Wiki+Style+Guide

This is an organic style guide for my wiki. It contains some initial thoughts about the conventions I've used throughout my re-design of the Fitness Sports web site.


 * **Addressing Site Visitors:** One of the points that Redish keeps repeating throughout her book is how an effective web site carries on a conversation with the visitors who land there. I have taken that to heart and addressed any visitors to the site as "you," and referred to the Fitness Sports entity as "we." I feel that makes the user's experience with the site more meaningful than if I referred to them in some generic way (e.g., site user, site visitor, or something similar).
 * **Choice of Font:** For easy-to-read text, one of Redish's guidelines is to use a sans serif font such as Arial, Tahoma , or Verdana . For my re-design, I used Lucida Console as the font of choice. I found it to be clean, easy to read, and it scaled well, independent of the point size I chose. A final consideration was that I liked the way it looked.
 * **"website" vs. "web site:"** This is one of those personal preference items. Either one is valid, and over the years I've gone back and forth on which form to use. I've settled on using "web site," mostly because it feels more proper to me than "website."
 * **Writing Style:** I've used an informal writing style throughout my re-design of the Fitness Sports web site. Another one of Redish's discussion points was to keep the audience in mind. I feel that using a formal writing style has a tendency to turn some members of the potential audience off. By using a more informal writing style, the potential audience is larger since the site seems more "approachable" than it would if a more formal style was used.

I would classify my overall style as more informal than formal. It is formal enough to make it look professional in nature, but informal enough to keep the audience interested and engaged with the content on the page.