10 Tips to Self Review

Hey guys me again with yet more advice ;)
Its great to see sites and I like most members I love ripping a site to bits urgh I mean offer constructive criticism :) but before you let us loose on your site you might want to check these handy self reviewing tips :)

1. Does it use tables for layout?
This is a big no no, We have all done it in the past but using tables for laying out content is a bad practice that will lead to problems later its also means the search engines have to work harder to work out what is and isn't content. Tables do have a use for displaying tabular data. But fear not a solution is at hand CSS layouts, you can find many using a Google search but to get you started have a look at http://csstinderbox.raykonline.com/

2. ALT attributes in image tags
This is one of the biggest mistakes made by site designers (regardless of experience) every img tag must have an ALT description and ideally should have a title, look at this example for more details

3. Hierarchical structure
Most people are OK with this one but just in case their are several heading tags in XHTML but the ones we use commonly are H1/2/3 which are used to show some sort of hierarchy, search engines love these tags as they provide easy to understand structure. Remember to include them nested so for example:

4. XHTML what!
HTML died years ago, no really it did, try to use XHTML where possible its a little more complicated but far more logical their are plenty of tutorials on using XHTML but the important thing is to relies that XHTML is a subset of XML  which means we can do fun things with it but thats anotehr post.

5. CSS for all styling
CSS is not just for layouts its for all styling on your site, by using CSS you gain far more control over how your page looks, it also loads quicker and is standards compliant.

6. Accessibility rocks
Making your site accessible to all is important, remember not every one uses javascript/flash or what ever the latest gadget is, you must therefore make sure your core site is designed for the lowest common denominator by all means add fancy gadgets but make sure the core content is accessible. There is a second really important reason to make sites accessible it aids search engine crawlers find code, if your content is all in images, or a flash file the search engines can't "see it" to crawl it and so you won't rank for those terms.

7. Meta tags
Still important today but perhaps for different reasons, use meta tags to provide a description of the site, keywords (though use this sparingly) and perhaps most importantly language this is often forgotten but is vital on a multi-language site.

couple of non technical tips

8. Branding
Does the site look the same through out or is it a mix of themes, its important to have a consistent theme, people are fickle and untrusting of sites that have a mixed look, so make sure your site looks like 1 site not may little ones.

9. Call to action
Every site has a reason for being, what's yours? make sure the reason for the site is obvious!

For more generic tips on branding and promoting site check this post out http://www.webdigity.com/index.php/topic,5829.0.Venture+Skills+Quick+Guide+to+Reputation+management.html

10) Privacy policy
Finally make sure your site has a privacy policy this is in most countries a legal requirement if you don't know where to begin you can check this simple template out http://www.webdigity.com/index.php/topic,6132.0.Privacy+and+You%21.html

Cool tutorial Tim. Bravo!

BTW why you think meta tags are still needed?

I know that the description meta is used for your listing in google, so a description meta can increase your "CTRs", but what about the keywords meta tag?

BTW should we sticky that thread?

Meta tag keywords are still used even though they carry little weight in themselves, but they do add weight to your natural keywords so if you know which keywords your aiming for it will offer a little benefit adding them in. The description meta tag is still in full use, but I think the most important certainly for non English sites is the language.

One thing I didn't put was declare a doc type so the browsers can correctly parse the page. :(

I think meta is not dead, even if they won't help on search engines. many websites/directories use them by default to index them.

And since the www 2.0 web is tagged we should keep them for the future...

Thanks for the tips. I'll be sure to implement them whenever I design sites.

Perhaps the no-tables should be more of a goal, rather than a must. As long as the browsers keep rendering 100% CSS layouts differently; not every layout is reliable without tables.

I make every attempt to be tableless, but sometimes, with the differences between the browsers - it's just not a viable option. Yeah, I could put in a bunch of hacks to get things to work and spend hours trying to figure out why one browser or the other refuses to do things my way, or I could give in, slap a table in there and move on.

Tables are a no no, I can't emphasis that enough 1) they are non accessible, try reading it in a blind reader 2) They will cause you headaches when you come to update your site even minor edits can turn into serious work if you need to adjust layout, 3) The table structure has no semantic meaning, within a year expect search engines to start sending your table based sites to the supplemental pages, as they deem them to have no content.

