How NOT to Build a Website (cont)

In November of 2006 my wife, Shirley, and I took a Mexican Riviera cruise. In anticipation of some much-needed downtime I ordered a book called Head Rush Ajax. Not sure why I bought that book except that I had heard of Ajax, and the book looked interesting in its format.

Well, I read that entire 400 page book during the 8 day cruise. And yes, there was plenty of time left over to make sure that my Sweetie was fully engaged and entertained during the cruise! I felt as though I really understood Ajax after reading that, but more importantly it made me start thinking more about both javascript and html.

When I got home I ordered Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML. If you’ve never read this series of books, you just have to do it. I have never learned as quickly as I did reading those books.

So anyhow, the Head First book on html made me realize how easy html and css is to use. I immediately restructured all of my websites using css. Now I can change the look and feel of an entire site by changing a few lines in the css document.

I do continue to use DW8 for updating and creating my sites, but it’s funny – now I use only the “code” window and never look at the “display” window! And I feel as though I have absolute and complete control of every aspect of my sites and pages. I can move anything anywhere on any page with a quick css update.

So the moral of the story is that if you have, or want to have, a website, learn html and css and do it the right way. You may wonder why I continue to use DW8 if I can write html in Notepad. DW8 still provides good value to me because it helps me see code errors as I make them, and makes it easy to ftp the updates to my live sites. I can make a change, click two buttons to review it, click two more buttons to upload it to the web servers.

That is how to build a website the RIGHT way.