Tales of the Urban Explorer - A Refresh?
Just like the last time I hosted 'Tales of the Urban Explorer' - the website, I quickly got bored and abandoned the project.
Unlike the previous time, the most recent incarnation is all my own work and while it may look rough around the edges there's no trace of web-builders, web-designers or fancy front ends to update the content.
It’s all HTML, CSS-Tailwind and the odd bit of Javascript all done the hard way and this is making me pay more attention and not ditch it.
When you get no hits for days, it's hardly an inspiration to add more content, and the presentation while serviceable is not up to professional quality.
It does hit you in the face like a sledgehammer, but when I look at the competition (always designed by those fancy web-builders with their equally unattractive maintenance fees), mine is placed firmly in the shade.
The lack of website hits is due to my reluctance to pay for SEO. It's all a big fucking con and so long as remind myself that I did all for 'for the experience', then it should be OK.
But it’s not enough…
Everyone else simply shows static images, but I offer more than that. Do people not want to read or has the general intelligence level degraded so much that my extremely infrequent visitors are illiterate buffoons and can't see anything beyond visuals?
I signed up sometime last year for some analysis..., free but free means shit analysis.
Occasionally I will get an email telling me how bad my website is. This is wrong, it's got a rating of 67% and you should pay us to make it all better and go away. Don't pay and your score is 0, what a dunce.
...#Robots.txt is there, so stop telling me otherwise you bastards'...
It's all about the money, the money, the money, isn't it?
You can see there have been no updates since August 2024. That’s hardly an inspiration to any new viewer (what new viewers?).
I hosted 121 explores and then realised I was probably wasting my time on an invisible audience. Could further development encourage more users? Not a chance, but it could wake me up to further coding practice.
A few weeks ago, I started meddling with the borders and re-sizing of images, created a copy of the 'industrial.html' but could not figure out if the new look was any better than the old.
Can you give me an opinion? Which one fits your eyes and is more appealing?
...'the new look with borders and horizontal red lines, smaller avatars'...
The borders around the images are an orange colour, should they be different colours depending on the type of exploration, or do the borders look shit and should be canned?
If you think the original is superior then tell me so. It will save me a shit lot of work retrofitting the other pages.
...'the classic look, no borders, no red lines, larger avatars'...
I was also considering writing some type of front-end to aid me in adding new content, and maybe another page to separate where the explores hail from.
I don't mean exactly, but perhaps by county. It's all rinse and repeat code so I can't see this being much of an issue.
I have well over 400 documented explorers and another 70-80 that still need writing up. I would prefer to make the change before the rest of these are added.
That's if I can force myself to add the rest, and retro-fit the older STEEM-based explores from 2018-2019 which have images hosted on the late busy.org servers.
What would you say is missing from this website? More content, I can deal with but what else?
...'@goblinknackers' large yellow balls are a little in your face?, what do you think?'...
@steddyman tells me the images of the explorers connected to every explore are disconcerting and unnecessary. Should they be omitted?
I wanted to create something unlike any other Urban Exploration website, and I feel this is the case, but that doesn’t make it compelling viewing.
...'why else would you want to see this shithole, other than for the used rubbers?'...
The quotes I feel are click-bait and should make the viewer want to click and read the article. I can't track when this happens as these are links to PeakD and Google Analytics only shows me views of individual pages.
I need to either do something with this or let it rotlike the last incarnation.
Do you like posting your Urbex content and photography for FREE on Facebook and YouTube? I like to get some form of reward for my work and every time I create I do just that. Take a look at The Urbex Community on HIVE.
If you want to keep creating for FREE then ignore what you are reading. If you want to be like me and gain something other than BUGGER ALL for your work then click here and learn about posting on the HIVE blockchain.
My Urban Exploration Tales can be found directly on the internet via my
Website: 'Tales of the Urban Explorer'.
If you found this article so invigorating that you are now a positively googly-eyed, drooling lunatic with dripping saliva or even if you liked it just a bit, then please upvote, comment, rehive, engage me or all of these things.
Great stuff you do - i struggle now to upload a new profile pic here that mirrors me perfectly - I am armed in that one as a sales warrior - meta accepted all but on Hive I can not upload lol :-)
I wish it was great and people looked at it. You have to pay to get attention and as it gains me zero income.., well bollocks to that!
