Our mission here at Bangingtoolbox is to dominate with the best content on the internet when it comes to DIY. And we have an easy-to-read and accessible website for everyone even those that would otherwise have limited access to building information. Using Cloudflare as a global CDN.
We also work to have a website that is easy to navigate with a consistent predictable layout to keep our readers comfortable throughout their browsing experience with us.
1. Clear heading structure
- All our pages have a clear heading of the main topic and subheadings for all following content.
- Our headings have a hierarchy structure on the primary topics as it breaks down into smaller and smaller details.
- Our article titles that you see on each of our pages may differ from what you see in search engines, webmasters have the option to show different titles in search, however search engines show what they want and we do not control what they decide to show you.
- The titles we set for search engines try to describe what’s different about our article in comparison to others. We also try and include specific phrases, or jokes, that will resonate with other experts in the industry to separate ourselves from other websites.
- Our titles do not mislead or exaggerate, and are checked and changed to maintain accuracy as our articles get updated.
1. Menu navigation.
We have a popular sticky and narrow header menu for easy navigation while not taking up to much screen space.
We have a footer menu with popular category pages that is visible for mobile readers that cannot see a sidebar (Desktop only).
2. Sidebar navigation.
Having a right-hand sidebar narrows the main content of our website and makes it easier to read with less eye movement and eye strain.
We keep a list of our category pages in our sidebar on all pages except for our home page for easier navigation.
3. Interlinking our content.
We interlink related pages within our articles. We have so much related content that our internal linking is extensive. But to keep our interlinking modest we try to keep less than 15 internal links per page. The most important piece of content, you should read next is at the very end of each article, or under our second-page title.
Internal links are easy to see they are bold, underlined, and dark black.
4. External links.
We link to other websites on most of our pages for the following reasons.
- To suggest another related article for our readers.
- We got some inspiration or data from another website.
- We link to official construction safety advice.
All our external non-monetized links are easy to see as they are dark green bold and underlined. Usually in number format, with a reason for the link at the bottom of the webpage with the corresponding number. Or a text link.
5. Monetized links.
All external link we have that supports us with monetization is clearly identifiable as a large bright red button or bright red text in bold and underlined.
We do not trick anyone to support us, all our monetized links are clearly identified for those that got value from our content and want to help support us.
5. Buttons.
We use many buttons on our website to make navigation easier, and more customized. We use Maxbuttons to make this possible.
3. Screen resolution and devices
Our website has been optimized for different desktop, mobile, and tablet devices.
You can find out your resolution here.
1. Desktop computers
Our website is optimized for high definition 1080 desktop monitors, on 75% 80% 90%, and 100% zoom setting.
100% and 90% zoom look the best however, people who are skim reading to find details may zoom out to 80%.
2. Mobile devices
We use boldgrid visual editor. It gives us the option to create a different desktop, tablet, or mobile element of a webpage to optimize for different devices.
Our theme also displays differently for different screen sizes. Boldgrid is used to hide desktop elements and show mobile replacement elements not covered by our theme on our home page and category pages.
3. Tablets
On the construction site, many builders use tablets. Most tablets have the same resolution as modern phones but they have a larger viewport. We also optimize our website for tablets.
4. Grammar and punctuation
Content at Bangingtoolbox is edited by qualified tradies, writing is not their main skill, or education, construction, or design is. Grammar may not be 100% perfect here, however, we do run our content through Grammarly and fix up what we can.
5. Website speed
We do everything we can to have a fast website.
- We use the biggest known global CDN (Cloudflare) to deliver our content to your web browser.
- We have optimized and compressed images with smaller Webp versions using Shortpixel.
- We have optimized Javascript, HTML, and CSS code, using a popular tool Automize.
- The website’s javascript is Deferred, for the priority of CSS and fonts to load first.
- We do not lazy load our logo or featured image, for faster page loads on website navigation.
- We do not aggregate Javascript or CSS to improve caching and to improve speeds for mobile phones with smaller CPUs.
- We instruct for cached content to your web browser and preload pages on your mouse hover over our internal links for faster loading.
- We lazy load images and elements (Delayed loading until they are in your viewable screen).
- We have locally hosted fonts and have blocked google fonts API.
- We only use a single but lightweight tracker (Clicky analytics).
- We don’t use heavy commenting plugins or visual editors.
- We do not load background images on mobile pages that don’t display them.
We test our page speeds with GTmetrix.
6. Improving our pages for readers with dyslexia
It’s common for workers in the building and construction industry to have dyslexia. Making a website that is easy to understand and read for dyslexia makes our resources more accessible and valuable.
- Keeping our titles to sentence case rather than title case helps dyslexic readers read the titles on our webpage.
- We get our editors to break up paragraphs in the right spots to separate ideas and points.
- We help readers find the right area of information on each page by making new paragraphs on areas of strong focus and common interest also found with the help of a heatmap.
- We use extensive bullet points, pros cons, advantages, and disadvantages and numbered lists to break up and simplify information for easy interpretation and understanding.
- We use easy-to-read fonts and font sizes, and separate our title and main content font display for easy interpretation.
- We clearly highlight our primary titles/topics so that they are easy to see and find.
- We clearly color our internal, external, and monetized links (As mentioned in 2. Our clear link navigation above).
7. Better improve accessibility with feedback
If you notice anything that is not displaying correctly or clearly on our website please contact us with the problem. We will get our development team to fix the problem as soon as it is possible.
8. Our continued accessibility improvements
We constantly monitor and improve our website to meet accessibility standards and to improve the experience of everyone visiting our website.
