If any of you have ever browsed through my site (you should if you haven’t) you’ll notice there is a very specific color and layout scheme. If anyone has seen it in the last several days you will notice it looks almost exactly the same as before. There is a difference though and for you tech nerds this is a big one. All the differences in the site are not visible but have improved my site greatly.
Though I am still not complete I have been updating the website to run off a CSS style sheet and some more advanced php coding. My side bar (and several other features) all are sourced from single pages instead of being code on every individual page.
Using a style sheet (www.warrengreeley.com/style.css) has help clean up the code on the individual pages and allows the site to load faster and run more efficiently. It also ensures the themes of all the different pages are the same.
Using a code source from a single page on all my pages was easy. I made the source on a page, side.inc.php, and then on every page that I wanted that source to go on I just imputed one line of code: include(’side.inc.php’). Then the content from that page shows up on whatever page I want. Doing this makes my job easier cause to change something on every page now I only have to alter one set of code and it makes the website load faster.
For those of you who are completely confused right now don’t worry. The point is not how I did it but that I did it. If you are not a web designer like me, then you can find someone (like me for instance) to do the job for you. What I am trying to stress is keeping and updating your website to be as efficient as possible.
In doing so the benefits are great (and may out weigh the costs). Your code is cleaner which means faster loading time and a better user experience. Your site will have an ensured matching theme. Cleaner code means it is easier to be Crawled by search engines. And you will end up doing less work with this efficient design structure.
Talk to your local web designer about how you can make your website run better and work for you.
