Tips and Tutorials for Your Genealogy Web Site
Posted in RootsWeb and FreePages, Website Design Tips & Tutorials on Nov 11th, 2009
A recent question on the RootsWeb Freepages Mailing list was:
For some files on a Freepages site I’m in the process of developing, I would like to restrict the size of the page window to a fraction of the normal size. The problem is whether this is possible and, if so, how to accomplish it.
Barry Carlson, [...]
Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Website Design Tips & Tutorials on Aug 1st, 2009
Do you know the difference between an absolute and a relative link? Do you know which is your best choice for SEO (Seatch Engine Optimization) purposes?
Absolute Link
An absolute link is created when the href value is a fully qualified URL, including:
the transfer protocol: http://
domain name: e.g. www.yourdomain.com
and filename: e.g. your-page.html
An absolute link to the Expression [...]
Posted in Troubleshooting Tips, Website Design Tips & Tutorials on Jul 30th, 2009
How many of you are in the habit of validating your web pages as you work on them and before publishing? Do you also check your work in more than just your default browser? Perhaps you assume if it looks good on your monitor, it will render the same way on everyone who visits your [...]
Posted in Accessibility, Website Design Tips & Tutorials on Jun 19th, 2009
Smashing Magazine’s latest article 10 Ways To Make Your Site Accessible Using Web Standards
Without argument, one of the most important things to consider when creating a website is that it be accessible to everyone who wants to view it. Does your website play nice with screen readers? Can a user override your style sheet with [...]
Posted in Website Design Tips & Tutorials on Jun 1st, 2009
You best watch out, because the HTML police are about. They scour your code and pick out the most unspeakable crimes against HTML markup.
The writer lists ten of the most common coding mistakes and how to correct them. They include:
Placing Block Elements Inside Inline Element
Not Including an ALT Attribute on Images
Not Using Lists When [...]
Posted in Announcements, Website Design Tips & Tutorials on May 28th, 2009
For many years now I have used and highly recommended James Huggins email form script. I use it on each of my sites for the Contact Form and the Family Group Sheet. Examples include:
Expression Web Tutorials Contact Form
Family Group Sheet
Family Genealogy Contact Form
Huggins’ Email Form Script is a free PHP script to process Web Forms, [...]
Posted in Website Design Tips & Tutorials on Mar 14th, 2009
One of the things Cricket Walker teaches in her SEO Training Class, is to add a robots.txt file to your website. Web site owners use the robots.txt file to give instructions to the web bots about their site. A basic file might consist of the following lines of code which tells on web bots NOT [...]
Posted in Website Design Tips & Tutorials on Mar 11th, 2009
Unlike it said last week on FOX news:
“Programs like Microsoft Frontpage, Adobe Dreamweaver, and Microsoft Expression let you edit HTML without actually knowing it.” http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/morning_news/ 090304_my_tech_guy_learn_make_webpage
Cheryl Wise, of By Expression states: “You can’t create a website, at least not a functioning, attractive website with any of the programs listed above without actually learning some of [...]
Posted in Website Design Tips & Tutorials on Feb 19th, 2009
Dmitry Fadeyev states:
By now, all good designers and developers realize the importance of usability for their work. Usable websites offer great user experiences, and great user experiences lead to happy customers. Delight and satisfy your visitors, rather than frustrate and annoy them, with smart design decisions. Here are 9 usability problems that websites commonly face, [...]
Posted in Announcements, Website Design Tips & Tutorials on Feb 18th, 2009
Are you new to CSS? Confused about box models and how to create a CSS based page layout? This Introduction to CSS class is for you. You must be able to write or at least read HTML and familiar with the terms of web design to participate in this [...]
