January 2004 General Meeting
Website Design Considerations
Webmaster Reference Links:
Web development programs
All you need is a basic text editor; however there are many applications that make this job easier. Do be aware that some "visual editors" tend to overprotect you from underlying code.
- Note Pad or Word Pad - FREE!
- UltraEdit - Shareware
- HTML-Kit (FREE)
- Dreamweaver
- GoLive
- NetObjects Fusion
- List of editors
Register Domain Name
There are a number of Registrars. Be cautious if price is "too good to be true." Your hosting company usually can arrange domain name registration, or you can do it yourself. I use Dotster and am satisfied with price and service:
Web hosts
There are so many potential hosting companies, that I will list only a few. The first two I use currently. ImHosted was the host I used for XPS.ORG until I moved the site to BSD Web Solutions. Since my reasons for moving were not for any specific bad experience with ImHosted, I list them for consideration if only for low price. Pair and Host Rocket have been on my "short list" of potential hosts for some time, so I offer these for your consideration also. Another possibility is to have your ISP host your site.
- Local: BSD WebSolutions
- Free (at HostRocket)
- HostRocket
- Pair
- ICDSoft.com $60/year
- ImHosted
- Forums to do your own research
General reference
- Apple Developer Connection, Internet Developer
- A List Apart
- Web site authoring
- Creating a web site
- Creating Killer Web Sites
- Learn how to Plan, Design, Build and Grow your web site.
- Netscape devedge
- Site Owner Guides
- Sitepoint
- Tutorials @ W3C
- Web Development Reference
- webmonkey - the web developer's resource
- WebReference.com: Dev the Web™
- Web Copy (content)
- Digital Web magazine
Books
With so many books available on this topic, I include the following for your consideration. If you get only one book, choose the first.
- HTML for the World Wide Web
- Web Design on a $hoestring
- HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS
Standards and practices
- My Web site is standard! And yours?
- Web Design Practices
- WEB STYLE GUIDE, 2nd edition
- Accessible Site Design Guide
- UW-Platteville on Web Standards
(X)HTML
- Getting started with HTML
- The HTML Learning Corner
- Web Design - Jennifer Kyrnin
- Better Living Through XHTML
- Utilities
- THE WEB-SAFE COLOR DILEMMA
- Add Google! Search to your site
CSS
- HTML Utopia! Design Websites Without Tables
- Using Style Sheets
- CSS Layout Techniques: for Fun and Profit
- Mulder's Stylesheets Tutorial
- CSS Pointers
- Adding a touch of style - A short guide to CSS
- CSS, design, style, fun
- Style Guide for the Branch Libraries of the New York Public Library
- CSS bug table
- W3C Core Style Sampler
- CSS Borders Design - Beauty in Simplicity
- More CSS links
CSS Tricks or Hacks
- QuirksMode
- Box Model Hacks
- Import Hack
- Commented Backslash MacIE5 CSS Hack - v2
- Image overflow
- CSS Positioning
- How to "skin" a site
- Ordered Columns and more
- Columns of Equal Height + Using Images To Show Link States
- Design Detector
- No frames
PHP and MySQL
- What is PHP?
- MySQL is the world's most popular open source database
- Step by step, install PHP under Windows
- PHP/MySQL Tutorial
- Build your own Database Driven Website using PHP & MySQL
- PHP Builder
- Zend
JavaScript
Alternate browsers
You are sure to have at least Internet Explorer if you use Windows. Most will have IE 6. If you are serious about publishing a Web site, you will need to test using a variety of browsers, as well as the earlier versions of popular browsers. Until recently, having more than one version of IE required that you multi-boot to another instance of Windows. A technique has been discovered that eliminates this need. See the links for "Multiple versions of IE" below.