Ken Larsen's web site - Web site creation

In my last job at IBM I created and maintained a few internal web sites.   Since leaving IBM I've resurrected my web publishing skills and created my personal web site and the following web site for a psychologist friend of mine using Microsoft FrontPage:  http://jeannehernandez.com/

If other people prevail upon me to create web sites for them, I may launch a web site business, but for now it's just another one of my recreational interest.

Lessons learned: 

  1. I built Jeanne's web site using "frames".  From a navigation and aesthetics perspective, frames are wonderful.  However, from a "search engine visibility" perspective, they're not great.  Extra steps must be taken in the internals of the HTML code to ensure that all pages get "crawled" and become visible to Google and other search engines.  Here are two web sites which address this issue:  Search Engines and Frames and Improving Your Listing on Google 
  2. Google's Page Rank is a numerical (0-10) assessment of how visible a web page is to Google's search engine.  To display page rank you must enable page rank on your browser.  Here's how to do this on Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0:
  3. Here are some tips to improve a site's visibility to Google:
  4. It's important to comply with web standards.  Here's a style guide I found:  Web Style Guide
  5. After reviewing the Web Style Guide, I modified my web site to have:
  6. The advantage of selecting the font size as 1, 2, 3 instead of 8 pt, 10 pt, 12 pt is that this permits a viewer to modify screen text size via the browser's "View->Text Size" command. 
  7. To avoid being picked up by spammers, email addresses should not be posted on web pages.  It's best to have a "contact me" which when clicked upon pops up an email form.
  8. Pictures posted on the web should be shrunk to their optimal viewing dimensions before posting.  This is to minimize page downloading time.
  9. Web pages should be designed to look best on screens which are 1024x768 pixels as this is becoming the most widely used screen size.  My son Kevin found this information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Image_use_policy/Size
  10. Here are some tips on controlling how web sites index and access your web site:  http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/controlling-how-search-engines-access.html
  11. If someone is interested starting their own web site, my recommendation is that they buy a domain and hosting service from GoDaddy,  http://www.godaddy.com  It's inexpensive and you can develop it quickly.
  12. Here's a web site for creating backgammon board diagrams:  http://apbg.net/bg_diagrams.php
  13. (November 2014) The current recommendations for web design are Squarespace and WordPress, but I haven't used either.
  14. Since May of 2012 I've been using Microsoft Expressions Web 4 for web design.  It cost me $ 160 back in 2012.  Now (2015) I see that a free version can be acquired.
  15. In May of 2012 I bought a domain and 5 years of hosting service from GoDaddy for $ 280.
  16. (February 2017) This website/blog builder looks to be pretty good:  https://websitesetup.org/  However, I haven't tried it.  It recommends using WordPress, but from what little I've seen of WordPress, I don't like it.  There are ads.  I don't like ads.  They're distracting and clutter things up.  I would expect that the ads are there only if you go with the free version of WordPress.  If you paid for WordPress service, you could probably get rid of them.  That's my assumption.
  17. (February 10, 2018) Gym buddy John Morrison recommends that I study w3schools.com  It gives advice to schools on web publishing.  One piece of advice is to use Hex={FF,F8,E7} for a background color.  It's "Cosmic Latte".  When I got home I immediately began converting my web pages to  it.
  18. (March 2018) Here's a blog that another gym buddy (Diana Walstad) created using WordPress:  https://dianawalstad.com  Diana pays $ 38/year for hosting service.
    She learned how to create a WordPress blog from the Rivers Agency in Chapel Hill.  Here is their website:  https://riversagency.com/

January 30, 2019:  I spend $ 570.25 to extend my domain and web hosting service for five more years.

November 23, 2019:  At my gym I have an argument with my highly esteemed friend Dr. John Morrison about web design.  John founded the computer science department at NCSSM in Durham, NC in 2005.  I asked John what tools he would use if he had to start from scratch and build a website like mine.  He told me that he would build each page in HTML using a text editor.  He is adamantly against using a WYSIWYG (What you see if what you get) tool.  I was absolutely aghast!  I totally disagree and told John that he needs to wake up.  Writing a page in HTML is an extraordinarily tedious operation ... unless you're someone like John ... who can solve a crossword puzzle in under 20 minutes.  But, if you're a normal person, a WYSIWYG tool is an absolute necessary.  He justified his stance based on the speed that his creations load versus WYSIWYG created pages.  To me, that is not a valid argument.  With rare exceptions, everything loads fast ... because computer hardware has become extraordinarily fast.  Priority should be placed on the aesthetics of the web pages.  John's own NCSSM page is severely lacking when measured by that criteria.  John said web page design is not part of his department's mission statement. 

November 24, 2019: John Morrison is wrong about the NCSSM Computer Science mission statement.  It can be found on this page.  Within the mission statement is "The primary goal for all classes is for students to build a toolkit that they can use to solve increasingly complex computing problems and complete working applications."  To me, the word "complete" means that a user interface must be included.  I advise John to upgrade his courses to address this omission.  I assert that ignoring the value of a WYSIWYG user interface is a major flaw in the NCSSM computer science curriculum.

 

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