Freepages-Help-L Archives

Archiver > Freepages-Help > 2008-06 > 1214256862


From: "Ralph Taylor" <>
Subject: Re: [FreeHelp] FREEPAGES-HELP WHAT NEXT?
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:34:22 -0600
References: <mailman.741.1214118301.9829.freepages-help@rootsweb.com>
In-Reply-To: <mailman.741.1214118301.9829.freepages-help@rootsweb.com>


I'd recommend you decide what it is you would like to do on your website,
then learn the technology to do it. Look at some of the technologies on
other sites and see if you want to use any.

CSS (cascading style sheets) can do wonderful things for appearance; it
eliminates extensive inline styling and does things you can't easily do with
the old-style styling.

If hosted on a server supporting it, SSI (server side includes) allow you to
change menus & other standard content in one place, rather than many -- a
boon to maintenance. Other Perl commands can show the current date, date
revised, etc.

Forms allow the viewer to provide feedback and can do other useful things.

XML can make the site interactive, but will require extensive maintenance.

You haven't mentioned W3C standards, but that's a "technology" important to
the long-term life of your website(s). We should at least learn what the
standards are before choosing whether or not to comply with them.

One technology I recommend against: Building the site so that Flash Media is
required for the viewer to see anything. The video is flashy, but not
accessible to all. If you go this route, build in a "fall-back" mechanism
for viewers who don't have the most recent version.

For Dreamweaver or Expression Web (the successor to Front Page), these are
simply WYSIWYG editors. I'm not sure a "course" is essential -- though
undoubtedly beneficial. You could just explore their features. But, be sure
to learn which of those features are proprietary and try to avoid them.
(Proprietary features are, almost by definition, non-compliant with
standards.)

-rt_/)

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