About this Site, Created by an XHTML, CSS, and ColdFusion Web Developer

XHTML

As an XHTML web developer, I know the importance of creating web sites that are compatible with multiple browsers and devices (ie, mobile phones, PDAs). The key is developing well-formed, or well-programmed web pages.

Why program with XHTML?

Many pages on the internet contain “bad” HTML.

XML is a programming language where everything must be programmed correctly, which results in “well-formed” web pages.

Today, there different browser technologies: some browsers run on computers, and some browsers run on mobile phones or other small devices. Mobile phones and small devices do not have the resources or power to interpret a “bad” markup language.

Therefore, by combining the strengths of HTML and XML, we get a programming language that reaches more users, now and in the future.

Source: http://www.w3schools.com/Xhtml/xhtml_why.asp

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

As a CSS web developer I know the importance of creating accessible web sites that can be read by all users, including those with visual or physical impairments. Using CSS not only helps these visitors, but offers additional benefits.

Why program with CSS?

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a simple mechanism for adding style (ie, fonts, colors, spacing) to Web documents.

Some of the benefits of programming with CSS include...

• Reduced bandwidth costs
• A higher search engine ranking
• Faster download speed
• Increase in reach—A CSS-based web site is compatible with PDAs, mobile phones, in-car browsers and WebTV.

Source: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/

ColdFusion

As a ColdFusion web developer I know the importance of creating dynamic web sites that are interactive, powerful, accessible, and easy to maintain.

Why ColdFusion?

Some of the benefits of programming with ColdFusion include...

• Easier to maintain than static web sites
• Interact with visitors through web forms
• Provide automatically refreshed content
• Store user-submitted information in organized databaseS
• Automated processes such as sending confirmation e-mails to users
• Will deliver a site in any language
• Allows you to create customized functions i.e. currency conversion
• Offers increased levels of accessibility

Source: http://www.mso.net/Benefits-of-ColdFusion

Ajax

As an Ajax web developer I know the importance of creating a user-friendly experience for visitors. Ajax provides truly dynamic content on a Web page without a page refresh. Ajax effectively does away with the traditional “Click-and-Wait” Web-application architecture of yesterday, making it possible to provide the responsiveness and interactivity users expect from desktop applications.

Why Ajax?

Some of the benefits of programming with Ajax include...

Familiar user interface

Offering users a similar or even just a familiar user interface to what they use on the desktop means lower training costs, fewer errors, and greater initial productivity.

Improved application responsiveness

In a responsive application, users can move rapidly from one action to another as quickly as they can visualize the workflow. Less responsive applications can defeat the user’s workflow visualization by forcing them to continually wait for program information.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

As an SEO web developer I know the importance of creating a web site that can be read and indexed by search engines. Of utmost importance is the content on your site, and ensuring that you are adding rich keywords in all of the visible and invisible elements on each of your web pages.

Why is SEO Important?

Any web site that is geared towards business or commerce should posses search engine optimization elements. The ultimate goal of a web site is to attract internet users, and studies have shown that the vast majority of users find web sites by using the major search engines.

SEO campaigns have a much higher return on investment than other traditional internet marketing techniques.

Source: http://www.redlineseo.com/why.htm

What are some elements of effective SEO?

Meta Descriptions
It’s important to add a meta description for every page on your site, the meta description is what frequently shows up under your page title in search results and convinces people to click-through to your site.

Meta Keywords
Though Google does not seem to place high relevance on meta keywords to determine the content of a web site, other engines like Yahoo! may still look at these.

Headings
Similar to how newspapers and magazines use headings and sub-headings to help readers, websites can use special tags in their HTML. These tags not only help human readers read the content, they also help search engine spiders better understand the content on a page and what is most important. It is generally a good idea to use heading tags to help signal to the search engines, what the web page is about. Since it doesn’t hurt you to have metakeywords, we’d suggest going ahead and adding them to the page.

Content Keywords
Developing keyword-rich content is an extremely important aspect of SEO. Almost everything you need to know about search engine positioning can be summed up in one word: content. If you have content which is useful to visitors, you’re already 90% there, and all the rest is fine tuning. If you don’t have worthwhile content, all the keyword optimization in the world won’t get you very far.

With these caveats in mind, there are several places where keywords can and should be used effectively on your pages:

• Page titles (<title> tags)
• Header contents (<h1>, <h2>, etc. tags)
• Alt image text (<alt> tags)
• Anchor text (<a> tags)
• Bold/italic text (<b>, <i>, <em> etc. tags)
• Body text (especially near top of copy)
• URLs and individual file names
  

Source: http://www.hubspot.com