This isn't the 80's. The Internet is now a part of everyone's life so shouldn't your archaic beast for a site also be? The answer is yes if you enjoy growth. In spirit of how badass Web 2.0 is I have assembled a list of 12 ways to turn your Web 1.0 site into a Web 2.0 site
1. Replace esomething.com with MYsomething.com
Your web site is not web 2.0 if it has some lame "e" in front of it. We all know your web site is electronic! Let's make it personal with a friendly "my" :).
2. Increase 10px font to at least 12-16px font
Nobody likes squinting their eyes, and no it doesn't look good. Get rid of the small text and replace it with some easy reading text for us productive people.
3. Change categories to tags
Why would somebody want to read your site if it's categorized into specific sections? Your content should be dynamically tagged so everyone can keep track of which is more and less important. Get a tag cloud!
4. Change your news section to a blog
People want to know what's going on with your company besides just formal news. Write something thats cool, funny, stupid, whatever! 1/2 the battle is keeping the audience entertained.
5. Change email a friend to RSS subscriptions
When was the last time you emailed a friend? Have you ever used it? Me neither. Get rid of that worthless feature and get people subscribing to your site via RSS or even...
6. Change bookmark this to social network this
With sites like del.icio.us and Digg you should not be having people bookmarking your site only for themselves to see it. Get your site out there in front of everyone with social bookmarking and networking!
7. Change user account to user profile
Nobody wants a boring user page with just their username and email (Yes, I'm talking to you Amazon). They want a full blown personal page that tracks their whole life and tells the world about how great they are. Get your users involved!
8. Change crappy hard-coded HTML to Semantic HTML with CSS
Your design is cool and all but how do you update it? How do you change it? How does it allow for new content to be added (which is the most important part!)? Get rid of your angst ridden layout and get some semantic HTML styled by CSS in there that is super light and better for everyone - please!
9. It's visitors not HITS!
Once again, this is not the 80's and we don't care about your hits! All that matters is the visitors (Yes, short for unique visitors) and the conversions. Get some Google Analytics on there and stop with the hits talk already.
10. Add comments
People want to contribute and share. Let them! It's better for your users and for your search engines.
11. Change esite.com?id=5235&sort=desc&useless=this &one%20more=still%20useless TO.. mysite.com/meaningful-title
Need I say more?
12. Change custom built site to open source CMS
Come to think about it, just get rid of your whole site and download Drupal or Wordpress and start rocking some free theme. After all, people really don't care what your site looks like that much. They would much rather visit to a terrible looking site with compelling content than a beautiful site with pitiful content. Do it right!
Conclusion
People don't use the web just as a book anymore. They like to get involved and contribute. Allow your visitors (not hits) to be a part of your site!
Me!

72 Comments
Eagles bingo hall
Good morning. All things are difficult before they are easy.
I am from Malaysia and know bad English, please tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "Occupy cambridge wants to highlight the capitalist leanings of authorities which are forcing people out of their comfortable community spaces through this move.Two arrested on attempted murder charges in tuscal."
Waiting for a reply :-(, Imperia.
I’m intrigued too! Thank
I’m intrigued too! Thank you for starting the posts. I have not seen a conflict, maybe because I am learning about web 2.0 tools. To my mind, web 2.0 might highlight where there are pratcical gaps in EBM. Even better it might facilitate ways that we can organise research better to help solve these problems.
Thanks for sharing it. This
Thanks for sharing it. This looks pretty interesting. I'll share it with my friends.
I hope that we will see more from you.
Cheers,
Angelo Gotin
İt's great! I try to web
İt's great! I try to web 2.0.
Wordpress is a Content
Wordpress is a Content management system because it holds contents, unless your blog doesn't have any content except shit.....
How about using the web 2.0
How about using the web 2.0 logo generator?
hi,Using logo generator is
hi,Using logo generator is not a good idea..becuase it does not give you freedom to add diffrent fonts,shapes and additional graphics which will enhance your logo/brand.
And I recommend using a
And I recommend using a framework like symfony, not a non-customized system like Drupal or WordPress.
Hope 2.0 will be dead soone
I hope people will play enough with this 2.0 and this trend will dead rapidly. Only professional communities will alive
I am tired of all this web 2.0
Yes, big fonts are good, clear design is good but that’s all. Web 2.0 makes people sit at computers and communicate, communicate, communicate besides of work, rest, leave! Enough web2.0!
I like the last one... ^
I like the last one... ^
nice post..
nice post..
thanks !
