Website Design
The design of the magazine website is basic, but well organized and clean. Departments are located in a frame along the left side and department contents are legibly arranged within the main frame using basic typographic design elements of bold type, white space, and an appropriate visual on occasion. In addition to links to the departments, links to the submission guidelines, how to donate, the blog, and the community forum are available in the left-hand frame.
The website is not optimized for viewing on smartphones nor is it available for the Kindle or iBooks. There is not an RSS feed for the entire site; however, the Reviews department and blog are available by feed.
Given that many readers prefer not to read for pleasure on computers, the magazine may want to look into providing ePUB or PDF formats of its content.
Search Engine Optimization
According to www.siteguruji.com, the magazine does not have a sitemap, which would help search engines find and index the site’s pages. This lack may explain the uneven search results. Strange Horizons does not show up on the first page of Bing or Google when using the search terms “online science fiction stories”; however, it does appear on the first page for the search terms “online science fiction magazine” and “online fantasy magazine.” The magazine does not appear on any of the first five pages when using a contributor’s name + “short story” in Google, although a link to a discussion forum thread comes up using that search in Bing.
It would appear that the magazine could stand to up its visibility in search engines.
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