Tagged in: HTML

Web Design

Role Of A Webmaster In Creating And Maintaining A Website

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A webmaster is a person who handles the maintenance of a website making sure that the web servers, hardware and software function systematically. He is the sole architect of the information contained in a website that includes both words and pictures. He has other responsibilities like designing the website, generating and revising web pages, replying to user comments and analyzing traffic through the site. A webmaster is generally qualified in HTML and other scripting languages like JavaScript, PHP and Perl. They may also require a thorough knowledge of configuring web servers such as Apache (web server software that played a significant role in the development of the World Wide Web) and serve as the server administrator.

Companies that hire a webmaster usually have different roles for them that depend on their requirements or financial state. In a smaller company, typical webmaster is responsible for many functions simultaneously. In a larger company, a webmaster is hired on account of their sound technical knowledge and programming skills and who has specialized in a certain area of expertise. There may be a team of webmasters who take over the overall corporate web design and policies and work with people who provide the company with its network infrastructure and supervise the design of the companys website. There may be additional web developers whose duties are to organize and develop the web content. All these various departments of webmasters inter-relate the creation of a website, content and organization, for the corporations intranet.

The essential qualities to look for in an efficient webmaster are intelligence, enthusiasm for web technology, exceptionally good communication skills, thoroughness and an eye for detail, integrity, ability to be an efficient team player, courtesy, professionalism, experience in web development and finally knowledge of Perl, UNIX, HTML, CGI and JavaScript. Other than constant maintenance of websites and their designs and management of web servers, they must also possess knowledge of Perl programming, maintenance of site maps, maintenance of mirror sites, assistance in site promotion, writing entries for the glossary, providing top level user support, maintenance of search engine index, HTML validation, generation of the top 100 page from the access logs, monitoring the error logs and reporting potential problems, verification on the validity of the links on the site, checking presentation and readability in different browsers available at various platforms, editing the content, maintenance of the quality and style of the site, finding, creating and installing tools to develop web content and eventually check them for consistency and development of interactive web applications.

Some of the most basic roles of a webmaster in general are as follows:

– HTML Authoring: They need an understanding of HTML 2.0, 3.2, 4, Dynamic HTML including other extensions like tables, frames, server-push/client-pull, server-side includes etc.

– CGI Scripting: Includes having knowledge of Perl, C and UNIX shell scripts.

– Basic Graphic Designing: Must possess the ability to develop attractive web pages that live up to the given standards.

– Internet Awareness: Must be well acquainted with issues concerning the Internet and the World Wide Web.

– General UNIX and PC (MS-Windows) awareness

– Basic knowledge of TCP/IP and Networking

– Graphic Designing skills: An apprehension of graphics applications and techniques like Photoshop, Fractal Painter, 3D modeling and so on.

– Customer Awareness: Must have the capacity to manage a professional relationship with the customers and work within their requirements.

– WWW Server Configuration: Must show proficiency in NCSA, CERN, Apache, and Netscape Commercial Server – including NSAPI.

Web Design

Advantages Of Tableless Websites

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HTML was originally designed as a semantic markup language intended for sharing scientific documents and research papers online. However, as the Internet expanded from the academic and research world into the mainstream in the mid 1990s, and became more media oriented, graphic designers sought ways to control the visual appearance of the Web pages presented to end users. To this end, tables and spacers have been used to create and maintain page layout.

Problems then started to arise from the use of these techniques. As many webpages are build with tables nested within tables, this resulted in large HTML documents which use more bandwidth than documents with simpler formatting. With slower performance, the internet slowly begun to decline and the Web development industry shrank. Because of this, several UI development was carried out by coders with greater knowledge of good coding practice. It was around this time that many became critical of messy coding practices and the idea of tableless design began to grow.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) were developed to improve the separation between design and content, and move back towards a semantic organization of content on the Web. According to popular Web design outsourcing Philippiness companies, the term “tableless design implies the use of CSS to position HTML elements on the page but it should be noted that tables and CSS are not mutually exclusive. Many experienced HTML coders use CSS to manipulate tables frequently.

Advantages
There are several advantages through the use of tableless websites, these includes:

Accessibility
As a result of the separation of design (CSS) and structure (HTML), it is also possible to provide different layouts for different devices, e.g. handhelds, mobile phones, etc. According to different Web design outsourcing Philippiness companies, it is also possible to specify a different style sheet for print, e.g. to hide or modify the appearance of advertisements or navigation elements that are irrelevant and a nuisance in the printable version of the page.
Maintainability
In tableless layout using CSS, virtually all of the layout information resides in one place: the CSS document. Because the layout information is centralized, these changes can be made quickly and globally by default. The HTML files themselves do not, usually, need to be adjusted when making layout changes. If they do, it is usually to add class-tags to specific markup elements or to change the grouping of various sections with respect to one another.
Bandwidth Efficient
Clever implementation of tableless design can produce web pages with fewer HTML tags thus reducing page download times. According to web design consultants and Web design outsourcing Philippiness companies, using external style sheets to position page elements means more mark up language may be cached and further reduce download times for subsequent pages using the same resources.

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