An RSS feed lets a reader check a site for new entries without opening its homepage. A small feed can start with just a title, a site link, a description, and one item. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <rss version="2.0"> <channel> <title>My Web Notes</title> <link>https://example.com/</link> <description>Notes about building websites</description> <item> <title>A new … Continue reading →

Before Flexbox and Grid, a common way to position a sidebar was to float it and give the article room beside it. Try this with an element named menu followed by an element named article. #menu { float: left; width: 10em; } #article { margin-left: 11em; } #footer { clear: … Continue reading →

Once a site has more than a few entries, copying the same layout into every page stops being practical. A classic WordPress theme uses templates to place the content inside a common design. The idea is easiest to see by following one page through its templates. On a local test … Continue reading →

WordPress 1.5 introduced Pages alongside the chronological blog. That gave a small site two useful places to put things. A weekly update could go in a post, while an About page could have an address readers could return to whenever they needed it. You can try the distinction on a … Continue reading →

A browser will often display a page even when some of its markup is malformed. That makes visual testing a poor way to tell whether the source is sound. An HTML validator gives you a second check. Try it with a small HTML 4.01 page. Put an image on the … Continue reading →

Written retrospectively for the 2004 archive. I like the idea of saving a copy of a site before changing its design. A screenshot tells me what it looked like, but it leaves out the experience of clicking through it. The HTML and images let me reopen the old pages and … Continue reading →

Written retrospectively for the 2004 archive. PHP 5 arrived in July 2004 with a revised object model. To see one reason to use a class, try keeping the parts of a page title together in a small object. The example can run on a modern local PHP installation: <?php class … Continue reading →

Written retrospectively for the 2004 archive. Before adding a photo to a page, open it at the size you expect the reader to see. A large original can look fine when the browser scales it down, while the visitor still has to download the whole file. Make a resized copy, … Continue reading →

Written retrospectively for the 2004 archive. Make a homepage, an About page, and a Links page. Give each the same three navigation links in the same order. A reader should be able to move between the pages without having to learn a new menu each time. Now add a short … Continue reading →

Written retrospectively for the 2003 archive. One of the things I like about early personal sites is how much a links page could tell you about the person behind it. A handful of useful links with a note beside each one made a page worth bookmarking. To recreate one, make … Continue reading →