find a website that has a the exact information you've been looking for for ages, and all you want to do is delete it from every one of your research information notes?
Well, I did, want to and am seriously leaning into the removal issue......
Found this website that has information on WW-2 burials, practices and what have you's, as well as operations, al be it a lot are named, but blank, but.... work in progress, research is never "done" etc, information on the different branches of service, not a whole lot, nothing you can't find anywhere else, but it's there, like a one-stop-shop of knowledge, so you can narrow down where you need to fine-tune your next search.....It should, for all intent and purposes, be my next favorite "start the research" site for Stories behind the Stars, but there's a couple of "peeves" at work here....
- I know adds pay for a lot of the sites. BUT DO YOU HAVE TO HAVE SO MANY ADDS THAT YOU CAN'T EVEN FIGURE OUT WHAT THE TEXT IS FROM THE ADDS IN THE MIDDLE OF IT?
- I know common courtesy tells you, that if you use the information, or even go back to the same nonprofit or volunteer site more than twice, you should contribute, be it financially, (if you're able) or painfully, by sitting thru the ads (if you're not). And generally, I do.
- Having an option of turning on/off the adds is a nice gesture, but if you have to make that decision EVERY PAGE YOU VISIT, and when you return to a previous visited page with adds declined, you get a very blurry page with a huge add and if you click off THAT, you get the "option" of declining adds again, and if you think that's the whole of it, there's pop-up ads, that shrink your readable screen to about 2 lines at a time....
- So for the sake of getting somewhere, I figured "if it looks interesting, I'll turn of the adds, get the information down, and turn them back on"..... the page with the adds on, went on forever, and when I turned the adds of, the actual information fit on one screen..... and had ONLY 7 ADDS!
- At this point, it doesn't feel like "helping to keep the site up" but more helping to sustain a lifestyle.... I know research can be expensive, and people like to get paid for helping out, (although a LOT of us don't, and help for the helping), but IF, as stated on every page, the point is to preserve history and the memory of the soldiers keeping us safe.... and not monetary gain, there should be a less annoying way to get your point across, like maybe just putting a donation button on the page - Oh wait, there are 2 on EVERY page already!
Do you get where I'm "coming from" on this? If you make your helpful website a bitch to navigate, you're missing your goal. If you're "monetizing" to the extend that you're turning people off, the message you're trying to send, you have to wonder what message is actually getting out there.....
Speaking as both a researcher and a web designer, This is a crazy way to do "business"! Putting THIS many adds on a website is not bringing you any money, or goodwill from people visiting. It's wasting your hosting money, your web maintenance money, your followers and potential donors, but from a business standpoint, you paid your designer and marketing people too much! I for one, will not visit again, and I know it's going to cost me time to find the information from a different source, but it won't be as frustrating!
So, if you know anybody that's thinking of making a website for a nonprofit or just for fun, and they indicate they want to "monetize" try and talk them out of "going for the full boat" and stick to maybe 5 or 6 adds per page with NONE in the text area. Their potential customers will thank them for it by actually coming back.
Meanwhile, don't forget to hug a loved one a time or two while you can, and consider yourself thoroughly hugged :-)
Pauli