WebMaster's Page

My name is Pastor Kevin Phillips, and I am the webmaster for Hillsdale Assembly of God Church in Jonesville, Michigan. I am self-taught, and there is alot I still do not know about web design, but I have learned quite a bit. I created this page in the hopes of providing helpful tips to those who are new to the web design process, especially those volunteering for churches and other Christian organizations.

There are some websites I have found very helpful along the way. The following are some excellent resources that provide you much of what you need for web design. I have used these websites frequently and they are very useful.

Two more features merit mention, but are so important that I decided to mention them seperately. They are the W3C Validators, which check your XHTML and CSS codes. The CSS Validator checks your Cascading Style Sheets to ensure they are properly formed and gives recommendations to make certain you are following best practices. The other validator can be used to check your XHTML for accuracy.

As you undoubtedly know, there are three types of XHTML documents: frameset, strict, and transitional. In my opinion, framesets should be avoided at all costs. While support issues have been worked out a long time ago, a web surfer's experience with them still tends to be confusing, annoying, or both. Strict is the best form to use, as it will be most forward-compatible with XHTML 2.0 and best supported by new versions of browsers as the old conventions die, but if you must use transitional, there is a right way to do it.

Do not use the transitional form so you can use old HTML style elements and attributes. Do this with CSS as much as you can. I recommend validating your transitional page as strict until you've removed every possible error. Then if you still have to use the transitional format (to support elements that cannot be represented in CSS such as <iframe>), switch to this doctype. This isn't necessary, but you will produce the best and cleanest code this way.

There are many useful pieces of freeware out there for web designers. Here are some of my favorite freeware programs. I use them frequently as I develop this website. I hope you will find them useful as well. Of vital importance is the use of multiple browsers to make sure your web pages display correctly across platforms.

Below is a starter template for an XHTML document. Assuming that you will validate your XHTML and CSS, I already includes the W3C validation stamp codes in the template. Notice the one big mistake most XHTML programmers make: XHTML is actually XML, so the document should actually begin with an XML declaration. This also means that you should not declare the document as text/html in your meta tags, since it is indicated at XML in the XML declaration and then as XHTML in the DTD. In addition, as XML, the document should be declared xml:lang="en" in the root <html> tag instead of declaring the language in the meta tags.

It is slightly more difficult to use an XML declaration is in a PHP document, because the PHP processor will try to read it as PHP code since it begins with <? just like PHP code. In this case, use the echo command to produce the XML declaration:


<?php

echo "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>" ;

?>

And remember to fully form your XHTML code with PHP, ASP, or other server-side scripting, including your <head> section, and follow all XHTML conventions so that your output XHTML file will be properly formed. The sections in red represent where you should enter your data to form your page.


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">

<head>

<title>Title</title>

<meta name="Description" content="Description" />

<meta name="Keywords" content="Keywords" />

<style type="text/css">

CSS

.w3c img { border:none; width:88px; height:31px; }

</style>

</head>

<body onload="Javascript"  onunload="Javascript">

XHTML

<div class="w3c">

<a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/">

<img src="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/images/vcss" alt="Valid CSS!" /></a>

<a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=referer">

<img src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-xhtml10" alt="Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict" /></a>

</div>

</body>

</html>

In several contexts, I have found that it is still useful to stick with HTML 4 Transitional. This is usually with Javascript programming that just doesn't seem to work properly when the HTML code is updated to XHTML. Also, if you use some templates, they may not display correctly when updated to XHTML. If, in such situations, you determine it is necessary to use HTML 4, the follwing is a template for HTML coding:


<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/">

<head>

<title>Title</title>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii">

<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">

<meta name="Description" content="Description">

<meta name="Keywords" content="Keywords">

<style type="text/css">

CSS

.w3c img { border:none; width:88px; height:31px; }

</style>

</head>

<body onload="javascript"  onunload="javascript">

HTML

<div class="w3c">

<a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/">

<img src="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/images/vcss" alt="Valid CSS!" /></a> 

<a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=referer">

<img src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-html401" alt="Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional"></a>

</div>

</body>

</html>

My last offering is an XHTML guide. This guide is for those already familiar with XHTML and is just meant to serve as a quick reference. It is in PDF format. Again, I am by no means an expert on web design, but I hope this info and these resources are helpful to you.

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