Wow.. It was a joke people.
Wow.. It was a joke people.
Stop being as stupid as you claim this article to be.
Crap crap crap
all this stuff is rubbish!
This site & content featured...
What a load of crap
A few points...
Well you got raked over hot coals with this post, didn't you? Welcome to the Digg crowd: rude, anonymous, and know-it-all, yet most of them are just 17. Think what obnoxious boars they'll be in their 20's (*shiver*). I think most of them have rabies.
That said, I do have a wee critique or two, but all well-intended...first of all, nobody gives a damn about web 2.0. It's the name of a technological revolution on the Web that allows the use of Flash, Ajax, and other apps that speed up and perhaps enrich content. Changing the way your website or blog looks without employing at least one of those technologies will not make it more Web 2.0.
Second of all, black websites are old. There is only one site where I can take light text on a black background, and that's maddox.xmission.com, and that's only because I laugh so hard I'm usually in tears by the time I'm done with his posts. Content rules, but if you're not Maddox, you should get rid of the black background, which is dated and makes legibility an issue.
Tags/clouds/categories, again, who cares? Why wouldn't I want to browse the categories on someone else's website? I've been using a tags cloud myself for the last few months, but I know people have a tendency to skim over them, because they're overdone and most people don't read more than 2-3 pages into your site anyway, so I put up alternate links to the Tags page all over the place just to increase usage of them. The only good thing about tags is specificity, but specificity is often overwhelming, so I don't think categories are such a bad choice, either.
One thing I'm with you on is text size. I like text big and clear. I'm using 11 point myself and if it were not for how badly it would screw my design up, I'd increase it.
>get rid of the black
>get rid of the black background, which is dated and makes legibility an issue.
What.
Seriously, what. What kind of eyes do you have? This should be the default display in all browse
way cool
very funny, got a laugh out of it the whole way.
this site seems to apply all
this site seems to apply all the points
oh my god some people are
oh my god some people are just too stupid to smell irony even if it's shoved up their butts...
Awful.
This is awful advice. This is not web 2.0 at all.
Web 2.0 is not about using big fonts and tags. Its a fundamental shift in architecting web-applications.
Its about thinking about accessibility and cross browser compatibility. Its about using technology to enriching the lives of your users.
It's allowing customers to give you feed back and then you listening.
Web 2.0 is adding a "contact me when someone adds a comment" so I can come back and read what other ridiculous advice you gave someone.
IMO "Web 2.0" is now
IMO "Web 2.0" is now yesterday's news. These points that are made here are very superficial ways to bring your very old website to LOOK like a site that has been built over the last few months, but good gosh... there is more to building an online success than these suggestions.
People on the cutting edge have already been talking about Web 3.0 for some time now, and if you think about it, in a few months, maybe a year, this will all seem like a trend or the "web fashion" for the times. This crap will pass.
Instead, think of what value can you provide for your site's visitors that your competition cannot. How is what you do (service or product) better, and how do you want to position/relate that message to your visitors?
In the beginning of the web, people (designers/developers/marketers) wanted to get rich quick by putting up a site, do what the big boys were doing, and sit back and let the cash roll in.
There was the great "DOT.Com Crash" in the nineties. Remember?
Things come and go. Web 2.0 will soon be old hat.
Instead, think of long-term "strategeries" for success... LOL, and you will do yourself and your visitors a favor.
PEACE,
More then 12 rules...
As web designer I never used such severe arguments [and guidelines] at the start of a web 2.0 design work. In my opinion, web 2.0 is much more than 12 rules, it's about the renewed user experience which has to be captivating.
Zolatn Sebestyen
RespiroMedia.com
What the?
Hmmm. Some good points. Some really retarded points. Bad blogger bad. Obviously doesn't do web design for a living.
Horrible article. Font size?
Horrible article.
Font size? c',mon! Doesn't define crap to make it web 2.0
Number 12, people don't look at design? Are you kidding me?
You wrote a good blogpost
I was a little hold back because of your 12 ways title, but you managed to turn me into a positive fan of your post :)
2 more things are perhaps, make widgets from your site, and split your site in to atoms others can use, and let the users with an account import their data from other websites (as threadless.com wonderfully does)
nice work
dugg for sad truth
Drupal, blogs, CMS are for
Drupal, blogs, CMS are for people who don't know a thing about building a website but want to call themselves webdesigners. Font sizes around 16px - the fact is it's better to read but it's just a fashion at the moment and probably will change. Do something different, be original - this will never go out of fashion, no matter if it's web2.0 or web12.4.
