Web Development Articles

HTML & XHTML Validation: A Love Story

Photo by bruckneriteIf you’re relatively new to web design, you’re probably still learning how to get your pages to look the same in all browsers. Even more important, though, is learning how to get your pages to function correctly in all browsers.

The most arduous way of doing this is to open your site in every browser—at least the major ones—and check the functionality of every link, every Flash element, and so on. Of course, even if you’re willing to take the time to do this, you have no guarantee that the invisible elements of your site—your meta tags and doctype tags, for instance—are working correctly.

The only way to ensure that your site has been properly coded is to validate it in order to confirm that it adheres to accepted web standards. So, how do you do this? Well, let me introduce you to your new best friend, the W3C Markup Validation Service.

Tags: html, web design, xhtml
Posted in Design, HTML/XHTML, Web Development | No Comments »

3 Suggestions for CSS Beginners

Photo by eelke dekkerStill somewhat new to CSS?  Below are three suggestions to help improve your coding:

1) External, Not Internal

There are three ways to apply CSS styles to your web site:

  1. Use Internal CSS
  2. Use Inline CSS
  3. Use an External Style Sheet

Internal (or “embedded”) CSS is a set of CSS properties specified within the head tags of your page.  For instance, if you want the background of your page to be black, you could do this:

<html>
<head>
<title>My Web Site</title>
<style type="text/css">
body {
          background-color: #000;
}
</style>
</head>

Inline CSS is similar, except that the properties are applied directly to specific elements within the page.  For instance, if you want one paragraph to have a 20px margin above it, you could do this:

<p style="margin-top: 20px">This is my sample paragraph.</p>

Tags: CSS, html, web design, xhtml
Posted in CSS, Design, Web Development | 2 Comments »

4 Essential Plugins for New WordPress Users

Photo by Kevin LimMost experienced WordPress users could spend hours discussing their favorite—and least favorite—WordPress plugins. If you’re still fairly new to WordPress, though, you might be wondering which plugins you really need.

Below is a breakdown of four WordPress plugins that all new users should consider installing. There are a lot more great plugins than the ones listed below, but the following list represents the core group of plugins I find essential to maintaining the optimal health and functionality of a WordPress blog.

BackUpWordPress

With traditional, static web sites, it’s easy to keep backups of all your files right on your own computer. With interactive, database-driven sites, however, the content is always changing, so you consistently need to create new backup files. For instance, if you have a WordPress blog, all of the site’s posts, pages, comments, and registered users are stored in a database on your hosting provider’s server. Because of this, it’s important to make regular backups of everything stored in the site’s database. That way, if anything goes wrong—if someone hacks into your site or your hosting provider accidentally wipes out all your files—you’ll be able to restore your web site with relative ease.

Tags: Blogging, Blogs, Plugins, Robots.txt, SEO, Sitemaps, WordPress, XML
Posted in Blogging, Blogs, SEO, Web Development, Writing | No Comments »

XML Sitemap and Robots.txt Considerations for WordPress Users

Photo by Cristian LabarcaIf you have a WordPress blog on your own web site (not through WordPress.com) you should configure both a robots.txt file and an XML sitemap in order to provide indexing information to search robots.

If you don’t know anything about configuring robots.txt files, I encourage you to learn more about them by visiting http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html. If you don’t know anything about configuring XML sitemaps, I encourage you to learn more about them by visiting http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php.

Below is an outline of special considerations that WordPress users need to be aware of when setting up these files for their blogs.

Tags: Blogging, Blogs, Plugins, Robots.txt, SEO, Sitemaps, WordPress, XML
Posted in Blogging, Blogs, SEO, Web Development, Writing | No Comments »