What's your opinion on works in progress/unfinished pages?

[bear]

I know we've all run into unfinished/WIP pages and sites while exploring, but I'd like to narrow this down more to: In your opinion, when is the right time to publish a page?

A few examples and edge cases to get the ball rolling:

• A clearly unfinished home page, but the rest of the site is accessible and filled with content
• A blog with only one blogpost
• Half-finished shrine(s)
• Under Construction warning pages
• Broken/nonexistent navigation links
• Art/photo galleries with one or two images
• A page that houses links that are WIPs or nonexistent

What should you do with a page before it's ready to be linked to? Do you share your works in progress on your site, or do you wait until there's a good amount of content? Does one thing on a page justify it being published? Is there a largely agreed upon definition of what makes something a WIP vs. a "finished" webpage that gets updated regularly?

I'm excited to hear more opinions on this topic! Also, please don't take any of my examples to mean these things are bad to have on your site, I've had nearly all of them at some point on mine.

[Kolo]

As long as there's something unique or relevant on the page I still enjoy looking at it. It makes me want to come back to it later and see if it's improved. But if the majority of a site's links are blank... I dunno. I give up and stop looking after  a while, especially if I can't tell from the link whether or not a page will have any content.

An unfinished homepage would probably make me click away, but I'm thinking like - a page so unfinished it doesn't have links to other content or any description of the site. A homepage is like the welcome foyer to me; if it's undecorated, then is the rest of the house even built?

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Unfinished Websites/WIPs don't bug me much; I check them out, and if there is not much to see, I just won't stay for long - but since it only takes the time to click the link, its okay. I'm mainly interested in DIY video games, and if I spent time to get download a game or even have to invest additional time to make it running (compiling or compatibility) and then it is only a barely functional demo, I'm pissed.

[wygolvillage]

I usually try to have all my ducks in a row before I start to make the final version of a page public, graphics, assets, text content, features, functions, etc. But I'm not too bothered by finding a page that's not complete since all things online are always kind of "under construction".

Seemingly functional links/buttons to parts of a site that don't exist yet, though... Those I'm less of a fan of. So many times I'll see a cool looking site but a good handful of the interesting looking links on the navbar don't lead anywhere because there's not a page yet... I dunno maybe it's because it's one of those things I can never imagine doing myself xP

[xero333]

I started making my personal site then just didn't have any time to carry on, so it's sitting with the homepage slightly done and literally nothing else lol. I hope when I get some more free time to carry on with it.

[Paprika]

Honestly, I like it. I really like it. If I wanted something super clean, finished and polished, I'd look on the current big internet websites. Having misaligned gifs, errors of display and "under construction" gifs is sweet. You see that it is made by someone who wants to do it themselves, not by a professional looking to keep his visitor online more than 5 minutes with 4 clicks maxiumum.

Like in real life, unfinished stuff is often nice or has its own charm and it somehow invites me to come back later, to see if there's progress or new things. If it's an abandoned website it has its charm too, thinking that someone started something had either forgot, stopped or moved onto something else !

[WarriorSong]

As someone who doesn't have a lot of time to work on my own projects, unfinished pages don't bother me. I think there's a certain charm to seeing that there's someone clearly working on it. As long as there's something there and it's not completely blank, I think it's fun to check back on WIPs and see what's new.

[brisray]

I don't consider most of my pages properly finished with nothing more to add to them. I'll revisit pages, update them and make sure the links still work.

How I work is new pages don't get added to the menus or sitemap until they are more or less complete. I don't like broken links, but now and then I rename a page or even delete one. Those always get redirects on the server, so even the very old links will work.

It's why I also have a "Latest Updates" page. It's just my preference to show any new pages or ones that have been updated, even if just a couple of sentences or a complete rewrite.

[rhenn]

Personally, I like to avoid making pages public until I feel there's something worth looking at. I don't have a problem with unfinished/wip pages on other websites - I generally assume pages are gonna change/get updated over time! but I think they should be at least functional. Stuff doesn't have to be super polished but if it's more bugs than website... idk.

Same goes for <under construction> pages. If all a link goes to is a placeholder page, I feel there's not a lot of point in having it there in the first place (though I'm still guilty of this, lol.) I also agree with wygolvillage's point re: seemingly clickable links.