I know its a pain working tableless but its not impossible I'm in the middle of creating a tableless theme for phpld and its only taken half a day and I'm more or less there it just requires you to get out of a mind set.

Just my take on it I know its a hot subject. 

Designing tabless templates is hard in the beginning but it worths your time. Besides search engines which already gives you extra weight(eg. MSN) the pages of your site load much faster than a template with tables.

I would like to redesign webdigity's template to a tabless one, but I guess I will have to wait some time as this would require a lot of work :(

I generally agree with all you've said. I'm just suggesting that while the programming world knows what it needs to do, someone needs to tell the big boys over in Redmond that their way is not always better.

I am constantly trying to take tables out of my layouts; but with the different browsers not agreeing on things like padding and margins - it will be some time before every website can be done without tables. Unless, folks are willing to give up their layout in order to achieve a tableless design.

I tend to think it's a bit unrealistic to expect that all websites using tables for design to completely redo their sites to be 100% CSS. Some webmasters won't bother to take the time and others simply don't have the time. In the niches I work in, many of the sites are being designed by novices using WYSIWIG tools that create bloated and table-filled code. I just don't see those folks taking the time from their busine$$ to change what is a working site. Unless the newer versions of the software they are using somehow makes the changes for them, I don't see most of them only using tables for tabular data.

The aspect of the Americans with Disibilities Act and how it may come to play with sites being accessible to the blind may push the issue, but even then it will take a long time to change.

For example, I just launched a 100% CSS site today. And in my hurry to get it up forgot to test in IE. It passes W3C validation with flying colors, the CSS has a few minor issues (that I will work on), but none of them are related to the mess I get in IE - it works perfectly in FireFox. Hopefully the problem isn't all that big. IE and it's continuing failures at properly rendering tableless layouts is the main reason so many folks simply stick with tables and whether rightly or wrongly will continue to do so; which is why I think it is a fine goal, but will be a long time in achieving.

The old box problem strikes again. Fortunately, my design is simple enough that 5 minutes and the problem was fixed.

This long-standing math issue is perhaps the biggest reason many will never embrace tableless layouts. I wish it wasn't that way as I do believe in using CSS and leaving tables for tabular data; but, until enough versions go by where all the browsers in use count the same way, I don't see tableless design becoming the norm.

I disagree, for several reasons firstly the vast majority of webmasters are template junkies, they rarely start from scratch, and those that do use technology such as dreamweaver.

As the template designers move away from tables so will the masses, so as the big cms wordpress/joomla/Drupal/Plone all have table less designs as their default templates, projects like OSWD and similar now enforce accessibility within templates so their designs are now all table less as well. So if your starting from one of these all the hard work been done for you.

The second point is most from scratch designers using Dreamweaver or modern web design software are presented with CSS driven in real time, with the primary method of layout being divs, indeed in studio 8 table tags have been hidden even more to avoid accidental usage.

These two points alone mean the vast majority of designers are and will use table less designs its only a group of backwards looking people who can't do simple maths and grasp some basic concepts, and with the latest browsers the number of IE problems is dropping though I still think the adage of spending 20% of your time coding and 80% making it work in IE still holds true. Give it a year and there will be only a few people using tables for layout, and they will be laughed at ridiculed and in the US sued! Here in the UK their is already the start of a law case (criminal) which could result in a man going to prision (unlikely) for breaching the disability act now if found guilty it will send shockwaves through designer community and suddenly we might see alt attributes in images and css based layouts.

As we know from the past, internet is changing very fast. For some reason W3C's standards are more significant now, while before 10 years W3C was an organization that none knew anything about.

For the moment all the web design companies are creating sites using standards, and I guess this will soon go to automated software too. As for the rendering problems I think it is just a matter of experience. BTW IE seems to be more "strict" regarding strict designs, while it was more easier to make it work fine with non css templates.

yes absolutly right, you are not far away from the door as a web-designer if you create website designs with tables (at least here in europe)

check the job offers; all web-designs are requested as a table less design

When designing a site, use markup specifically made for the purpose, CSS is for styling... xhtml for markup... Tables... well pretty useful when displaying tabular data, which was its main purpose anyway...

I'm a css and validation evangelist, need I say more?

I will keep your tips in mind as I wade through the various jargons and languages in an attempt to learn how to build a great website.