Tag: best practices

Best practices: keywords in alt attributes

October 22, 2009

22 Comments

Topics: Accessibility.

This is certainly a subject that I’ve covered before — in fact, it’s something I would hardly choose to cover yet again if it didn’t continue cropping up as an important issue. The use of text in alt attributes is an extremely sensitive subject. Today, the good folks at SEOmoz published an extensive article documenting their statistical findings on web site ranking factors, as gathered from the data in their LinkScape analysis tool. It’s a good article, and demonstrates some […]

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How NOT to use Post meta fields in WordPress Themes

August 25, 2009

5 Comments

Topics: Web Development, WordPress.

A little while ago, while working on a site built by another developer, I came across this rather interesting example of how to use custom fields badly in a WordPress theme (abbreviated for, well, brevity): (The original also did this for meta keywords and meta descriptions — but the demonstration of this “logic” only requires one field.) Handwritten title | | | | | And so on. For approximately 40 separate pages. It made my brain hurt. For reference, the […]

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Best Practices in Web Development: Part 4

September 3, 2008

7 Comments

Topics: Semantics, Web Development.

Part 1 (Contracts, Site Requirements,Information Architecture) Part 2 (Hosting and Security) Part 3 (Navigation, Scent) Part 4 (Semantics, Structure vs. Design, Universal design) Part 5 (Interaction, Errors, and Administration) So, we’re finally getting to the meat of best practice web development. This is what people are usually thinking of when they ask about best practices in web design or web programming: actually building the web site itself. Web design best practices encompass a wide range of needs — everything from […]

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Best Practices in Web Development: Part 2

August 27, 2008

7 Comments

Topics: Web Development.

Part 1 (Contracts, Site Requirements,Information Architecture) Part 2 (Hosting and Security) Part 3 (Navigation, Scent) Part 4 (Semantics, Structure vs. Design, Universal design) Part 5 (Interaction, Errors, and Administration) Once you’ve established your needs document, you should take the time to pick the right server set-up. Different sites need different services — but the right hosting package should always offer certain key elements. Hosting is an integral part of good web site performance, so you should pay close attention to […]

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Best Practices in Web Development: Part 1

August 25, 2008

4 Comments

Topics: Web Development.

Part 1 (Contracts, Site Requirements, Information Architecture) Part 2 (Hosting and Security) Part 3 (Navigation, Scent) Part 4 (Semantics, Structure vs. Design, Universal design) Part 5 (Interaction, Errors, and Administration) This is the beginning of a five-part series highlighting the entire process of developing web sites for clients. Best practices don’t just start with construction: for a small business or independent contractor, they start long before that. Through the course of these articles, I’m going to cover issues including: Preparing […]

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