Quality Designers Build Quality Websites
Building a website is like building a house. You have a lot of pages — or rooms — to build. Likely, you will have browsed other sites and have gotten an idea for your own site. So, you meet with your designer and explain what you are looking for. Shortly, you will have a mock-up of your layout — like your house’s blueprint.
Using the layout, your designer will begin to construct the foundation of your website, the page’s skeleton. Your website won’t match what was initially planned if your designer doesn’t follow current coding standards. Designers are creating cleaner, faster code by always following w3c standards and assuring your website will be cross-platform and cross-browser compatible for years and years to come.
By using what you learn today, you will be well-equipped to determine if your designer is using up-to-date code or running you around the bush.
Before we being
You can check a site’s view source to see if your designer is using modern coding standards. To do that, right click on the web page you want to see and select “View Page Source” or “View Source Code” button depending on what browser you are using.
XHTML Coding Standards
Have HTML pages? PHP and ASP are great languages to code your site in. They have built in features which will help organize your information and, best of all, PHP and ASP are widely available. You may have it without even knowing it!
Do you have a Doctype? It should be the first line of code one your page. Not having a doctype or using the wrong one can have bad results on your site. The most common outcome is that it isn’t browser compatible.
Table Frameworks are a no-no. Tables have their time and place, and thats for tabular data. When you start using tables to lay out your site, it multiplies your code by roughly four times what it should be. All that useless code just adds to the time it takes to load your page.
Follow modern coding standards! Tags like <font>, <basefont> and <center> are considered depreciated code. Attributes of align, bgcolor, and color are also big no-no’s. A better solution would be to use good ol’ CSS.
Be sure that you have valid code! Clean code means a better cross-browser, cross-platform result that will have support for many many years. Check to see if you site is using valid code, cascading style sheets, and links.
Navigation and Link Standards
Your navigation should be easy to find. Its the highway of your website which quickly takes you from one page to the next. If your navigation is hidden from your visitors they have one button left to turn to – the back button.
Keep your links static. Links which blink or continue to change colors aren’t necessary. Try keeping your links pure xhtml/css with definite stats: Normal, Hover, Active.
Content Standards
Frames and iFrames are also a big no-no. However, they are used inappropriately far less than tables are. Keep all frames down to a minimum – preferably zero unless you need to use them. Your content will have a much better flow.
Your content needs to be readable, at all times. Its not just good advice, you should look into the US Section 508 and the UK Disability Discrimination Act. In summary, they say that people with disabilities will want to use your site so you need to accommodate them.
See any important text in your sites images? Google and narrators can not read the text you place in your images. Even worse, your visitors can’t click or copy any of that text. Its a lose-lose situation for your Search Engine Optimization and visitors.
Image Standards
Blurry images make bad impressions. If an image is worth a thousand words, what are those thousand words saying about your website? Be sure that your images are clear and concise to put your best foot forward.
Images should illustrate, not deviate. The point of images and graphics are to enhance your users experience. By using images to illustrate your point your users will find what they are looking for much quicker. Adding random images just to make your site look cool will draw your users eye away from your content if it doesn’t fit within your theme.
Ever see images not matching the background? Hopefully not, but this is actually a fairly common problem. If your image is lighter or darker than the background, and it wasn’t supposed to be, it creates quite an eyesore. This is normally the first incorrect thing I notice on a website.
Search Engine Optimization
Don’t use a link builder! Getting a large volume of links to your site is good, but they must be quality links. Any random link won’t increase your site for the keywords you need. Even worse, you could find yourself flagged as a spammer fpr using those techniques!
Sites should have a hierarchy. Try building a cluster chart of your information. Within a few minutes you will the starting point of what your sites hierarchy should look like.
Final Thoughts
Being a quality web designer is hard work. Hopefully what you learned today will help you decide if your current designer and developer is or isn’t of high quality.
Got or find a bad quality website? Feel free to post the url to the site below so I can take a peek. I’d really like to look at what you find!
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