Tip Archive

2 November 2005
Tip of the week XHTML Valid The Importance of XHTML compliance

In order to make the internet accessible to all people, standards in programming were introduced. W3C is an organisation that promotes accessibility in web design by publishing specifications and guidelines and providing tools and software. Many web designers do not follow these standards because it requires more technical skill and because it is more time consuming.

Many of the popular tools used to design and update websites fail to comply with W3C standards and because many website developers choose to use programs like Dreamweaver, Contribute, and Frontpage to design or update websites, the internet is littered with websites that are not XHTML compliant. As a consequence the visually impaired and people who cannot use a mouse to navigate webpages are being denied access to information on the internet.

Read More...
22 October 2005
Tip of the week Example Side Bar Using a Side Bar to show content

You may add a side bar to your site, a side bar stays on the opposite side to where the menu is and like the menu stays the same on each page throughout the section of your site where it is created.
Side Bars are usefull for content which will follow a user throughout the site, they are good for advertisement placement(Since they do not get in the way of the main content), showing the latest news and just about anything that should remain the same on all pages.

Side Bars are created exactly the same as regular pages, the only difference being that when you save the page make sure that it gets saved as side_bar.xml .
25 September 2005
Tip of the day Defining Reusable Content Blocks in CuppaWEB

Saving as Content block. As of CuppaWEB v1.8 it is possible to create reusable content blocks, these content blocks can be imported in any page and make content authoring a much simpler process. Planning your content does become a bit more involved but the benefits outweigh the negatives. By distributing page content into content blocks your pages become easier to maintain.

To make a content block, build your page as normal, when finished click on the "File->Save as ContentBlock" menu in the CuppaWEB Page Editor and supply a file name when asked for one.
19 September 2005
Tip of the day What is a Content Management System or CMS?
CMS's allow end-users (typically authors of some sort) to provide new content in the form of articles. The articles are typically entered as plain text, perhaps with markup to indicate where other resources (such as pictures) should be placed. The system then uses rules to style the article, separating the display from the content, which has a number of advantages when trying to get many articles to conform to a consistent "look and feel". The system then adds the articles to a larger collection for publishing. The systems also often include some sort of concept of the workflow for the target users, which defines how the new content is to be routed around the system.