That is the state of the world, all want money but do not pay a lot :-)
Websites are dead man, get with the times... :)
Thanks @bozz, that helps loads.. 😀
😃 just being honest!
I like the new look more: the focus feels more on the main image, while those red lines help viewer perceiving the signature (your avatar) more like a signature, so my eyes stop on the main photo and don't get distracted much by what is below.
It seems there's a split opinion looking at the comments, thanks for yours.
Maybe you might consider changing the borders: imho those are what may bring some to see the original option as the better one.
So you might keep the borderless style of the original photo, but introduce the improved signature with those red lines... and that could make everyone happy (maybe 🤣).
I liked the original better. I don't mean it badly but I think the borders make it look a bit dated!
It's hard to get hits on a regular site these days. All those money grabber ones promise the earth but how can you guarantee they are not going to point some bot shit your way. I wouldn't put it past them!
Well.., I always shit at design. If you are a coder everything tends to be square, no curves and cool stuff. I still feel the avatars are a little oversized.
They might be slightly but only slightly I think.
I wouldn't think you would want to reduce them much where you have to peer at the pic. I ain't no expert tho!
My first time seeing the website. It's actually great as well as your collections of urban explorations! 400 documented stories is wow! That's a lot.
!LUV
@slobberchops, @jane1289(1/5) sent you LUV. | tools | discord | community | HiveWiki | <>< daily
Its over several years. The website seemed a decent place to put them all once they run their course on HIVE.
It's purely personal opinion, but I like the new look more. It helps to create a visual structure for the page.
I took the liberty of running an analysis tool - https://pagespeed.web.dev/ - yeah, it's a free one, but it's the one I used on the before & after of my website when I recently moved it to a new platform. What it showed was interesting, because the site gets really great scores on Desktop, but poor ones on mobile devices.
I know about 70% of the customers on my site are now using Android phones, iPhones or tablets, so that might make a difference. The two things that jumped out to me were image sizes optimised for mobile so that phones don't have to do the heavy lifting of resizing them, and some of the image sizes. The vampire-coven image in particular takes a long time to render on mobiles, but I don't know how easy it would be to be able to identify the device being used and serve up different versions.
Something I find really helps move me up in natural search is constantly tinkering with things. A word change here, a new product or page there - something every week. Search engines love to see sites that are maintained , it proves they're not abandoned. Things I'd suggest are to move the "About me" to the right hand end of the header bar, and maybe add a "perils" page so that any budding explorers inspired by your site can be told about the risks and how to avoid them !
I hope that helps ! Overall, I like the site 😀
I placed a load of effort into the mobile experience, with different settings for sizes. Is that performance or the viewing experience?
Resizing images and fonts was a pain the arse for different screen sizes. I remember the pain, but was intent on doing it all by hand.
Thanks.., all ideas..,, I like the perils one.
Is that the cover image? After clicking its all handled by Peakd.
Yes, the borders look shit and should be canned.
Nice and direct.., I need to try something else.., I am also unconvinced.
I think the horizontal bars dividing sections are fine, but the frames around the images look like old sites, and not in a good way.
I like the new look, easier to make sense of. I'm not mad about the black background but that's me 🙂
The photos are amazing!
That's 3-2 in favour of.., I don't know what to do!
Try the new look for a couple of months and see if you get any change in traffic/engagement.
I'm not convinced myself, hence the question to everyone. Its a retrofit of 121 explores if I decide to switch it. Not a massive deal, not work nonetheless.
Yeah, and we're not helping - rock and a hard place 😁
The frustration in your post is evident, but it is equally clear that you care deeply about the topic.
Classical style with no borders and larger avatars is more aesthetically pleasing than the new look with borders, red lines, and smaller avatars. While borders do provide structure, they sometimes hinder readability.
If engagement is the goal, an interactive map could help, or consider sorting explorers by location. Internal tracking for click-through rates could provide valuable information regarding user behavior.
The explorer images add personality, but if they're deemed excess, their dimensions could be toned down. Click-bait quotes work wonderfully, but there is no need to expand them—they are short and punchy which is perfect.