Very Useful!
Dugg! Great post; it's a great, do-this-do-that-and-you're-done kind of post. Added all of them to my to-do list :)
6. Change bookmark this to
6. Change bookmark this to social network this
At the bottom of this very article it says "bookmark/search this article." I thought we weren't bookmarking things anymore? Oh wait... this article sucks. Thats why it's filled with flaws.
By bookmark I am talking
By bookmark I am talking about the conventional ctrl+d type. The browser based. You will find the bookmark links at the bottom of this all social bookmarking sites. I apologize for the confusion.
>_>
horray we finally got to 1999.
i can never get the time i spent reading this and the comments back, can i? oh dr. who please come rescue me.
Are you for real!
This is the worst thing I have ever read! What in the world makes you think there is a Web 2.0? It's not like a new build of the internet has been released! "Web 2.0" is nothing but a buzz word that self importent "bloggers" use to impress people.
Rename this article to
12 points to prove the author is a blogger and not a real person.
Sure...
And I recommend using a framework like symfony, not some stupid non-customized system like Drupal or WordPress.
And 12 is just stupid.
Thanks!
As a designer, thanks for your article. You've got a lot of good, simple points, that will hopefully get other developers thinking. Maybe, they'll move beyond programming simple sites to designing great ones.
Beta comment
Good, interesting article. But reading this suggests, as I've suspected, that there's little difference in content between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, it's just a matter of design or semantics :p
Also you forgot the obligatory "Beta" that should be added to any Web 2.0 logo. This is probably the equivalent of the Web 1.0 Under Construction. "Beta" gives the web site designer:
(a) an excuse if something doesn't work on the site.
(b) the ability to put up a one trick pony site hoping visitors will give them ideas on how to expand.
(c) the added excuse that if it fails they were just trying it out.
So true
Yeah, the beta comment is so true.
Actually, this article seems pretty lighthearted to me. If I wanted my website to be more "Web 2.0" I might try a couple of these points but for the most part this is just fun to read.
Bad article
Font size? c',mon! Doesn't define crap to make it web 2.0
Number 12, people don't look at design? Are you kidding me?
dumbest post I ever read!
dumbest post I ever read!
dumbest comment i've ever read!
It's surprising me how stupid some people are in this world... and how the majority of them gravitate toward digg...
Thanks
I thought your article was very interesting, from someone who is only just learning stuff about the web (I'm 34 and we rarely used the net while at uni) so thankyou.
ps whats a siph?
12. Change custom built site to open source CMS
I disagree with this, if you have built a custom CMS and it works, leave it. It may have fewer features than Wordpress or Drupal but if it has the features you need and is lightweight it will be better for you. Many of the big Web 2.0 names certainly aren't using open source CMS softwares.
Otherwise I think you raise some good points.
That's a good point. As you
That's a good point. As you are probably aware, this list (as with anything in life) is never a 100% correct answer. These are simply some points that may be considered.
meh
This is pretty out there, IMO.
I feel like breaking down each of your points and why they aren't that great:
1. A name change doesn't qualify something as web 2.0. Either way, Myspace and eBay are the only 2 major sites that use e or my in the front of their titles...as far as I know of.
2. A font size doesn't qualify something as web 2.0, either.
3,4,5. I'll give you these, especially the email one.
6. yes it's web 2.0 but let me tell you, sites with 15 "Add to furl, add to del.icio.us, digg this, etc" buttons really start to get annoying. Most social bookmarking systems have their own ways of letting people bookmark stuff (like bookmarklets or buttons) on their own.
7. It's web 2.0, but it's stupid and you don't NEED to do this to become web 2.0.
8. Yeah...well, this kinda has to do with how you want to keep up your site, not if it's web 2.0 or not.
9. I rarely see sites with a hit OR visitor counter nowadays...
10. I agree
11. Typically, normal websites do it the first way and blogs do it the 2nd way.
12. that's just fucking stupid.
compliment ?
not of much value, though a good view for beginners ;)
i aggree with you. it is a
i aggree with you. it is a visitor, not hits. hihihi
thanks.
-IT-
great
i digg.
Graphics & Logo
How about using the web 2.0 logo generator? How about removing the stock photos you've been using?
Very helpful in changing the look and feel of a web 1.0 site into a web 2.0 site.
http://www.grandstart.com
over thirty
some of us are over 30 and think this is great advice.
don't listen to the whingers still lamenting the plight of the font tag
dugg.