After working on it off-and-on for …what? Over a year? We have finally launched the new website for my wife’s dance studio: Dance Project Saint Louis. Design by Ken, code by me, content by Dance Project.

It’s running WordPress and took me longer than expected to get all the little things worked out. That just might have something to do with the fact that I’m not terribly familiar with advanced WordPress development, nor am I very well-versed in PHP. I did learn a lot on the way though and I kept as much [traditionally] dynamic content as possible. Although I will admit I hard-coded a few items. One big one being the primary navigation.

Hard-coding the primary nav has it’s benefits though. I like being able to use lengthier, more descriptive names on those pages while keeping the primary nav link text nice and short.

Also started using MailChimp as our email list management service, thanks to their generous “Forever Free” accounts. Up to 500 subscribers and 3000 sends per month should do us well for quite some time. I was having trouble getting their code to work in the new site, but their customer support (via chat) was very responsive and helpful. The person on the other end was knowledgeable(!) even with my technical questions. Ended up being some kind of conflict with other jQuery code, so the help he (or she) could provide was limited, but like Simple Motives, I’m always impressed by good customer service and by knowledgeable support staff.

So, please, check it out. If you’re in St. Louis, sign up your daughters. If you’re a fellow dev, then constructive criticism is welcome.

Web standards, accessibility, WCAG, XHTML, CSS, blah, blah, blah… My web pages look just fine. Why should I care about the so-called “web standards”? Well, do you care that your car was built with and tested for safety standards? Do you care that if you buy a DVD, it will just work in the player you have at home? Does it bug you that you can’t just go buy a replacement battery for your digital camera (or it’s exorbitantly expensive) since it’s proprietary?

Having standards solves lots of problems.

What are web standards?

At a minimum your site will have:

• Valid HTML/XHTML
• Valid CSS

Hopefully your site meets some basic accessibility standards:

• Section 508
• WCAG priority 1

Even more hopefully, your site will meet the more strict accessibility standards (I usually go up to WCAG priority 2):

• WCAG priority 2
• WCAG priority 3

Also, just passing these tests isn’t enough. Seems stupid to say this at this point, but you shouldn’t be using table-based layouts and some thought should be given to how your site will degrade in text-based or unknown browsers. Focus on what matters: the content and usability. Do you really need a bunch of Flash animations and fluff on your site? If you do, then chances are good that people won’t hang around long enough for it to be successful anyway.

Adhering to these standards ensures that your pages can be viewed properly on a wide variety of platforms now and well into the future. You’re pretty much guaranteed that new web browsers will be able to view your pages properly, versus a poorly coded page that will probably fall apart visually. Check out your sites on a wide variety of browsers and devices and see what happens. Check it out on your mobile phone or on your PS3 or Wii browser. If you’ve been coding for IE only (thus making your site proprietary) it will be immediately evident.

Not to mention the fact that coding according to web standards can save money. Pages are more likely to work right “out-of-the-gate” on a greater variety of browsers/devices. Less testing plus increased compatibility = win. Standards-compliant code by definition means that developers new to the project should be able understand and maintain what was written.

Popular Validator Links

• W3C Markup Validator
• W3C CSS Validator
• HiSoftware’s WCAG Validator
• WAVE Validator

For More Info…

• Wikipedia on Web Standards
• Web Standards Group
• Great Q&A list on the W3C site