[starbreaker]

Little imperfections like typos, unfinished pages, or even missing pages or broken links prove that a website is operated by a human being. They're to be embraced.

[Nikodile]

In a sense, I'd rather see something unfinished than never published at all. It's the curiosity that lost media gives me. Like "how different would my day to day be if this was finished and/or published"? Usually, the answer is "not different at all", but it's fun to speculate and imagine how things would turn out.

[BlazingCobaltX]

Obviously you cannot stop anyone from publishing their site in whatever state it is. Personally, I made sure I had at least three pages (home, about, links) completed before opening my website, because I felt bad about someone coming across any less. Looking at other sites, I think I would want to at least know 1) some info about the webmaster, 2) what the website's purpose is. Any less and I will just assume the site is nowhere near done or it's just someone hoarding a username (if it's Neocities).

[tarraxahum]

I am kinda impatient, or rather, sometimes I need to post stuff unfinished or I risk not posting it at all.

For example, my characters are split into three pages - one for a separate story and its cast, one for videogame RPG characters and one for other OCs who aren't big enough to have a dedicated page yet. When I had the first two, I wanted to link them from, like, a crossroad middle page with those three categories listed, but I didn't have time or energy to do it properly, so for a while it was literally just three links slapped on a document with a third link being inactive 'cause the third page wasn't done either. Eventually, however, I made the third page and prettied up the middle one. Now, if I hadn't posted what I already had? Might've never gotten the motivation to finish the rest.

So for that reason I don't mind websites with dead links and pages under construction. I get it. You made a thing, you had to attach other things but didn't make those yet. It's all good.

Although I will say, it's kinda sad when the front page is cool and then all the links are empty so you realize you've stumbled on it too early. Like, aww! I was excited to see what you got there! But at that point you just hope that the person won't lose steam on that front page alone and everything else will eventually follow.

[PurpleHello98]

I'm hardly one to talk, considering how many pages I have in progress! I do prefer to have my pages at least somewhat finished before I publish them, though---like a 1.0 form.

[vvinrg]

I do most of my actual site dev SSHed into my server, so it's always a possibility you'll see a page while it's in-progress, but for me the in-progress phase usually lasts however long it takes for me to proofread myself/debug the code, which is rarely more than an hour. as I'm currently working on a rewrite of the main index page and its styling, I haven't done much big with my site lately, but whenever I get the current site moved to its new home, there will probably end up being work-in-progress areas of some sort, or more likely unlinked pages. my site is not currently in a state where big laborious things have a logically-cohesive home. as it is, the site is mostly a vessel for file downloads and prose, so there's not enough time spent on any one page for them to have unfinished states. I make incremental updates to stuff over time, and plenty of changes, but they're usually very atomic.

comics.marigold.town's final form is still very much so in the planning phase(sigh, college), but as it stands, the main landing is a big "under construction" banner, which links to the bit of implemented functionality. this was the plan from the beginning, as the final thing is massive in scope.

as for my dreamwidth, there's a certain standard I try to keep with whatever I put up. there are so many private posts tagged as 'draft'. unedited rants, writing ideas I hate, etc. I think maybe 60-40% of what's there is actually public.

I don't really mind unfinished sites when coming across them, although it's always sad to see "more coming soon!" ... "2 years ago". I don't think any netizen is required to finish what they start, and unfinished pages come with the territory of the world wide web. our medium makes it possible to instantly see an unfinished work, where any physical media requires a more laborious publishing step, or at the very least some digitization, before it can reach any wide audience. there's a sort of "completion filter" for a book or a painting, because it's much more of a step to publish than clicking "upload" or copying some files over sftp. as I said above, for me there is no "upload" step, and the same goes for many neocities users who haven't thought to create separate pages for testing.

plus, big yellow "WORK-IN-PROGRESS" banners are charming imo.

It's why I also have a "Latest Updates" page.

I'd like to do the same, but I write in detail about webmastery on my dreamwidth, so I'd like to have an embed of that somehow, but I don't feel like trying to deal with XML in PHP, esp. not after last time(hours of bad debugging lol).

I hope when I get some more free time to carry on with it.

I feel that. meant to work on stuff over spring break but got swamped with a lot of stuff.