January 2004 General Meeting
Website Design Considerations
Introduction
Thus site is associated with the Mid-Hudson Computer User Group, Inc. Website and was developed to contain the presentation for the January 2004 meeting. Updates resulting from member feedback or author initiative will continue.
Scope
There is far more to this topic than can be addressed in this overview. However, it is not space alone that constrains the scope of coverage; the author's own experience is limited to developing and maintaining only two Websites (beyond a personal home page): xps.org and mhcug.org.
Thus, we will only address similar basic, static, Websites; such as those for individuals, families, small businesses, charitable, and civic organizations.
Sites that require shopping carts, are database driven, or demand support by more than one person using content management systems (CMS), are left for further study by the reader.
An instructor should not attempt to teach at a level beyond his/her experience. In this case, I felt an exception had to be made in order that we address the important topic of "standards based" design using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
Although the MHCUG and XPS Websites, at the time this was prepared, do not incorporate CSS, I believe no one should embark on a new Web development project without using CSS.
These pages are written using CSS. My first such attempt, so please bear with me! Why did I wait this long? CSS has been around for several years, but browsers did not begin to incorporate it until version 4 and only now are CSS-compliant browsers installed in 90% (or better) of user's systems.
You should download each of these pages using "File | save as | Web Page, complete" to your computer, where you can examine the XHTML code and, in particular the CSS files, using any text editor. The file "link.css" contains all the CSS information for these pages. The comments within the file may prove to be helpful. MHCUG members should feel free to contact me if you have a question. If you live in our area, but are not yet a member, be prepared to hear why membership might be a good idea [smile].
Patrick Mannix Webmaster, Mid-Hudson Computer User Group, Inc.