Route and Area page redesign - preview and give feedback!

Consider adding an expand all button for the subheadings on the area page or don't have them collapsible at all. Some pages with lots of subheadings, like Clear Creek Canyon, are slow and cumbersome to read through if you have click on every subheading.

Another suggestion for a minor change, make the forum "thumbs up" and "beta" buttons a little bit smaller, and place the icons at the top of the post along the name, location, etc. line. If I'm scrolling through posts and want to only want to read ones that are considered good or beta then it helps to know that before I scroll to the bottom of the post. This is especially true for long posts and small laptop screens.

The Route Finder no longer shows which crag the routes are at.  I use this a lot to search a particular area to find crags with a high concentration of a certain grade.

For example, if I want to search for a crag in Clear Creek Canyon with a lot of 5.8-5.9 Sport climbs it was easy by searching CCC and sorting by area then difficulty.  Now you just see a long list of routes with no idea where they are until you open up the route page for each route.

Can we bring that back?  Apologies if this has already been discussed.

Jim Turner wrote:

The Route Finder no longer shows which crag the routes are at.  I use this a lot to search a particular area to find crags with a high concentration of a certain grade.

For example, if I want to search for a crag in Clear Creek Canyon with a lot of 5.8-5.9 Sport climbs it was easy by searching CCC and sorting by area then difficulty.  Now you just see a long list of routes with no idea where they are until you open up the route page for each route.

Can we bring that back?  Apologies if this has already been discussed.

This is a problem on mobile-sized screens (desktop screens do show the area).  I will be restoring this to mobile screens soon.

Was “Rock Climbing” added to some areas? Annoying. My. Chaktar in Cochise Stronghold is an example. 

Is it ok to change these titles back?

Bill Lawry wrote:

Was “Rock Climbing” added to some areas? Annoying. My. Chaktar in Cochise Stronghold is an example. 

Is it ok to change these titles back?

It's not added to the title (so it can't be removed), but on the main area page, we show some variation of "Rock Climbing", "Ice Climbing", "Bouldering", or just "Climbing" based on how many of what kind of routes are within that area.  We do this for SEO reasons on the main heading of the main area page.  The prior version of the area  page similarly had "Rock Climbing" hard-coded at the end of every area name.

I see.  I wondered why it wasn't done the same everywhere. 

Not new - am feeling like Rumpelstiltskin.

Many years ago I recall 'hidden' means of cluing in search engines without such prominent changes - though I had little experience with actually using that.  If it worked back then, it's a little difficult to believe that we have regressed today.  

Bill Lawry wrote:

Many years ago I recall 'hidden' means of cluing in search engines without such prominent changes - though I had little experience with actually using that.  If it worked back then, it's a little difficult to believe that we have regressed today.  

It's hard to believe times change, but they do. Search engine algorithms have for a long time been aware of these tricks and are designed to negatively rank pages that employ them.

Nick Wilder wrote:

This is a problem on mobile-sized screens (desktop screens do show the area).  I will be restoring this to mobile screens soon.

Sweet, thanks!

Marcus wrote:

It's hard to believe times change, but they do. Search engine algorithms have for a long time been aware of these tricks and are designed to negatively rank pages that employ them.

I think you know not of which you speak - or at least not of what I speak. :-)

I just realized I can't figure out how to add new areas as a favorite with this new setup. I use the "What's New" feature a lot. I've done a Command+F search, but no luck. Any tips where to look? 

Evan Wisheropp wrote:

I just realized I can't figure out how to add new areas as a favorite with this new setup. I use the "What's New" feature a lot. I've done a Command+F search, but no luck. Any tips where to look? 

go to the home page. To the right of the route finder box, there's your favorite areas. hit change to add or subtract areas

Bill Lawry wrote:

I think you know not of which you speak - or at least not of what I speak. :-)

If you're talking about meta tags or other such information embedded in the html, they're also pretty superfluous. You can't just designate "rock climb" as a keyword and expect Google to take your word for it. Structured data is a step forward, but again they'll measure this against what is visible and most structured data is intended to be defined on visible information to begin with.

Unless of course I have again misinterpreted what you're hinting at, in which case I say be clear man! (And since this is MP, let me clarify that I'm assuming you're a man, because I haven't met very many women named Bill, but if you'd prefer I didn't use the term Man, that's cool man.)

Anonymous wrote:

Humans > SEO

The question being, is it annoying for Bill alone or annoying for many users? Once SEO starts encrouching on UX you've created a second issue to address where before it was only the one.

Wasn't debating that, nor do I want to. Just commenting on the "hidden" idea.

Anonymous wrote:

Humans > SEO

The question being, is it annoying for Bill alone or annoying for many users? Once SEO starts encrouching on UX you've created a second issue to address where before it was only the one.

Yay, just voicing my opinion ... one in a crowd.  I'm totally good with the ones who are paying the bills looking at the overall impact to users who provide the content.

Marcus wrote:

If you're talking about meta tags or other such information embedded in the html, they're also pretty superfluous. You can't just designate "rock climb" as a keyword and expect Google to take your word for it. Structured data is a step forward, but again they'll measure this against what is visible and most structured data is intended to be defined on visible information to begin with.

Unless of course I have again misinterpreted what you're hinting at, in which case I say be clear man! (And since this is MP, let me clarify that I'm assuming you're a man, because I haven't met very many women named Bill, but if you'd prefer I didn't use the term Man, that's cool man.)

I'm talking about anything that is equivalent to forcing the word(s) in the title.  Not shenanigans like including a key word one hundred times in itsy-bitsy font or mostly grayed out.

I looked over some old html I had.  What I was recalling was indeed in meta tags.  Are they now less impactful than a phrase or word forced into the displayed title?

eli poss wrote:

go to the home page. To the right of the route finder box, there's your favorite areas. hit change to add or subtract areas

Thank you, that worked! I wish you could choose more than 6, but that's a different topic. 

Bill Lawry wrote:

I'm talking about anything that is equivalent to forcing the word(s) in the title.  Not shenanigans like including a key word one hundred times in itsy-bitsy font or mostly grayed out.

I looked over some old html I had.  What I was recalling was indeed in meta tags.  Are they now less impactful than a phrase or word forced into the displayed title?

They're a reference, and Google does use them, but if the same keywords do not also appear on the page then no weight is applied to them. Priority is given to keywords that appear higher in the hierarchy of various HTML5 structures, such as H1, H2, etc, but is also dependent on proper use of Header, Article, Aside, Main etc, though even that is weighted against where it's found (and how often) in lower structures. Then there's back links, domain authority, and Google has introduced deep learning algorithms and language recognition into the process. Gone are the days when you could add a meta keyword and description, submit to dmoz and be on your way.

On the devil's advocate side, this also means that you can relax a little and just let things organically sort themselves out on a site the size of MP.

Marcus wrote:

On the devil's advocate side, this also means that you can relax a little and just let things organically sort themselves out on a site the size of MP.

I suspect that resonates with my relatively uninformed thinking. 

Optimization as a goal by itself can result in wasted effort - or no net gain or sometimes worse - when the whole is considered. 

+1 on the borders.  

MY COMPLAINTS

Page views missing on area pages

Original route grade missing on route pages

Other than that, it's great!