Web Site Conventions for creation.

What are web standards?

“Web standards” are, basically, an approach to building web sites that ensure they work correctly in any modern browser.

Web standards sites use a combination of technologies, namely XHTML, CSS and unobtrusive JavaScript (also called DOM scripting).

Why are they important?:

Because there are millions of web sites out there on the World wide web we need to follow conventions or guidelines in their creation to ensure that the web site acts and re acts in a similar fashion to web sites of a similar nature.

Web site conventions are used in the creation of web sites to allow the visitors of the page to easily interact with the information and the page itself,  some of the essentials that go into making a good site are:

1. Purpose
   All Web sites have a purpose; it’s a matter of deciding what the purpose of the site will be and what target audience you would like.
2. Design
   Talking about things like colour choice, alignments, visual interest, and meaningful metaphors.
3. Message
   Content is the message, each page within a site needs to have a goal, to serve its purpose in the overall scheme of the site
4. Architecture
   architecture is the basis of how the web site is organised.
5. Usability & Accessibility
   not everyone will be able to access a site due to various circumstances; different equipment, connections and even disabilities can prohibit users accessing a site. You need to take these in to consideration.
6. Online marketing
   it’s not enough to just have a website on the Internet, you need to be able to direct traffic to the site, and otherwise it may fail its purpose.
7. Technical Considerations
   when we look at the technical side of a site, many variables are looked at from domain names (will it be easy to remember); is the ISP reliable, will they be able to accommodate to future technological changes as a site grows.

Standards keep your site not only running in one browser on One operating system they help to make it available to all browsers on all operating systems across different computer platforms.  From the point of view of a business person this is important to reach a wider scope of people for there service or products.

Information Architecture

Information Architecture:

The production of a website's Information Architecture is a very important step in the design process as it comunicates the purpose and use of the sites for the user, this should be clear to understand for the audience. It is important once the decision has been made to build a website to arrange the main message of the site or company into small memorable chunks of information, this is proven to better help users remember the content not only of the site but the last page they were reading on your site. The information should then be ranked in a Hierarchial order to present information in chunks or building blocks to represent the true message of the website and company.

Depending on the budget of the design, the information architecture will vary depending on the size of development team and how long they can spend developing structured information.

It is important to get the information for the website that best demonstrates the use of the site and is easy to understand for the projected audiences, it helps usability for the site and helps achieve the goals of the website for the company or individuals involved.

Revisions of information Arcitecture should be reviewd to allow for any changes that will clarify the message of the website or the information presented on its pages, this may arrise from comments or survays from the users of the site or a possible buisness re structures or internal changes. It is important to keep this information accurate and up to date to inform the customers accuratly.

Web Conventions & Standards

Revision:

What are conventions and why are they important to Website design and development?
Conventions are there to help firstly interoperability between Web browsers, the purpose and Usability of the site and it gives guidelines for a successful working website.

List three conventions used in Website design.
Purpose: All sites have a purpose; it’s a matter of you deciding what the purpose of your site will be and what audience you will need to target.
Design: We are talking about things like colour choice, alignments, visual interest, and meaningful metaphors.
Usability & Accessibility: Not everyone will be able to access a site due to various circumstances; different equipment, connections and even disabilities can prohibit users accessing a site. You need to take these in to consideration.

Who determines the conventions used in Web development.
World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) is a web based organisation that re writes these standards and conventions as needed by the industry, this could be because of changing trends, a new web browser or a new PC architecture.

What is the Role of the W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential.

Web Admin Week 1

This week we looked at Web site administration, some of the types of web sites that i could think of were Online shopping sites ( SSL or Secure), Information sites, User blog / information sharing, private Family ( sharing or news / Photos), Private internal Business web site for geographically restricted offices.

 

 

Some of the needs web sites can have are:

• Secure Information transfer (Bank, Shopping sites)
• User Input such as blog sites or journals,
• Media playback
• Private detail collection
• Usability for disabled

The benefits of having a web site are the ability to reach a wide audience 24 hours a day 365 days a year with a small amount of administration and implementation, it is also a great way to increase productivity at a workplace with remote file access or information sharing. And it can also help bridge the gap between family located in different states and countries a web site for family news and pictures or even a shared picture folder for all to contribute to. These are just a few of the benefits of having a web site there are many more appearing as time goes on and the technology becomes more secure and faster.

What is web site Administration?

 

Web site administration is the up keeping and overall maintenance of a web site, it can also allot of the time include the design and roll out phase of the web sites life cycle. But for the most part web site administrators maintain the web sites accessibility this can include features such as colour schemes, font size, location of content and information, keeping the web site on the server and available to the intended audience and maintaining and dealing with any security threats or problems that may arise with information or files stored with in the web site. Web site administration can be done remotely in most cases as there are many web hosting providers out there that take the hassle out of hosting a web site professionally, but these still need a web site administrator to maintain them as most web hosting companies only offer server space and web site names or a DNS ( Domain name server ).

 

 

What are some Tasks a web site Administrator Completes?

 

A web site administrator would be in charge of uploading any new and updated web pages either via FTP or the new Java applets that incorporate FTP with a Graphical user interface, they may also need to use these facilities to backup the current web site and contents. They may also need to upload a mysql type database and then once it is up and running the web site administrator would be in charge of making sure the database was secure and free from errors ( as an error in a database can bring down all pages linked to it) The web admin may also be in charge of designing the database therefor hopefully reducing the risk of web site failure. Also the web site administrator is in charge of the web site compatibility issues so if there is changes needed in the code to deploy the web site across multiple platforms then this would fall on the web admin's duties, And finally the web site administrator would need to keep his eye on the content being uploaded not only by the owner or designer but possible user input can also sometimes breach copywrite laws or others it would then be up to the web site admin to take tempary action and notify the owner or designer about a possible note to the parties involved.

 

 

Web site administration seems to be a great deal more involving then i expected its not just a case of uploading the site and checking it in a single browser for functionality. There is a whole other side to professional web site administration that is very important in providing a secure and productive web environment.