware test has about ten sub-pages. After the changeover, each article will have a table of contents at the top with links to the individual paragraphs (jump marks), everything on one page, no need to turn pages. The well-known vertical swipe gesture is more intuitive on small screens than turning pages.

Background

More and more people are reading websites on their smartphones or tablets and are used to getting more content by using the “swipe up/down” gesture. Thanks to the new design with Hamburger Button, my website can also meet these wishes.
Of course, users of a large screen have no disadvantages from this.
This saves me a lot of effort in another project:

Linked Translations

Since there is unfortunately no suitable software extension for my CMS that would link all German texts with the English translations, I am now doing this page by page by hand. Thanks to the above-mentioned preparatory work (read all on one page), there are no longer four hundred pages to link, but about half as many.

All Hardware Test Reports done

I have also already changed a few software test reports.
03.03.2022: Now this article itself has also been changed.

Examples for Hardware Test Reports

WD Blue SATA SSD 4 TB
Fairphone 4 5G

Examples for Software Test Reports

CMSimple_XH (Flat-File CMS)
RethinkDNS (DNS + Firewall)
Session (privacy-protecting instant messenger)
Threema (privacy-protecting instant messenger)

Keyword list: ASCII, Apps, Browser, CMS, Computer, DNS, Details, Disadvantages, Experience, Flat-File CMS, Glossary, HTTPS, Hardware, Homepage, IT, Instant Messenger, Link, Links, Mobile Apps, Mobile Phone, Privacy, Smartphone, Smartphones, Software, Storage, Structure, Tests, Threema, Tips, URL, Web Addresses, Website, review, why

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