Improving my web design skills

Mark M

Mark M

Mark M

Soldato
Joined
6 Jan 2006
Posts
3,407
Location
Newcastle upon Tyne
Im really enjoying working on web design after doing some work on my works site. Ive been looking at some stuff on the net and was wondering if people could give me some pointers to make the "most correct" site possible.

Im using css currently but Ive been reading a few things about includes? My server supports them providing I use .shtml.

Can these be used for meta tags etc in the header?

What about navigation etc?

I assume that if it could be used for the header, footer and navigation it would make it incredibly easy to alter your site in the future?

Is this the correct way of moving forward so to speak as apposed to copying a "template" page each time? If not what should I be looking at?

Thanks for any help and advice, Mark
 
just keep making loads of sites, that what im doing and its really paying off. always start a new site fresh so that you come across loads of problems, which you will, and you'll learn something new. don't worry if you can't find someone to make a site for, just make up a site then, or do one for yourself, like a blog site, then a photos site etc etc.
 
Key things for any development:

  • Repetition/Duplicatation
    If you have multiple pages, but all pages have the same header, for example, then use includes to include one copy of the header, not have multiple copies of the same header on each page.
  • Ease of maintenance
    Always always always write your code, documentation, and notes/comments with the intent that you will not be touching this project again for a long time, but will be expected to come back to it to make changes. Really, really 'dummify' it with comments so the pick-up time is as short as possible.
  • Descriptive keywords, variables and names (if you use them)
    Links to the above. I gather you are only creating static pages? No php/asp/perl/other flavors dynamic stuff, so an example of a bad keyword would be class="class1" or similar, compared to class="div_main_container" - descriptive, I know it's for a div, and will be the main container.
  • Easy to read code
    Links with the above two.. Whitespace is your friend in many situations, but of course, too much or improper use is your enemy :)
 
that's the next thing I'll be doing too ... using php header and footer files. It will really pay off if you have to make quite a few pages.
 
Mark M said:
Whats the difference between php footer and header and html?
Click to expand...

It's just a different way of doing the same thing, if your webserver supports SSI (server side includes) then you can just stick the following in your html:

Code: 
<!--#include file="included.html" -->

or you can use php..

Code: 
<?php include('included.html'); ?>

If you're already using php you might as well use the latter.
 
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