A book I've been reading made a point about one of the key differences between a website and a physical space you might explore in the real world such as a store or a museum.
The difference I’m referring to is that with a website you have no sense of scale. If you’ve been to 10 pages on some website, do you have any idea how big that site is? Are there 100 other pages? 1,000 other pages? If you’re exploring a mall or a zoo or something, you always have some idea of how much of it you’ve seen.
It got me to thinking… How big is Caedes? This site has such an intimate feel that I have always thought of it as feeling like it consists of 100-200 total pages. Of course in reality there are many more pages here. But how many? Think about this:
Total images – 16,837 at press time. Every image appears in two galleries, one category, and one user gallery, plus each image has its own discussion page. [((16,837 / 36) * 2) + 16,837 = approx. 17,772 web pages].
Total active users – 6,149 at press time. Each user has a profile page and a favorites gallery (I’ll just assume one page average favorites gallery size). [6,149 * 2 = 12,298 web pages].
Discussion board threads – approx. [3,000 web pages].
Miscellaneous other features – approx. [200 web pages].
Total = More than 33,000 web pages
I’ve used generous assumptions for galleries, i.e. 36 images per page rather than 8 per page, and not considering the enormous number of gallery pages that even though they are sorted at 36 per page probably only have 1-10 images (user galleries in particular). I also disregarded all the full screen image display pages (about 5 per image, that’s a lot of pages). I’m counting the voting booth for one page even though it is different every time you view it. So in reality, Caedes is a lot larger than even this estimate, and some of those web pages (i.e. user profiles, forum discussions, even image discussions) are the equivalent of many many web pages in one.
The difference I’m referring to is that with a website you have no sense of scale. If you’ve been to 10 pages on some website, do you have any idea how big that site is? Are there 100 other pages? 1,000 other pages? If you’re exploring a mall or a zoo or something, you always have some idea of how much of it you’ve seen.
It got me to thinking… How big is Caedes? This site has such an intimate feel that I have always thought of it as feeling like it consists of 100-200 total pages. Of course in reality there are many more pages here. But how many? Think about this:
Total images – 16,837 at press time. Every image appears in two galleries, one category, and one user gallery, plus each image has its own discussion page. [((16,837 / 36) * 2) + 16,837 = approx. 17,772 web pages].
Total active users – 6,149 at press time. Each user has a profile page and a favorites gallery (I’ll just assume one page average favorites gallery size). [6,149 * 2 = 12,298 web pages].
Discussion board threads – approx. [3,000 web pages].
Miscellaneous other features – approx. [200 web pages].
Total = More than 33,000 web pages
I’ve used generous assumptions for galleries, i.e. 36 images per page rather than 8 per page, and not considering the enormous number of gallery pages that even though they are sorted at 36 per page probably only have 1-10 images (user galleries in particular). I also disregarded all the full screen image display pages (about 5 per image, that’s a lot of pages). I’m counting the voting booth for one page even though it is different every time you view it. So in reality, Caedes is a lot larger than even this estimate, and some of those web pages (i.e. user profiles, forum discussions, even image discussions) are the equivalent of many many web pages in one.
Have you seen all of Caedes today?