h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As a long-term dole monkey, I have drifted into doing some voluntary work, confusingly for our local council's voluntary section.

Anyway, fool as I am, I mentioned at the last staff meeting that I'm pretty good with HTML, and everyone said "Good - our website needs designing"

Now, it's not as if I need a step-by-step tutorial and, besides, I intend to stick to the Golden Rule of Web Design (steal the code from elsewhere and customise it a bit). And my superiors will hopefully be providing any material, so I don't have to do anything original.

Generally speaking, though, are there any traps or pitfalls I should watch out for, given that I'm new to designing websites for other people?

B

Yes, saying "I'm pretty good with HTML" is the main one.

Don't forget to put in a secret "backdoor" with a frighteningly simple password that will let all and sundry see the employment records of everyone in the country and possibly enable the well versed hacker to divert billions from the budget into his own swiss bank account ...

Don't over try anything too fancy - you'll get it just nice and then you'll realise it looks terrible on a different resolution monitor/netscape/IE4/IE6 or whatever.

A quick glance at http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com
will provide a bit of insight into the conceptual pitfalls.

www.codeguru.com might help with specific problems later on.

What sort of editor are you going to use?

Nice link!

Editor? Just Notepad for me.

B

make a copy of the last version of the page that worked fine before you change anything...

Keep it simple, use tables.
Serious websites are about information, not crazy graphics and eye-wrenching backgrounds. That's why it's called IT. If it's a council site, it's going to be about delivering the information people want as easily as possible. Bear in mind that, under certain circumstances, the best possible website simply displays a phone number.
Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done - golden rule.
User empathy is king.


If you know your HTML, I'll not patronise you further. If you've got any specifics, or technical Q's, pile them up and I'll answer them later on - at least, to the best of my ability.

Cheers.

Test the pages on as many different versions of as many different browsers as you can. If it's something for a council website, you want as many different people to be able to access it as possible - and they won't all have, or want to have, the latest versions of Internet Explorer (or any other browser, for that matter).

I should think that you local council would have a better editor than Notepad. Why don't you ask them

I like Notepad! It's easy on the eyes and the mouse wrist!

Excellent advice, Surrender - all taken on board.

B

Hi there - not done a huge amount myself but..

plan what you're going to do first

Don't overdo the graphics that take ages to load and slow everything down, pre-cache if possible.

Don't try to do everything at once, finish the first bit before moving on to the next.
(never manage it myself but i should)

When I saw the subject title, first thing I thoughjt was "holy crap, B's got a job designing http://virgin.com/

I apologise for this interruption to an otherwise serious discussion- I know Jack about website designing and shall now leave the thread very quietly.

I'm (ir)responsible for our part of the website at work. I comissioned the original coding from a friend who knows about these things and I maintain it using Fr*ntp*g*. The main thing that I've learnt is to think very carefully about the structure of the site, and how the user will move between pages - links etc. Sounds obvious, but getting this not quite right has cost me a lot of time....

Otto

...and of course ensure that the site is accessible; not only to those using different webbrowses, but to disabled users; graphical links, graphics etc, should all have text labeles put on them, isn't it the 'alt' tag or something like that that way, those using screen readers can access the site...

Are you waiting for *the one* then? And how does it affect your ability to design websites?

Know your audience, their needs, expectations and the main browsers they are likely to be using. A site that does one thing in Internet Explorer six may do another in Netscape 4x.

Give yourself as much time as possible, then give yourself twice that amount of time. Never underestimate how long you might need.

Make one small step, then test it, then make another one. Otherwise you will waste a lot of time de-bugging.

Don't assume that something isn't possible. Search engines are your friend. On the other hand, never promise anything until you've tried it out for yourself.

And the absolute golden rule is - as has already been mentioned - "Keep It Simple"

Hmm. Does 'pretty good with HTML' include cascading style sheets (CSS) and server-side includes?

If not, look 'em up, they'll save you an awful lot of work

Another website that may be of assistance to you is http://www.w3schools.com

If it's a council site it will be subject to the DDA so should be accessable to all.

http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp

has some tips and a nice little thingummy that will tell you if you are doing things right...it's mainly a case of using alt text and if you can making keyboard navigation easy (ie all the links together and not huge pages that take masses of scrolling to navigate).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2000/dot_life/2557637.stm has got a bundle of useful links but bobby is the best tester and has some of the most sensible advice.

Thanks all for the links. At some point, I might actually get round to designing this thing and letting you have a preview (as long as you promise not to have a look at the source code and take the p**s ).

26199:"Does 'pretty good with HTML' include cascading style sheets (CSS) and server-side includes?"

No. Well, actually I can do CSS, but I wasn't intending to use them.

B