Social media promotion and niche forums can be effective for driving traffic, so SEO is not a complete hassle. If the goal is to practice coding, keep doing what you are doing until you reach a level of satisfaction.
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I did not know you had a website! I think this is a great move, and I suggest that you keep it (even if there are not as many views as you may have wanted)
I have been struggling with the idea of create a site of my own, simply to keep a better file of my own posts.
Regarding yours, I think it is good! But it cannot rank high (in my opinion), because all of its content is first published on hive front ends and then on your website. It does not have any content on its own.
Depending on the time you have, I would suggest this:
Tagging here @learningpages who also has a website apart from this blog, maybe they have something more to share!
!GIFU
Thanks for the mention. LearningPages.org does get a lot of views, but I believe that's because it has built up it's SEO presence over the years. Some of the content is in a niche which I have discovered is not suitable for Hive. Other content is shared with appropriate acknowledgements. I have stopped posting all all other platforms.
I like the original, without the lines. Larger avatars are good. Can't you add the one with the mask to your original? That looks nicely gruesome.
I clicked on the site. You have Adventure Tales Stories Photography as a heading. I think maybe stories and tales (although different) sort of suggest the same kind of content to people. Maybe put something more sensational, like Scandals, or even Legends instead of tales. People today are all into legends.
I've started a few websites. Never coded. Just used the standard GoDaddy and then Wordpress. I actually got a little website ADHD and had several going at the same time. I still pay for domain names because I can't give it up, but I don't pay attention to the sites.
My sites never took off. I'm not good at design or at attracting an audience. I found it helped when I started writing book reviews for other people. That generated some traffic.
I like your website. I think it's cool. But as for attracting traffic....????
Thanks for the suggestions, though I don't know whether I will further the site any more. I don't think I have ADHD, but maybe I have... as I tend to move on from things if I get bored!
Whats probably not clear is that the avatars are the people who attended that explore. The masked dude is @lpff who doesn't write here, but has an enormous Facebook following.
Every curation reward from @buildawhale’s bot votes:
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I like it better this way...
and it's not about writing love stories that end in suicide, it could serve to attract readers.
Design in general is hard to get right. Stuff that looks modern today can look crap a short time later and I'm not sure what goes in web these days. Colours, fonts and layout all matter, but I couldn't define how. That's why I'm happy not to be a web developer. I've done courses on CSS and stuff, but couldn't do it now. I used to maintain my own site, but I used a CMS with defaults. One reason I prefer using Hive is that I don't have to worry about that stuff and I use minimal formatting on my posts. I can see that this is a nice exercise for you anyway and I think it looks pretty good. It may bring the odd (or very odd) person to Hive.
LOL.., we devs can't draw or design for crap. Artists and Devs are a different breed!
Indeed. I do some basic UI stuff for work, but it's not seen by the public and that's good. I express my creativity in other ways.
@themarkymark
Your attempts to downplay legitimate concerns about your actions only reinforce the need for transparency. The community has repeatedly highlighted issues surrounding your influence on the Hive blockchain, including allegations of manipulation and unethical practices. These are not baseless claims—there’s substantial evidence available for anyone willing to look. Transactions Don't Lie
The Truth https://peakd.com/hive-126152/@bpcvoter3/themarkymark-buildawhale-usainvote-gogreenbuddy-and-scam-farm-downvoting-cult
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While some may feel intimidated to speak up due to fear of retaliation, silence doesn’t equate to approval. It’s clear that your actions have consequences, and they’re harming the very platform many of us care about. Instead of addressing these concerns head-on, dismissing critics with sarcasm and personal attacks only deepens mistrust.
If you truly value the Hive community, now is the time to engage in meaningful dialogue and demonstrate accountability. Otherwise, history will remember how power was misused at the expense of others.
I like more the new one... Maybe you could use the AI for the SEO and do less manual work.
Hello, in my last post I thought about tagging you but I didn't dare, but I made my post thinking about your way of writing, I didn't get a ruined infrastructure but a colonial house from the 16th century, I hope you are well and visiting you to see if I can get a new post from you... bye. Gracias
It's OK, I don't bite. You put a lot of effort into it.. I can see. I don't post so often these days.
Sometimes it is good to strive and create some quality, I try. I hope you can write soon. Take care of yourself