One thing I am personally working on is sharing more of the “behind the scenes” stuff that happens when you are running a small website like mathbootcamps – along with the challenges/interesting things you have to deal with. With that said, the biggest thing I am working on right now is what I like to call “The Video Situation.”
Mathbootcamps.com and the mathbootcamps youtube account have always been kind of separate entities. I might write an article on mathbootcamps and add a video or just leave the article as-is. I might make a quick video of a math topic for youtube but not have a corresponding article for it. This is all because they are both just fun things to do, so I have just been writing or recording as I feel like it and going with whatever topic seemed interesting at the moment. While this has been fun, it isn’t how you get a website really going and I have realized what I want is mathbootcamps.com to really get going!!
So considering how silly the disconnect between the two pieces is, I started at least matching up videos and posts on the site. For example, below you can see a post I did about making histograms using graphing calculators. The video is over on the right with the idea being that anyone who didn’t want to read a long post could just watch the video instead.
This has been working fine until recently, when google started knocking sites down in search results if they didn’t have a website that adjusts to mobile devices (this is called responsive web design). To avoid the penalty, I set up a mobile theme for the site, and while it still needs some work (it isn’t that pretty and isn’t really branded like the rest of the site), it does the job and keeps my site from being penalized.
Maybe you notice the big problem?
No video! Even worse, the example in the post refers to the video.
My mobile theme just doesn’t show the videos on the right hand side of the posts. Even if it did, they would probably be really tiny and useless.
This means that it is time to truly get organized with the videos and the pages. As I am filling out the topics with new articles (you will notice the stats page is coming along nicely!), I can start incorporating the videos INTO the posts. This way, those visiting me on mobile will have the same content as everyone else and hopefully find what they need to help them with whatever math they are working on.
This also means going through a lot of old posts to figure out which posts already have a video and where exactly to place it. A big project, but Im thinking it will also help me find any posts that no longer cut-it style wise. A big project for sure, but one that will make the site better overall.